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.
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.
SQL Server 2012 has very nice HADR technology built-in, AlwaysOn Availability Groups. It allows to have multiple replicas of selected databases across multiple servers, which can be even located across multiple sites. AlwaysOn itself provides mechanism to keep all replicas of database synchronized and up-to-date, as some of them might serve data for read-only purposes (for example reporting).
MSDN article: AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server) describes AlwaysOn technology in details. In this article I will focus on practical side of this HADR technology and how to get this up and running fast without any issues.
To test and demonstrate SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn capabilities I built simple Lab environment on VMware Workstation as shown below. Lab contains 2 servers with Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter and SQL Server 2012 Enterprise.
In order to get SQL Server AlwaysOn up and running we will complete following activities:
So, let’s get started…
To remove Event Log Source use this:
Remove-EventLog -Source "Desktop Window Manager"
By default elasticsearch has 2GB of RAM set for JVM. In case you run it on VM with less memory you need to change:
in /etc/elasticsearch/jvm.options configuration file.
If you use CentOS and want to add some extra packages you can use EPEL.
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux is project created by Fedora.
In order to use repositories on CentOS first download and install RPM appropriate for your version of CentOS from here:
http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/
Then install it and enjoy more packages from new repo.
[root@localhost ~]# yum install epel-release
Here is example from CenOS 7 how to add EPEL repositories:
Previous article about Riverbed covered RiOS upgrade process. In this post I will show how to install Riverbed Service Platform (RSP).
First let’s see how to get RSP image and what is RSP and how this can be used.
RSP can be downloaded from Riverbed Support page (https://support.riverbed.com/software/rsp.htm), where appropriate version for particular RiOS and Steelhead model can be downloaded.
Best source of detailed description will be RSP User’s Guide, so I did use it as source of information.
RSP offers branch-office-in-a-box services with the following benefits:
- A VMware-based virtualization platform that provides the benefits of the most commonly deployed and advanced virtualization tool set
- Support for running up to five different additional services simultaneously on a single Steelhead appliance, depending on the service and Steelhead appliance model
- Support for more services and types of services, including in-band packages located in-line with optimization such as the Universal Threat Management (UTM) security services, proxy solutions such as video or network monitoring services, and improved support for out-of-band packages such as Windows Active Directory, DNS and DHCP management software, and print services.
- A comprehensive, integrated user interface that provides granular control of RSP, including setup, reporting, and the definition of the data flow between services
I think it’s common problem as Active Directory gets bigger in organizations, control over content of that mission-critical component seems to be lost. Same happened in my place. In addition to that we had to provide information from AD on a regular basis in a form of report. We had no tools to pull all data from AD, process it and present in some readable format. However, I was working with skilled SQL guy who was also very good in Reporting Services. So, I proposed that we can link Active Directory with SQL Server and use Transact-SQL to pull information from AD, process it on SQL and then make it readable and presentable through Reporting Services. That would allow SQL guy to process all information and do all kind of reporting required.
Here are components of our LAB environment before solution went to production:
And below steps how we made SQL Server 2008 R2 to work with Active Directory to use Transact-SQL queries to pull information from directory database.
So, finally I got 6 brand new Cisco 1142n wireless access points. They all are lightweight access points, which means that more less Wireless Controller is required to get them to work. Unfortunatelly due to many circumstances I have purchase of Wireless Controller delayed, so for now have to turn all of those into autonomus wireless devices. That means that IOS has to be replaced on those devices to allow 1142n be fully configured.
But how the whole process happenes? Here are all steps I took to make lightweight AP become autonomus wireless access point:
By default remote management on Windows Server 2012 Core can be blocked by firewall.
In order to enable this functionality, issue following command from Command Prompt window:
Netsh.exe firewall set service remoteadmin enable ALL
Once it’s done you should be able to manage server remotely.