Dangerous Things
Custom gadgetry for the discerning hacker

The Store is now open! Check out the gadgetry »
Like what you're reading?
Share It.

Server Management

Using an EMC AX150 or AX150i SAN without the APC UPS

Using an EMC AX150 or AX150i SAN without the APC UPS

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

I’ve got a couple EMC AX150i iSCSI SAN boxes I use for network storage. They are designed to function with write-caching turned on when they are in contact with the 1U APC UPS they ship with. When you buy one of these SAN units new, the UPS and special communications cable comes with it pretty […]

Copying HP Procurve switch configs to/from switch

Copying HP Procurve switch configs to/from switch

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Once again I’m blogging something to assist my own memory. I use HP Procurve switches because I can’t afford Cisco gear, but still need decent performance. Unfortunately I just hit a snag with one of my switches where a single port has failed. As the switch is fully committed, I need to swap it out […]

Emergency SQL transaction log truncation procedure

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Sometimes you find yourself with an MS-SQL transaction log that grows in size very rapidly, quickly out-pacing your scheduled backup/truncation routines. I found when such events occur, you can manually truncate the log file without doing a huge time/space consuming backup by issuing these commands in sequence; DBCC SHRINKFILE(‘LFLFLFLFLFLF‘,1) BACKUP LOG DDDDDDD WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY DBCC […]

How to expand a VMware virtual Windows disk

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

1. Shut down the VMware virtual machine 2. Expand disk to desired size using Converter, vCenter UI tool, or vmware-vdiskmanager.exe 3. Detach disk from host machine, attach to a surrogate VM, and boot it up 4. Find disk drive letter and run diskpart.exe * Type “list volume”. Look for the volume number for the expanded […]

Roaming profiles and folder redirection for multiple domain forests

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

I started dealing with multi-domained Windows forests and many of the scripts and group policy settings currently being used only work with a single domain set up, or would work better if the domain name was taken into consideration. For example, folder redirection for two users named James Smith, but who work in totally different […]

1Gbps fiber optic residential internet access?!

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Google is planning on rolling out 1Gbps fiber to homes? Uhh, where do I sign up!? I wonder what impact will this have on colo facilities who’s primary claim to fame is 100Mbps burstable pipes? Will they once again shift focus to power, cooling, and security if every home has 1Gbps feeds? I sure hope […]

Resetting Dell DRAC passwords through software

Resetting Dell DRAC passwords through software

Monday, February 1st, 2010

A while back I posted about resetting HP iLO card passwords through software. I’m following that post up with one about doing the same with Dell’s DRAC remote access cards. You may have forgotten the password, mistyped when setting a new password, or even acquired a used DRAC card with unknown an password. The good […]

Absolutely horrible network performance for guest VMs on VMware Server?

Absolutely horrible network performance for guest VMs on VMware Server?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I got my new HP workstation with 9GB RAM and a fancy quad core CPU a while back and it’s been running real spiffy… but after loading VMware Server 2.0 on it, I found the guest machines running on this bruiser of a machine had truly abysmal network performance… I mean Kbps transfer rates on […]

Green "compute" CLUMEQ data center in Quebec Canada

Green “compute” CLUMEQ data center in Quebec Canada

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

This project makes my little passively cooled datacenter project look like amateur-hour (ok, it looked like that before). The entire building was built for 20M$ back in 1965 to house a giant Van Der Graaf generator, but now it’s a pretty sweet looking ultra-efficient datacenter (pdf)! This kind of thing just inspires me because its […]

Passive cooling server project is a success

Passive cooling server project is a success

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

Last summer I posted about the possibility of using outside air to cool a datacenter. Soon after posting I set about building a proof of concept. I also started noticing a trend leaning toward things like increasing the baseline temp target in datacenters: Cloudrack turns up the heat Raise the temperature, fight the fans I […]

Get Adobe Flash player