Category: General

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Pockethernet hands on

The Swiss Army knife of network troubleshooting

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to follow a network cable through a mesh (or should I say mess?) of hundreds of other cables, just to find out which switchport it is connected to? If your answer is no, please tell me your secret! 🙂

Cool tool

Last week I got a packet with a handy new tool inside. It’s called Pockethernet. Once started as a crowdfunding project, it is now a mature, full featured network analyzer that easily fits into one hand or the pocket of your shirt.

Continue reading “Pockethernet hands on”

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Generate DataCore Support-Bundle by CLI

How I’ve learned the hard way to collect support bundles on the CLI

It is a standard procedure to generate a support bundle after any changes on your DataCore SANSymphony-Cluster. Usually you’d click the Cluster Object in the Datacore-Console and select “upload support bundle”.  You just enter the customer’s name, an incident ID and select your choice of Mini-, Standard- or Full-Bundle. The collection will be initiated on both hosts simultaneously. Files will be archived as ZIP and (if there’s an internet connection) uploaded to DataCore Support.

Single-Host Collection

Sometimes it might not be possible to collect bundles from both servers or you may not want to trigger a log-collection on both hosts simultaneously. Continue reading “Generate DataCore Support-Bundle by CLI”

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Why patching your vSphere infrastructure is just not enough

In recent discussions on why should one use a compliance and security scanner for vSphere I more than once heard a straight opinion: Why should we pay another tool. We have VUM already and just keep our vSphere cluster(s) up to date.

This opinion neglects several crucial facts about vSphere as well as any other software: Not every bug is patched once found right away. Sometimes known vulnerabilities linger for months until they are patched. In addition, some of the problems just cannot be solved by the software provider, VMware in this case.

Let me use two examples to point that out. Continue reading “Why patching your vSphere infrastructure is just not enough”