Practical Technology

Yes, today is the day that I made a fine boo-boo.  A shameful one, to be honest. I was deploying config files for the monitoring software and got lazy - I overwrote files instead of moving them or renaming them...all because I wanted to get that last little bit done before I left for the day. Of course it turns out that some esoteric command was in the files.  Not mission-critical, but I'll be spending time in the backup software tomorrow (assuming the servers were ever backed up) trying to figure it out.  Or re-writing the command from scratch.  Ouch. The amount of time it will take to rename the files versus restore from backup can be described in orders of magnitude.  Honest to goodness - at least this project is almost over. Lesson:  Even if you are 100% certain you'll be okay overwriting a file - move or rename it for insurance, because restoring from backup is tedious and painful and sometimes an endeavour in panic.   Sub-les...

From a post I made here:   http://communities.vmware.com/thread/342742?tstart=0 It started out simple, then got longer, and ended a saga.  The iSCSI saga.   I would paste the whole thing here...but I'd imagine the VMware communities will be around well after this article is rendered obsolete. Bottom line :  If your switchport is accepting tagged packets on VLAN10 only, and your physical adapter is tagging packets for VLAN10, setting the virtual machine networking (bridged to said physical adapter) to ALSO tag packets for VLAN10 will break stuff.  Leave the VLAN tagging for the physical devices. After the saga came to a close, I then tried to add the iSCSI targets to my workstation, but ran into this:   http://www.jeremycole.com/blog/2007/11/09/the-iscsi-name-specified-contains-invalid-characters-or-is-too-long/ Yes, my naming scheme was foiled by a subtle Microsoft...oversight.  This is what the Initiator does:  ( http://technet.micros...

Well, misreading a forum post led me to book my VCP410 re-take for end of February - around the same time big things are happening.  So Lord-willing I'll pass it this time.  I have already begun studying in earnest, but definitely need to put effort into it. A number of people I've spoken to have said the '410 is focused on min/maxes, and after taking it  last spring, I'm inclined to agree.  Memorization has never come easily to me, so I'll really have to put all the spare time I have into this.  I had tried to go on working experience and book knowledge and got a 221 - pass is 300/400 - rather embarrassing.  Now, to be fair, I did not study at all, nor do any of the recommended lab exercises, so that probably didn't help.  Now, why did I wait so long to do a re-take?  The aforementioned 'big thing' and rebuilding our garage over the summer. I've been speaking to my employer about potentially taking the VCP5 course/exam, but would not be ...