Drinking12many

I have been home the last week or so, which is rare with my job. So let's spend some cash on a lab upgrade. My current lab just has a small 16 Port Netgear managed switch, a couple older AMD boxes cobbled together from leftover parts. One is a FreeNAS box with probably 3-4TB usable storage 16GB RAM and an A6-3650 AMD CPU, the other is an 8 core FX-8320 based AMD box with 24GB of RAM, running ESXi 5.5. I often run out of RAM and network ports while testing things for work such as multiple SQL clusters using AOA for replication etc. Even now in the screenshot with very little running I am using 19GB of RAM. Divorce does have one benefit no permission required!!. 1. Cisco 3650G - 48 Port switch with room for 4 SFPs including 10Gb I paid 170 with free shipping but there are other options - https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR1.TRC0.A0.H0.Xcisco+3560g+48ps.TRS0&_nkw=cisco+3560g+48ps&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_o...

For a recent project, I was asked to get the Microsoft JDBC working on Redhat with SQL 2016. In the instructions I found online to be blunt they were lacking especially because I am not a programmer. I hope that this post helps someone in the future attempting something similar. First JDBC for Windows and JDBC for Linux work a bit different. At the time I write this there is a version 6.2 for Windows, but the Linux driver is only at 4.2. This leads to one major difference 6.2 supports passing a username and password as part of the connect string for Kerberos on Windows while the 4.2 driver for Linux does not. Below is a java sample code that works on windows without getting into keytabs etc. I assume in all this you know you need to add a server principal name to your SQL Server service accounts and have already done that. Using "setspn -a" with a domain admin account. Once you have everything configured if you want to verify something is using Kerberos run this query on SQ...

Inexplicably after some updates our Vcenter stopped starting. Everything and I mean everything pointed to an issue with the SSL self-signed certs VMware generates leading us to these KB's. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2036760 https://communities.vmware.com/message/2123347 Even though nothing in regard to those had changed the only thing we could find is that some WSUS patches were applied. We even created a SR with VMware which led us through most of the same steps including removing all the vCenter software reinstalling...course all that and the same error continues. So we completely reloaded the server thinking something like .Net or something must be messed up. After all that.... Error still continued. So we thought....hmm only thing we didn't try is starting with a new database.... OK create a completely new database and the error stopped and we can log into VMware.... EXCELLENT - Its somet...

I was working with making some custom Scripts in PowerGUI and found some of the community ones missing some of the common things I have to do as part of Hardening or system setup. Most of the ones on other sites work but did not work well in PowerGUI due to it bombing out on an error so I just wanted it to set the ones which where not in the state I wanted them in. Status of Lockdown Mode Get-VMHost | Select Name, @{N="Lockdown";E={$_.Extensiondata.Config.adminDisabled}} Disable Lockdown Mode $Scope = Get-VMHost | Where {$_.Extensiondata.Config.adminDisabled -match 'True'} foreach ($ESXhost in $Scope) { (Get-VMHost $ESXhost | get-view).ExitLockdownMode() } Enable Lockdown Mode $Scope = Get-VMHost | Where {$_.Extensiondata.Config.adminDisabled -match 'False'} foreach ($ESXhost in $Scope) {  Get-VMHost $ESXhost | get-view).EnterLockdownMode() } I also wrote a few scripts to help set up hosts for our Flash storage as recommended by Pure f...

Taking this up again.  I know I only posted a couple blogs before I stopped doing this, but I have decided to try to start it up and actually do something with it. I will most likely focus mostly on technology related topics, but may throw in some other posts as I had originally.  Since I started this I finished my Bachelor's in IT, gotten a new job, and started my Master's in Strategic Leadership specializing in cyber-security. I would like to make this mostly a place where I provide little bits of knowledge for problems I solve at work that may hopefully help others in the future. 

'Teams 10Gb Emulex Nics into a failover Team 'Script to take the IP from the active emulex nic, enable any disabled emulex nic, then team them and reapply the IP to the team. 'Requires the Emulex teaming software to be installed. ' Enable any Emulex NICs which are disabled. strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\CIMV2") Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _     "SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapter where NetEnabled='False'and servicename='be2net'",,48) For Each objItem in colItems     Wscript.Echo "-----------------------------------"     Wscript.Echo "Win32_NetworkAdapter instance"     Wscript.Echo "-----------------------------------"     'Wscript.Echo "NetEnabled: " & objItem.NetEnabled     Wscript.Echo "ProductName: " & objItem.ProductName     objitem.enable Next ' Gets ...

Not much to post today but the following Clunker  Math The person who calculated this bit of information is now and has been a professor at The University of West Virginia in Morgantown, West Virginia for the last forty some years. A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year. The government claims 700,000 clunkers have been replaced so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year. A vehicle  that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons of gas a year. So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year. That  equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil~5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption. More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars. So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save  $350   million.... We  spent  $8.57  for every  $1.00  w...