This week we take up the topic of creating IBM Rational patch install areas for pre-7.1 versions. As we have discussed in previous weeks, there are a number of tools in Rational 7.1 and beyond that introduce much automation into patch management. However, there are...
In my initial blog post, I explained a little bit about Nagios, and how it can be configured to monitor any networking device or server. Nagios' basic operation is this: Define a check Execute the check at a specified interval Take the result of the check and...
Over the past year, I have been doing a lot of work with clients who use high-end CAD and/or EE software tools from respected vendors like Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor Graphics. The majority of these software tools require a license server to be setup on your local...
I recently came across a forum post asking for advice on the combination of running Pro/Intralink 3.4 on Windows 7 64-bit. In short, I’m happy to report that we’ve been using this combination without incident: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1, PTC...
As Senior Systems Integrator for SPK and Associates, a California based IT services company specializing in infrastructure management services, I recently completed an interesting project. The goal was to create an ESX cluster for a small engineering group...
This week we continue on the topic of installing using IBM Installation Manager. But with a bit of a difference. Instead of bringing up the IM install GUI and using it to conduct the installation, we will take a step toward greater installation automation and create...
In my last post, I gave an overview of Bacula, the enterprise-level free backup software. For this post I wanted to dig into the software a bit more and show how simple it is to setup a weekly backup job. One of the first things we do at SPK when working with a new...
The goal of a typical system administrator is to get a job or task done as quickly as possible, without worrying about how elegant a solution might be. Reusing any existing scripts, tools, or utilities are always the first line in tackling the job. Often times, the...
Now it's time to look at some of the server side configurations. The first step is to configure reverse proxy for the HTTP services. These services live on hosts that sit in the DMZ. A proxy is very simple to configure and allows a lot of flexibility to grow over time...
One of the most important aspects of our Linux server management service is operating system patching. With Windows, Microsoft has made this trivial by means of the Windows Update utility. Microsoft is the single source of the patches, and assuming that the patches...
Let’s be realistic: Windows users use Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office requires configuration. You’ve probably used the Microsoft Office Customization Tool to create Microsoft Software Patch (MSP) files to automate installation, but you should consider using...
One item I’ve done repeatedly while doing network consulting services is configuring high availability (HA) networks. The recommended way is Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). This requires that you have two firewalls for every location and they run in...
