I want one

Back in August I blogged about a new toy for Christmas. I didn't get it. So I'm putting on my list for next year this baby. The best part is it's cheaper than the Moller SkyCar
-PC

I'm back and Server Updates

Well, I'm back from a nice Christmas break with the family. It's nice to be back at work and away from all the endless chaos that exists around my family and my wife's family. I'd much prefer the chaos that is Microsoft Server 2003. For a year now I've adjusted my schedule to come in early to apply Microsoft security updates once a week. I document the updates that I install in a Excel spreadsheet that sits in our documentation folder on the file server. That being said, I pretty much just install every patch that comes down the pipe. I don't have the luxury of having test servers or a test network that I can run the patches on first. After a year of this, I'm wondering if the bags under my eyes are worth it. At some point this year we will probably be purchasing a IPS to guard to entrance to our server farm. We will probably go with Enterasys Dragon because of our current investment in Enterasys hardware, but I've also had great success with TippingPoint as well. Any competent IPS should have Microsoft's security holes in it's signatures so any attempt to exploit them that way would be blocked....right???. Does anyone have any suggestions for a better way to manage the large security hole that is Microsoft???
-PC

annoyance

One of the annoying things about my job is the existence of our Domino servers and mentality that surrounds them.  Early this week, one of our servers had barfed and was not running a process that archives images for us.  When I went looking for the reasons behind the vomit, I noticed that the domino services were using an inordinate amount of memory.  My boss informed me that yes.....the versions of domino that we are running have a known memory leak.  Rather than upgrade the server software to fix the leak and any unknown security holes, the solution is to reboot the server on a regular basis.
-PC

Cisco finally catches up

Enterasys has had this ability for years. It will be interesting to see how Cisco leverages this. Traditional ACLs have been Cisco's (and everyone who copies them) bread and butter for a long time. With this ability, Enterasys uniqueness becomes blase

Back from the dead!!!

Wow.....it's December already. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. I'm just now getting back to work after a week off for vacation. One site that I watch, that has absolutely nothing to do with network administration, that I recommend is Trevor Carpenter's blog. He is running a December challenge to photograph a portrait a day through the month.