Following from Automated backup for your network switches with WinSCP and PowerShell you can take things one step further and with a little more PowerShell its possible to get email reports on any changes between switch configs. This kind of setup would be useful for any sized organisation who have a need to ensure changes are logged or want to ensure that no… Read more
Category: Hardware
Processors, graphics cards, solid state drives and much more is all in this section of the site!
Automated backup for your network switches with WinSCP and PowerShell
Although it may not be the most glamorous side of IT every sysadmin will appreciate the value of a rock solid backup system. All too often though these systems do not extend down to the ’embedded’ systems like network switches and firewalls. However with a little WinSCP (and its fantastic .NET assembly automation package) and PowerShell combined its pretty easy… Read more
Dell T430 Hyper-V Host Looses Network Connectivity (or more precisely the Broadcom NetXtreme Network Adapter does)
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
Windows 10 IoT Core AppX Manager Error code: 0x80004005 when trying to Install an app
Having recently jumped into the world of Windows 10 IoT the first stumbling point seems to be Installing an app (which has multiple dependencies) onto my Rasberry Pi 2 Model B using the AppX Manager. In particular after selecting the AppX file, the Certificate and listing out the Dependencies I get the error: Commit deployment Error source: <appx file>.appx Error… Read more
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
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 end to end deployment – Configure Network Settings and Remote Management
In this final post we’ll cover the Configuration of Network Settings and setup of Remote Management for a Hyper-V 2012 R2 Server which will be managed from a Windows 10 Enterprise PC. There are quite a few steps to go through for this part of the configuration of the Hyper-V deployment however a number of these steps can be applied to… 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 – Install Hyper-V Server
In this post I’ll be going through the installation of Hyper-V Server on our Dell T430 hosts. Remember you can download and use Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 for free (link) however you must still license the guest Operating Systems. I’ll be configuring a 80GB partition for the OS with the remainder of the storage set aside for the virtual machines… 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