A co-worker took his first attempt at the RHCE certification this past week. He unfortunately did not pass. I’ve been told by 2 instructors that first-timers generally only pass about 33% of the time. I wonder how true this is?
He’s quite bummed about the experience, but I look at it in a different light: he now knows his strengths and weaknesses on the subject, can study up with VMs and with buildout work on the new RHEL environment we have, and can go back in a month and get a better score than I got.
Funny note about my RHCE: I completely failed the questions about SMB networking.
On Friday we successfully executed a 20-server move from one colocation facility to another across town. The new site has much more room for expansion, is more secure, and will save the company a few hundred thousand dollars a year in related costs. So it was a *good thing*.
Technically, the best part about it was being able to perform the move during business hours. There is enough redundancy in the systems now to allow the full shutdown of DCs, an Exchange server, a huge portion of the Cisco Call Center environment, other support and security systems, and the end users never notice. That is a fantastic feeling, knowing that designs are coming together properly to allow such controlled failures, without affecting the business.
Over the course of this move, I’ve learned a few things:
- Exchange servers appropriately update themselves upon an IP subnet change with no errors. I expected a 2nd reboot to be required after the server recognized it was in an completely different AD site.
- Physically moving DCs to a new site is also extremely easy, provided you update DNS / WINS appropriately.
- Cleaning up bad subnets in AD Sites and Services is a pain, because it’s so tiresome doing all the subnet calculations over and over again. Worth it, but boring.
- Security guards at building docks can be real jerks, or can be really easy to work with. Leaving the building, the movers kept having to drive around the building as we went back in for another pallet’s worth of equipment.
Now it’s time to rebuild servers that have been brought back to the office to be re-deployed with new OS’s in the DMZ, and finish building that environment properly!
Despite what the documentation may or may not say, do not attempt to upgrade your BIGIP without a working, directly connected console cable. We bricked an LTM 6400 by performing the upgrade exactly as the steps stated, but without using a console cable to watch the output.
Technically, a co-worker was doing the upgrade, so I don’t have full details (I did review the CR and steps), but he was doing the “local network install” via crossover cable into the management interface, so there should have been no issues, since the documentation states that’s OK. But we still completely ruined the box. Thank God no impact to the business, due to the HA pair working properly.
Ran the upgrade on the replacement box today with the “console cable” trick from the support guys, saw an error, fixed it, and everything went smoothly. Now to failover from 9.2.3 to 9.4.1 and reap the benefits of administrative domains! (And teach the other IT groups how to put their own stuff in maintenance/disabled mode.)
Edit: due to several searches ending up here:
Connect with a Null Modem cable, set: 9600,8n1. Make sure that your laptop’s serial port is actually working, by testing with a Cisco device or similar – we have 2 laptops that didn’t get any data on the 9.2.3 OS, but did on 9.1.2, changing laptops (or OS in my case) got us back online.
I have a Sprint PCS PPC-6700 Windows Mobile 5 PDA/Phone. The battery life on it is decent, considering all that it does, but I still dislike it.
Here’s why: it’s a terrible consumer device. It’s great for geeks like me who understand software is buggy and difficult to write, but I couldn’t imagine any of my end users dealing with this thing. Examples:
The phone is ok, but the Bluetooth radio randomly shuts off on me. The worst is in the middle of a conversation, my headset will go silent. And it’s ONLY ever in the car. So there you are, driving down the street, and having to fumble for a soft-button to turn on the speakerphone. Many MANY people will mention something or other about software upgrades required, and believe me, I have them. I had them before Sprint support knew what I was talking about. I’m still 100% up to date, according to Starcom’s site. No, I’m not going to run a 3rd party update to a business tool, like I would my own personal phone.
The device requires a reset every 3 days. I have 2 pieces of add-on software, and I’ve actually REMOVED 8 installs from Sprint (from the hidden ROM, so they don’t come back during a hard-reset). I installed Google Maps, because it’s fantastically worthwhile, and “TCPMP” for media playing (Windows Media Player doesn’t play Cisco UNITY voicemails sent to email). Out of the box, it required a reboot every 1-2 days. After 3 days of no reboots, ExchangeActiveSync stops reliably retrieving email. The touchscreen becomes wildly out of sync (I can’t hit the scrollbar anymore, usually). Phone calls actually hang up in the middle of conversations. And the phone finally won’t respond to any buttons or screentaps, save for the “power” button.
It Phantom-Dials. I’ll read an email, put the phone back in its holder, and walk down the hall. 45 seconds later, one of the recipients of the email will call me back asking me what I called them for. Best I can figure, is that the joystick is getting depressed, scrolling up, getting depressed again (on a recipient of the email), and the call button is getting hit. In the holder designed for the device, on my hip. I’ve been wearing cell phones on my hip for work since I was 19 – don’t tell me I’m hitting it with my elbow. Having to lock your phone in your pocket is understandable. But in it’s designed holster?
So, what DO I like about the phone?
I don’t have to open my laptop at home to watch email every night, in case something breaks. Exchange ActiveSync DirectPush in conjunction with SMS for alerts is fantastic. I turn on the sounds for text messages, but not email, and if it’s an actual issue, I get the alert, hear it, and respond. But if it’s a co-worker sending out a “I finished doing this overnight work.” email, I don’t get woken up. Better response time for the business, more sleep for me.
Charges from USB on my laptop. On the road, this has been a life-saver.
Can install all sorts of neat software. Games, document readers, etc. Adobe Acrobat for PPC and Microsoft Reader, combined, give me hours of reading material. Especially manuals for things I have to do the next day.
Pocket IE: www.weather.com, www.opentable.com, www.google.com (which has a great mobile device reformatter). I took just my phone to New York City for a 3 day weekend, and was able to book every dinner, find directions, and verify that Ferries were open on the days I wanted to go places.
Google Maps. I use this to check the traffic of my drive on my way to the car in the parking lot, so I can decide which way to drive home. Add accurate directions that I can pull from my contact list… wow.
Now I just have to figure out RAPIP, so I can plug it into my Ubuntu Feisty laptop and sync THROUGH the GNU/Linux OS, rather than just through WinXP.