I can’t point to a particular reason but for a long time I had been averse to Solarwinds. I’m not sure if it was that I considered them expensive for what they did, difficult to install or some other obscure reason.
Regardless, I’ve been trialing the latest versions for the full time contract I’m on currently. I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve seen so far. They seem to have expanded their offerings and now include modules such as Netflow Analysis, Config Management and App performance management.
More to come if we actually implement it but I think it might be a good contender for the $20-40k management platforms.
I got an interesting comment on a year old post of mine regarding CAPWAP.
Matt from Aerohive had some interesting things to say about CAPWAP and the state of things. I wrote a somewhat lengthy response so I thought I’d put up a new post on it.
As you can see further up in the comments, someone suggested an open source CAPWAP based app. The site is still barren, aside from some fairly old files and a basic update about 30 days ago. You’d think CAPWAP would be an area that has a lot of open source interest and yet I’m unable to really find anything. There are vague references but no one seems to be moving forward with anything.
Matt also made the comment that CAPWAP is about AP’s and not controllers. I can understand that a traditional “controller” might not be necessary but I would think some form of a management platform would be important. If you have a single AP and no management platform, what’s the point of CAPWAP?
Ok, so that ZoneMinder install I was hoping to do in the last post…yeah….not happening.
I’ve run into this before but I’ve decided it’s just not worth the trouble of trying to fix it. For some reason when you install the PV149 video capture card in older machines it likes to have problems with IRQs. I’ve tried this a couple of times and once before I got it to work after a lot of jockeying of IRQs in the bios and the OS. It sucks and it’s just not worth it.
The PV149 will be going in a slightly more modern and definitely more mainstream desktop motherboard. I hope I don’t have the same problem with that.
I’ve decided to repurpose the ML380 G2 for my new Trixbox. Should be enough horsepower and it’s already installed cleanly. Just need to make sure I can still apply the HPASM drivers so the fans will chill. Yar!
I’ve been busy with work and haven’t been able to squeeze in much of anything else. I’ve done a couple of things like upgrading Unraid to my Pro key and swapping motherboards. In the process I discovered that at least my copy (don’t know if it’s the default behavior) decided to hang on to the MAC address from the old motherboard. That created a small problem when I put the old motherboard back into service on a different machine! Fixing it is simple, just modify the network settings on the flash drive. See my post here for the specifics.
Also, I’ve been working on getting Sage transitioned to a new PC that’ll have enough juice to run Comskip. Only problem is that it’s been flakey ever since. Random lockups, long seek times for folders. That’s what I get for running beta software. Gotta be on the bleeding edge though! On top of that I seem to have lost my meta information on the old Sage PC and all of my IMDB lookups for DVDs is gone. Argh. 300+ DVDs in there now, I think. I might have to break down and buy DVD Profiler after all. Only $30 I think.
Comcast managed to hose up my internet connection which I host this site as well as some forums on. They did this by assigning my static IP’s to another location in their network. The result was split routes at their peering routers with the majority of traffic going into a black hole and a trickle getting through to me.
Once I explained to them what they broke it was a relatively quick fix.
Then, we lost power after a storm last night. Batteries lasted about an hour but that was not nearly enough.
And traffic has really been sucky for my day job. 2.5 hours almost every trip this week. That’s each way.
Ugh. I’m tired.
I recently discovered this new Cisco AnyConnect Essentials license being touted for the 8.2 code for ASAs. It took me a little while to parse through the cryptic description on Cisco’s site but it seems that you can now get client based SSL for a couple hundres $$’s depending on the ASA model. That’s up to the platform supported max!
If you want the web portal “clientless” SSL VPN you have to pay the previous crazy pricing for the “Premium” license. For most people this won’t matter and what it means is essentially a cheap SSL client solution now. Woohoo!
This guy seemed to confirm my thoughts.
Dude stole my theme too! 
Wow…I knew I had been neglecting the blog but I didn’t realize it had been over a month!
So, what have I been doing? Working too much! This time of year has gotten worse and worse over the last several years. It seems like the kids all get busy with activities, we get the itch to work on outdoor stuff and I feel the urge to work on the Cobra a bit. The result is I always feel overworked and by this time I’m telling myself to just let it be. What get’s done, get’s done.
So, what have I been able to squeeze in? Got a new 4 post cabinet. Did I mention that already? Got it for free! Steered it away from the dumpster. I’ve been slowly migrating all my gear over to this thing and I think it’s coming along nicely. I just need to get it finished. Part of what I want to do is move more of my devices into rackable cases. I’m getting there.
As of now I have the following in separate chassis:
-DMZ VMware Server on Ubuntu for web sites
-Unraid (currently 4tb usable, got another 1tb drive ready to go in, just need more SATA ports)
-Compaq ML380 G2 that’ll probably become my video surveillance recorder
-SageTV
-TrixBox CE (needs a rackmount case)
Also sporting a couple of switches, couple of routers and a couple of UPSs.
Once I’m done with the migration I’ll post some pics.
I love this kind of stuff: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html
Here you have a company that’s entirely about the efficiency of massively parallel systems. They’re finally pulling back the current a bit and showing how best it works on a scale of 1000′s of servers. One shipping container alone can hold 1160 servers! WOW! The ideas about 12v only in the PSU and the onboard battery are brilliant!
I want a couple of these for myself! Heavy processing and lots of memory with just enough hard drive! Trim the energy and heat like they do and you can do a lot with that.
I just read about SGI’s demise over on GigaOm. It seems Rackable has scooped them up for a measly 25 million. This is just depressing.
Back in the day I was infatuated with SGI. For hardcore geeks they were cool before Apple was cool, again. I wanted an O2 so bad I could taste it. I was ready to squander every penny we had (not too many of them I might add) to get one even though I had no idea how to use Irix. When I was at ERAU I had a friend in the CS program. They were working on SGI’s (early 90′s Octanes I think) to create an air traffic control simulator. The graphics capabilities of the SGI’s at that time were unrivaled. When I got into Computers professionally I signed up for SGI’s marketing list and got to go to several events including a screening of Jurassic Park. Of course, I asked a million questions and drooled all over the demo units.
When HP started coming out with some powerful graphics workstations I remember thinking that was the beginning of the end. Around the same time SGI decided to introduce some Windows NT models. I really knew it was the end then.
To look at SGI’s product line today, they still have the same aesthetic on the hardware but aside from some nice cases there’s not much sexy about them any more. They don’t sell any workstations as far as I can tell either. They long ago sold off the software assets that were cool. Today they seem like just another storage vendor.
It’s like a portion of my youth has died.
I’m not bringing this up because it’s something new…but rather because it took Cisco ages to add this to their least expensive voice solution, the CME. I have an inbound SIP trunk set up with Vitelity for my business. It comes right into the same system that’s running the home phones. It’s so nice to be able to direct that inbound route based on the DID I get from Vitelity. From there it’s a pretty simple matter to send the call where I want. Right now I direct it at a RingGroup which does RingAll. I then have my office phone and my softphone ring for business calls.
At the same time I don’t have to change the house side of things. I also have a RingAll RingGroup for the home POTS line. The POTS comes in through a Cisco 1760 which is then plar’ed to my RingGroup extension via SIP. I have the same office phone in that RingGroup as well. I prepend either Vz or Anewvo (company name) to the CID and I can see where the call is originating from. That prepending is done either in the inbound router or the RingGroup. Flexibility!
Next up, I think I’ll try some “follow me” on the business line. It’s all in there, should be pretty easy to configure.
On a related note, I’ve been quite happy with the call quality on the Vitelity trunk. It’s not like I’m hammering my link when I’m on calls but so far it’s been excellent. Price is pretty reasonable too!