Microsoft Windows Update has a track record of having the worst error reporting, usually throwing error codes, rather than helpful errors. I stumbled on another case of this after I worked on 2 identical machines this week. Windows Update reported the unhelpful error code 0x800f0818 during an update of .Net 3.5 SP1.

We recently acquired a new company, and introduced them into the fold. There is a big difference about the new addition compared to the rest of the organization. They are a Linux and Mac shop. They write their application in Perl, and 95% of the company use Mac computers, and the few machines that are Windows based are for accounting purposes.

What does this mean for me? Well, we now have a bunch of Mac users and no staff to help support them. That’s not saying they don’t have the ability to support themselves, but sometimes they have questions and ask other sources. So we ordered a bunch of new gear, which means I now have a MacBook Air to play with, and as of yesterday an iPad¹.

Initial review? The Air is nice, but only for the hardware aspect. I’m still having issues and bugs sneak in, and working around some of the things I’m used to doing other ways is quite difficult. One of the reasons I installed Windows7 on it is because I have to make a lot of compromises to just get things working that are just PnP with Windows. That doesn’t include any of the Active Directory issues we’ve been having.

As for the iPad, there are some quirks that I’m struggling with, and some software choices I’ve yet to understand. They keyboard isn’t fast enough to keep up, and constantly misses letters. Even in landscape mode, it causes cramps in my knuckles. Software wise, missing stuff like the subscribe options for podcasts in iTunes, seem weird to me.

I’m a Windows/Linux guy, I cannot fault the stuff Apple has done, they really have changed the market, but I have issues with some of the stuff and how it is setup. This might just be because ive been using the other platforms for so long.

I’ll probably post a better review after I’ve spent more time using both. Have any of you switched platform. What kinds of issues did you run into? What quirks can’t you get over? What things would you like on your original platform?

Earlier this week while trying to establish some potential bottle-necks on our VMware ESXi servers, I noticed an odd issue with the performance tab. When clicking on performance, the “Overview” tab would throw a generic browser type error about not being able to connect. Clicking on the detailed view seemed to work just fine. Doing some stumbling around, I fell upon KB1014454.

These are my links for July 23rd through August 18th:

• Behold a Buzzword is Born: High Recoverability | The Nubby SysAdmin - Wesley has another great post on high availability, or in this case, high recoverability (his new buzzword).
• ISC Diary | Ping is Bad (Sometimes) - ISC folks giving a good explanation as to why PING isn't always the best metric.
• List of Free PowerShell eBooks - A collection of free PowerShell books.
• Official: Revisions to VMware vSphere 5 Licensing — The Lone Sysadmin - Bob Plankers discusses VMWare's change of heart on their licensing plans.
• VMware Scale Up vs. Scale Out: The Big Picture — The Lone Sysadmin - Bob Plankers has another great post on VMWare pricing, and host planning.  He factors in all kinds of external factors when planning out hosting VMs, and has a nice spreadsheet to give you a guide.

These are my links for July 15th through July 22nd:

• Why would you use Windows? - SysAdmin1138 Expounds -
• Balancing Your Interrupts - Jeff McReynolds has an interesting post on the impact of interrupts on processes, and how load ends up being distributed across multi-processor systems.
• GNS3 | Graphical Network Simulator -
• Automatic Monitoring with Puppet and Nagios « Mike’s Place - Mike gives a quick run down on using Puppet to automate the configuration of hosts in Nagios.
• On Android threats Spyware:Android/SndApps.A and Trojan:Android/SmsSpy.D. - F-Secure gives a run down on another shady app, listing a new form of updates as 'greyware'

These are my links for July 13th through July 15th:

• 101 Tips to MySQL Tuning and Optimization at SysAdmin Tips and Tools - Monitis has put together 101 performance tips for MySQL. Some work for general system performance tips too.
• A Look at VMware Licensing & Environment Growth — The Lone Sysadmin - Bob Plankers throws down some more examples on the new VMWare licensing schema.
• Pentagon hit by huge cyber attack - Reports from the Pentagon on compromise of systems containing sensitive information. 
• LAN-to-LAN VPN on an ASA 5505 - Another great guide by Jeremy Stretch on setting up VPN tunnel on a pair of ASA 5505 devices.
• The Five Stages of VMware Licensing Grief — The Lone Sysadmin - Bob Plankers gives his point of view on the licensing changes in VMWare.

These are my links for July 4th through July 13th:

• vSphere 5.x Licensing – Awesome (if you’re rich) | Standalone Sysadmin - Matt shares his thoughts on the new VMWare v5 licensing changes.
• Make Sure Your High Availability System Isn’t Just False Bravado | The Nubby Admin -
• F5 Friday: Eliminating the Blind Spot in Your Data Center Security Strategy - Lori MacVittie talks about hidden blind spots in application security, specifically layer 7 issues, some which have shown up in big name compromises recently (CIA for example).
• The One Way That High Availability Will Help You - Wesley David (TheNubbyAdmin.com) gives another great post on High Availability, and what it covers.
• Getting started with Configuration Management -

Over the last several months, we’ve been building out a second, and third, developerment and QA environment for our teams. Part of building out the environment, I started to look at ways of automating some of the server setup. One of the things we needed to automate was the configuration of MSMQ¹. A bit of looking around, and I stumbled on a post from a Microsoft engineer. He has a quick script on how to create queues with Powershell.

These are my links for June 17th through June 23rd:

• The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated raid - Instapaper Blog - The FBI take a little more than they were supposed to in a late night raid on a data center. Instapaper's read-only DB taken in the raid.
• NodeCloud - Node.js resources - New to node.js? Some good resources here to get you going, and keeping in the know.
• Two-factor SSH authentication via Google secures Linux logins | TechRepublic - Adding 2-factor authentication to PAM using Google
• Dealing with Fake Tech Support & Phone Scams - Microsoft Team bringing to light a form of social engineering, fraud, and methods to handle.
• Digital Forensics: Dropbox - An interesting post by SANs about forensics, and dropbox.

These are my links for June 9th through June 15th:

• VMware KB: vMotioning a virtual machine that resides on an NFS datastore fails with the error: General System Error Occured - Few tips on fixing issues with NFS permissions and vMotion
• Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for June 2011 - June 2011 Security updates from Microsoft, coming in at 16 updates.
• Latest Android Malware Takes Flight With Angry Birds - Dark Reading - Another round of malware strikes the Android market
• ISC Diary - Adobe releases patches - ISC reporting on a round of patches from Adobe covering a suite of products.
• Top 10 Git Tutorials for Beginners -