SCEP on Windows 2008R2 for iPhones / iPads
A project never really finishes, if you’re lucky you complete the initial requirements and get those signed off, and if you’re good at managing your project you’ll refuse to allow the scope creep in and mark any additional feature requests as “phase 2″ and evaluate them at a later date. One of the nice-to-haves with the deployment of iPhones was a VPN system so that you could access the internal systems when out of the office, and to date this has been in a very “test and dev” environment with access only for IT staff in a completely non-supported way.
However, I’ve found myself with a bit of time and so I started delving into the SCEP world for issuing certificates to iPhones which I would then later use to authenticate an SSL VPN connection, and here’s what I found. Continue Reading →
Quick: vmware tools on freebsd
I’ve never bothered installing vmware tools on my freebsd systems, but as it’s Christmas and we’re doing various pieces of maintenance I thought, “why not?”
In order to do this I first needed to install the compat6x port:
cd /usr/ports/misc/compat6x/ && make install clean
I then mounted the freebsd.iso from the vmimages folder, mounted the cdrom into existing folder (/cdrom) and copied the folder to the temporary directory before extracting and installing:
mount -t cd9660 /dev/acd0 /cdrom
cp /cdrom/vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz /tmp
tar -xf /tmp/vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz
./vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl
Upon completion the installer then runs the first time required config to set up the installation.
NAS comparison: iomega and netgear
As you will know, I’ve had no end of problems with iomega NAS boxes (and customer support for that matter), and so with a recent purchase decided to test the market again and purchase a different product.
Back in the day we had some Netgear ReadyNas boxes, little desktop units offering 2-3TB of network storage which was ideal for backups. The ReadyNas boxes weren’t special in any way, the interface was decidedly average and the software had a few quirks, but they did have one brilliant feature – they hardly ever stopped working.
So, I decided to give them a go again and have since done a direct comparison between the previously-complained-about iomega units and the newly-purchased netgear ones. There are a couple of differences you should know before you worry about the performance though: 1) the netgears are considerably more expensive; 2) the netgears come with a much better warranty. Continue Reading →
Quick: Why not to buy the iomega ix12-300r either!
In a previous blog post I explained that our iomega ix4-200r was a generally faulty product with little or no hope of ever making it into my good books, mainly because of the (deliberate) limitations on iSCSI LUN sizes.
After feeding this information back to the suppliers who recommended the product they gave a response which was something like “oh, yes, well, those are the small units, they’re not too good, try the larger unit instead: the ix12″.
And so we did, we bought a few ix12-300r units and configured them up appropriately, the good news is they don’t have a restriction on iSCSI LUNs that I’m bothered about – it might be set at 16TB but I’m okay with that. The bad news is, the product itself is just as unreliable and realistically can’t be used for anything sensible. We had a fault initially logged on the 13th October and as I write this on the 5th December it’s still not resolved fully. Continue Reading →
Installation of Dell EqualLogic MEM 1.0.9 (1.1 EPA) and vSphere 5
So the 1.0.9 version of Dell’s MEM module (ug, that’s as bad as PIN number), scratch that, of Dell’s Multipathing Extension Module for EqualLogic was released last week. I promptly ignored it for a week before reading the line that said “fully supported in production environments” (whoops) and installed it today. It wasn’t easy.
I’ve already upgraded vSphere Centre to version 5, and so I made an install package for MEM 1.0.9 (1.1EPA) – Update Manager then told me that it wasn’t required anywhere, “that can’t be right”, I thought to myself, and then realised that I needed ESXi 5.0 to install MEM; but you can’t install ESXi 5.0 while MEM1.0 (or anything pre 1.0.9) is installed. A little bit of a catch 22.
I then embarked on a whirlwind tour of command line chaos, using PowerShell to create my own installation .iso which combined the ESXi 5.0 install with the Dell MEM bundle, I uploaded that to the Update Manager and used it to upgrade two hosts, and I’m shocked to say that it worked almost perfectly, so, for the simple commands you need to use, see below!
To do all this you’ll need to download and install the vSphere PowerCLI. Continue Reading →
The things I love about iOS5 – the first 24 hours of playing
iOS5 was released at 6pm GMT yesterday (12th October 2011) – if you haven’t already upgraded your iPhone and iPad, then you should.
If you’re having issues because you’re getting “resource not found” when trying to upgrade to iOS5 or something similar-sounding, then fear not – it’s just apple’s servers being under a bit of strain, you can download the offline copy straight from the web site and then within iTunes simply do a backup and then shift-click “Restore” to browse to the offline file (remember to upgrade iTunes first though).
If you’re in charge of a fleet of iPhones I’d always recommend downloading the package first and then using it again and again on all devices to save time and internet bandwidth. You can either download it once in iTunes and then get it from:
C:\Users\smd\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPad Software Updates
C:\Users\smd\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
(or the equivalent place on your own system), or you can find out the URL from somewhere else such as this helpful article on osXdaily. Continue Reading →
MDaemon, Airwatch and iPhones
Faced with the task of rolling out iPhones to near-100 users we thought it would be best to investigate some Mobile Device Management (MDM) vendors, trying to keep track of 100 free “find my iPhone” accounts might be achievable, but it certainly wouldn’t be fun.
We fairly quickly decided on Airwatch (http://www.air-watch.com/), relatively new to the market place in terms of MDM but cheap enough that we could give it a go without too much heartache.
At the same time as this MDaemon (our preferred e-mail server software) released an update which supported Exchange ActiveSync (if the word makes you shudder because of flashbacks of crappy PC-based synchronisation problems, fear not, it’s different): this presented us with an opportunity to roll out 100 centrally managed iPhones with vastly improved functionality and easy-of-use when compared to our previous implementation.
Quick: Why not to buy the iomega ix4-200r for veeam backups
In previous blog posts (Using veeam to backup the new virtual infrastructure to Iomega NAS boxes and Backup Strategies with Virtual Machines in VMware using Veeam) I mention my purchases of the iomega ix4-200r, generally I haven’t been impressed with them because they’ve been a little unreliable.
Looking at use around the net I decided that the best way to have a target for my veeam backups would be the iSCSI initiator from Windows straight onto the device, so I should provision a LUN, add it to Windows and write to it.
I tried and failed, after about a week of to’ing and fro’ing with veeam, vmware and iomega support I got to the bottom of the issue: these nas boxes are software locked to provide LUNs that are <= 2TB in size* – bearing in mind my 8 file servers each serve up anywhere between 500GB and 1TB worth of data this means that my first backup file from veeam is always going be over 2TB, making the device pretty much worthless in my environment.
*I’ve been assured that a LUN that’s exactly 2TB will work, although I can’t actually get that working in my test lab having tried it on two separate devices.
Remote Access Options in Server 2008R2
Server 2008R2 has many different methods that allow connections to your business network from outside for whatever purposes you see fit (most often though, home working). What’s better still is that once you’ve bought your Server 2008R2 installations these specific features don’t require any extra licensing or purchase cost, all it takes is your time and willing!
The roles that I’ll mention today are:
- Routing and Remote Access (RRAS)
- Remote Desktop Gateway
- Remote Desktop Web Access
- Remote Applications (RemoteApp)
The different versions of Server 2008R2 have different levels of functionality for the roles that we’re interested in: Network Policy and Access Services and Remote Desktop Services, so you should check using this hugely cropped table that I’ve made from lifting the information found on the Microsoft website about comparing server editions by role. Continue Reading →
Find my iPhone can work on iPhone 3 and 3GS too
I know, it’s probably not something that we should talk about too loudly lest Apple get upset, but it’s true, you can use the “Find my iPhone” feature that apple recently made free for the iPhone 4 with your iPhone 3 and 3GS, but there’s a trick to it: you’ll need a willing friend who does have an iPhone 4 for you to borrow.