As we can download SCOM 2012 RC from Microsoft, I decided to do quick installation in LAB environment. Whole test environment is based on VMware Workstation 8. Deployment of SCOM 2012 will be spread across few servers to separate certain functions (in fact similar to real-life deployments). For SCOM2012 deplyoment I will use following servers:

• lab-dc-01 – Domain Controller – Windows Server 2008 R2
• lab-sql-01 – SQL Server – Windows Server 2008 R2 + SQL Server 2008 R2
• lab-net-01 – SCOM 2012 Management Server – Windows Server 2008 R2 + SCOM 2012 Management Server
• lab-wks-01 – SCOM 2012 Management Console – Windows 7 x64 Ultimate + SCOM 2012 Management Console

This will be mainly screenshot tour through installation phases of SCOM2012.

Here is schematics of the lab:

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Background image on logon screen os common issue with pre-installed servers, for example from Dell. That makes accessing those systems via Remote Desktop painful and slow (it happenes that serer is shipped to location, racked and stacked, and then whole configuration take place remotely). By default background bitmap from logon screen is sitting in C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds, so you can put your own logon screen background or if you don’t want to have any (just system default) you can follow instructions below and remove background from logon screen.

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By default when I installed mysql on openSUSE, root password for mysql access was blank. First thing then is to change password as this might pose security issue. First of all login to openSUSE using root account and then:

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VMware Workstation and GNS3 are two platforms which are very handy to test and evaluate solutions before live implementation. By default each of those platforms is separate, however both have components which allow integration. What that means is that it is possible to have virtual machines hosted on VMware Workstation to communicate with Cisco equipment which is running oin GNS3.

By default VMware Workstation has 10 virtual networks which are named VMnet0, VMnet1, … , VMnet9. Each of those networks can be used as:

• Bridged – virtual network connected seamless way to physical adapter. Virtual machines connected to bridged network will appear in same network as physical adapter connected to computer.
• NAT – VMware will translate virtual network and computers connected to that network and allow communication acting as gateway
• Host-only – network available only for virtual machines connected to it. private network for virtual machines.

Configuration of virtual networks is flexible and can be adjusted easily. Each of virtual networks can be also presented on host computer as network adapter.

In GNS3 environment we have Cloud Node Type which can be configured to communicate with any network adapter installed on the computer on which GNS3 is running

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Often using VMware Workstation platform we need to quickly create new virtual machine. reasons for that might be different. For example additional machine for our Lab environment or just quick test without affecting other machines we have setup in our virtual environment.

Installing whole operating system with all applications we used to have in our setup might be time consuming process. That is why it is worth to consider creating and using templates to be able quickly generate virtual machines we need.

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This is simple Lab environment I built when was working on IPsec VPN tunnel between our internal network environment and 3rd party vendor systems. As we had some issues with establishing IPsec communication, to make sure that everything is fine on my side I start replicating live environment in Lab. To build test environment quick I use GNS3 as platform to run Dynamips hypervisor for IOS. That speeds up whole process of preparation and testing.

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Some time ago I received request to automate file transfer between FTP server and Development systems. Both, FTP server and Development system, are Windows-based. FTP server was running FTP over SSL only, so that automatically eliminated built-in Windows FTP command-line app. As I was using WinSCP in the past decided to do quick check if it is possible to use it in batch mode, so I can create script and run it on Windows Task Scheduler to automate whole process.

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/etc/rancid/rancid.conf

In this article you can find description of parameters in rancid.conf. By changing parameters in this file you can impact the way RANCID will behave, collect and process collected information. You can also define type of version control repository and email notifications as well as many other option.

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RANCID is a great automation tool which allows you to collect configuration from network devices and store in repository with version control (CVS or SVN). In this article I will show you how to install RANCID and prepare to work on openSUSE 11.4 with subversion as repository for configs.

Having repository with network devices configuration might be also part of disaster recovery planning as in case of failure it will be easy to pull recent configuration from repository and apply on replacement router or switch.

To demonstrate commands I’m using copy&paste from PuTTY while executing step-by-step what is described in this article.

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Quick installation how-to for Nagios on openSUSE 11.4 “Celadon” platform. Same procedure applies to other versions of opeSUSE platform. I’m using version 11.4 for my LAB purposes.

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