If you want to boot with DHCP/PXE/TFTP method and your DHCP is handled by a Mikrotik router and your TFTP server is on another server, then you need to set the next-server and boot-file-name parameters in the network definition. Do not try to set DHCP options (codes 66 and 67) and assign them to the network definition, it will not work. The same applies to the NTP servers option. So, do not do this:...

I had to configure a bunch of ESXi 5.1 servers with LSI 9240-4i hardware RAID controllers the other day. This RAID controller is perfectly supported in ESXi 5.1 but it lacks the monitoring features. To have these, you need to install first the LSI SMIS package on your ESXi hosts. With this, the ESXi server acts as a proxy to query the RAID controller from the network. Then you need a Windows computer running LSI MegaRaid Storage Manager (MSM) software....

This weekend, I finally had time to install a few network cameras from Ubiquiti in my house. The goal was to replace the previous system, which was composed of cheap USB webcams and the software motion , that has been running for years. HP Proliant N40L I had a spare N40L lying around that I used as a storage server for my VMware lab, so I repurposed it to be my future one and only home server running file sharing, monitoring, etc and AirVision of course....

It has been explained many times over the internet, so I won’t cover that. One thing you have to pay attention to is, if you run snmptt as a daemon, be sure that it has the right to write to Nagios FIFO. On my Debian system, I had to run snmptt as nagios user. Then, when you convert the MIBs to snmptt.conf file format, sometimes it will fail because the MIB is not RFC compliant....

After a few hours spent trying to find why Ubuntu 12.04 would not download a preseed file while netbooting, I stumbled upon this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/casper/+bug/923219 . I needed to add “IPAPPEND 2” after the APPEND directive in the pxelinux config file. Great.

Just as a reference for future needs. To resize a zvol exported as an iSCSI LUN to a Windows OS, you need to change the zvol size, then change the “iSCSI backend” the LUN changed size and then do a disk rescan on your Windows initiator. Commands are: zfs set volsize=1T tank/volume sbdadm modify-lu -s 1T Then on Windows, go to Server manager, choose Storage, right click on Disk management and select rescan....

After a few weeks using FreeNAS 8.3.1, I noticed I could not create new volumes because the pool was out of space. The problem was that I should have had enough space, by a long shot. In fact, one of my “block” volumes was taking space more than twice it’s size. I had other volumes that seemed unaffected (or less affected), the only difference was that the problematic volume had volblocksize=8k set ....

Update: I just saw that since April 25th, SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 are supported by VMware vCenter 5.1U1 . All information is available here : http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/04/vmware-vcenter-server-5-1-update-1-released.html Original November 21th 2012: While it is working with the SSO service, vCenter and vCloud Director, it just doesn’t work with Update Manager service. Well, at least with the SQL Server native client v11. Then Update Manager service just doesn’t start and throws an unhelpful 1067 Error....

So, here’s a short checklist of what to do right after I install FreeNAS 8.3 (not necessarily in order). configure link aggregation (LACP seems to work with 2 switches, failover or other algorithms don’t) change admin and root password enable ssh with root password when LAN is secure configure SMART tests (monthly long test) configure general settings (timezone, syslog, email server) create zpools with lzjb compress, atime off and no deduplication create zfs datasets and volumes and inherit options active directory synchronization iSCSI targets and stuff SMART checks enable SNMP

I’ve just got my hands on a new server to store backups and archived files before being sent offsite, and it wouldn’t boot off my USB key. Even after many dd, dd with skip and FreeNAS installations, I was getting a “GPT table corrupt” message. Finally, the fix was easy enough: boot FreeNAS installation CD and choose Shell instead of Install type gpart show , it listed my device and that GPT table was corrupt type gpart destroy -F return to the menu choose Install when it’s finished, go back to the shell type gpart show again to check that it’s not corrupt anymore reboot enjoy your FreeNAS That’s it....