Articles
MonoWall Internet Gateway Sunday, 01 March 2009 21:31 |  Written by Tony |  |  | 
Monowall or m0n0wall is a open source internet gateway that can be run many different hardware platforms and has some fantastic features for the small and home office. We’ve been playing with it a lot here are sohoadvisers and I can tell you that this is a fantastic application. I’ve used 3com Office Connect routers for years and I was looking for another but I did not want to spend any money. My 3com router was working fine but I wanted to have some Quality of Service (QOS) features which the 3com that I have did not support. QOS allows the router to prioritize traffic. Most users in the SOHO and SMB market would use the QOS feature to prioritize Voice over IP (VOIP) traffic. VOIP traffic would be traffic that a Vonage or other VOIP phone creates when making an internet call. The VOIP network traffic gets priority over email or web traffic to ensure that you get the best sound quality from your phone. Monowall does not call this QOS in their product, they call it traffic shaping. Traffic shaping is one of my favorite features of Monowall. Used correctly, it ensures that one person won’t hog all of the bandwidth. This feature alone was worth the switch for me. You can also setup Monowall as a VPN server using IPSec or PPTP without the need for any additional hardware. You or your employees can connect from public access points, and still know your data is secure. Another noteworthy feature is the Captive Portal feature. Captive Portal directs all web traffic to an authentication web page prior to accessing the internet. If the user can’t authenticate, they can’t get on the internet. This works just like a public Wi-Fi Hotspot does. You need to enter either a username and password or an authentication token. With this, you can make your own Wi-Fi Hotspot allowing your guests or clients to connect with Wi-Fi. Last Updated (Saturday, 07 March 2009 00:39) |
New ESXi ArticlesWritten by Tony | | |
We've been working with ESXi a lot lately. In case you don't know, ESXi is a free virtualization hyperviser from VMware. We love ESXi server but the lack of a free built-in backup is dissappointing. To make life easier for our readers we just updated our articles on several ways to backup ESXi server for no cost. Check out our Tutorials section for more information. Last Updated (Saturday, 26 September 2009 17:20) |
Backup ESXi to NFSFriday, 02 January 2009 19:55 | Written by Tony | | |
Like many others that work with the free version of ESXi, I think VMware should have included an easy way to backup virtual machines even if it was just a copy to another Datastore. Knowing that backups are extremely important, I have looked all over trying to find a simple and free way to backup the free version of ESXi Server. This is a backup that will work if you are have an NFS Datastore setup. Backups can take a lot of time so to avoid any downtime it is best to schedule them to run at night. Requirements:
If you are using Windows and want to enable NFS follow the article Connect ESXi to Windows Based NFS. This will also take you through enableing SSH access. To enable SSH read the article Enable SSH in ESXi. Now that you have NFS and SSH enabled it time to configure the backup script. This script requires very little configuration but it does require a file that lists the VMs that you wish to backup. It actually only requires one line to be edited. # directory that all VM backups should go (e.g. /vmfs/volumes/SAN_LUN1/mybackupdir) VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/EnterNFS-StorageNameHere Change "EnterNFS-StorageNameHere" to the name of the NFS datastore where you want the backups to go save the script and you are ready to move the file to the server. You also need to edit the BVMs file. You can do it in Notepad but its possible that it will add some extra data that will cause issues. If you do use Notepad you want to make sure you don't hit enter or it will add exta characters that ESXi will not like. After the files are copied to the server I'll show you how to check for the extra characters. The BVMs file needs to contain the names of the VM's that you want backed up. Each VM needs to be on its own line. VM1
VM2 VM3 Now that the script and the bvms file is edited it's time to copy the files to the server. Using SCP copy the files to your ESXi server. To make things easy I just copied the file to the root "/" file system.
Next use an SSH application like Putty to access your ESXi console remotely. After you login type "cat bvms". The image below shows how the file should look if there are no errors in it.
Now that you have verified that your bvms file is correct you need to make sure that the script has executable permissions. You do this by typing chmod +x ghettoVCB.sh. Now you're ready to run the script. To run the script type ./ghettoVCB bvms, the backup should begin to run. Note: If you are using the latest version of ghettoVCB, you will need to use ./ghettoVCB -f bvms.
Last Updated (Saturday, 05 December 2009 08:07) Backup ESXi to Local DatastoreFriday, 02 January 2009 19:55 | Written by Tony | | |
Here is my favorite backup solution for ESXi. This utilizes the same script for backup up ESXi to an NFS store but it copies the data to a local ESXi Datastore. Now supports ESXi 4.0 Requirements:
To enable SSH read the article Enable SSH in ESXi. This script requires very little configuration but it does require a file that lists the VMs that you wish to backup. It actually only requires one line to be edited. # directory that all VM backups should go (e.g. /vmfs/volumes/SAN_LUN1/mybackupdir) VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/EnterDataNameHere Change "EnterDatastoreNameHere" to the name of the ESXI Datastore where you want the backups to go, save the script, then move it to the ESXi server. You also need to edit the BVMs file. You can do it in Notepad but its possible that it will add some extra data that will cause issues. If you do use Notepad you want to make sure you don't hit enter or it will add exta characters that ESXi will not like. After the files are copied to the server I'll show you how to check for the extra characters. The BVMs file needs to contain the names of the VM's that you want backed up. Each VM needs to be on its own line. VM1
VM2 VM3 Now that the script and the bvms file is edited it's time to copy the files to the server. Using SCP copy the files to your ESXi server. To make things easy I just copied the file to the root "/" file system.
Next use an SSH application like Putty to access your ESXi console remotely. After you login type "cat bvms". The image below shows how the file should look if there are no errors in it.
Now that you have verified that your bvms file is correct you need to make sure that the script has executable permissions. You do this by typing chmod +x ghettoVCB.sh. Now you're ready to run the script. To run the script type ./ghettoVCB bvms, the backup should begin to run. Note: If you are using the latest version of ghettoVCB, you will need to use ./ghettoVCB -f bvms. As the script runs you will see the staus of the backup as it happens.
Last Updated (Saturday, 05 December 2009 08:07) |
