Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 end to end deployment – Project Goals + Hardware

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 end to end deployment

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



Where I work…

Well the new school term is upon us and I have (at last!) had the time to do a photo of my office setup. In the photo above we have- 2x HP 23bw 23″ IPS monitors These beasts recently replaced a pair of 1440×900 resolution monitors – given that I’m doing a lot of database work at the moment it only… Read more







PRTG Case Study Live

Make no mistake I’m all for PRTG as my preferred Network Monitoring software so when I was asked to be featured in a case study I jumped at the chance. That study is now live and can be seen here – http://www.paessler.com/company/casestudies/oxford_spires_uses_prtg Another similar article can also be seen here – http://www.networkingplus.co.uk/case-study-details?itemid=351



How to Factory Reset a AudioCodes Mediant 1000 E-SBC with a CRMX-C Module

If you have a shiny new AudioCodes Mediant 1000 E-SBC with a CRMX-C CPU module and a need to factory reset it then this is the guide for you! Looking at the front of the SBC (photo above) just to the right hand side of the second network port status light is a tiny little hole – perfect for a… Read more



Setup 10ZiG PeakOS to work as a digital status display (Kiosk mode)

Thin Clients are typically used to connect to VDI/Session hosted environments using though Microsoft/Citrix/VMWare technologies but they do have their other uses… In this post I am going to show you how to setup a 10ZiG thin client (in my case the 5872v) running their custom made Linux PeakOS that will Display status maps from my PRTG network monitor server… Read more