Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Citrix XenServer or VMware ESXI


As stated in a post back in December I am working on rebuilding my home network, I looking to go “Green” and cut down on some of the excess energy. So what better way to do that than to virtualized my network. However with virtualization come decisions such as XenServer or VMware. So the purpose of this post is to go through my thought pattern as to why I want to leave WMware and migrate to XenServer.

Just for the record I am still using both ESXi and ESX enterprise at work, and soon going to be upgrading to Vsphere, so from time to time I will still be posting information about VMware. Now using the above chart you can clearly see lots of good reasons why you should give XenServer a try and not be too quick to choose ESXi. I will highlight some reasons for wanting to go the Xen side of things.

Reason one: Hardware


I have an HP DL 380 G4, and a DL360 G3 that I am planning on using for this project, now by default this Server‘s architecture does not natively support VMware’s new Vsphere. So instead of installing ESXi 3.5 and being locked into a product with a limited life cycle I started thinking of an alternative virtual solution hence Citrix XenServer.

Reason two: Ease of management


As stated above “centralized multi-server management”, currently at work we have several ESXi installations across the network and managing them at times can be a pain. VMware offers a solution for there paid product called “Virtual Center” however the free product does not have this function. So instead you have to log into each machine individually to apply patches or make system changes. After a while even if you have six ESXi servers this can easily become a hassle.

Reason three: Innovation

XenServer was the first solution on the market to employ paravirtualization, which allows a guest OS to be fully aware that it is being run on virtualized hardware. This collaboration between the OS and the virtualization platform enables the development of a simpler, leaner hypervisor, as well as highly optimized performance.

Reason four: System Maintenance

The VMware VI 3.5 updates site lists hundreds of patches that have been issued since the product was launched in December 2007 and the automated update process is touted by VMware as a way of managing the application of these updates. By contrast, Citrix has issued just five hotfixes for XenServer 4.0 since its release in August 2007 and includes automated update features in XenCenter for applying system updates.

Reason five: Budgetary Concerns

If you are a small to mid size business that's now getting into virtualization your managment will want to first see how much return on invest (ROI) the can get on any solution before putting extra funding into it. With the enterprise level solution offered by Citrix you are able to do this at 3X less than the cost of using Vmware.




In conclusion I am not saying that VMware is any less superior than ZenServer  I am mainly tring to encourage others to not only lean towards the popular product in the marketplace but always try other options.

Reference links

http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/XS_vs_VMware_comparison.pdf





Saturday, January 23, 2010

Installing and Configuring Archivists’ Toolkit

While working on an AT installation and following the manual as well as calling support I was unable to resolve an issue that I was encountering, so I decided to research and document the fix.

What is Archivists’ Toolkit?

The Archivists’ Toolkit™, or the AT, is the first open source archival data management system to provide broad, integrated support for the management of archives. It is intended for a wide range of archival repositories. The main goals of the AT are to support archival processing and production of access instruments, promote data standardization, promote efficiency, and lower training costs.

Installation

This is just a brief overview of the installation steps since there is already an official manual that covers most of these steps.
  • You first need to create a blank database using either MYSQL or Microsoft SQL server; in our case I used MS SQL.

  • Once the database has been created, you then need to install the a Archivists’ toolkit
    application on the client machine, after the installation you need to browse to the %install directory%\Program Files\Archivists’ Toolkit 2.0\ and launch the “Maintenance Program 2.0.exe”
    • This program is used to prep the Db and create all the necessary tables.
Now here is where things got out of hand for me, based on the specified documentation I needed to select my DB type, enter the connection URL, then my username and password.

Connection URL:

Jdbd:sqlserver://[ip address]:[port];databaseName=[name]
e.g: Jdbc:sqlserver://127.133.68.55:1059;databaseName=OurArchives

However that didn’t seem to work. I did further research and discovered I needed to first have the following in place ;
  • SQL Server 2005 JDBC driver, and a CLASSPATH configured
  • Create a ODBC connection to the DB Server
Steps to create a Java CLASSPATH

1-- Download sqljdbc__enu.exe driver and extra it to a temporary directory (link provided below).
2-- Run sqljdbc__enu.exe.
3-- Enter an installation directory when prompted. We recommend that you unpack this zip file in %ProgramFiles% with the default directory: "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver".

Once you have followed the above information the next step is to setup your classpath on the client machine.
  • On a Windows machine right click "My Computer" --> Properties --> Advanced tab--> Environment Variables--> User variables for user name -->Click new --> Specify a "Variable name" and the "Variable value" which is path you created above in step 3.
Image of a configured classpath on my Windows 7 PC:



And finally instead of following the format;

Jdbd:sqlserver://[ip address]:[port];databaseName=[name]

I used Jdbd:sqlserver://[ip address], typed in my User and Password went on to the next screen and enter in my repository name as the DB name and all was well.

Hopefully this can help someone and save you the back and forth effort of trying to set this up.

Related Links
http://archiviststoolkit.org/support/userManual1_1


Monday, January 18, 2010

73 Reasons why you dont need money to start a Tech repair business!

Well instead of giving you reasons I decided to give you a stacked PC repair toolkit!

This post was triggered by a Wave that @DoorToDoorGeek started in preparation for his interview over at http://www.podnutz.com/pnd213. The list then began to grew as the Podnutz community started adding their favorite utility, I've added a few of my own and in the end we have the following list.I will try to update this list as time goes on, sort of like a central place to refer back too when you are looking for a tool to get the job done. If you would like a tool added to this list just leave a comment and it will get added.

Boot Media
Kaspersky Rescue CD - http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/
Trinity Rescue Kit (includes ClamAV, F-prot, Bitdefender, AVG and I think one more) - http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=5&front_id=12
UBCD - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
UBCD4Win - http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm
MHDD - http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
Hiren BootCD - http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
BartPE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Kon-Boot - http://www.piotrbania.com/all/kon-boot/
Ophcrack - http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

Hardware Testing/Info
Crystal Disk Info (portable) - http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html
gSmartControl - http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/en/Home
SIW (portable) - http://www.gtopala.com/siw-download.html
Memtest 86+ - http://www.memtest.org/
AIDA16 - http://soft.softoogle.com/ap/aida16-download-1910.shtml
CPUZ Portable - http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/System/System-Info/Portable-Cpu-Z.shtml
GParted - http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Speccy (Portable) - http://www.piriform.com/speccy

(Batch) Uninstallers/Cleanup Tools

Glary Utilities (portable) - http://www.glaryutilities.com/builds.html
PC Decrapifer (portable) - http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/download
Revo Uninstaller (portable) - http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download_other.html
Steven Gould's Cleanup (can be made portable) - http://www.stevengould.org/index.php?Itemid=70&id=28&option=com_content&task=view
PureRa (portable) - http://raproducts.org/
CCleaner (portable) - http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds
Process Explorer (portable) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
SpaceMonger 1.4.0 (portable) - http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/index.php?action=get&file=spcmn140.zip
JavaRa - http://raproducts.org/javara.html
Windows Installer CleanUp Utility - http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/d/e9d80355-7ab4-45b8-80e8-983a48d5e1bd/msicuu2.exe
RegDelNull (portable) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897448.aspx
PC Fixer - http://www.digitalsupporttech.com/en-us/download.htm

Malware&Root-kit Analysis/Removal
SpybotS&D - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
SuperAntiSpware "Online Scanner" - http://www.superantispyware.com/onlinescan.html
Malwarebytes - http://www.malwarebytes.org/
A-Squared (portable) - http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/download/
GMER - http://www.gmer.net/
RootkitRevealer - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897445.aspx%20
RootRepeal http://rootrepeal.googlepages.com/
AutoRuns (portable) - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/AutoRuns.mspx
PSList (portable) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896682.aspx
PSKill (portable) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896683.aspx
PSSuspend (portable) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897540.aspx
Sysinternals Utilities complete list - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545027.aspx%20
HiJackThis (portable) - http://www.pendriveapps.com/hijackthis-portable-anti-spyware-malware/%20

Security Scan
Dial-a-fix (no Vista or Win7) (portable) - http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Dial-a-fix#Mirrors.2Fdownload_locations.2C_and_articles
WinSock XP Fix - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
SmitFraudFix (portable) - http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php
ComboFix (portable) - http://www.combofix.org/download.php
RougeFix (XP Only) (portable) - http://www.internetinspiration.co.uk/roguefix.htm#uninstal
Secunia OSI (Online scanner) - http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/
Kaspersky AVP Tool (portable) - http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/AVPTool/
NOD32 online scanner - http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/
TrendMicro online scanner - http://housecall.trendmicro.com/%20%20
Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AD724AE0-E72D-4F54-9AB3-75B8EB148356&displaylang=en
TrojanRemover (can be made portable) - http://www.simplysup.com/tremover/download.html
Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner - http://onecare.live.com/site/en-my/default.htm
Threatfire - http://www.threatfire.com/download/%20

Remote Support Tools
Logmein - https://secure.logmein.com/
TeamViewer - http://www.teamviewer.com/%20
Crossloop - http://www.crossloop.com/%20
One Click VNC - http://www.vncscan.com/vs/oneclickVNC.htm

MISC
Web Of Trust - http://www.mywot.com/
Firefox plug-in Noscript http://noscript.net/%20
Windows Update - http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
Anti-Malware-Toolkit (Updating your tools) - http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Anti-Malware_Toolkit
Ketarin (Updating your tools) http://ketarin.canneverbe.com/%20
ICSI Netalyzr (Great tool for testing your Internet connectivity) http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/

Cleaning and Protection Tips
Help with Malware removal- http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/%20
http://rmccurdy.com/email.html

http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showtopic=9573

Special thanks to the Podnutz community for their efforts in putting this list together.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Navisphere Express (AX4-5i) and VMWare ESX 3.5 preparation



In this post I will be documenting the steps I I took I prep our SAN and Virtual infrastructure prior to the creation of several VM's for a project.

Creating a Disk Pool
1. Log into your SAN URL in my case it was a Navisphere https://SAN-01
2. Click on Disk Pools (1) -->Select available drives (2) type of Raid configuration then
create Disk Pool.


Creating Virtual Disks
  1. Log into https://SAN-01
2. Click on Virtual Disks (1) Create New Virtual Disk(2)



Click on the Disk Pool tab -->(1) Select a Disk pool with free space -->(2) Type in your Virtual Disk name -->(3) Choose virtual disk size -->(4)Optionally you can pick a Server to apply this Disk too -->(5) Select apply to complete




Presenting the Virtual disk to a VMware Blade Server

1. First click on Virtual Disks
2. Then select you disk you want to present to the Server
3. Click on "Assign Server"
4. Select only one Servers so you can present the VDisk to be formatted--> apply OK.



5. Once you have selected the Server to apply this virtual disk too, log into Virtual Center with your VM client --> select that Server (1) -->Go to the configuration tab and right
click the ISCSI software Adapter then choose “Rescan”.Once this is completed
you should see the drive appear below and you are now able to add the drive and
format it.



6. Select the Server you assigned the virtual disk too -->Once you can see your newly presented virtual disk -->select Configuration tab of that Server-->Under hardware click Storage -->Then proceed by clicking “Add storage” on the upper right hand corner



7.
Once the new windows pops up select “Disk/Lun” --> click next choose the virtual disk you just presented -->Click next twice -->Give it the same name as it appears when you log into https://SAN-01 (Navisphere )





8. When prompted to choose a block size, choose the maximum file size of the drive for example if the drive is formatted for 1 TB choose a block size of 1024 GB, if its formatted for 2 TB choose 2048 GB and so forth --> Select finish and you are done.

Now you can log back into https://SAN-01
(Navisphere ) and assign the Virtual Disk to the remaining Servers that needs to access it.






Saturday, January 9, 2010

Goodbye Smoothwall, Hello pfSense!

I have been a faithful Smoothwall user for many years.After the first time I got hacked I started to look into firewalls and was pointed to smoothwall by my co-blogger Dre Day.

Now years later I have decided to leave Smoothwall in 2009 and start the year a fresh with pfSense. Why you might ask, I will attempt to answer this question but putting the facts in front of you and hopefully you can see why.

I have take information from both projects website and narrowed it down to a few features of interest to me.


Smoothwall Express features of interest to me

Firewalling:

* Supports LAN, DMZ, and Wireless networks, plus Extrnal.
* External connectivity via: Static Ethernet, DHCP Ethernet, PPPoE, PPPoA using various USB and PCI DSL modems.
* Portforwards, DMZ pin-holes
* Outbound filtering
* Timed access
* Simple to use Quality-of-Service (QoS)
* Traffic stats, including per interface and per IP totals for weeks and months
* IDS via automatically updated Snort rules
* UPnP support
* List of bad IP addresses to block

Proxies:

* Web proxy for accelerated browsing
* POP3 email proxy with Anti-Virus
* IM proxy with realtime log viewing

Maintenance:

  • Backup config
    * Easy single-click application of all pending updates
    * Shutdown and Reboot from UI

pfSense features of interest to me

Firewall

  • Filtering by source and destination IP, IP protocol, source and destination port for TCP and UDP traffic
  • Able to limit simultaneous connections on a per-rule basis
  • pfSense utilizes p0f, an advanced passive OS/network fingerprinting utility to allow you to filter by the Operating System initiating the connection. Want to allow FreeBSD and Linux machines to the Internet, but block Windows machines? pfSense can do so (amongst many other possibilities) by passively detecting the Operating System in use.
  • Option to log or not log traffic matching each rule.
  • Highly flexible policy routing possible by selecting gateway on a per-rule basis (for load balancing, failover, multiple WAN, etc.)
  • Aliases allow grouping and naming of IPs, networks and ports. This helps keep your firewall ruleset clean and easy to understand, especially in environments with multiple public IPs and numerous servers.
  • Transparent layer 2 firewalling capable - can bridge interfaces and filter traffic between them, even allowing for an IP-less firewall (though you probably want an IP for management purposes).
  • Packet normalization - Description from the pf scrub documentation - "'Scrubbing' is the normalization of packets so there are no ambiguities in interpretation by the ultimate destination of the packet. The scrub directive also reassembles fragmented packets, protecting some operating systems from some forms of attack, and drops TCP packets that have invalid flag combinations."
    • Enabled in pfSense by default
    • Can disable if necessary. This option causes problems for some NFS implementations, but is safe and should be left enabled on most installations.
  • Disable filter - you can turn off the firewall filter entirely if you wish to turn pfSense into a pure router.
  • VPN
  • IPSec
  • Reporting and Monitoring RRD Graphs
  • Dynamic DNS support
  • Network Address Translation (NAT)
  • Real Time Information
  • State Table

Redundancy

CARP from OpenBSD allows for hardware failover. Two or more firewalls can be configured as a failover group. If one interface fails on the primary or the primary goes offline entirely, the secondary becomes active. pfSense also includes configuration synchronization capabilities, so you make your configuration changes on the primary and they automatically synchronize to the secondary firewall

Captive Portal

Captive portal allows you to force authentication, or redirection to a click through page for network access. This is commonly used on hot spot networks, but is also widely used in corporate networks for an additional layer of security on wireless or Internet access. For more information on captive portal technology in general, see the Wikipedia article on the topic. The following is a list of features in the pfSense Captive Portal.
 
In the end pfSense was the best fit for what I was looking for in a Firewall.


Friday, January 8, 2010

Windows 7 GodModes

A friend of mine sent me a message yesterday asking me to create a folder on my Windows 7 desktop and name it "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" without the quotes of course.


Now being the skeptic that I am I delayed and then he proceeded to tell me that its not going to mess my system up, knowing that he is not the type to do that I took a chance :). To my surprise it really was a GodMode with lots of undocumented features.


Quote from CNET news in repose to this feature "Intended for developers as a shortcut to various internal settings,such features have been around since Vista and even before, according to the head of Microsoft's Windows division, who tells CNET that theso-called GodMode settings folder uncovered by bloggers is just one ofmany undocumented developer features included in Windows.



To make it work, create a new folder with any name, then a period, then one of the text strings below, example test.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} will give you the following




Additional strings to test with:

{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43}
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}
{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0}
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}
And, as a reminder, to create the Godmode folder itself, use this string:
{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Screen shot of a protion of the GodMode admin interface:





I started testing a few options and the first one that I can see myself using on a daily basis is the "Record steps to reproduce a problem". This little screen capture program can also be called from the command prompt by typing PSR, this can be very useful when troubleshooting an issue, or for documentation.

I have tested this on Windows Server 2008 and it works but apprently this feature is not supported in on Windows 2003.



Guest Post: Microsoft Security Essentials Command Line Tip

The is a guest post courtesy of Matt Burian an IT Consultan, you can find out more about him over at www.burianit.com.


Something I found while trying to find a way to update MicrosoftSecurity Essentials automatically on my home testing domain. Some command line parameters for working with MSE:

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/updating-microsoft-security-essentials-using-command-line/

Especially useful is this line:

"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Security Essentials\MpCmdRun.exe" -SignatureUpdate

This is used to update the MSE definition files. I have automatic windows updatesdisabled on my client machines, so I push this command in a login
script via group policy, and know that my definition files are up to date on all machines every time a user logs in.

Obviously, this is just for my personal windows domain, and would not be appropriate for a real business or enterprise environment as MSE is designed for homeuse, and provides no management features.

However this could still be useful if you wish to disable windows automatic updates, and still update your MSE definitions, either on a network, or just a local machine by running this command at startup of the machine.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Troubleshooting tips and other useful information

First let me start by saying I wish everyone a Healthy and Prosperous 2010. While reading through my emails this morning I came across an email from http://techrepublic.com.com/ that had several wonderful articles, and out of those I pulled out a few useful gems that I believe can benefit anyone starting out in IT.

How Does Ping Really Works?

http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_Mays_Ping.pdf

The OSI Model Understanding the Seven Layers of Computer Networks

http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_Simoneau_OSIModel.pdf

IP Addressing and Subnetting for New Users

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a00800a67f5.shtml

12 Things to know when troubleshooting your network

http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_Tolani_12TipsTroubleshooting_P1.pdf

TCP/IP Sluething Troubleshooting TCP/IP Using Your Toolbox

http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_Rohling_TCP-IP.pdf

Router Essentials

http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/whitepaperpdf/WP_Tolani_RouterEssentials_P1.pdf

Network Security Checklist

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/network_sec_checklist.pdf