Been Busy

Really, really busy…

But that is a good thing.

Lot of cool stuff happening and hope to have some more time later this week to post some stuff.

What version of Ubuntu am I running?

To find out run the command:

lsb_release -a

This command is used to display the Linux Standard Base and Distribution info and the lsb_release man page can be found here.

Here is the information it displays:

user@srv:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Release: 10.10
Codename: maverick

 

Migration from vCenter 4.0 to 4.1 – One Geeks Journey…

When we first deployed VMware back in early 2008 vCenter was not yet supported running as a VM (at least I do not think it was). Since we were new to the technology as a whole I don’t think I would have run vCenter as a VM until we were able prove the stability of it in our production environment. Over the past few years I think VMware has proven itself as being robust and impressively stable so much so that we have virtualized every thing that is not nailed down tied to specific hardware – Exchange, Microsoft SQL, AD, web servers, application servers, etc. Since we need/want to upgrade to vCenter 4.1, it also seems like as good a time as any to go ahead and run vCenter as a guest VM.

Currently our vCenter is on a separate physical box running Windows 2003 with 4 GB RAM and a single 2.66 Ghz dual core processor. The vCenter database is on Microsoft SQL 2005 also running on the same physical box. The hardware we have in place would support running vCenter 4.1 but since 4.1 requires a 64 bit OS, and ours is currently running on 32bit, I am going to upgrade/migrate vCenter to a new guest VM running Windows 2008 R2 64. I am also going move the vCenter database to the new VM (I know it is not necessarily best practice to run the DB on the same box as vCenter but my environment is small and it should work out ok – if not I will move the database to another server at a later date) which is running Microsoft SQL 2005 x64.

Read more

New Theme

Changed the MyGeekFinds.com theme to one that will hopefully make post easier to read. The name of the theme is REDiance and I found it here but the author’s website is not longer accessible so I removed the link from the footer.

Still have some work to do and this is probably not the last change, but it would be great to hear what you think.

Thanks!

Google 411 – 1-800-466-4411

Check out Google 411 – 1-800-GOOG-411 or 1-800-466-4411

Google’s new 411 service is free, fast and easy to use. Give it a try now and see how simple it is to find and connect with local businesses for free.

Just call 1-800-466-4411

Been a while

But I have some more stuff to post coming soon.

Where is Santa?

Follow Santa as he delivers toys around the world.
Norad Santa

Merry Christmas!!!

Failover to Standby Datamover

Last night a tech from EMC was here to update the Control Station and DART code on our Celerra to enable file system deduplication (more about this later).

As part of this process we had to failover to our standby datamover. Thought these commands might be useful later so here they are.

server_2 – Primary datamover
server_3 – Standby datamover

Fail over to standby mover

# server_standby server_2 -a mover

Faults server_x and renames it to server_2.faulted.server_3
Renames server_3 to server_2
server_3 is now online as server_2

During the time it took to failover I dropped 3 pings to the datamover.

Fall back to primary mover

# server_standby server_2.faulted.server_3 -r mover

Renames standby server to server_3
Renames server_2.faulted.server_3 to server_2
server_2 is now back online as the primary mover.

Again I dropped 3 pings while the datamovers switched.

Here are a couple other useful Celerra commands.

Listing your datamovers and their status from the command line:

# /nas/bin/nas_server -l
id type acl slot groupID state name
1 1 0 2 0 server_2
2 4 0 3 0 server_3

You can get this info from the GUI but this is quick if you are logged into the Control Station CLI.

View the nas version running on your datamovers:

# server_version ALL
server_2 : Product: EMC Celerra File Server Version: T5.6.46.410
server_3 : Product: EMC Celerra File Server Version: T5.6.46.410

Basic stuff but it might be useful to have on hand later.

Setting Up a Serial Console on RedHat Linux 9.0

I put these instuctions together several years ago. I am moving from a co-located physical server to a VPS with Hands-on Web Hosting so in the process of moving I am trying to consolidate some of my older sites that I no longer update. I am guessing these instructions should also be usable on newer versions of RedHat, Fedora, or other Linux distros.
–

If you are running RedHat 9.0 and want to run “headless” (no monitor, keyboard, or mouse) but still want to have a console to receive console messages or login, here are the basics of what I did to get it working.

This example will set up a serial console on Com 1 (ttyS0) at 38.4K Baud, Data bits 8, Parity None, 1 stop bit.

Requirements:

* agetty – alternative Linux getty – agetty is included in the RedHat 9.0 Installation (unless you chose not to install it)
* A Null Modem Cable – To connect to your PC, laptop, or terminal. You can make one yourself or pick one up from Radio Shack for a few bucks.
* Running lilo as your boot loader.
* Support for console on serial port must be compiled into the kernel (not loaded as a module) This option is located under Character devices – it is compiled in by default on Redhat 9 installations.
* Root access.

Make sure you set up your BIOS to continue on Keyboard or Mouse errors. Some machines will allow you to ignore these errors specifically, on others you may have to configure it to continue on any error.

In /etc/lilo.conf add this to the global section:

serial = 0,38400n8

Then add this to the append line in the kernel section:

append = “console=ttyS0,38400n8″

If you are already using an append for other options just add console=ttyS0,38400n8 to the end of those. Once you have made the changes to /etc/lilo.conf remember to run /sbin/lilo to set the new configuration for the next boot.

To enable the ability to login on to the machine using the serial console add the following line to /etc/inittab:

s0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -i -h -L 38400 ttyS0 vt100

Connect the null modem cable to Com 1 and then to your PC, Laptop, or Terminal. Configure the connection (terminal program) for 38400 baud (38.4k), 8 data bits, parity none, and stop bits 1. (On windows you can connect using Hyperterminal, TeraTerm, or any other terminal program that supports serial ports. On a Linux machine you can use minicom).

Now reboot the linux box that you configured the serial console on and monitor the connection. You should see the kernel decompress and then the boot messages over your serial connection. Once the machine has finished booting you should receive a logon prompt on the console.

If you receive a bunch of garbage on the terminal check your baud and parity settings. If you do not receive a logon prompt check you inittab configuration and make sure agetty is running on ttyS0 (ps -ef | grep agetty).

For more help check out the man pages for agetty, lilo, lilo.conf, and inittab.

You can also try a google search for linux serial console, there are a lot of other similar ways to do this.

Staging Patches in vSphere vCenter Update Manager

New feature in vCenter Update Manager allows you to stage vSphere updates before installing them.

Use the Stage wizard to download the patches before using remediation. This downloads and prepares the patches while the host is still online. This decrease the amount of time the host is off line (in maintenance mode) will applying patches.

You can stage at the cluster and Data Center level to prepare all hosts in the cluster for remediation.

Shortcuts in Home-Inventory-Hosts and Clusters

Just updated to ESX 4.0.0 build 175625. Staging took about 3 1/2 minutes total and remediation took about 12 minutes per host (this include Entering maintenance mode, VM migration, patch installation, reboot, exit maintenance mode). Three and a half minutes of savings may not seem like much, and across three hosts it really isn’t that big of a deal, but across 20 hosts that would make a huge difference.

Awesome new vSphere feature!

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