New Toys

I received two new Juniper SRX240s to replace our venerable Netscreen 50s. We ran them to the very end but ultimately, support for ScreenOS is ending and we wanted to move with the tide. I'll update everyone (currently a flock of albatross in New Zealand) on how my progress is going. I'm pretty sure my game plan will be.
1. Re-route all traffic out through our Irvine site, freeing up our Valley connection.
2. Learn JUNOS
3. Setup basic connectivity. I'll be assisted by my new best friend.
4. Setup VPN tunnels. We are using site to site at several home offices as well as the Netscreen & NCP IPSec client.
5. Attempt to integrate our Websense installation (I never checked if this was a compatible feature like it was with ScreenOS, whoops)
6. Repeat process in Irvine

Wish me luck.
-PC

Symantec Tech. Support Purgatory

So I never intended this site to be a Symantec bashing site(That's for you, my visitor from Ireland's Symantec site), it's just I use Backup Exec so frequently that I find myself calling and interacting with Tech. Support on a regular basis. On Friday, I called in to ask why I couldn't backup my Domino 6.5 on my newly upgraded version of Backup Exec 2010. After 40 minutes of listening to music and never receiving any notification that I would be here indefinitely, I hung up to place myself back in the queue thinking I 'd been transferred to the tech support equivalent of Mongolia. After an additional hour of waiting to the same thing, and really needing to go to the bathroom at this point, I was finally connected to Paresh my Symantec Engineer. Apparently it wasn't Mongolia but India I was transferred to. After about 10 minutes, he explained to me the Domino 6.5 isn't supported by BE 2010. Now I've lost all my backup policies and settings and must rebuild from scratch my backup server. I hate Backup Exec!
-PC

T-3 line

So wouldn't you know it....as soon as I implement our new DS3 circuit, we get a hardware fault on one of the new Cisco 3845 routers. Darn thing just kept rebooting. We figured it out when the president of the company called us to inform us that mail was down. Figures! Cisco came through for us though. A quick call to TAC and the replacement part was shipped, installed and we were back on-line. I had to run the following command on the refurbished board they sent out (erase nvram:), but after that all was groovy.
-PC

Backup Exec with Domino

This has the been the bane of my existence since I first started working here all those many years ago. Hyperbole aside, this is not a mature product. I'm not sure if it's the Domino install, since I'm pretty much locked out of any Domino administration, or if it's the general suckyness of Symantec's product but it's been a nonstop hassle for about 3 years now. I would be lucky to have 100% of my jobs completed on a daily basis to say nothing about an entire week. Now I can keep jobs running without crashing the Backup Exec Agent on my Windows boxes and it just required a little hackery. I still need to massage the installation on a regular basis, but it no longer consumes me with great abandon. Here is what I did. It's really simple but since I haven't seen it documented anywhere on the web I give you.....
1. Create batch file and save it to c:\bin or whatever.
netstop "BackupExecAgentAccelerator"
del "c:\program files\symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS\logs\*.lbd"
del "c:\program files\symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS\logs\*.ucj"
net start "BackupExecAgentAccelerator"
2. Schedule batch file to run via Scheduled Tasks at whatever time is convenient for you once per day.

Problem solved.
-PC

In Memoriam

I haven't posted anything in months. Today felt like the proper time to get back in. Never forget and make them pay!
-PC

rogue cables

So awhile back I started this mini project that turned into a beast of a project. For some reason the company, before I was hired, terminated all of the data cabling into this APC four post rack. Two 48 port panels in the front and two in the back. I was then asked to bring all of these connections up as live to the core switch that was mounted in the same rack. Needless to say this made for some interesting cable management.

Fast forward to my mini-project where I bought an APC 2 post rack with appropriate cable management troughs. My goal was to move all of the cables from the 4 to the 2. The only problem was the cables were too short to re-terminate them in the 2 post. Introduce a 110 block mounted in the ceiling as a middle man and you can rightly say, WTH was I thinking.

My problem is this. Halfway through this little project, I'm informed that our sales and accounting staff are moving to our new corporate office. Most likely we will give up this office space when the lease is due this summer. Having never experienced this phenomenon I don't know what to do with the abandoned cable. Assuming the building mgmt. re-leases the space, I'm pretty sure I want to rip out the cables to the offices in question. I don't want by accident one of those connections being plugged into our core switch. Or am I over thinking it.
-PC

Rocketry Camping Trip

        Our camping trip to Lucerne Lake was not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  The launch event put on by the ROC was outstanding.  The boys got to launch their little Estes kits with the A and B motors we provided and then starting getting some Cs from the concession trailer.  The Discovery Channel's TimeWarp program was there filming a water rocket demo, a really frigging big model rocket (2 story) with I believe a M rocket motor and then a recreation of a famous V2 rocket explosion where the rocket tips over and explodes.  I'll update with some video we took as soon as I get it.  Some of our boys got on some b-roll footage for the show, so I'll have to check out the show in April to see if they made it on.
        The water rockets we made for launch on the next were not as big of a hit.  Can't blame them after the big boom and very testosterone pumping spectacle the day before.  We got some 2-liter bottles to launch 150'.  This was our first attempt at rocketry with this troop so we were pretty pleased with the results.
        Weather was great.  Saturday was a clear day without a cloud in the sky.  Sunday was a nice day as well with no rain clouds in the sky.  It was cold, don't get me wrong.  It dropped down in the high 20s but it was manageable for all except our newest scouts.  Pain is a great teacher however and I'm sure they will come to the next campout more prepared.  We decided to skip out Sunday night to beat the snow.  It turns out we made the right decision because they closed the 15 due to snow for awhile.
-PC