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Free Open Source Computer Management
Jan 30th
Hey what’s going on fellow Admins? I thought I would drop by aTa today to drop the latest Tech Chop video on you. In this episode I talk about a really great computer management solution that runs on your favorite flavor of Linux.
By computer management, I mean it’s sort of in the same category of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, but way easier to setup. Plus since it’s open source, there are no licensing costs. It’s called FOG.
FOG can clone hard drives, and deploy the disk images in a multicast. Not only that, but you can deploy software with it, map printers and join computers to Active Directory.
Check out the video:
If you have any questions about FOG that I didn’t cover in the video. Capabilities, installation questions, etc. Let me know in the comments!
By -=El Di Pablo=-
To Open Source or Not To Open Source?
Dec 8th
At my current day job, I work for a small technology start-up in La Jolla California. We offer web-based solutions for some of the nation’s top banks, and housing lenders. We also provide a database for “closing service” providers, so you can hire people like home inspectors, and exterminators at the best price when selling your house. It’s kind of like the “Orbitz” of the real estate closing market.
Any way, the company is only a few years old, and up until now we are running on a Microsoft BizSpark licensing plan. Now that we’re getting a little older though, and we are using more servers to produce our goods, we need a more robust licensing plan from Microsoft. I decided to go to one of my local VARs to work on some quotes, and what they came back with almost gave my boss a heart attack.
In this post I am strictly going to talk about Microsoft SQL Licensing. Just so you know though, the quote we got for SQL was on top of an already ridiculously high $107K three year quote for server licenses. Before I give you the quote I got for SQL, keep in mind this is only for two physical servers running SQL Enterprise.
So we got our quote from Microsoft, and it was roughly $183K for three years. Yes, for two servers it was almost $200,000! That is because at the time of this writing, they were quoting us based on the number of processors. One of the physicals servers has four processors, and the other has two. Bam! Bend us over for $200K!
On top of that, my VAR is telling me that next year Microsoft is switching to a per-core model of licensing. On my server with four procs, each proc has six cores! On the two proc box, each proc has four cores! Now my boss is starting to hyperventilate.
I’m sorry Microsoft, I know you’re just a mom and pop shop, and you’re just trying to make your way in this crazy world, but $200K is too much to pay for a database. The good news for us is that Microsoft SQL isn’t the only game in town. Good news for my company, I’m not afraid to think outside of the Microsoft box.
After getting that quote, the manager of our dev team and I started talking about moving to an Open Source database solution. First he said MySQL, but since they’re owned by Oracle now they have more strict licensing. I’m suggesting PostgreSQL.
Never heard of it? Here’s a description from their About page:
An enterprise class database, PostgreSQL boasts sophisticated features such as Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point in time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups, a sophisticated query planner/optimizer, and write ahead logging for fault tolerance. It supports international character sets, multibyte character encodings, Unicode, and it is locale-aware for sorting, case-sensitivity, and formatting. It is highly scalable both in the sheer quantity of data it can manage and in the number of concurrent users it can accommodate. There are active PostgreSQL systems in production environments that manage in excess of 4 terabytes of data.
Best of all, PostgreSQL provides all of their Enterprise features absolutely free under a Liberal Open Source License! With something like this we can lower our overhead, and use those cost savings to improve our bottom line.
We will have to no doubt do some serious coding changes to make sure our data is compatible with PostgreSQL, but I think in the long run, the cost savings of switching to open source will outweigh the work to get there.
What do you think? Move to an open source database? Stick with Microsoft and suck up the cost? What’s your argument for or against? Let us know in the comments.
-=El Di Pablo=-
Get More Out of SNMP
Dec 2nd
When I started my current day job one of the things the IT department didn’t have was a decent monitoring system. They did have an external service that monitored the company websites, but nothing internally for monitoring servers for disk space, service, or CPU issues. To remedy that problem I decided to implement a really cool open source monitoring solution called Zenoss Core.
After setting up Zenoss, I learned about a really cool application for Windows servers that lets you get more our of monitoring using SNMP. With this applications, it means less to configure, and you can simply add servers to your monitoring solution with SNMP, and pretty much get everything you need to keep your network in top top shape!
It’s called SNMP Informant. Here are some of it’s features from their website:
- Full 64 bit support – Our "all-in-one" installer automatically detects the operating system version and installs
the correct components - Access Windows Performance data – Our Performance providers allow you to connect to any "out of the box" Windows Performance counter object using industry standard SNMP Object IDs (OIDs)!
- Access Custom Performance data – Our new "Custom" provider (part of SNMP Informant-Premium) allows you to collect data from any valid Windows performance counter. If you’ve got a performance counter instrumented application, and you can see the performance counters in PerfMon, then you can monitor it using SNMP Informant Premium!
- Run Remote scripts and collect data – If you’re using custom scripts to monitor something on a remote Windows server, you can now execute that script remotely using SNMP Informant, and collect the results of that script into an OID that YOU specify!
- Use your OWN Private Enterprise ID – You can customize SNMP Informant to respond to queries made against your OWN IANA Private Enterprise number!
- Read Remote Registry information – The new "Custom" provider also lets you specify what registry value to read!
- Collect WMI information – Our WMI providers allow you to connect to the Windows Management Instrumentation sub-system using SNMP! Stop/Start/Restart services! Reboot servers! Execute programs remotely!
- Monitor Exchange, SQL, Cluster, BizTalk, ISA and more, including Forefront, WSUS, Virtual Server, Citrix, the OS, and system hardware. Supported Operating Systems include Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7, Server 2000, Server 2003 (incl. R2), AND Server 2008 (incl. R2).
- Extend your monitoring system’s ROI – If you use products like HP Network Node Manager, IpSwitch Whatsup, OpenNMS, Nagios/Cacti/MRTG/RRDttool, Zenosss, or other SNMP compliant management platforms, find out how SNMP Informant can add significant value to them in minimal time and with minimal effort!
- Stop/Start/Restart Services and Windows Server – Using SNMP, you can control your Windows server like never before!
- Can be used with SNMPv1, SNMPv2 and SNMPv3 – Many companies are starting to to take advantage of enhanced SNMPv3 security. SNMP Informant supports all 3 versions. Find out more here!
- SNMP Informant is priced attractively – We recognize that while functionality is important, value cannot be overlooked. That’s why we have priced SNMP Informant to help maximize your IT budget spending.
Their standard version is absolutely free, so you can start adding it to all of your Windows servers today, and start seeing better results with your monitoring solution.
What are you guys using for monitoring these days? Solarwinds? What’s Up? Microsoft Systems Center? OpManager? What’s your favorite and why? Let us know in the comments.
-=El Di Pablo=-
Four Applications That Will Get You More Youtube Views
Dec 1st
Image via CrunchBase
A while back I mentioned some applications and or plugins I found that will help boost the views you have on a particular Youtube video on Bauer-Power. These methods might be considered by some as shady. I say, if by shady you mean helpful, then yes… Very shady!
All of these tools are fully automated. You can simply set them, and forget them to earn credits which in turn you can trade in for more views. With some of them, not only can you get more views, but you can also get comments, likes, favorites and subscribers! Basically everything you need to be the next Justin Bieber.
Here’s my list:
- Vagex – Terrible name I know. Sounds like something your girlfriend might use when she’s feeling not so fresh. Trust me though, it’s the best one out there. Not only can you get more views, but you can specify key words that you want to rank for in Youtube’s search. Plus you can get likes, favs, comments and subs as well.
- U2BViews – This is number two on my list. This is available as a desktop application as well as a Firefox extension. They are getting ready to add likes, favs and subs, but they do not have it yet. I’ve also chatted with the developer and talked them into adding Google Plus One’s as well.
- Viewet – This one is pretty much just like U2BViews, except it’s really only good for more views in my opinion. The thing I like about it is you can manage your credits easier. You can withdraw from one video to deposit on another video.
- Enhanceviews – This one runs as a browser plugin only. This one is great for comments and likes. You can even submit your Youtube account to them to use as they see fit, and earn credits that way. The only thing I don’t like about it though is their credit to view ratio. The ones above are all one to one, but Enhanceviews is something like 38 to one. Still, you can rack up credits pretty fast.
So why would you want to use this I hear you mumbling to yourself, all creepy like. This can best be answered from the Viewet page:
YouTube video views benefit your videos in many different ways. Viewet [and the other tools] increase your video’s ranking for your keywords and tags, increases the chances of your video being featured on a Google search for the keywords on your video, and also can get you video honors and even featured on the YouTube homepage.
If you can make it to the front page of Youtube, you are two clicks away from Bieberdom! Woot!
The best thing about these tools is they are 100% free to use. They all have paid features, but the free versions are robust enough that you don’t need to use them. I find it’s best to set these up on a computer in the corner over the weekend with the sound off, and walk away. The next time you have a video of you cats doing something super cute, use your new secret weapons to push them to the front page.
Got questions about these? Know of any other similar tools? Let’s chat in the comments!
-=El Di Pablo=-
Cool Free Tool For Wardriving
Nov 29th
I think it was in 2006 I attended my first hacker convention in San Diego called Toorcon. It was pretty cool because the company I worked for at the time was a sponsor, so they paid for my admission in. I will never forget one of the guys that I saw there. Dude was bald with a douchy bluetooth headset on, a military M1 jacket with cammo pants, sunglasses indoors, combat boots, and of course a backpack with a friggin’ antenna coming out of the back that was easily six feet tall. The dude was a serious wardriver.
What is wardriving you ask? According to Wikipedia:
Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a portable computer, smartphone or PDA…
…Wardriving originated from wardialing, a technique popularized by a character played by Matthew Broderick in the film WarGames, and named after that film. Wardialing in this context refers to the practice of using a computer to dial many phone numbers in the hopes of finding an active modem.
Basically you drive around, and look for open wireless networks. Simple right?
Now I’m not saying you need to be like the guy at the hacker convention, but sometimes it’s nice to know where in town you can go to catch some free Internet in case you have to send an emergency Tweet, or update Facebook at the drop of the hat.
Well I found a cool tool that runs on Windows that will automatically try find and connect to open wireless networks when you’re in range, and will alert you to stop when it has found an open access point and is trying to connect.
The tool is called outSSIDer, and you can get it as a free download. From their page:
outSSIDer automatically attempts to connect to any open access point that comes within range as you walk down the streets hunting for WiFi.
When an attempt is made it alerts you with sound to stand still and wait. That way you don’t need to watch the screen while walking – you can even close the laptop lid to save battery!
The connection is then verified against payment hotspots and restricted networks by trying to fetch the Google website icon.
If it fails connecting or verifying, it alerts you with the sound again and resumes scanning.
This tool is light and easy to use, and certainly a good tool to have in your wardriving goody bag. Do you go wardriving ever? What tools do you like to use? Let us know in the comments!
-=El Di Pablo=-
Blast from the past 2008: It’s an Admin’s worst nightmare (well one of them).
Jul 19th
The information published below on AtA 3 years ago today still rings true. Check it out:
It’s an Admin’s worst nightmare (well one of them).
A server’s system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you’re going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what is taking up so much space.
There are several tools for looking around your drive and getting a visual image of what is on it. Tools like WinDirStat, Folder Size and TreeSize all do a nice job of showing you where all that space is going.
But sometimes you need a quick and dirty tool and (if you’re like me) you don’t want to install something on your servers unless you really need to.
That’s one great thing about SequoiaView, it gives you a nice visual map of any drive or folder without installing anything. Download the zipped version, unzip it and run the executable. There’s nothing to install or risk messing up your servers with. Delete the whole folder when you are done and there’s no trace of it.
Of course, I am using JFFNMS to monitor my network so I was able to learn about this impending disaster early enough to do something about it. In my case – I had forgotten to reconfigure the IIS logging on my Exchange server, so the OWA logs were slowly filling up the system drive since they default to Windows\System32\LogFiles.
What do you use to monitor disk space on your servers? Do you have any horror stories to share with AtA? Well that is what the comments are for!
