A very simple subject but whilst setting up my home VCP5 setup I had the requirement of getting the hypervisor installed on a USB key without burning it to a CD to use in the destination server – For those with iLO or equivalent you can continue browsing more interesting parts of the Internet – but to achieve this mean feat my instructions are as follows:-

Fire up VMware Workstation
Create a VM with no HDD and no network adapters, but added a USB controller
Start the VM with a long boot delay, enough for me to attach the USB key to the VM once the VM was powered up and attached the ESXi 5 installer ISO to the CD drive of the vm.
Let the VM boot and viola, you’ll be installing to the USB key of the VM from your installation media.
You can then take said key to your machine of choice (remember this isn’t supported in production by VMware unless you’re using a manufacturer provided and somewhat costly ESXi USB key) and fire up your new ESXi host from the key.

Sorted me out anyways!
Ciao for now
P x

A great looking new feature called All.I.Can is released on Oct16th in the UK and I can’t wait to see it.
It’s showing at the Prince Charles – Leicester Square so it’s a cool screening venue. The film itself looks to me a cross between Steep and Home, and I love both those films so I hope I’m in for a treat!

Ciao!

Dang. I spent a couple of days trying to figure out what was going on with an IBM xSeries server after upgrading a working system from 3.x to 4.1U1 , troubleshooting cables, adapters, firmwares only to find that it’s a ‘feature’ in the way 4.x deals with the specific type of Intel Gig NIC that I have installed in my estate which are the 82571EB Dual and Quad port adapters.

This KB article will help set you straight after I was pointed in the right direction by VMware support.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1010313

Hope this fixes you up quicker than the couple of days it took me to resign to the support case.

There’s a post on RunningVM’s blog about getting the information you require…

http://runningvm.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/firmware-updating-ibm-x3650-m2-and-other-x-series/

Wireshark, great tool, installed it countless times, looked at the data, got confused went away from it again.

Today I actually had a real reason to need to know how to filter because of a big work project. So.. After getting yourself a capture, I needed to see all comms in the capture that was related to the MAC address 08:00:0f:12:c5:74.

In the filter section enter in the following to only show parts of the capture which are related to that MAC.

eth.addr eq 08:00:0f:12:c5:74
or
eth.addr==08:00:0f:12:c5:74

For IP address use the following example

ip.addr eq 10.99.60.4
or
ip.addr==10.99.60.4

The expression button to the right of the filter field also contains all the options you could want to use. Bloody confusing first time you look at it, but keeping it simple, lets imagine you’re wanting the IP address 10.99.60.4 to be filtered again. Hit the expression button, scroll down to the Field Name of IP – Internet Protocol, scroll down again (alphabetical would be useful at this point Mr Wireshark Developers!) and you’ll find ip.addr click on that field name, then choose the Relation  ’==’ and enter the IP address 10.99.60.4 into the value field. Hit okay and you’ll find all the relevant data being displayed in your capture now.

Hope this helps

Combined data from TrainingPeaks.com and Joe Friel’s TrainingBible.com sites:-

Get in 25 minutes in your warm up before starting the test. During warm up, get in 1 x 5 min all out Time Trial effort after 15minutes of your warm-up and spin easy until you get in the full 25 minutes. It’s important that in each month in which you test, your warm-up is the same. Do this test somewhere that you can come back and re-test each month.

Once warmed up and ready to go immediately start the test. The key to this test is pacing. Almost everyone starts at too great an intensity and then fades in the last few minutes. It’s not unusual to hear of athletes failing to finish the test the first time because of starting out too fast. Tell yourself you’ll hold back just a little the first 10 minutes and continually remind yourself of this once the test begins. At exactly ten minutes into the test click the lap button on your heart rate monitor. Then when the test ends click the stop button. You now will have three heart rate­data points captured on your heart rate monitor—average heart rate for the first ten minutes, average for the last twenty minutes, and average for the entire thirty minutes. The one we are interested in is your average for the last twenty minutes. This a good estimate of your anaerobic threshold heart rate

 

Greetings,

Since I’m not on full steam for my CCIE Written as I’ve re-scheduled it for 22nd April ’11, I found myself being bothered by upgrading a 5505 unit from 8.2 code to 8.3.

Given this unit wasn’t production, I had little interest in nailing a lot of money on Genuine Cisco memory so dug around and found a DIMM that worked.

The unit is a Samsung 512MB PC3200 DDR CL3 stick, and although not half height like the original 256MB DIMM, still fitted without fouling the chassis.
The full part number, (if it’s the correct line!?) is  M368L6523DUS-CCC .

I hope this helps anyone running an ASA for test/dev out there.

Be Cool
Paul.

SPAN

Configuration of SPAN as follows:-

Single port source:
(conf)#monitor session 1 source interface fastethernet 0/1  both|rx|tx
Range of ports source:
(conf)#monitor session 1 source interface fastethernet 0/1  - 2 both|rx|tx
Non sequential list of ports source:
(conf)#monitor session 1 source interface fastethernet 0/1 , fastethernet 0/4  both|rx|tx

(conf)#monitor session 1 destination interface fastethernet 0/2

RSPAN

Similar to SPAN except vlan’s are used for the destination on the source switch and vlans are used as the source on the destination switch.
To configure an RSPAN source session, configure a source with an RSPAN VLAN as the destination. To configure an RSPAN destination session, configure an RSPAN VLAN as the source and a port as the destination.

(config)#vlan 998
(config-vlan)#name RSPAN
(config-vlan)#remote-span
(config-vlan)#exit

On the source switch

(config)#monitor session 1 source interface fastethernet 0/1
(config)#monitor session 1 destination remote vlan 998

On the remote switch

(config)#monitor session 1 source remote vlan 998
(config)#monitor session 1 destination interface fastethernet 0/12 {encapsulation|ingress}

Flow Control

Devin’s post on Flow-Control here

Configuring flow control is completed in interface config mode. In the lab, 3560′s are used and flowcontrol ‘send’ is unsupported using 12.44(SE6), so it’s only receive that can be configured.

(config-if)#flowcontrol receive desired|on|off

To view flow control on your switch:

#show flowcontrol

 

As luck would have it, my plans for trekking in the Himalayas got stunted due to the time of year that I was able to go, but the result of that is that I’m going to be spending New Year and the most part of January in Southern India with a close buddy of mine.

Ironically, having been a disciple of the Goa Trance scene back in the early 90′s, it’s only now, almost 15 years later that I’m actually going to visit the place that spawned the idea’s that made Youth, Alex Patterson, Chris Decker, Mark Allen, Goa Gill etc etc bring back the intoxicating hedonistic vibe that was so prolific, at least for me, back when I were a nipper.

Luckily though I’ve no particular pre-conceptions for the trip. Don’t get me wrong tho, I won’t be saying no to a New Years party in the hills behind Anjuna if Goa Gill’s putting the smack down with some 2010 trance business.

My stay is mostly intended to be a relaxing chillout on some sandy beaches in between the hectic work and study schedule I’ve set over the next 8 months. I’ve got my camera and a lovely new Wide Angle lens and hope to capture some stunning images which I’ll definitely be sharing on here on my return. Whether Indian culture has that intention for me though is still to be seen, but whatever which way, it’s going to be an experience I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

Speed and Duplex

First, let’s cover what auto-negotiation does not do: when auto-negotiation is enabled on a port, it does not automatically determine the configuration of the port on the other side of the Ethernet cable and then match it. This is a common misconception that often leads to problems.

Auto-negotiation is a protocol, and as with any protocol, it only works if it’s running on both sides of the link. In other words, if one side of a link is running auto-negotiation, and the other side of the link is not, auto-negotiation cannot determine the speed and duplex configuration of the other side. If auto-negotiation is running on the other side of the link, the two devices decide together on the best speed and duplex mode. Each interface advertises the speeds and duplex modes at which it can operate, and the best match is selected (higher speeds and full duplex are preferred).

The confusion exists primarily because auto-negotiation always seems to work. This is because of a feature called parallel detection, which kicks in when the auto-negotiation process fails to find auto-negotiation running on the other end of the link. Parallel detection works by sending the signal being received to the local 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, and 100Base-T4 drivers. If any one of these drivers detects the signal, the interface is set to that speed.

Parallel detection determines only the link speed, not the supported duplex modes.

Using auto-negotiation to your advantage is as easy as remembering one simple rule:
Make sure that both sides of the link are configured the same way.If one side of the link is set to auto-negotiation, make sure the other side is also set to auto-negotiation. If one side is set to 100/full, make sure the other side is also set to 100/full.

PPPoE

Stretch’s article here

Leased Line DataLink (L2) Protocols – HDLC and PPP
HDLC is the default on all Cisco RoutersHDLC is Cisco Proprietary, Low Overhead, No Features

PPP Industry StandardModerate OverheadFeature-iffic! e.g. Authentication, Compression, Multilink
PAP Clear Text AuthenticationCHAP Clear Text Username, MD5 hashing of password
Older PPP examples use VPDN (Virtual Private Dial Network)Newer examples use BBA (Broad Band Access) aka PPPoE Profiles

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2t/12_2t15/feature/guide/ftpprfls.html

PPPoE Active Discovery Initiation/PPPoE Active Discovery Request (PADI/PADR)
PPPoE Active Discovery Offer (PADO) and PPPoE Active Discovery Session (PADS) frames

Configuration CLIENT (BBA)

interface Dialer1
ip address dhcp
encapsulation ppp
dialer-pool 6

interface Ethernet0/0
pppoe enable
pppoe-client dial-pool-number 6

Configuration SERVER (BBA)

ip dhcp pool VLAN146
network 155.20.146.0 255.255.255.0

interface virtual-template 1
ip add 155.20.146.6 255.255.255.0
peer default ip address dhcp-pool VLAN146

bba-group pppoe MYPPP
virtual-template 1

interface fastethernet 0/0
pppoe enable group MYPPP

To add authentication to the configuration,

Serverside:-

interface virtual-template 1
ppp authentication chap

username R4 password cisco

Clientside:-

interface dialer 1
ppp chap hostame R4
ppp chap password cisco

Configuration Client (VPDN)

interface Ethernet0/0
pppoe enable
pppoe-client dial-pool-number 1
interface Dialer1 ip address 142.1.35.5 255.255.255.0
encapsulation ppp
dialer-pool 1
dialer persistent

Configuration Server (VPDN)

vpdn enable
vpdn-group CISCO
accept-dialin
protocol pppoe
virtual-template 1
interface Ethernet0/0
pppoe enable
interface Virtual-Template1
ip address 142.1.35.3 255.255.255.0

To view configuration and use of the dialer interface, use:-

show ip route
show pppoe session
show ip interface brief
show ip dhcp binding
show run | sec bba-group