If your a network admin, and you’re not using virtualization in your disaster recovery, then you’re probably being negligent. VMware ESXi is free. You can’t do all of the fancy stuff, like VM motion, but it is the same bare-metal hypervisor as ESX. You can register, download, and obtain a free license for ESXi here. ESXi is pickier when it comes to hardware than its pricier counterpart ESX. However, if your hardware works with the drivers it does have, you can add your hardware IDs to the configuration files and use your hardware. If you use a system, motherboard, and/or NIC listed on the community maintained list and download and use the community maintained configthen yo... [More]

Having an Intrusion Detection System isn’t optional for network administrators who get audited by federal agencies. An IDS is also very handy to have as it shows you everything that is going on. You don't have to spend a lot of money on this, especially since most of the best tools are free. In my case, I wanted: network intrusion detection, network inventorying, and security scanning. I spent a lot of time messing around with separate packages for getting the functionality I wanted, but it was a pain to manage them all separately. I finally found an all-in-one system which met all of my requirements. OSSIM provides snort, nagios, ntop, and nessus (and various other security tools); this met... [More]

I managed to snag some tickets to Metallica this past weekend. Definately worth it. Granted, I don't particularly care for their newer releases. Fortunately, these guys played a lot of pre-black album stuff. It was worth it to hear One and Fade to Black. Oh, and they like to spit a lot.   These guys have a lot of props. They brought at least 6 or 7 semi-trailers worth of equipment. There were huge moving coffins filled with lights, cameras and lasers constantly coming down and going up in ceiling.  Apparently, most of what they brought was combustable.  They are very meticulous with their sound.  Lars is constantly running off the stage between sets to adjus... [More]

Fortunately, my company is enrolled in a 6 year microsoft subscription. This probably sounded appealing when Microsoft partners gave their speech (a year before they had a dedicated IT professional). I admit that it is nice to have a server license with the ability to upgrade to the current version at the time of my choosing. A company definitely saves money over time. Anyheuw, thats what I did. I have a single forrest with one domain. The domain I inherited was originally a windows 2000 domain. This became obvious after examining the selected options and functional levels. Apart from these inconveniences, upgrading from 2003 DCs to 2008 DCs was a snap. Important: You will need to... [More]