Practical Technology

Let me preface this with a disclaimer: I am not the creator/inventor of any of these ideas, this is just a combination of Google and the context of our environment.  For all I know people have been doing this for ages...it's new to me! Our context Our 'prod' environment is in a managed hosting context for various reasons (compliance, past decisions, etc).  This means that from a 'traditional' monitoring point of view we are covered.  Anything beyond that we're on our own.  Also, we are 95% Windows. What is monitored today: Host/svc, host/svc, ports alive, HTTP GET = XYZ, is CPU crazy, is RAM maxed, etc... Picking up what's left:  Logs! Centrally aggregate all logs and query that pile of data to get alerts.  i.e. the services/applications we run (written in-house) dump stuff to the event log, among other places. What are our goals? Get visibility into what our svs/apps are doing - know (be alerted) that svcX is dumping errors right now, not a wee...

To keep it short... Swap went well Managed to snap some key coolant piece was the only issue at the time, decided to do the coolant re-route Also managed to incorrectly assume that the clutch would not need re-adjusting because...hey I haven't changed clutch components or drained the fluid or anything... The above caused me to run for 2 weeks on a misadjusted clutch, so the shiny FM Stage1 clutch is now pretty much toast - we played with the adjustment afterwards to try and salvage it...no luck I've decided to get off the 'because racecar' bandwagon - ordered the OEM-level value clutch, and I'll get the 1.8 flywheel I have resurfaced The de-powered steering thing has become a saga...continue to have 'stiction' issues Had the bushings done (IL Motorsports rubber ones), only the mechanic didn't replace the rear bushings due to some miscommunication.  The good news is that alignments are now holding, the bad news is that 1 week after the fronts w...

Well, some pretty fantastic exhaust leaks have cropped up sooner than I would have hoped, so the decision point came to this:  Put in a stainless 1.6 system, or advance the plans to do a 1.8 swap.  Seems kinda wacky, but moving to a 1.8 means I have a much larger selection of parts, and more importantly used parts, to choose from. Work has already started on the '96 exhaust system I picked up - been cleaning, grinding, wire brushing, and even welding! (someone decided a self-tapping screw was an acceptable way to plug a hole in the cat)  I also learned a new trick to get studs out of a (rusty) cat (alytic converter). The plan is to use a full 94-97 exhaust system painted with POR-20 - a small expenditure that should help keep the rust away.  The engine will most likely also be 94-97, but JDM sourced (JDM for availability, not JDM yo) (if they have an NB1 engine for not much more, will get that).  I may end up getting a transmission as well, depending on what...

Update:  Support had nothing, so we are forced to chalk it up to the vDS stuff being wonky.  If anyone runs across this, would be interesting to hear their solution. What follows is the ticket we've submitted (with a few additions that might help the general public).  This being the first time I've really had the chance to play around with and design my own VDS solution, mistakes were made.  Long story short I wanted to do X initially, switches didn't like that and our network guy recommended against it, so we did Y.  Turns out X does work, but we get weird un-sanctioned behaviour.  (X being 'let vSphere handle networking, just give me VLAN trunk switchports', Y being 'let's use LAGs/LACP/MLAG/etc'.) I will update once we have a solution... March12 - Quick update, I moved the rest of the VMs off the old VDS, roughly 25% of them had the same failure issue.  We're still waiting for something concrete from Extreme - I suspect with our failure sce...

EDIT#2  Ok, THIS Dell tech guy is also out to lunch.  ANOTHER Dell tech guy (who originally sold us the stuff) insisted that OEM licensing works, and there are two potential issues here: Physical label has a misprinted key Typo I tried the key from another box, activated right away.  Facepalm.  I tried the key several times, triple-checked for typos, so it wasn't a typo.  We actually got a misprinted key, or perhaps it was not allowed to activate, and now today if I try again it'll work.  Ugh. The following is being left for posterity. Our new Dell rep, poor guy, he unhappily told me today that what they (old team) sold us initially would actually never work (OEM licensing + VMware).  Rather unfortunate.  Well, at least it explains why I had so many issues getting an answer from support.  They had to go to a senior senior tech rep to get this cleared up. The link he provided, and a snippet:  http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice...

After a few years now of running a fair-size home VMware lab - my thoughts. It has gotten me two jobs so far - or rather, it has piqued the interest of interviewers - and thus paid for itself several times over with the resulting salary increases.  Good job, Mister Lab. It did help me with the VCP4 certification (even though the exam was garbage) - I felt that using physical hosts vs. virtual hosts did give me a 'real-world' advantage, especially around troubleshooting. I am now at the point where I've outgrown it, in a way.  Or rather, I can only go so far with it, so my time is better spent using old equipment from work.  To clarify the point above - I have three 16GB hosts at home, but three 64GB hosts at work.  Math is simple.  OpenFiler "SAN" at home, true iSCSI SAN(s) at work.  Etc. SSDs were 'just' coming out when I built this - or rather, they were just becoming affordable.  My 15k SAS array is kinda stupid now compared to SSD performanc...

EDIT update2: See newer post, it wasn't working because the key was misprinted (apparently very rare, but does happen).  We used another OEM 2012R2 key and it worked. The below is what happens when nobody realizes this is the case. --------------- Posting about this because Google failed me, and 75% of the reps I spoke to (3/4) had zero clue how to resolve the problem. Problem:  You are running ESXi.  Your server has 2012R2 Datacenter (or whatever) OEM licensing that allows unlimited VOSE's.  You make an ISO of the provided & corresponding OEM media and install to create a fresh template.  The server's key (on the sticker) does not let you activate said guest VM. Solution: You should have received the downgrade package 'DO NOT DISCARD' with one or two stickers containing Microsoft license keys - the title post-fixed with PHYS, one with VIRT.  If you did not, request it from your Dell rep. i.e. Windows Svr Ent 2008 R2 Virt .  Use the cor...