Practical Technology

InfraDog has a new feature being released today (Android, iOS to follow next week): VMware integration! I've been playing around with the final beta for the last 24 hours and have learned a number of interesting things about the new feature and the app in general. Adding the vCenter is super easy - on the management point software just add the vCenter hostnames, and it automatically picks up any attached hosts.  Push to cloud, done. Once on your device, it functions much like the regular server options, but you now have new tasks available (maintenance mode!) and an 'instances' section that populates with the VMs on that host. Clicking on a VM gives you server-like info with a few new options: remote console (view-only) and new tasks (the usual VMware soft/hard power options). I had one small UI complaint, but it turned out to be PEBKAC (PEBSAF?).  See below, because I enjoy embarassing myself in public. From the main screen you hit 'System'.  This gives...

A few ways to solve, but I'm posting the cause in the hopes that it'll be easier to find. The root cause is one of two things: One, the cable modem/provider taking a snap of the first MAC address and essentially refusing to provide DHCP to other devices after that, or Two, the method of acquiring DHCP causes the device to become blacklisted by the DHCP server. I'm ruling out #2 in my case because once I spoofed the MAC of my PC (the first item I connected) and then disconnected the PC/power cycled devices - the router immediately got DHCP. Anyways, the actual cause might just be a 'first device gets DHCP', in the sense that the vast majority of consumers will either connect a wireless router, or a single device - not a dumb switch like I did to increase my options. To verify this, I powered everything off, plugged the cable modem LAN direct into the router's WAN port My provider is TekSavvy, the cable modem is a Thomson DCM476, the router is a WRT54GLv...