Have been having a bit of an interesting issue over the past few weeks whereby our Hyper-V Hosts (Dell T430 Tower Servers) would loose network connectivity at seemingly random intervals; the only resolution was to restart the server or to remove and replace the network cable. After much investigation looking at the servers and associated network switch we discovered that… Read more
Category: Servers
Servers power many organisations and are even making their way into homes (even if it is a simple NAS box). With more RAM then you could even imagine (I have to admit I’m a RAM addict) and processors that make the latest and greatest gaming PC look minuscule in comparison it is these mighty machines that make the world go round.
Small server room cabling – Front to Back patch panels
A typical issue for administrators of small server rooms (perhaps only one or two racks) is keeping cables tidy between servers (which have their network ports on the back) and network switches (which have their network ports on the front). One way of reducing this problem is to have a patch panel at the front of the cabinet and a… Read more
Jump right into a SSH session from the PRTG Enterprise Console
Ever wanted to jump right into a SSH session from an item that you’ve seen in the PRTG Enterprise Console? By setting up a Device Tool its all too easy to do by just clicking on the device and pressing a function key on your keyboard. Note that the Device Tool feature of the Enterprise Console can be used for… Read more
Requesting a CSR from Dell iDRAC gives you a blank file
A interesting quirk of an issue with this one; when generating a CSR to secure the iDRAC (version 8) interface on a Dell T430 server it appears that you can’t use an apostrophe in any of the fields else you are presented with a empty/blank csr.txt file (see right). The work around is simple if a little annoying (especially when CSRs… Read more
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 end to end deployment – Dell iDRAC configuration
In this post I will be covering the basic configuration of iDRAC as well as getting ready for the installation of Windows Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. In this server configuration I have plugged a network cable into port 1 of the on-board NIC which will (initially) be used to host iDRAC, the management connection for the OS as well as… Read more
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 end to end deployment – Project Goals + Hardware
Time for a new series of posts! In this series I will be looking at the end to end deployment of a pair of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 hosts along with supporting services including networking and backup. This kind of deployment is an excellent option for anyone who is looking to run Virtualisation but without the cost of VMWare… Read more
Knackered your iDRAC 8 web console by uploading a Custom SSL Certificate Signing Certificate? – Fix
A bit of an interesting one today; while provisioning a pair of shiny new Dell T430s I had obtained and uploaded a valid 3rd party signed SSL certificate to the iDRAC interface with a view to ensuring that whenever an administrator accessed the interface they didn’t get a invalid certificate warning. However after uploading the certificate and restarting iDRAC I was presented… Read more
Restarting a Palo Alto Firewall for the first time – how long does it take?
As part of my new job I’ve taken on the management of a Palo Alto PA-3020, on my list of things to do…update the software/firmware on it. The update process its self is pretty simple in that you identify the version you are going to update to, download it, install it and then reboot the firewall at a time that… Read more
Hyper-V Remote Management RPC Server unavailable. Unable to establish connection between Hyper-V Host and Client PC.
An interesting quirk of running Virtual Machines for this post… the background is my ‘main work PC’ is currently running Windows 7; in order to remotely manage a Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 machine I had installed Oracle VirtualBox onto my main PC and inside that had setup a Windows 8.1 VM to remotely manage the Hyper-V Server instance. However after setting up… Read more
Fun with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a powerful tool that comes with any of the paid editions of SQL server. By design its main function is to extract, transform and load data into databases however by mixing in CSV exports and PowerShell commands it can help automate various workflows. Although I won’t delve into too much detail in this… Read more