Posts by Year

2024

2021

NFD24 - DriveNets

2 minute read

Recently I had the privilege to attend NFD 24 in which DriveNets presented. I had never heard of them until this event. Which I am shaming myself for because...

2020

Ubuntu 20.04 - cloud-init Gotchas

1 minute read

Recently while working on my latest Packer Templates I ran into an issue with Ubuntu 20.04. The issue was related to cloud-init not being able to grow the ro...

CFD7 - VMware TKG

5 minute read

Recently I had the pleasure to attend #CFD7 in which VMware presented VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. Our friend, Kendrick Coleman did a great job presenting T...

2019

CFD6 - Hashicorp

4 minute read

Recently while attending Cloud Field Day 6, one of the companies presenting just so happened to be Hashicorp. Now Hashicorp is one of my personal favorite co...

Nested ESXi Templates

1 minute read

Over the past week I have been working on a streamlined process to deploy nested ESXi 6.7 via automation tooling. Going through this I came across an issue w...

Ubuntu 18.04 Templates - Duplicate IPs

less than 1 minute read

Oh, the joy of Ubuntu 18.04 continually amazes me. As long as I have been using it, I have not provisioned mass VMs using a template. I use Packer for all of...

Streamlining OS Deployments

3 minute read

UPDATE: 2023-05-11 - I found this post in my backlog, and it was never published or finished, as you can see. This conversation continues to be something ...

2018

Python - vSphere Host Networking Info

5 minute read

Oh I love Terraform so so much. But why does vSphere feel like a second class citizen? Is it because my use case is a real snowflake? Maybe, maybe not! Howev...

Using ARA Records Ansible Within Projects

2 minute read

While exploring some options to provide a level of reporting capabilities as part of a project I figured using ARA would be an awesome idea. My goal was to p...

Ansible - Raspberry Pi Kubernetes Cluster

less than 1 minute read

Recently I started working on a little project which involved building a Kubernetes cluster using Raspberry Pi’s. I published this project on GitHub under an...

Ansible - Older Than N-Days Epoch

3 minute read

I recently had a scenario in which I needed to determine if a device’s last check-in time had been longer than 30 days. The real fun with this is that the re...

#NFD17 - It’s A Wrap

less than 1 minute read

I had the great pleasure to once again be a delegate at Tech Field Day this past week in Silicon Valley, CA. This event was NFD17 and had some great presenta...

Ansible - IP Sets and DShield Block List

11 minute read

In this post, we are going to look into how we can leverage Ansible to manage a Linux firewall using ipset along with a DShield block list. Now, why would we...

2017

Ansible - Defining Variables As Dictionaries

6 minute read

This post is to go through an example of defining Ansible variables as dictionaries rather than lists. I wanted to throw this together as I have not found a ...

StackStorm Series - Getting Started

5 minute read

As mentioned in the previous post StackStorm Series - Intro we will be working through a series of posts in regards to StackStorm. In this post we will revie...

StackStorm Series - Intro

1 minute read

You may or may not have heard of StackStorm previously. If you have not I highly recommend checking them out. StackStorm is classified as Event-Driven Automa...

Ansible - MAAS Management

1 minute read

Several months back I was working quite a bit with MAAS and needed a way to fully automate not only the MAAS deployment but also the management of VMs. In th...

New Journey Begins - Revisited

less than 1 minute read

I previously posted this post New Journey Begins which was about my new journey at Verizon Telematics. Well I am here today (even though this new journey beg...

New Site

less than 1 minute read

Welcome to the new EverythingShouldBeVirtual site. I had been planning on moving from a hosted Wordpress site for a few years now but I was stuck in a contra...

TFD14 - NetApp

1 minute read

NetApp was a presenter at TFD14 which took place in Boston. They showcased their dedication to the Open Source world along with their DevOps related initiati...

Ansible 2.3.1 - sshpass Error

2 minute read

As you may or may not be aware, Ansible 2.3.1.0 was recently released. After installing Ansible 2.3.1.0 in my Python virtual environment I immediately ran in...

Ansible - SSH Known Host Keys

less than 1 minute read

I wanted to throw this together mainly for my own reference but maybe it will help someone else as well. I had a need to add every host’s ssh keys to every h...

ZFS - Replication Backups

less than 1 minute read

I recently rebuilt my lab NAS hosts with Ubuntu 16.04 and used ZFS for the storage pools (once again). In doing it this time around I wanted to get a good me...

KVM - VM Templates

2 minute read

It has been a minute since I had done any KVM based VMs so I wanted to share some little tidbits on creating your KVM templates. I will be focusing on Debian...

2016

New Journey Begins

2 minute read

As many of you know, a little over 3 weeks ago, I began my search for a new career opportunity. Things always happen for a reason and I fully embraced, with ...

Ansible - Provision Docker Swarm Mode (1.12)

4 minute read

Lately I have been working quite a bit with the latest Docker Swarm Mode released in Docker 1.12 and so far it has been pretty awesome. The days of spinning ...

Docker - Spinning Up A Graphite Container

1 minute read

As I am working through some testing methodologies for Infrastructure/app testing I wanted to throw together a usable Graphite image that I could easily spin...

Docker - Creating An Alpine Image With Ansible

1 minute read

As I am experimenting with Docker images and finding the right combination which works well for me the majority of the time. I have finally put together a si...

Docker - Ansible - ELK Stack

7 minute read

In this post we will be going over setting up a quick and easy way to standup ELK Stack using Docker containers for each of our components required. Keep in ...

Python - Manage PowerDNS Zones/Records

13 minute read

While working on another PowerDNS project I have started working on a Python script to manage Zones/Records. Being that there is not a ton of info out there ...

Vagrant - Multi-Group Ansible Provisioning

2 minute read

As I continue to develop different scenario testing I continually try to leverage a common Vagrantfile across scenarios while only having to adjust variables...

Python - NMAP/SSH Fun

7 minute read

I am currently working on some Ansible/Python project(s) (More to come on that soon) and am working on integrating some functionality between some of the mov...

Vagrant Box Templates

4 minute read

Over the past few months I have been putting together some Vagrant box templates based on different Linux distros all using Packer. My goal is to have a stan...

Ubuntu - VMware Template Cleanup Script

2 minute read

Just sharing these scripts in case anyone ever needs/wants a quick way to prep an Ubuntu VM template with/without guest customizations. One script is just a ...

Ansible - Using the set_facts module

4 minute read

Today I was writing/updating an Ansible role for installing Cacti monitoring and decided to add the ability to choose the back-end webserver being used. The ...

Vagrant - Complex Vagrantfile Configurations

8 minute read

I will be using this a reference for adding various Vagrant configurations for setting up testing environments. I really just wanted to put this out here bec...

Docker - Building containers using Ansible

4 minute read

Have you thought about building Docker containers using some Ansible role(s) or playbook(s) you may already be using for your regular automated deployments? ...

Vagrant - Ansible Provisioning multi-nodes

1 minute read

I am just throwing this out here for my own reference because I seem to always forget how to do this when spinning up multiple nodes within a Vagrant environ...

Tech Field Day - #TFD10 - VMTurbo

3 minute read

Once again VMTurbo presented at Tech Field Day and this time it was at #TFD10 in Austin, TX. VMTurbo is known for their unique way of managing your virtual a...

Vagrant - Adding a second hard drive

3 minute read

I was just working on some Vagrant lab stuff and had a need to spin up a Vagrant node with more than one hard drive. So I turned to google and did some searc...

Tech Field Day - #TFD10 - Diablo

1 minute read

While attending Tech Field Day 10 a little over a week ago one of the presenters was Diablo Technologies and they spoke about their product Memory1. I found ...

Ansible - Setting up an Ansible Control Machine

24 minute read

In this post we will be setting up an Ansible Control Machine to execute our Ansible tasks from. This server will not have writable access to our Git repos s...

Migrating VMs from PF9 KVM to ESXi

4 minute read

I have been doing some testing over the past few months of Platform9 running on top of KVM and I have to admit that it has been a very good experience. Howev...

Ansible - Clean Formatted Playbooks

5 minute read

While going through and doing some cleanup to various different roles and playbooks in my Ansible collection I wanted to share what I feel is good clean form...

2015

Ansible - Debian Based Gotchas - Part-1

4 minute read

As I am currently running through some Docker setups between Debian Jessie and Ubuntu Trusty using Ansible I ran into a few gotchas. Now I would have assumed...

Ansible - Discover and Backup PowerDNS

6 minute read

While working on a solution that requires PowerDNS, I have come to a point in which I would like to include backup and recovery options for this solution. So...

Packer - Vagrant - Ansible - Windows

6 minute read

While doing some Packer builds for Windows Server 2012 R2 to be used with Vagrant in order to do some Ansible learning I stumbled across this issue.

Hey, I can DevOPS my Network too! - Intro

1 minute read

This will be the introduction to a multi-post series on some different methodologies that you too can use everyday either to learn, test or develop your goin...

A Journey to modern-day IT relevance

11 minute read

We keep hearing this term day in and day out it seems. Attending conferences, meet-ups and other social events keep pushing this down our throats in one way ...

Tech Field Day - NFD10

less than 1 minute read

I was invited as a delegate to attend Tech Field Day - Network Field Day 10 (NFD10) in Silicon Valley the week of August 18th. This was my first time being a...

Vagrant - Multi-NIC Definitions via YAML

4 minute read

I am currently working on a little routing project to use as a learning tool for others to easily consume by using Vagrant and Ansible (Inspired by this post...

Learning Vagrant and Ansible Provisioning

3 minute read

After attending Tech Field Day (#NFD10) there was a great deal of discussion around using Vagrant and Ansible for building out environments and provisioning ...

Ansible - Generate Rundeck Inventory

1 minute read

I have been doing some testing with Jenkins and Rundeck along with Ansible lately. I wanted a way to number one not have to manually update resources.xml for...

Ansible - Installing open-vm-tools

less than 1 minute read

Just sharing this out in case someone else may be looking for a way to install open-vm-tools for Ubuntu or CentOS and wants to ensure that only virtual machi...

Ansible - Quick Inventory Gathering using loops

less than 1 minute read

I came across this today looking through the Ansible Google groups. The OP wanted something that would output something like below into separate files per in...

Ansible - Zenoss 5 Core - Master

3 minute read

As it has been some time since actually putting something together to install Zenoss I figured I would set out to do just that using Ansible. As I began thro...

Ansible - Highly Available ELK Stack

12 minute read

A little over a year ago I provided installation scripts along with this post to help setup a completely redundant ELK Stack. This post has definitely been o...

Sneak Peak #1 - Upcoming Project

less than 1 minute read

I have been working on a new project for the past few weeks and it has been coming along very nice. I wanted to share some screenshots for everyone to checko...

Ansible - Generating Host/Groups YAML file

3 minute read

As I have been working on a nice little project of mine (More on that in the near future) I came across the need to take my hosts inventory INI file and get ...

Ansible - Elasticsearch Curator Cron

less than 1 minute read

Just wanted to put this together as I was finally just able to get this working with the newest version of curator. The syntax has changed quite a bit for de...

Logstash - VCSA 6.0

1 minute read

As I have begun upgrading portions of my lab to vSphere 6.x I came across the difference in parsing syslog messages from the new VCSA which was different tha...

Ansible - HAProxy

18 minute read

In this previous post I setup KeepAliveD using a fictitious tenant using Ansible. In this post I will be building upon that same configuration and creating t...

ELK Stack demo - #vBrownBag

less than 1 minute read

Watch the #vBrownBag session I did to get an idea of some of the possibilities you can achieve using ELK stack.

Ansible - RabbitMQ Cluster

3 minute read

UPDATE: As of 08/06/2015 the following role can be found here on Ansible Galaxy. The below information was updated based on this new role available at the...

Ansible - KeepAliveD

12 minute read

In this post I am creating a fictitious tenant using a vars file which looks like below.

Ansible Playbook - GlusterFS - Apache

6 minute read

I wanted to share some of these playbooks for reference to others who may be attempting to do something similar. Overall I am setting up some Ubuntu servers ...

Ansible Playbook - LVM

3 minute read

In spending the past few weeks learning a ton about Ansible (after creating 30+ playbooks and roles - Some very complex :)  more goodness coming soon ).. One...

Creating vSphere VM’s using Ansible

5 minute read

I am putting this out here in case anyone else may be interested in spinning up some VM’s using Ansible. I am doing this with Ansible 1.8.4 and connecting to...

vSphere 6.0 Syslog Configuration

1 minute read

So in setting up a new ELK Stack from scratch (more on this later) and also standing up the GA release of vSphere 6.0 I had to go through setting up syslog f...

ELK Stack Presentation on #vBrownBag

less than 1 minute read

Last week (02-25-2015) I presented on the weekly #vBrownBag about using the ELK Stack. This also included a demo :) If you are at all interested in the ELK S...

Disabling SSLv3 on NSX Edge Devices

1 minute read

So a few months back after the Poodle attack I had a request to disable SSLv3 on the NSX Edge Gateways so I started looking around and didn’t find anyway to ...

Tech Field Day - #VFD4 - Scale Computing

3 minute read

Scale Computing was the last and final vendor to do a presentation last week at Tech Field Day - VFD4 (Virtualization Field Day 4) in Austin, TX. I really ap...

Tech Field Day - #VFD4 Experience

2 minute read

Last week I had the honor of being a delegate for Tech Field VFD4 (Virtualization Field Day 4) in Austin, TX. This was my first time ever being a delegate so...

Tech Field Day - VFD4 Live Stream

less than 1 minute read

http://new.livestream.com/accounts/6937754/events/3250666/player?width=640&height=360&autoPlay=true&mute=false

2014

Tech Field Day #VFD4

less than 1 minute read

Yes, you heard it right. I have been granted the honor to be a delegate at the next Virtualization Field Day in Austin, TX January 14-16, 2015. I am extremel...

HAProxy and MySQL Checks

2 minute read

I wanted to throw this out in case anyone else has a need for such a setup to use L7 for node up/down when load balancing MySQL with HAProxy. All you have to...

Homebrew NAS for vSphere

17 minute read

So for the past 4 years or so I have been running Nexenta 3.x for my lab NAS; which has been working great, but I was at a point of having to rebuild my late...

Cisco ASA Logstash Parsing

less than 1 minute read

I recently had an opportunity to get around to creating some Cisco ASA parsing for logstash to detect some abnormal activity on the network. So now that I ha...

Nexenta Jumbo Frames

1 minute read

I Wanted to go through and enable jumbo frames for my lab iSCSI storage which is running on Nexenta CE (For about 4 years now). So how do you do this? Login ...

VMware NSX - L2 Bridge Gateway Whiteboarding

less than 1 minute read

I wanted to share this whiteboarding session as my first attempt. I am trying a new platform that I have been wanting to explore and hope it is beneficial. I...

PFSense Snort Logstash

less than 1 minute read

I have been working on getting some detailed logging from Snort logs generated through PFSense and thought I would share them. This can also be modified to w...

VMware NSX Firewall Logging with Logstash

less than 1 minute read

So the past day or so I have been working on getting some good detail from my NSX Edge’s (ESG and DLR) and I have been able to get them working very well. Th...

Bro-IDS Logstash Parsing

less than 1 minute read

I have spent the past several days working with Bro-IDS and Logstash parsing and wanted to share this with anyone else who may be doing the same and needs so...

IP Reputation Lookups with Logstash

1 minute read

I had a great question yesterday about how to configure Logstash to integrate IP reputation lookups within Logstash and Kibana without having to copy and pas...

Suricata IDS/IPS VMXNET3

5 minute read

As part of a bigger post coming soon I have been using Suricata IDS and my Logstash server has been getting hammered and unable to keep up (running a single ...

Graylog2 v0.90 Install Script

less than 1 minute read

In the past I have been updating the auto install scripts for Graylog2 and updating the original post each time. However here on out I will be creating new p...

IPTables Cluster Script

2 minute read

I have been working on some interesting virtualized networking setups (More on this in another post soon) and needed a way to configure IPTables rules on all...

vCenter 5.5U2 Upgrade on VCSA

1 minute read

So I decided to upgrade my vCenter 5.5U1 VCSA to the latest vCenter 5.5U2 release yesterday and it has been a complete disaster at this point. vCenter contin...

VMworld 2014 - It is TIME!!!

less than 1 minute read

The time has finally come for VMworld 2014 - US in San Francisco. I know I am very excited this year as well I am sure everyone else (20k+) is as well. I am ...

VMware NSX WebUI Sync Issue

1 minute read

So I recently had an issue when trying to create some new tenant networks and had a very strange issue. When creating the Logical Switches within NSX I was r...

vSphere - Enable SSH using PowerCLI

1 minute read

In case you have the need to enable SSH, set SSH service to start on boot and also set the firewall rule to allow ALL IPs you can use the following PowerCLI ...

VMware NSX 6.0.5 Upgrade Tips

2 minute read

So I performed my first NSX upgrade today which overall was not too bad but it did take quite a long time. I ran into a few gotchas along the way and figured...

Listen to me on the latest VUPaaS Episode

less than 1 minute read

If you are a fan of virtualization podcasts and have not yet checked out the VUPaaS. I highly recommend it. This is a great podcast targeted at end users of ...

Solarwinds Scalable Deployment Design

less than 1 minute read

I am currently working on a scalable Enterprise Solarwinds deployment and wanted to share this design. The design is not completed yet so this drawing may be...

Ubuntu 14.04 Graylog2 Virtual Appliance

1 minute read

I have put together a Graylog2 prebuilt virtual appliance to share with the community. This appliance is built on a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 LTS x64 Server and run...

Ubuntu Graylog2 Auto Install Script - Video

less than 1 minute read

I wanted to throw together a video real quick to demonstrate how easy Graylog2 can be installed using my Ubuntu auto-install script. This video will augment ...

NexentaStor 4.0.1 GA Released today

less than 1 minute read

NexentaStor 4.x has finally made it to GA as of today. I will be evaluating if it makes sense to make the move yet or not prior to upgrading my actual produc...

Build TFTP Server for ESXi Installs

7 minute read

So it has been a while since I have built a TFTP server and the opportunity came up to do this again to do some ESXi deployments. I wanted the ability to do ...

Solarwinds Web UI Issues with Google Chrome

1 minute read

So in the past few days, I have witnessed on two different environments when trying to connect to certain components of Solarwinds using Google Chrome you wi...

VMware and Hyper-V Visio Stencils

less than 1 minute read

For any of you ever looking for some great FREE Visio stencils you can head over to Veeam and download them for free. They have stencils for VMware and Hyper...

Get your VSAN, Get your VSAN now!

1 minute read

Yes, you heard it correct. VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) is now GA as of 03/11/2014. VMware released VMware ESXi 5.5 U1 and vCenter Server 5.5 U1 which includes ...

Infinio releases v1.2 Today

1 minute read

This is some great news for a Monday. Infinio has released their latest version which now fully supports vSphere 5.5. I did some extensive testing on their p...

Purge Syslog and Trap alerts from Solarwinds DB

less than 1 minute read

I was getting overloaded on the number of syslog messages in my Solarwinds DB and needed to purge them. So I wanted to share with other’s what MS SQL Server ...

VMTurbo releases their latest 4.5 version

1 minute read

VMTurbo is a great product in regards to overall health of your virtual environments. Their product assists in identifying where improvements can be made as ...

vSphere 5.5 - Enable SNMP

1 minute read

I am going through setting up Solarwinds Virtual Manager and needed to enable SNMP on my vSphere 5.5 hosts. So the service set to automatically start but it ...

PowerCLI – Change vSphere iSCSI Path Selection

1 minute read

Here is just a quick PowerCLI script to change all of your iSCSI datastores to “Round Robin” path selection. The default path selection for all datastores is...

ZFS and BTRFS Bitrot Avoidance?

less than 1 minute read

Have you ever heard of bitrot? Well if not you should head over to here and have a read. I was sent this article by a colleague and I thought it was a very i...

2013

PowerCLI Script to add Syslog Servers

less than 1 minute read

I was asked earlier about this. So I figured I would throw this together real quick. There was a concern about adding syslog server settings to an enormous n...

Upgrading Ubuntu Nagios 3.5 to 4.x

1 minute read

In this previous post we installed Nagios 3.5.0 from source. Now that the current version of Nagios is 4.0.2 I wanted to walk through upgrading the previous ...

Happy Monday Morning 11-25-2013

less than 1 minute read

So I woke up to all sorts of fun today. Several VMs were reporting to be down in my lab so when trying to connect to vCenter I was getting an error which lea...

Infinio Install - Nexenta Testing

9 minute read

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Infinio at VMWorld and then again at the Atlanta VMUG about their new product which at the time was Pre-GA but i...

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) Error

less than 1 minute read

I was just poking around in my vCenter WebUI and happened to run into something wrong with vCenter Infrastructure Navigator. I was getting an error stating t...

Exciting news about HP Storvirtual VSA for SMB

less than 1 minute read

Here is some very exciting news in regards to the HP Storvirtual VSA.  A no cost option is available as a package when purchasing HP Proliant Gen8 Servers. T...

Build vSAN vSphere Lab using PowerCLI

4 minute read

Here is my first contribution as far as any PowerCLI scripts go. I am myself just learning finally so I will share with everyone as I am learning. Obviously ...

Getting Started with vSAN in vSphere 5.5

2 minute read

As you may or may not know VMware announced the new vSAN with vSphere 5.5. vSAN is currently in public beta but it is very easy to get started testing it out...

vSphere 5.5 - Using vCenter Server Appliance

2 minute read

I have been wanting to give the vCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) a go in my main lab for quite some time but never got around to it. Well I finally pulled the...

Adding Veeam v7 vCenter Plugin

1 minute read

As I have been testing out vSphere 5.5 and Veeam v7 the past week or so. I wanted to go ahead and check out the new vCenter webui plugin for Veeam v7 so I fi...

vSphere 5.5 Quick Stats Not Up to Date Error

less than 1 minute read

I have seen this error since I upgraded to vSphere 5.5 last week. There is a kb article here on how to fix this. According to this kb article this is a known...

Veeam 6.5 Upgrade to 7.0

less than 1 minute read

In this article I will be running through a quick Veeam upgrade from 6.5 to 7.0. This is a fairly straight forward and smooth process. So for the most part I...

vSphere DRS Invocation Error

less than 1 minute read

I just came across this for the first time in one of my vSphere 5.1 HA-DRS clusters. One of my clusters had an error saying “DRS invocation not completed.”

iSCSI Design Considerations and Deployment Guide

less than 1 minute read

Here is a link to the latest updated VMware iSCSI Design Considerations and Deployment Guide. I highly recommend reading through this when implementing iSCSI...

Top 10 VMworld 2013 Breakout Sessions

less than 1 minute read

If you missed VMworld or just want to watch some of these great sessions over. Head over to here for the Top 10 Breakout Sessions from VMworld 2013 which was...

Veeam Backup and Replication v7

less than 1 minute read

As you may or may not be aware of is that Veeam Backup and Replication v7 was released last week. I am definitely looking forward to getting into the new ver...

Cacti 0.8.8b Windows Templates Updated

less than 1 minute read

The new version of cacti was released a few weeks ago which is now 0.8.8b. I have exported the templates from this new version and they are available on GitH...

Dell Perc H310 and NexentaStor

3 minute read

I have been using Nexenta for several years now of course. Over those years I have been using Supermicro SAS controllers reflashed into IT mode cards so the ...

Graylog2 Streams via Email

less than 1 minute read

I was recently asked how to get emails working from streams you have created within the Graylog2 web ui. Seeing as I had done this just recently I thought I ...

Nexenta NMS Web Interface Not Responding

less than 1 minute read

I was just getting ready to swap out a failing drive in my Nexentastor CE NAS and tried to log into the web interface and received “Waiting to establish NMS ...

vCenter SSO AD Gotcha

1 minute read

So this past week I have been upgrading my home lab domain from AD 2008 R2 to AD 2012 and so far it has gone without a hitch (read here on this). Well until ...

Server 2012 AD Upgrade Notes

1 minute read

So I am in the process of going through an Active Directory 2008 R2 upgrade to Server 2012 which has been going very smooth so far. So far I have prepped the...

Using Veeam for office relocations

1 minute read

Here is a great scenario for using Veeam Backup and Replication when relocating a branch office. Say you have a remote office that contains a rather large fi...

Collecting vSphere Syslog Data with Graylog2

2 minute read

Are you looking for a good syslog collector for your environment but not wanting to shell out the money for Splunk or VMware vCenter Log Insight? Not saying ...

Zenoss 4.2.4 CentOS Install

3 minute read

Wanted to throw this together for anyone else who may be looking everywhere on how to do this as well. I will be adding additional information as I come acro...

Getting started with Hyper-V 2012

1 minute read

I will be using this post for Hyper-V notes as I go through setting up and using Hyper-V 2012. This may not be informative to all but I am really just using ...

Installing Nagios on Ubuntu 12.04

less than 1 minute read

This is just a quick Nagios setup guide for installing on Ubuntu. This will get you up and running quickly. May create a github script at some point to auto ...

Free eBooks from Microsoft

less than 1 minute read

I recently just came across these and wanted to share with anyone who may not have seen this already.

Nexentastor Drive Failure?

less than 1 minute read

No worries. Global hot spare taking over. This is what I woke up to this morning. It’s all good.

What? Hyper-V? Yes Hyper-V 2012

less than 1 minute read

Yes you read it correctly. I am right now downloading Hyper-V 2012 to install and start some testing. I have never considered it because of my dedication to ...

Installing IBM XIV Utilities for vCenter 5.1

3 minute read

In a previous post I went through the installation of the IBM XIV VASA version 1.1.1 which was a windows based installation. The VASA provides a lot of good ...

vExpert 2013

less than 1 minute read

I received the news this morning that I was added to the vExpert program for 2013. I have to say I was really surprised and excited at the same time that I w...

Win the Ultimate Mobile Virtualization Lab

less than 1 minute read

Want to win an Ultimate Mobile Virtualization lab? Well Veeam is giving one away each month through August 2013. Go here to enter to win.

VMware vDS RSPAN Port Mirroring

2 minute read

I wanted to throw this together real quick on how to setup RSPAN VLAN Port Mirroring using a Cisco switch and vDS (vSphere Distributed Switch) Destination Po...

Latest Happenings

less than 1 minute read

I have been working on a ton of things lately without many posts. One big reason for this is that I have been working a lot with Openstack. This has been con...

vSphere 5.1 Network Designs

less than 1 minute read

I will be adding some vSphere 5.1 Network Design ideas in this post. I will be updating it as I create additional scenarios. These designs are based off of H...

Current NexentaStor Disk Layout

less than 1 minute read

Here is a current view of how my NexentaStor NAS is configured from a disk and controller perspective. I will be modifying this some here soon. Go here to ta...

Random White Boarding

less than 1 minute read

Doing some random whiteboarding today. Always fun to do.

Veeam thoughts

3 minute read

I have now been using Veeam Backup and Replication for a few months now and have to say it is a really amazing solution. During this time my thoughts along t...

Latest Nexenta Testing Results

1 minute read

So I have been running my new Nexentastor CE storage for a little more than a month now and wanted to run another IO test real quick as a sanity check. So I ...

Nginx Reverse Proxy

1 minute read

I just wanted to throw this together real quick as I had a request this past week to look into this. I was asked to look into deploying a reverse proxy for a...

Veeam B&R and HP 3Par Brainstorming

less than 1 minute read

Doing a whiteboard session brainstorming on new Veeam B&R and HP 3Par design. This is just a single site to an offsite location. This same philosophy wil...

HP BL490 PSOD ESXi5.x

1 minute read

I have recently had several different HP BL490 G6 and G7 servers having PSOD (purple screen of death) running ESXi 5.1. I was able to capture a screenshot th...

Updating HP C3000/C7000 using HPSUM

less than 1 minute read

After going through years of changes with the way that firmware is managed on HP c3000/C7000 blade chassis’ I have to say it is absolutely easy as can be now...

Ubuntu 12.04 Graylog2 Installation

14 minute read

I recently wanted to check out Graylog2  for gathering syslog messages because I have heard good things about it. Well the issue was that I was not able to f...

Slow Transfer Through Cisco ASA

1 minute read

I recently ran into this issue in which transferring files through a Cisco ASA Firewall was extremely slow only in one direction. The transfer would run betw...

SSO Server Unavailable Using Web UI

1 minute read

I just ran into this issue. Tried to login to vSphere 5.1 web ui and received the “SSO Server Unavailable”. I tried restarting the vCenter Single Sign On ser...

Get The OpenStack Operations Guide

less than 1 minute read

Download the Openstack Operations guide from here. I plan on reading through this whole PDF soon. Good stuff.

vCloud Director Testing Using Autolab

less than 1 minute read

I will be spending a while testing out Autolab v1.1 to do some vCloud Director testing. I checked out Autolab v1 a few months back and it was awesome. So I f...

Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i IT mode

1 minute read

In order to get this SAS controller to work with Nexenta/ZFS you first need to flash the firmware to enable IT mode. This allows the disks to be presented as...

New Nexenta Server Test - iSCSI - SSD

1 minute read

I just did a quick test using the VMware IO Analyzer using the same tests that I did here. This test was only using iSCSI with SSD for ZIL/SLOG and L2ARC. Bu...

New Nexenta Build Pics

less than 1 minute read

Here are just some random pics of the new NexentaStor server being built. I will update this post with others as time goes on. Getting close to the final pro...

Veeam P4K Snapshot Backups and Recovery Video

less than 1 minute read

In this video I will show you how to setup Veeam to use snapshots from an HP P4000 SAN. This is using the SAN Infrastructure module within Veeam 6.5.

New Nexenta parts arriving

less than 1 minute read

Yesterday the boxes started showing up which contain the parts of what will become my new Nexenta storage. I am still waiting on more parts to arrive and wil...

New Nexenta Server Coming Soon

1 minute read

I just ordered all new parts that will be here this week. I will be replacing my current setup with this. Definitely looking forward to lots more testing soo...

Virtualized Internet Firewall With HA and DRS

1 minute read

I wanted to throw this together real quick and explain how to accomplish running a virtualized firewall (PFSense, Astaro, etc.). The goal to accomplish here ...

Nexenta Hot Spare In Action

less than 1 minute read

So I just had my first disk failure in over 2 years running this Nexenta CE server and it is good to see how the hot spare kicked in and I also replaced the ...

P2V Directly to ESXi 5.1 Host Managed by vCenter

1 minute read

Recently I had a need to perform a P2V directly to an ESXi 5.1 host and found that I could not do this because it would fail with the error “The access to th...

PHD Virtual Restores and Replication

3 minute read

In this article we will be going through the process of using PHD Virtual for doing file level restores, whole vm restores and replications. The initial inst...

HP P4000 Storage issue for Monday

less than 1 minute read

Here is what I have woken up to for today. This is the first time I have seen this. I rebooted the node to see if it would revive the missing disks, but no g...

Nexenta Performance Testing No-SSD/SSD

2 minute read

In this post I will be testing Disk IO without SSD for L2ARC and ZIL/SLOG and then again with SSD for L2ARC and ZIL/SLOG. I will be using the VMware I/O anal...

vSphere 5.1 hot cloning failure

less than 1 minute read

We have run into this issue a few times after migrating servers from vSphere 4.x to vSphere 5.x. When trying to hot clone a vm the process fails and generate...

Installing PHD Virtual Backup and Replication

2 minute read

In this post we will be installing PHD Virtual Backup and Replication. This solution is deployed as a virtual appliance. This means it is a very quick and ea...

More Nexenta testing coming soon

less than 1 minute read

I have two Intel 520 120GB SSD drives on the way this week to start doing some additional testing with ZIL/SLOG and L2ARC and using Nexenta as my datastores ...

First issue with Nakivo Backup and Replication

less than 1 minute read

Just went through the setup and built the first backup job and it ran without issue. Was going to test a restore and ran into an issue already. Unless I am m...

Installing Veeam Backup and Replication

2 minute read

In this post we will be installing the Backup and Replication server components. This is a fairly straight forward installation with very minimal setup steps...

Veeam Backup and Replication to Nexenta NFS

2 minute read

In my testing so far I have decided to throw this together as a valid scenario which could be a good solution, but obviously open to additional feedback and ...

Rebuilding Virtual Lab

less than 1 minute read

I am right now rebuilding my virtual lab to start doing some new testing. Took some time off to get a clear head and fresh start to the new year. So stay tun...

Back to Sophos/Astaro

2 minute read

Well after a few months of running my own rolled version of a UTM using Ubuntu I have officially gone back to Sophos/Astaro for the time being.  There are se...

2012

NexentaStor 4 Beta

less than 1 minute read

I just downloaded and installed the NexentaStor 4 Beta which is based on illumos.  Definitely looking forward to this new release in the near future. Just a ...

Old School Monday

less than 1 minute read

Going through some old vm’s I have built over the years and came across this one. :)

Deploying VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.1

4 minute read

In this guide we will be deploying the VMware vCenter Server Appliance. You can get this from the downloads at vmware.com. I will also be deploying this in V...

HP Storage Announcements

less than 1 minute read

HP is announcing their biggest Storage announcements in 20 years today. The 3PAR announcement is the one that catches my eye for sure.  Now we can build ente...

LAB - Video

less than 1 minute read

Quick video of the LAB in the dark to see the blinkies!

Nexenta homebrew raspberry pi winnings

less than 1 minute read

This all just showed up today. Can’t wait to see what all we can do with this. Look for more soon. Thanks Nexenta.

How to Secure Ubuntu 12.04

1 minute read

This is just a list of a few tweaks and apps you can use to secure your Ubuntu 12.04 LTS system (These also apply to other versions of Ubuntu). These are def...

Windows 8 Cygwin SSHD Issue

1 minute read

I use backuppc for backups at home which utilizes ssh and rsync to do the backups. This works very good for a mixed OS environment and keeps it simple and in...

Setup and configuration of HP P4000 VSA - Video

less than 1 minute read

In this video we are going to setup and configure the HP P4000 VSA and get it ready for use in our vSphere environment. This same setup can be carried over i...

VMware Hands-On Lab HOL Blog - VMware Blogs

less than 1 minute read

Go get signed up for the VMware hands on labs beta. Very cool stuff for those who would like to get some hands on experience and do not have a home lab or wo...

Atlanta VMUG - 11/7/2012

less than 1 minute read

I will be attending the Atlanta VMUG tomorrow. Definitely looking forward to this as this will be my first one. Glad I joined the VMUG community while at VMw...

Back to PFsense I go

less than 1 minute read

So after 2 years that I have been using Astaro/Sophos for my firewall I have gone back to PFsense. Do not get me wrong, but I do really like Astaro/Sophos. T...

Ubuntu UTM Homebrew – Part 2 - Network Graphing

less than 1 minute read

In this previous post we setup the initial UTM (Unified Threat Management). In this quick guide we will be setting up network traffic graphing. We want to be...

Windows 8 Mapped Drives via GPO

1 minute read

So I went ahead and loaded Windows 8 Pro this past weekend. I used it a few times during the preview releases and didn’t care much for it at the time. Well I...

Ubuntu UTM Homebrew - Part 1 - Web Filtering

4 minute read

I wrote this guide a few days ago and this solution worked great. But what if you want to have more control of your threat management and build your own. So ...

vSphere 5.1 AutoDeploy

5 minute read

In this guide we will be installing, configuring and using the AutoDeploy feature of vSphere 5.1. This is a great feature to use when you need to deploy many...

Super Router - PFsense & Untangle

2 minute read

I have been using Astaro/Sophos for the past 2 years and really like it. But I have gotten to the point where the 50 IP license restriction is getting in my ...

Lab Laptop

less than 1 minute read

I now have my HP EliteBook 8570w laptop. This laptop is going to be my mobile lab for demo’s and training. It is an Intel I7 with 32GB of Ram. Going to be a ...

Remove Platespin Block Based Drivers

less than 1 minute read

Remove Platespin Block-Based drivers In order to increase a drive size you must first remove the block-based drivers and reboot. Once rebooted you will be ab...

Cacti Monitoring for Windows Servers

2 minute read

A little over four years ago I spent some time learning cacti and snmp to come up with a good solution to monitor Windows Servers. I had used Cacti several t...

Cacti Templates for Windows

less than 1 minute read

Here are all of the different versions of my cacti templates. Grab the latest one.

Exchange 2010 links for vSphere

less than 1 minute read

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/VMware-Using-HA-DRS-vMotion-with-Exchange-2010-DAGs.pdf

vSphere 5.1 Data Protection Appliance

1 minute read

I just installed and configured the new vSphere 5.1 VDP appliance. Very easy installation and integrates well and works very well. But of course I am now loo...

HP ESXi 5.1 Download

less than 1 minute read

For those using HP servers for vSphere. Here is the link for the 5.1 installer. Add this to update manager in vCenter 5.1 and deploy to your hosts. Follow th...

Upgrade existing VDS to 5.1 using web ui

less than 1 minute read

Here is a quick walk through on upgrading an existing VDS (Distributed Switch) to version 5.1 from an older version. Upgrading to this new version will give ...

vCenter 5.1 quick installation screenshots

less than 1 minute read

Here are some screenshots to click through to see the installation of vCenter 5.1. You need to download and install SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Management Stu...

It’s Here!! vSphere 5.1

less than 1 minute read

I am downloading it now and getting ready to install it and start reporting back on the new cool stuff it has to offer. Very excited to start using it after ...

vCloud Suite Upgrade Promo Terms and Conditions

less than 1 minute read

Here is the link for the upgrade Promo for vCloud Suite. $1 to just upgrade to vCloud Suite Standard. Wow! :) The promotion is good from September 10, 2012 t...

Derek Seaman’s Blog

less than 1 minute read

Great blog site to check out. I will be reading through his stuff and it looks like it is packed full of good stuff.

Setting up vSphere Syslog Colletor

less than 1 minute read

Here is a quick step by step to installing the syslog collector for vSphere. This utility is part of the vCenter server installation media. I will be install...

VMworld 2012 Content

less than 1 minute read

Download PDF’s from many of the sessions by going to the link below.

vCloud Suite Datasheet

less than 1 minute read

Here is the link for vCloud Suite datasheet for info.

VMworld 2012 Day 3

1 minute read

Today was a little more laid back for me. I attended several sessions today. Went to NF-BCO2807 — vSphere HA and Datastore Access Outages – Current-Capabilit...

My Home Lab NexentaStor CE NAS

less than 1 minute read

Just wanted to post some of these pics real quick. I took them over a year ago I think. Just wanted to show it. It has 12TB of usable storage. One ZPool with...

VMworld 2012 Day 2

2 minute read

Day started off with another great keynote. I really liked the 4 minute challenge for each company to talk about new things they are working on. I thought th...

VMworld 2012 Day 1-1

less than 1 minute read

I almost forgot to throw out props to Sophos formerly Astaro. The new UTM 9 is the best yet. I have been using their ASG product for a few years now. I highl...

VMworld 2012 Day 1

2 minute read

So after the first day there are some very exciting things coming to vSphere 5.1 that I have heard so far. Some exciting news around vDS which adds managemen...

VMworld 2012 Welcome Reception Highlights

1 minute read

I had a great time at the VMworld 2012 Welcome Reception. Talked to several great people and companies. Many Brilliant technologies and ways of the future. I...

VMworld 2012 - All Registered

less than 1 minute read

I am all registered and ready to go. Wait for the On Hands Labs was several hours. So I just took a few pics instead. Looking forward to heading back up ther...

My agenda for VMworld 2012

2 minute read

Here is a copy of my agenda that I will be attending, and providing feedback on. I plan on trying to fit some others in the open slots too, but not sure what...

SF - VMworld 2012

less than 1 minute read

I am here and ready for this week. Although feeling really under the weather, but not going to let it keep me from this fun filled week. I am definitely look...

VMware Workstation 9 Released

less than 1 minute read

Get your copy of VMware Workstation 9 today. Looking forward to seeing what all it has to offer.

HP P4000 VSA - Storevirtual VSA

less than 1 minute read

How many other’s are eager to see this next week at VMworld? I know I am. Cannot wait to see the hands on and discussion around this announcement. I definite...

Veeam installed

less than 1 minute read

Veeam is installed and running some backups. I am not able to get the search server portion to work however as of yet. I have installed Microsoft Search Serv...

Installing Cloudphysics

less than 1 minute read

Installing cloudphysics and looking forward to what all this can provide and also provide some feedback. Below are some screenshots taken during installation.

Installing VEEAM for vSphere

less than 1 minute read

I am currently install VEEAM Backup and Recovery for vSphere. Here is the link to the prerequisites for the installation, I highly recommend looking it over.

VMworld.com: VMworld Bloggers

less than 1 minute read

Check out the link below to follow all VMworld bloggers coming up in San Francisco next week. I hope to be on this list too, but we shall see. :)

Setup Storage Cluster with SDRS - vSphere5

1 minute read

This is just a quick walk-through of setting up a new storage cluster within vSphere5. When using a storage cluster it makes the management of vm placement, ...

Thought of the day 08-16-2012

less than 1 minute read

Something I have been thinking about for a few years of doing and also using for a POC solution I would be interested in finding out if anyone else has thoug...

vSphere5 command line reference

less than 1 minute read

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcli.ref.doc_50%2Fesxcli_software.html

Pentoo

less than 1 minute read

Going to have to check this out. Looks like good stuff for pentesting.

Enjoy some of my Cacti Monitoring templates

less than 1 minute read

Go here and download and use some of the Cacti templates that I created almost 4 years ago. I use these at home and work. We monitor 300+ Windows server usin...

Issue with Sophos/Astaro UTM 9 and XBOX Live

less than 1 minute read

I just upgraded to the new version of Astaro yesterday. Now called Sophos UTM 9. Love the new interface and etc. However there is an issue with XBOX Live con...

Open vSwitch

less than 1 minute read

Open vSwitch.

Configuring remote syslog for ESXi5 hosts

less than 1 minute read

Just wanted to share this real quick for anyone who may want to setup remote syslogging on your ESXi5 hosts. I like to configure this so I can keep up with a...

Updating and deploying vSphere 5 on HP Servers

less than 1 minute read

Here is a link to the PDF from HP that goes over the details on updating and deploying vSphere 5 hosts. This also includes the steps to add the HP repo to VU...

NetApp now officially supported for vMSC

less than 1 minute read

Good info on NetApp being officially supported on iSCSI and NFS for vMSC. Worth looking into. Also look into HP P4000 storage as an iSCSI solution for vMSC a...

Upcoming vSphere5 guides and walkthroughs

less than 1 minute read

I will be going over SDRS and Storage Clusters which are new in vSphere5. I will be going through how to set them up and how they work. I will also be going ...

VMWorld 2012

less than 1 minute read

I will be heading out to VMWorld 2012 this year in San Francisco. Definitely looking forward to it and will be updating on some of the things I get to see an...

This weeks virtualization task

less than 1 minute read

Currently working on designing a stretched cluster that will include vMSC (vSphere Metro Storage Cluster). We are currently designing around OTV between 2 si...