Category: Technology

General articles on technology

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Install Dell OpenManage Server Administrator on VMware ESXi 5.x

Dell OpenManage Server Administrator or OMSA  allows you to see detailed information regarding your Dell hardware. It also allows you to perform operations such as specifying hot spares, configure RAID arrays and setup hardware monitoring and alerts.

Download the OMSA Offline Bundle from the Dell Website

Visit http://support.dell.com, enter your servers ‘service tag’ then browse to ‘Drivers and Downloads’. Under ‘Operating System’ select the version of VMware ESXi you are using, e.g. VMware ESXi 5.5 then under the “Systems Management” download the “Dell OpenManageServer Administrator vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) for ESXi X.X.X” where X.X.X is your version.

Enable SSH on your VMware Server

In order to upload the OMSA Offline Bundle and install it you will need to enable SSH access to your VMware server as follows:

Use the vSphere Client to enable local and remote access to the ESXi Shell:

  1. Log into a vCenter Server system using the vSphere Client.
  2. Select the host in the inventory panel.
  3. Click the Configuration tab and click Security Profile.
  4. In the Services section, click Properties.
  5. Select ESXi Shell from this list:
    ESXi Shell
    SSH
    Direct Console UI
  6. Click Options and select Start and stop manually.Note: When you select Start and stop manually, the service does not start when you reboot the host. If you want the service to start when you reboot the host, select Start and stop with host. Continue reading “Install Dell OpenManage Server Administrator on VMware ESXi 5.x”
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Cisco Wireless Access Points and the Google Chromecast

I recently purchased a few Google Chromecast’s to use for “wireless HDMI” within our business. The Chromecast allows for full screen browser streaming and for $35.00 USD on Amazon ($30.00 at Staples!) it is a great way to share notes during a meeting, project information and multimedia.

Our company leverages Cisco based Access Points for our 802.11n/ac wireless access. Out of the box, I found that Chromecast’s were able to connect but Chrome was unable to “cast” to the devices. Several articles here and here pointed to UPnP (IGMP) as being the issue.

Disabling IP IGMP snooping and the snooping helper within the access points resolved the issue:

1
2
 
no ip igmp snooping
no dot11 igmp snooping-helper

No restart of the Access Point or Chrome device is required after making this change.

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Mining Pool Recommendation

Not a lot of time to post at the moment due to a busy work schedule and several life changes.

I do want to take a quick moment and give a shout-out to Jason Hughes (aka wizkid057) over at Eligius. Eligius, maintained by wizkid057, is a 0% fee Bitcoin mining pool which is completely anonymous and provides solid, reliable infrastructure to support the pool user base. Wizkid057 is quick to support pool users via the BitcoinTalk forums.

If you are looking for a primary pool or a secondary pool for your mining rig/s, check out Eligius!

 

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Dell OpenManage Command Line

Dell’s OpenManage product consists of a number of network management and systems management applications which are made available via a secure, web-based dashboard. The dashboard is usually located a http://host.domain.net:1311.

A number of technical senarios such as restrictive firewall configurations or server level scripts may raise the need for Dell Open Manage (DOM) commands to be initiated from the command line. This short articles serves to outline some of the commands available and their use.

There are five main command line modules available for Dell OpenManage:

Command Used For Component Of
omreport Read hardware settings and state information OpenManage Server Administrator
omconfig Set hardware options like BIOS settings OpenManage Server Administrator
racadm Read or set configuration of the Dell Remote Access Card OpenManage Deployment Toolkit
syscfg Read or set BIOS options OpenManage Deployment Toolkit
raidcfg Read or set options for the RAID controller OpenManage Deployment Toolkit

Each of these commands can be initialized from the bash shell (Linux) or command line (Windows) in the same way any other system application can be ran.

An example is outlined below:

[[email protected] ~]# omreport chassis temps
Temperature Probes Information

————————————
Main System Chassis Temperatures: Ok
————————————

Index                     : 0
Status                    : Ok
Probe Name                : PROC Temp
Reading                   : 48.0 C
Minimum Warning Threshold : 10.0 C
Maximum Warning Threshold : 120.0 C
Minimum Failure Threshold : 5.0 C
Maximum Failure Threshold : 125.0 C
</snip>

Other command line examples are available at: http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/OpenManage_command_line_interface and instructions on install Dell OpenManage for Linux are available in my blog here.

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Asterisk – “I’m sorry an error has occurred”

I recently experienced an issue with Asterisk 1.8 and the voice mail module. If a voice mail is recorded and is less than 6 seconds a non-descript error message will be played:

“I’m sorry an error has occurred”

The cause is a default 5 second voice mail restriction within Asterisk. The solution is to edit: /etc/asterisk/vm_general.inc and edit the following variables:

; Asterisk post 1.6.2 options the minmessage and maxmessage are deprecated in favor of these
; which are per user settable also:
maxsecs=600                     ; max length of vm message
minsecs=1                       ; Minimum length of a voicemail message in seconds

Save the file then restart the amportal (# amportal restart)

Note that this will set the maximum length of a voice mail to 10 minutes and the minimum length to 1 second.