Importing IPs into IPPlan

Importing IPs in to IPlan saves tons of time if you have lots of IPs to add.

I am deploying many ESXi systems at the moment, and each vmk port has got a different IP and or the connected devices have IPs etc. I looked across the internet but couldn’t really find a process or guide. After struggling for a few days, I managed to finally import the addresses.

Be sure to edit and save this in Notepad. This needs to be done in ASCII format.

The columns are imported in the following order: IP address, user, location, description, hostname, telephone number and mac address.

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Creating vSwitch Names for new vSwitches on ESXi Hosts using Host Web Client

A little while back, I wrote on Changing your vSwitch Names on ESXi Host.  I found another way to do this, but unfortunately, this method ONLY works for NEW vSwitches.

Once the vSwitch has been created, you cannot change the name to something else. If you made a mistake and need to change it, you would need to either:

a. Removing the vSwitch and recreating it
b. Doing the Changing your vSwitch Names on ESXi Host option.

login
Login to the ESXi Host directly – https://ip-or-hostname/ui/ (note the trailing “/” after ui)

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How to Monitor DHCP Addresses with IPSentry

Recently, I had taken part in a maintenance weekend at the office, post maintenance, Our IPSentry dashboard, (we use IPSentry for some of our monitoring), reported a couple errors, which was fixed.

Come Monday morning, a colleague of mine noticed that certain systems were down, which he brought up. I did some further investigation and noticed one of our DHCP pools were running out of leases. I wanted to see if IPSentry could monitor DHCP addresses, and as it turns out, it can.

It took me a while to figure this out, but now I know it, I’ll add it here for the world to share.

As mentioned before, in order to monitor DHCP leases, you would need to make use of the SNMP Addin for IPSentry.

So here are the prerequisites:

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Using Lansweeper to find computers that do not have a specific windows update installed

So, today I was asked “How do I use product “X”” to to pull a report to list all systems that do not have a specific hotfix installed.

I will not be listing product “X” as

  1. It cannot do what was asked
  2. I don’t want to bad mouth the software, as what it’s actual purpose is, it does the job damn well.

So, below is a report (You can implement this via the “Report Builder” in Lansweeper).

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Resetting DSRM or Directory Services Restore Mode password in Server 2012 R2

Today I needed to reset a DSRM password, not because we forgot it, but more due to wanting to have different passwords for our domain controllers.

Although, you could have the same password for each Domain Controller – this is not always secure. If your server gets compromised and they hack the DSRM password, they will try that exact password on a different server in order to gain access to it.

What is DSRM?

DSRM is a special boot mode (or option) for Windows Server Domain Controllers (ONLY). Think of it as a kind of “SafeMode” for directory services. With DSRM, the administrator is able to repair, recover or restore Active Directory services.  DSRM is configured during the promotion of Active Directory Services. This Administrator account that you configure is completely unrelated and separate to the DOMAIN\Administrator account.

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Initial Server Setup of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Introduction:

This article assumes you have a freshly installed Ubuntu Server 16.04 instance and that your require some secure configurations and set up. In this article, you will increase the security and usability of your server and help give you a more solid foundation for subsequent actions.

Step 1: Install Openssh-Server

To login to your server (remotely via putty or some other ssh terminal client), you would need to have installed openssh server – if not, you can login directly to the console of the server, run the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

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Changing your vSwitch Names on ESXi Hosts

So, yesterday I thought to myself, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could change the names of the vSwitches on ESXi hosts. That way, it will quickly allow any one to see the different categories of switches – e.g. storage/management etc.

Turns out, this is possible. Thanks to a little bit of “hacking”, you can change the names of your vSwitches.

 

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