Jaime Gago Condensing Information Systems From the Vapor Of Data

8Nov/110

Network Install via PXE and TFTP on RHEL6 (X86_64)

This is a step by step on how I deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 via PXE and HTTP leveraging exclusively RHEL6.1, my focus will be on the PXE/TFTP-DHCP part as the HTTP based installation is well documented by Red Hat. In terms of hardware I had available 2 DELL Precision 5400 (2 NICs per machine), and an HP Procurve 2824 Switch (yes overkill).

28Oct/110

RHEL 6 (X86_64) and Nvidia driver with Geforce 8800 GTS

As I'm preparing for the Red Hat System Administrator certification I thought I would use my old gaming PC so I got an Academic license and installed RHEL6 so I could tinker at home...Oh boy...So far most of the pain has come from issues with my GeForce 8800GTS, or at least that's what I've gathered from the many steps I've been through to get X window and KDE to work.

I'm totally fine with runlevel 3 but a hanging "init 5" was not a satisfactory install and so I spent 2 evenings "google fu'ing" to finally get successfully to runlevel 5.

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30Jan/1112

Extend Your Server With The DELL C410X

In December 2010 I was at the Stanford HPC Conference where I took a glance at Certainty, it was there that I first heard of the Dell C410X Since then I've gathered as much information as possible on that device, and I thought to assemble it here.

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21Oct/100

Resources For Systems Architecture In An Apple Environment

I have been quite busy with my new job the past few months, but I hope to be back to a more active blogging starting with this post!

Since I've recently designed and implemented an HPC/HA system with mostly Apple technologies I thought to share some of the resources I used to achieve that goal.

29Jan/102

Automating Os X Server Backups Without 3rd Party Software

There are plenty of different options to backup Os X Server, including free tools like the excellent Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner and Open Source ones like lbackup or amanda. Michael Dhaliwal has a pretty good paper that he updates and publishes on his company (i.e. district13 computing) website.

For various reasons not worth listing here I decided to come with my own design while relying exclusively on built in tools (e.g. launchd). I thought this might help other OS X Server Admins so here it is.

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29Jan/100

Maximizing Os X Server Uptime

This is the first of 3 posts about the design I have implemented in my current position. Please note if you plan to use this as a reference that this setup was strictly meant for this particular environment so you *will* have to adapt it.

When it comes to uptime one of the way to go is to look at your design from Murphy’s perspective and come with the appropriate counter measure (e.g N+1 redundancy) for each different issue your can think of.

Here is my approach for an X Serve running Open Directory and AFP with a Vtrak Promise for User Data.

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22Dec/092

Apple Software Updates In A Business Environment

There are many ways to deal with Apple Software Updates, here’s the one I’m currently using with the Mac pool (300+) I am in charge of.

1)Automate the download from the mother ships aka Apple servers back to my home planet aka my LAN and make the updates available.

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