$1500 for a new ESXi server for vSphere 4.1 is a bit high. Unlike this guy, I have a lab in the basement so decibles aren’t as important as capex and opex costs.
Plus, to have a lab in the basement where I can do things with a cluster would require two of these beasties. Running a second on the iMac i7 probably won’t cut it. Last time I needed a lab for something it was because a network change crapped out 1/4 of my primary vSwitch.
I think I’d like to do a mock-up of the vCluster configs we have at work, then randomly shoot components to see how it fails. The network change issue was unexpected. Losing 1 out of the 4 strands of the portchannel going to a vswitch should not have cause the outage, however brief it was.
Meet My ESXi Server, the BabyDragon. | Error404 – Its A Blog.
VMWare ESXi 4.1 looks incredibaly interesting. It has better monitoring functions, better authentication integration and other cool features. I need to upgrade.
Sadly, the CPU in my current VMWare host doesn’t support the Intel vt extensions so it won’t run 64bit VMs, and it won’t support ESXi 4.1. So I’m looking at having to drop at least a grand to get a new server capable of running the latest VMWare. My Media Center PC could do it, but sadly, the Shuttle PC I was going to make my Media Center PC has a dead power supply, and Shuttle doesn’t carry accessories anymore.
Anyway, once the iTV ships, I can retire the Media PC and convert it to an ESXi host. Once I do that, here are a list of Virtual Appliances I want to play with:
- CAINE (Computer Aided INvestigative Environment), Digital Forensics and Security distro
- LogLogic Log Management Virtual Appliance
- HP LeftHand P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) Software
- vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) [appliance for vSphere CLI, vSphere SDK for Perl, and SMI-S]
- TurnKey Amazon EC2 SDK Appliance
When I decided to un-jailbreak my iPad and remove Cydia, I did a “Erase all Content and Settings” via the Apple Settings App. This however caused the iPad to no longer boot. Apparently it erased lots of data, but it did not restore some of the boot processes.
On a Cydia jailbroken iPad, there are two bars of pixled colors during the boot apple screen. These were present on the boot screen after I erased all the content. Eventually the iPad boot up sequence would time out and the iPad would reboot and fail again. I had effectivly bricked my iPad.
Digging around in google didn’t really provide much guidance. I did finally find a document provided by apple which provides instructions on how to restore a backup from iTunes.
Preseeds are poorly documented. This is a note to myself on how to reproduce an install
sudo apt-get install debconf-utils # It is part of the debconf-utils package.
debconf-get-selections –installer > somefile.txt
debconf-get-selections >> somefile.txt “
via [ubuntu] preseeding installation 8.10 – how to preseed “encrypted directory” prompt? – Ubuntu Forums.
Chris Farris
Chris Farris has worked on many award winning projects throughout his career. He began as an independent artist in 1984 and was soon responsible for the design and construction undersight of Southern Clambake University’s Main Hall. He is also responsible for the design of the Metro Regional Nerve Center, Lingering Corners Mall, White Bloaks Resort, and the famous Thomas Aquinas Building in downtown Draculaville. Chris earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996 and a Masters in Augmentation from Southern Fanatics School of Design in 1991.
Mr. Farris is active in a number of professional organizations including the San Francisco Chapter of the Liars Dice Association, a member of the San Francisco Society of Certified Interventionists, and a member of the American Flats Chamber of Commerce. Chris treats every client with respect and integrity.
I’m beginning to think vmware people are cult-like.
Show And Tell : First vSphere Plugin for WordPress! | Nickapedia.
When I saw the release announcement on WordPress 3.0 (Thelonious), I was excited to see that is was finally integrating in the WordPressMu project allowing one installation of wordpress to handle multiple blogs. I maintain several websites and blogs in wordpress, and have struggled with the operational best practices surrounding it.
I was quite excited to see the multisite support so I decided to deploy a VM at the house to test out migration of all my sites to a single install.
First off, multisite would end my ability to allow hosting customers direct access to their databases via the phpmyadmin plugin. Since multisite uses a single database, giving access to that database to one customer means that customer has access to all the sites hosted by that installation.
The next problem is that multisite is not (yet) designed to handle multiple top-level domains. There are tables inside the database that indicate they plan to go this route, but the admin interface isn’t ready for it.
Under the SuperAdmin menu, you can edit the Domain, SiteURL and Home fields to change the URL for the site, but then you can’t actually log into the wp-admin interface for that site.
This link provides an overview of how you can do it via editing the wp_sites table, however the Admin interface isn’t exactly setup to allow you to manage the site once you move it to a different domain.
Then there is the confusion over the wp_blogs table managing sites and the wp_site table managing domains.
WordPressMu had a plugin for Domain Mapping that has been updated (but not yet released, you’ll need to download from the author’s SVN trunk) to support WordPress 3.0. I’ve had better luck following this guide and using the Domain Mapping plugin.
However, with the Domain Mapping plugin, I’ve noticed some strange behavior with using multiple domains mapped to the master. I’m gonna chalk this up to running a non-released code.
In short, Multisite is not yet ready for primetime (based on my needs). I suspect it was more designed for a site like Redstate that allows users to host their own diaries, or the AJC where different reporters have their own blogs under the ajc.com domain.
I’ve not yet played with the features of the new Twenty Ten theme, but the ability to use the WordPress interface to build out custom page menus looks to be kick ass.
Just before the 3.0 release I converted the PrimeHarbor website to a wordpress site. Since I’ve not yet cut that over to production, I think I’m going to take the time to build it out under 3.0. And since PrimeHarbor is the site hosting the other domains, it makes sense to make that my root site if and when I go to multisite.
Courtesy of Intuit Works to Restore Online Access – WSJ.com:
Intuit Inc. said it is trying to restore service to company websites affected by an outage that began Tuesday night, leaving consumers and small businesses without access to online versions of the company's accounting and tax software.
Intuit’s products include TurboTax, Quicken and the QuickBooks accounting program used by many small businesses. The online services associated with those products remained offline Wednesday afternoon.
A company spokeswoman said it hadn't yet identified the cause of the outage, but ruled out a cyber attack. Some Intuit websites were beginning to come back online late Wednesday afternoon, she added…..
While many small businesses have their own issues with disaster recovery, the fact that all your critical data is stuck on a server you have no access to should be a source of concern. I’ve not used their online products, but if you can’t export your data to a Quickbooks file for use on your PC, you’re just asking for trouble.
Found this on Austin Scott’s website. It looks kinda neat. Maybe a candidate for the Gwinnett GOP’s site.
Useful reference on building a dpkg from source: Rolling your own Debian packages part 2.