what did you learn today? (part 2)

[PaveHawk-]

Arbelac[/url]":28j8jx9j]

PaveHawk-[/url]":28j8jx9j]ICND1/CCENT passed, no study, with a score of 887. Pretty happy with that, since I had some basic frame relay questions and I'm sitting there going "fuck, I havent touched FR in years!!!".

Congrats! I'd suggest studying for ICND2 though...

Yeah, thats the plan I was sposed to brush up on frame relay last night, but dinner with a couple of friends (300g eye fillet + bottle of wine + scotch later on) was far too tempting.

I've got the train signal stuff, so I dont see it being a problem.

 

[Danger Mouse]

PaveHawk-[/url]":2lgp4zbw]ICND1/CCENT passed, no study, with a score of 887. Pretty happy with that, since I had some basic frame relay questions and I'm sitting there going "fuck, I havent touched FR in years!!!".

Nicely done!

----

....that the reason some of our VOIP Cisco 7965 phones appear to die after a switch reboot is that the "phone guy" didn't bother to build the firmware files for the phones on the call manager, after the various version upgrades he did (in actually watched the contractor do).

So, the reboot made some phones sorta blank themselves because the firmware version they're looking for, isn't on the darn server. They're now in an uncertain state where they never boot up to the point to grab a firmware or even light up the screen. I haven't done enough searching to find out how to do a factory restore if a phone is at that point.

I'm thinking there has to be a way to connect to the aux port and show up as a serial connection or otherwise reprogram the flash on the darn thing from that state.

EDIT: I LUBS GOOGLE, right search terms and blam:

http://greenwireit.com/blog/2008/12/09/ ... sco-7970g/

Should also work for the 7965 that we have.

1. Setup TFTP server on computer on switch with phone only
2. configure TFTP server to mimick the DHCP option 150 and other settings on phone
3. Add phone firmware files in appropriate location & power on phone
4. And wait
5. Rinse/repeat if the phone doesn't take the firmware after typing in the correct numbers OR if the phone appears to be stuck in upgrade/reset mode

Mind you, this all came about because it seems as those the 48port copper switch blades on a 4506 or 4507 don't appear to startup properly following a reload with new IOS image. I've seen this across a number of the units, with what appears to be the same model/revision of switch blade. The activity/link light doesn't light up, even when a link is properly connected is one symptom.

I think a full poweroff will clear the condition.

 

[Darkseid]

that NorTel CCMSVR and agent desktop are kludgy, ancient, heaps of shit.

but since we have lots of those phones, we get to keep using it.



dont even get me started on the recording and reporting side of things, the kindest I could be is 'fucking shambles' - it looks like it was written in Borland, with a front end generated in Access, it runs like a one legged dog on tranquilisers, it crashes like its name is Maldonado.

In short, its trying to kill me!*






*it can join the damn queue.

 

[sryan2k1]

So, the reboot made some phones sorta blank themselves because the firmware version they're looking for, isn't on the darn server.

That makes no sense. The phones don't need to load firmware every boot, only if instructed to by the CUCM's. And even if they do, and they can't find the firmware they just skip it.

 

[ronelson]

Hearing "don't worry about automating it, just get it manually working and later you can go back and automate it" just makes me mad.

Unless you're on a war-room bridge, that's so wrong.

Yep, vmware template + sccm to bring it to current baseline patches means we spend basically no time setting up anything OS relating allowing us to focus on things like correct security design. I went from spending 70+% of my time just racking and configuring boxes during my first year at my current gig to managing 3x as many machines with hardly any effort.

We don't use SCCM but I have the templates set up the same way - deploy, patch, done. Every few months, I convert the template back to a VM, patch it, and run through the prep and template process. What's annoying is when we have those new apps that we deployed that aren't in the template, because that ALWAYS happens the week after the template patching. I try and wait for a few of those to accumulate, as we don't deploy new apps or VMs that often outside of large batches.

 

[Xon]

sryan2k1[/url]":bqtkswjm]That makes no sense. The phones don't need to load firmware every boot, only if instructed to by the CUCM's. And even if they do, and they can't find the firmware they just skip it.

Cisco IP phones can have wierd firmware bugs, and a number of them are designed to load configuration from tftp or the callmanager on boot and only half-designed to have settings baked in.

What is probably happened is some setting which lets the phone discover it's provisioning server is fucked, either on the phone or the network and the phone just doesn't connect to grab it's config.

 

[sryan2k1]

Yes, they always download their config on boot, but not the firmware image. Those are two very different things.


I bet option 150 just isn't set right.

 

[abkfenris]

TIL that one machine will boot from anything but the DVD drive when I ask it to boot from the drive, but will boot from it just fine if I leave the boot process alone. Head meet desk.

Edit:

And I've got some new reading material.

Cookie.Monster[/url]":2meuqh1q]That Microsoft just released a 314 page best practice guide for securing Active Directory.

Sent to Evernote, lets see if I get to it before I finish this job.

 

[jshiplett]

PaveHawk-[/url]":ieom0gd1]ICND1/CCENT passed, no study, with a score of 887. Pretty happy with that, since I had some basic frame relay questions and I'm sitting there going "fuck, I havent touched FR in years!!!".

Congrats!

 

[Barmaglot]

I almost ate a nasty outage last week from OnTap bug 657692 (aggregate was 96% full by the time I connected and started clearing space). It's fixed in 8.2, but I can't install 8.2 because it doesn't support FAS2040. Hopefully it will be fixed in 8.1.2P4, whenever that comes out.

 

[Dqua]

The past week or two I've finally had some time to dig deep into scripting some things for Enterprise Vault in PowerShell, which also let me learn more about PS. Had to figure out how to talk MAPI progmatically and found the Redemption API, which led me to having to figure out how to talk to the DLLs via PS. With that in my cap, was able to pull the properties from EV shortcuts and then retrieve the items via WebClient.DownloadFile() by building a URL with the pertinent EV info, which I could then return to the mailbox or public folder location. (Long story short, users have shoved EV shortcuts from their mailboxes into PF which has led to no end of confusion, "I've granted the user access to the folder but they can't open the item.") The guys at Symantec I've talked to have thought I've been working with EV for years.

Spoiler

I've only worked with it for 6 months

Edit: Not a "today" but from a couple months ago, a migration of the application to VMs found a bug in Intel NICs on VMware 5 servers when remote sites couldn't connect to my VMs. I just found out the other day from the VM group the issue is still open with EMC and EMC threatened to pull the card from the compatibility list to get Intel to get it together.

 

[Danger Mouse]

sryan2k1[/url]":177sa1ri]Yes, they always download their config on boot, but not the firmware image. Those are two very different things.


I bet option 150 just isn't set right.

Option 150 is set right.

Firmware bug in the 8.2 and 9.2 code releases.

The phones appear to have 8.2(2)

I'll report back after the fix is done

EDIT: The behavior that I'm seeing is like what's listed in this bug listing:

http://tools.cisco.com/Support/BugToolK ... CSCsg07708

 

[daldrich]

mdporter[/url]":mzfafu84]

daldrich[/url]":mzfafu84]That I need to come up with a way to quickly deploy Windows 8 to about 2000 Laptops. And run a PC test after it is done.

Define quickly, that's a huge project!

They want to get them imaged so they can be sold. Of course, their current imaging infrastructure is 2008r2 running WDS and RPK. And the laptops are running Windows 8 with UEFI bios and GPT disks. I know how to get around the first one, but don't know how to convince the WDS server to like talking to GPT disks.

On the bright side, they do have their old imaging server that runs 2012 decently nice. So, they may have two servers until they can get the other one upgraded.

Of course, after these are done apparently they have another 2000 waiting in the wings. But those won't come in until after I return to Greenville.

 

[ferzerp]

I learned that it's frustrating to have specific issues on high end products such that posting your issue (no fault of a vendor, or anyone else) would provide your identity, just based on the time and specific issue.

Meaning, I have had an issue, and I can't bitch about it on the internet without giving away who I am.

 

[jshiplett]

Anybody taken the VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale class? Was it worth it?

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/course ... ject=39046

 

[xcrunner529]

euri[/url]":27dydmlk]Anybody taken the VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale class? Was it worth it?

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/course ... ject=39046

Just took it two weeks ago. It was a meh for me, but my employer loves sending me to training instead of just letting me read. I guess I'm grateful, but I find training moves too slow.

There were useful things I learned like the esxtop utility and monitoring Ready values and stuff from the performance graphs, but the rest was really just internals on how ESXi works and schedules stuff. I found a lot of it was "here's all this stuff that can have a performance impact. ESXi sets this as the default just make sure it wasn't changed!".

 

[afidel]

euri[/url]":x35hlzei]Anybody taken the VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale class? Was it worth it?

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/course ... ject=39046

Just looking at the course outline it looks like info you can glean fairly easily from places like yellowbricks and scott lowe's blog. The course I took, and think might be more interesting generally was the design workshop, basically get a bunch of smart, experienced folks in a room for a week, give them some information and let them build a design in a small group and then have them present and defend the design in front of the rest of the group.

 

[jshiplett]

afidel[/url]":v68xpk4c]

euri[/url]":v68xpk4c]Anybody taken the VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale class? Was it worth it?

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/course ... ject=39046

Just looking at the course outline it looks like info you can glean fairly easily from places like yellowbricks and scott lowe's blog. The course I took, and think might be more interesting generally was the design workshop, basically get a bunch of smart, experienced folks in a room for a week, give them some information and let them build a design in a small group and then have them present and defend the design in front of the rest of the group.

I took the design workshop a couple of years ago and it was absolutely worthless, aside from gaining a bit of insight into how VMware views design which helped on the VCAP-DCD.

 

[Big Wooly Mammoth]

ferzerp[/url]":2zq1597g]I learned that it's frustrating to have specific issues on high end products such that posting your issue (no fault of a vendor, or anyone else) would provide your identity, just based on the time and specific issue.

Meaning, I have had an issue, and I can't bitch about it on the internet without giving away who I am.

I wrote up a post on Ars about 4 years ago; one of my coworkers was searching for some information on that product, found my post, and figured oud my Ars nickname based on the obscure product.

 

[dlp]

Scotttheking[/url]":15n5u7rm]Hearing "don't worry about automating it, just get it manually working and later you can go back and automate it" just makes me mad.

This can be a blessing in disguise if the manual process isn't too extraordinary but the people involved don't actually know what the process is that needs automating. Try this conversation:

Manager: I need X process automated, it takes too much time and is tedious.
IT: OK, let's start laying out the steps.
Manager: I don't know the steps. Ask the employees.
Employee 1: I do it by taking a left, a right, and then a left.
Employee 2: I do it by taking a right, a left, then a right.
Employee 3: I reverse, do a 180, park, and eat a Snickers.
IT: ...Which way is the right way of doing this?
Manager: This really should be automated already, it's not that complicated of a process.
Director (boss of Manager): What's going on? Why can't our systems handle our process? We should replace our entire system that handles all processes because this one process can't be automated.
IT: ...wut

 

[finni]

ferzerp[/url]":2l7c9572]I learned that it's frustrating to have specific issues on high end products such that posting your issue (no fault of a vendor, or anyone else) would provide your identity, just based on the time and specific issue.

Meaning, I have had an issue, and I can't bitch about it on the internet without giving away who I am.

Hope your problem wasn't with a pressure cooker.
...
What, too soon?

 

[Danger Mouse]

Danger Mouse[/url]":2un4u2uc]

sryan2k1[/url]":2un4u2uc]Yes, they always download their config on boot, but not the firmware image. Those are two very different things.


I bet option 150 just isn't set right.

Option 150 is set right.

Firmware bug in the 8.2 and 9.2 code releases.

The phones appear to have 8.2(2)

I'll report back after the fix is done

EDIT: The behavior that I'm seeing is like what's listed in this bug listing:

http://tools.cisco.com/Support/BugToolK ... CSCsg07708

Looks like it's the bug or the halted state where it's looking for an IP and connecting.

Took a phone fresh out of the box and connected to a switchport with the appropriate phone bits added and everything went swimmingly.

 

[Rick25]

xcrunner529[/url]":20k5vxmj]

euri[/url]":20k5vxmj]Anybody taken the VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale class? Was it worth it?


There were useful things I learned like the esxtop utility and monitoring Ready values and stuff from the performance graphs, but the rest was really just internals on how ESXi works and schedules stuff. I found a lot of it was "here's all this stuff that can have a performance impact. ESXi sets this as the default just make sure it wasn't changed!".

That pretty much sums it up for my take on it as well. Other thing to note is if you're using it to qualify for the VCP exams, the blueprint of the course states that it only really cover about 20% of that is on the exam. Fast Track and I,C,M would be better choices in that case.

 

[jshiplett]

Welp. There goes that idea.

Maybe the second CCNA-DC class...

 

[Duckie Dooh]

Rick25[/url]":3p34aopx]

xcrunner529[/url]":3p34aopx]

euri[/url]":3p34aopx]Anybody taken the VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale class? Was it worth it?


There were useful things I learned like the esxtop utility and monitoring Ready values and stuff from the performance graphs, but the rest was really just internals on how ESXi works and schedules stuff. I found a lot of it was "here's all this stuff that can have a performance impact. ESXi sets this as the default just make sure it wasn't changed!".

That pretty much sums it up for my take on it as well. Other thing to note is if you're using it to qualify for the VCP exams, the blueprint of the course states that it only really cover about 20% of that is on the exam. Fast Track and I,C,M would be better choices in that case.

I was going to put it at 10%.

 

[LTParis]

Choosing too complex of a password for vCenter Server local SQLExpress installation can result in error 32010. This had me stumped for 24 hours now, and even trashed a Server 2012 VM for a Server 2008R2 thinking that even with Update 1 that something was not working right.

D'oh.

 

[sryan2k1]

How complex? Our standard service passwords are 16 long, random upper, lower, and numbers. No symbols/punctuation.

 

[LTParis]

this was 21-22 characters, symbols (but the basic symbols, nothing crazy).

it took with a 12 character one

 

[PaveHawk-]

BES10 looks exactly the same as BES5. Ugly.

 

[Rick25]

PaveHawk-[/url]"ki71q4d]BES10 looks exactly the same as BES5. Ugly.

But at least it just uses ActiveSync now, no more CdoMAPI issues with the Exchange servers.

 

[PaveHawk-]

Rick25[/url]":2gbpf7wc]

PaveHawk-[/url]":2gbpf7wc]BES10 looks exactly the same as BES5. Ugly.

But at least it just uses ActiveSync now, no more CdoMAPI issues with the Exchange servers.

True enough, still, they could have made it nicer surely?

 

[Danger Mouse]

PaveHawk-[/url]":2qsp1wi9]

Rick25[/url]":2qsp1wi9]

PaveHawk-[/url]":2qsp1wi9]BES10 looks exactly the same as BES5. Ugly.

But at least it just uses ActiveSync now, no more CdoMAPI issues with the Exchange servers.

True enough, still, they could have made it nicer surely?

I think they're too busy trying not to die as a business

Seriously, I expect the next version to be spiffier, assuming their market share stabilizes.

 

[Danger Mouse]

...that since my manager has stated there can be "no downtime" during the Exchange 2010 migration, I'm doing things a bit different from most guides and walkthroughs. First, I'm doing a combined role rollout on the Exchange2010 side. Second, the fqdn for the various services will be flipped internally first and externally later, after the mailboxes move.

I'll be adding a second entry in our ISP's domain registry for the 2010 webmail, which will flip with the 2007 after I change it at the firewall. That will happen after all the mailboxes are migrated.

The mailboxes will migrate, after I complete the delayed Simpana V8 to V9 upgrade. From what I found on the internets:

http://documentation.commvault.com/comm ... _start.htm

http://sso.forum.commvault.com/forums/thread/9488.aspx

This will be interesting, as I'm not only flipping app versions, but SQL versions as well as server OS versions.


---

Yesterday's adventures in Call Manager land will be repeated with a mass upgrade of the phones to the latest firmware to get around the firmware blanking bug I ran into (exists in 8.2 as well as 9.0 code families it seems). And later this year, probably an upgrade to v9 of Call Manager, since we have an entitlement, assuming the various other apps work with it (School Messenger, etc).

Since "the phone guy" never really did any admin work on the servers, that means it falls to me. The new "phone guy" while good, is not really supposed to do more than the old "phone guy".

---

...that I put in my promotion papers. It'll be interesting to see if they do it or not. If they do it, since most of the problems I had with my job went away, I wouldn't mind staying. The last thing is the substandard pay.

 

[Rick25]

DM, any reason you're not jumping straight to Simpana 10? http://www.commvault.com/simpana-softwa ... -10?ref=ma

 

[sryan2k1]

Because 10 isn't out yet

Simpana 10 will be available for customer download from Maintenance Advantage Early Summer 2013. Sign up to be notified as soon as the upgrade is available, using the form to the right.

 

[ferzerp]

Big Wooly Mammoth[/url]":3uqdnrj1]


I wrote up a post on Ars about 4 years ago; one of my coworkers was searching for some information on that product, found my post, and figured oud my Ars nickname based on the obscure product.

This is kind of why when I write things involving actual projects, enough of the details are change to where the comments still should reflect the same answers, but the project doesn't 100% match what I am actually doing.

Sizes may get arbitrarily inflated or deflated, etc.

 

[Danger Mouse]

Rick25[/url]":28ncm6u8]DM, any reason you're not jumping straight to Simpana 10? http://www.commvault.com/simpana-softwa ... -10?ref=ma

They announced it and they've been talking it up big, which can lead to confusion about availability.

That and IME, you need to wait at least 2 SPs before you want to deal with Commvault Simpana on a x.0 release.

The other reason is I need to get this done NOW NOW NOW NOW.

---

In other news, my boss continues to reward the less capable IT staff with interns/helpers. I need to be less efficient and effective, then I too will get an underling.

 

[ronelson]

...that since my manager has stated there can be "no downtime" during the Exchange 2010 migration

This reminds me, I found a scribble in my notebook from last year's VMware Forum: "Downtime is dead. Now it's 'Follow The Moon'." Still waiting for my management to get the memo.

 

[sryan2k1]

Follow The Moon

A complete blackout every ~29.5 days?

 

[jshiplett]

sryan2k1[/url]"2gkzy1v]

Follow The Moon

A complete blackout every ~29.5 days?

But I don't want Buzz Aldrin to step on my face!