vCSA 6.0 automated deployment

Doing the first batches of vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) 6.0 deployment was kinda…rough. Playing around with the OVA and getting annoyed at the web-based deployment option kind of slowed us down. At my current job we prefer vCSA’s for our Test and Dev environments and dont want to deal with Windows Server. Fortunately VMware has given … Read more

Add drives without reboot on VMware Ubuntu guest

This post is on deploying a new Ubuntu VM, dynamically adding more disks, having the guest OS recognize the new drives and increasing its capacity without rebooting. This is really useful for critical production servers that cannot go down for reboots like a NFS server. Lets get started. OS: I’m using Ubuntu 12.02.4 LTS server OS … Read more

Raspberry pi Console Server

Do you work with networking devices but don’t have the money to shell out for a Opengear, Pele, or Tripplite serial console server? Fear not, Raspberry Pi is here! Home lab users and budget constrained Network Admins will enjoy this. For those who are unfamiliar with the Raspberry Pi (RPi for short), its a credit … Read more

Spotify on Ubuntu

Spotify has a preview build for Linux users! I have it successfully running on Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS Instructions from their website: # 1. Add this line to your list of repositories by # editing your /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free # 2. If you want to verify the downloaded packages, # you will need to … Read more

setfacl

This is a utility that sets Access Control Lists (ACLs) for files and directories for linux hosts.  I’m managing a Linux host on AWS and a design firm is working on the website itself. Even though the host itself is a sandbox webserver, I don’t want to give out root credentials – so we set … Read more

Use Windows RDP to connect to a Ubuntu host

Here is a quick tutorial on how to use Windows Remote Desktop to a Ubuntu host. Ubuntu setup: Open a terminal window on your Ubuntu host and install xrdp: apt-get install xrdp Lets set the RDP environment to use gnome echo “gnome-session –session=ubuntu-2d” > ~/.xsession Change the permissions to make it executable chmod 755 .xsession … Read more