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.

• Original software which came on devices was: c1140-rcvk9w8-mx.
• New software I had to deploy on all of them to make them autonomus is: c1140-k9w7-tar.124-25d.JA1.

But how the whole process happenes? Here are all steps I took to make lightweight AP become autonomus wireless access point:

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As a part of preparation for monitoring our WIndows Server 2008 R2 using SNMP and Nagios we had to add SNMP Services to few systems which didn’t have it yet. So, based on that fact I thought it might be nice to capture all steps involved in adding SNMP to Windows Server machine. Here you can see steps, screenshots and short description how to achieve that.

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By default elasticsearch has 2GB of RAM set for JVM. In case you run it on VM with less memory you need to change:

• –Xms2g to –Xms512m
• –Xmx2g to –Xmx512m

in /etc/elasticsearch/jvm.options configuration file.

/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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If you want to send email from PowerShell script via Google Mail:

$SMTPServer = "smtp.gmail.com"
$SMTPPort = "587"
$SMTPUsername = "sender@gmail.com"
$SMTPPassword = "password"

$EmailSenderAddress = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailAddress("sender@gmail.com", "PowerShell Automated Email")

$EmailFrom = $EmailSenderAddress
$EmailTo = "recipient@gmail.com"
$EmailCc = "recipient@hotmail.com"
$EmailAttachment = "C:\Scripts\Attachment.txt"
$EmailSubject = "Automated Email with Report."
$EmailBody = @"
Please find attached report.
"@

$EmailMessage = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage
$EmailMessage.Subject = $EmailSubject
$EmailMessage.Body = $EmailBody
$EmailMessage.To.Add($EmailTo)
$EmailMessage.CC.Add($EmailCc)
$EmailMessage.From = $SMTPUsername
$EmailMessage.Attachments.Add($EmailAttachment)

$SMTPSession = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient($SMTPServer, $SMTPPort);
$SMTPSession.EnableSSL = $true
$SMTPSession.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($SMTPUsername, $SMTPPassword);
$SMTPSession.Send($EmailMessage)
Write-Host "Mail Sent"

Many times I came across one issue… how to grant access to CLI (Command Line Interface) on Cisco devices without creating separate username and password for each user on each device? In order to resolve that I did use AAA features of Cisco IOS and built-in Windows Server 2008 R2 component – NPS (Network Policy Server).

Those two mixed together can create very nice environment which allows flexible management who, when and how can access network devices. Same time, Active Directory will be central place to grant or deny access to devices as well as enforce specific privilege level.

Below is simple diagram of the whole process and steps which take place when accessing Cisco device integrated with NPS/RADIUS.

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If you have machine which is not connected to domain, but has TPM chip you might want to encrypt disks with BitLocker and enable PIN protection at boot-up.

In order to do that you have to make sure TPM is activated and enabled for provisioning in BIOS. Next step will be to allow PIN use, as by default that option is not active especially on machines not connected to Active Directory domain.

So, to enable ability to set PIN follow the steps:

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In previous articles in the RANCID series I described:

• How to install RANCID on openSUSE
• Add devices to RANCID

So, we have RANCID collecting configuration from network devices to repository with version control. Only question is how to get access and make use of information collected there.

In this part of RANCID stories I will show how to install and configure WebSVN to access RANCID repository via web browser.

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Quick config snippet to setup external NTP server to synchronize time on Cisco IOS router.

labisr-01(config)#ip name-server 4.2.2.2
labisr-01(config)#ntp server 0.europe.pool.ntp.org
Translating "0.europe.pool.ntp.org"...domain server (4.2.2.2) [OK]
labisr-01(config)#clock timezone GMT 0
labisr-01(config)#

Once NTP server is set we can check status of it:

labisr-01#sh ntp associations
address         ref clock     st  when  poll reach  delay  offset    disp
*~88.191.227.26    82.197.188.130    3    37    64  377    38.7    2.04     1.4
* master (synced), # master (unsynced), + selected, - candidate, ~ configured
labisr-01#

labisr-01#sh ntp status
Clock is synchronized, stratum 4, reference is 88.191.227.26
nominal freq is 250.0000 Hz, actual freq is 250.0000 Hz, precision is 2**18
reference time is D442C30E.7A93ED17 (22:58:22.478 GMT Mon Nov 5 2012)
clock offset is 2.0449 msec, root delay is 71.69 msec
root dispersion is 61.25 msec, peer dispersion is 1.36 msec
labisr-01#

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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