Project 52 announced that the blog posts will be from March 17, 2010 – March 17, 2011. This gives me some time to think about how to dedicate a little more time to writing a new blog post each week.

I still plan on having a mixture of personal and how-to tech type posts. Hopefully the increased ESX posting will help some people. There should be more to come, as I was notified this week that we are planning to virtualize 90% of our datacenter environment. This should provide me with plenty of help and how to info that I can write on.

Until then

The projects I mentioned in the last post are actually work related. My personal projects are something I’m starting on this spring. In the summer, my electric bill gets close to $400, which is partly because the air conditioner runs almost non-stop trying to keep it frosty. But also because my insulation is absolutely horrible in the attic.

This house is only about 12 years old, but they used blow-in insulation, and it looks likes its started to sink a little and degrade. Not great. So I’ve purchased 30 rolls of some R-30 to be delivered (today actually) so that hopefully the cooling will be more efficient. I’m also going to go around with clear caulking and reseal all the windows and door frames. Hopefully this will help. Maybe I should also not try to keep the A/C on 70..

The other project is a little ironic. Seeing how we just got about 3-4 inches of snow, I am having delivered soil and things to start laying out for a garden. I’m going to do a raised vegetable garden. Raising it up with landscaping timbers, and then putting down the biodegradable weed barrier paper, and filling it with soil, moss and manure to hopefully grow some tomatoes, celery, brussels sprouts, and other yummy things. So this is what I’ll be starting on the weekends. Maybe I’ll even include pictures.

So my plan to start a week early on Project 52 worked out, because now I already missed a weekend in posting, but didn’t miss the week! The plan was to schedule a post to appear every Saturday, but that hasn’t worked too well.. So in the middle of the week works too, I suppose.

Sadly I can’t share both of the projects I’m leading right now due to NDAs. Hah. As i thought I’d be able to talk about most things on here.. The things I want to share I can’t. For now at least. Lets just say it includes VMware and Windows 7. Yay Two of the best technologies, and I get to work with both in my projects.

An open letter to Microsoft Learning.

It is to my knowledge that when Microsoft partnered with Sylvan/Prometric testing centers in June, 2007 that it was a 3 year contract. That would mean by simple math that the contract is set to expire in the coming months. For all practical reasons, I would see Microsoft renewing this partnership, as together I believe they delivered almost 2 million exams over the course of 2009 alone. However, one can hope that they will put this to an end, and switch to Pearson Vue testing.

There are probably numerous reasons that Microsoft Learning chose Prometric centers to begin with in 2007. Whatever the reasons, at the time I was actually fine with this decision. I have a local Prometric center and I was just starting out getting my certifications, so I was not aware of the vast differences between the two testing centers.

But now as an experienced test taker, (I believe I have taken at least 15 different Microsoft, CompTIA and Cisco exams), I have had the pleasure of dealing with the Pearson Vue testing centers. In my experiences as a candidate for these exams, Pearson Vue’s excels in any category when compared to Prometric’s testing centers.

Allow me to give an example of my local Prometric center compared to the Pearson Vue center. At Prometric, All of the computers that the exam is presented on are very outdated. The monitors are old CRT that can hurt your eyes after reading them for so long for the older scenario based exams. The chairs provided are simple fold-out chairs that are completely uncomfortable after sitting for more than 10 minutes. There is no table/desk area to rest the keyboards, and the mouse is on a small corner of the desk. So if you need to type anything for the exam, you have to balance the keyboard in your lap to be able to use it. There have been plenty of times the proctor has left the exam area and there was no supervision isnide the testing area. One could say that it is just my local center and others are much nicer, however I have tried 3 Prometric centers, and in my experience all of them have had the same standards.

Now, for the Vue testing center. When I walked in for my first experience here, it was for my CCNA. Being a much harder exam than some Microsoft exams, I was a little more nervous taking this one than I had been for other exams. I arrived about 30 minutes early for my scheduled exam, and the testing center offered complimentary soft drinks and candy bars. Plus, since I was early they offered an area I could do some last minute studying before going in to sit the exam. Once inside of the testing area, there was an entire desk with flat panel monitor for easy viewing, a good surface area that the keyboard and mouse was on the table instead of in my lap, and extra space for use of the whiteboard if needed. The chair was a comfortable, rolling desk chair.

All of these small details matter to candidates who are taking an exam. If I have to sit a longer exam for up to 4 hours, why would I want to pay $125+ to sit in an environment that isn’t comfortable. I believe there are several reasons why MSL should not renew the contract with Prometric and switch to the obvious superior testing delivery service, Pearson Vue. So to Ken Rosen and whoever has the ability to make this happen, I implore you to make the change. Your candidates and your exams will be better off.

I’m writing this post at about 36,000 feet in the air using GoGo’s in-flight wireless service on my flight. It was $10 for the duration of the flight (I tried some promo codes but they had all expired). Being that it is a 5 hour flight (Atlanta to Seattle), I’m not complaining. Definately better than the $5/hr that the airport wanted for WiFi service.

My company provided me with a HP 4410t.. A thin client notebook that I am using the built-in VMWare View Client to connect back to my virtual destop running on VMWare ESX 4*. The desktop process is almost smooth as glass.. The only issue I have came across is that loading images is a little slow. Its like DSL, noticable but completely acceptable.

I believe on my return trip I will be attemping some things that should bypass their filters. GoGo currently does not allow VoIP to be used other their service but since VMWare View uses an SSL connection to present you with the desktop, if I had a USB softphone it should passthrough securely and bypass their filter. I believe I will purchase one so I can try this out on my return flight next Saturday. I’m sure there are other services blocked but I’m not crazy enough to try to view those things up here.

VMWare View looks like a very stable product (This is my first time using it externally), and I have enjoyed deploying it in my test lab in the past couple months. I beleive everything is functional the way I want it to be, with my current setup having 4 Server 2003 VMs as well as 5 XP Desktop VMs. I am waiting on View 4.5 in which Windows 7 support should be included. For now, I am just sticking with XP. My View 4 configuration includes the automatic customization to configure all XP options when deploying a new image.. Such as setting it to DHCP, Configuring the computer name to use the pool-name+1 increment on the new desktop.  My image template includes all software preloaded (Office and the like),  full activated and ready to use. A complete desktop can be deployed in less than an hour.

The ESX hardware configuration is an HP DL180 with 20GB of RAM, and (2) 1TB SAS drives mirrored for my data stores. This project has went well and I look forward to deploying it in a production environment soon.

* I work for both an HP and VMWare partner/reseller, so while these statements are without bias, here is my disclaimer.

Troubleshooting a problem can be tedious and time consuming. However, with the right process, you can turn a drawn out troubleshooting process into a more concentrated point of observation. As an example, this week I was setting up a single VPN tunnel, however it connected 2 offices to a single 3rd party office. This was done via a point to point connection between the 2 offices of my client.

The equipment being used included 2 TZ170 Sonicwalls for my client, one at each site, and a Cisco PIX firewall for the 3rd party. I had no control over the Cisco device, but full control over the Sonicwall devices. I had the VPN tunnel setup for the 1st hop fairly quickly. We agreed on a preshared key and had the one office setup almost immediately. However, the 2nd office (over the point to point connection) could not get access into their network.

This is where I began my troubleshooting process. The easiest way I troubleshoot something like this is to break it down piece by piece, and in this case, hop by hop (The Sonicwalls are also routers). I enabled logging on both devices and watched as we attempted to ping from both networks. On one network, everything was being sent fine. However, pings from the point to point network were being sent, but nothing ever was being received. At this point I was happy that it seemed both of my devices were working properly. However, their network was not responding to anything I sent.

After several conversations over almost a week-long period, the 3rd party finally admitted to having entered the IP information incorrectly in their PIX device. Once this was resolved everything was operating as needed.

My point is how to break things up so you have an idea where to look at. I could have fired blindly and started making changes that I though could have fixed the issue, but by breaking it down first and peering into what was happening on a step by step basis, I was able to pinpoint where the problem was, and then once realizing where it was, how to fix it.

In the past few years, “social media” has gained dominance online as more and more younger people join those who have been plugged in for years. But what is social media, and why have I avoided it so much?

Back in the day I was all over the internet… Before Google was as huge and my homepage was the basic HTML layout of Yahoo. I played on the awesome java applet of Yahoo Games and was on IRC constantly. However as things evolved, somehow I didn’t see all of those new things nessesary. You could call those things the Web 2.0 change, but I don’t want to get that idea mixed in with social media.

The big one at first (that I saw) was Myspace.. and I avoided it like a plague. Why would someone need something this slow to post their thoughts and make friends? I finally succumbed and made an account, as everyone I knew kept asking me for my own myspace page. And then came Facebook. I can’t be found there… Not from any hidden privacy things (Is that possible there?) but because I don’t have an account.. and I refuse to create one.

But then there is Twitter and somehow, all of its magic. Granted, I haven’t even had a twitter account for almost 2 years.. still late to the party. But somehow, its not like the others. Its simple, and easy. It has streamlined what I think Myspace or Facebook could be. Sure, there are plenty of spammers, but I have encountered that everywhere.. Even those Yahoo games applets And from this I see what everyone else got from those other sites.

So in the future I plan on being proactive in social media, or whatever comes next.. Not on the sidelines watching it and wondering how other people benefit from it. I have already started by getting a Gowalla account and the associated iPhone app. And hopefully, the more people I follow on Twitter, the faster I can get into the next big social media site… But whats after social media?

First Lesson: Changing the IP address of a VMWare ESX 4 host. I recently had to do this as I was moving my VM box to another network.

First you must disconnect it from vCenter if applicable, and shut down all VMs on this host.. If you have high availability just move them to the other host. Put the host into maintenance mode, easily done from the vSphere client.

Now that all machines are off the host and it is in maintenance mode you can change the IP on the console. You actually have to delete the interface and create a new one.

esxcfg-vswif -d vswif0

-d marks it for deletion, and “vswif0″ is the interface you are changing. This could vary if you have multiple NICs being used. You can list the NICs using esxcfg-vswif -l.

With the interface being deleted now you may create a new one.

esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p “Service Console” -i <IP Address> -n <Subnet Mask> -b <Broadcast IP>

-a Defines the interface name. -p defines the portgroup the interface is assigned to… By default, this is Service Console.

To update the default gateway, use nano to edit the network file.

nano /etc/sysconfig/network file

You can change the Gateway here. If it is not present, add

GATEWAY=<IP Address>

Save the file and reset the interface using

esxcfg-vswif -s vswif0
esxcfg-vswif -e vswif0

You can change the DNS settings on the vSphere client once you have reconnected.

I will continue to write about general network topics as well as VMWare topics as these are my primary during these 52 weeks. I hope to learn alot as well as help others learn during this time. See you next time!

Enter Project 52.

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

I have decided to participate and hope to last the entire year… Its only 52 blog posts and a year to do it is plenty of time. I should be updating every weekend and plan on writing content based on what I’ve encountered and found during the before week. It might be shakey at first, but hopefully with time and practice each week will get better.

See you then. =)