Projects

Sorry for the lack of blogging recently – i havn’t really been up to all that much. I have made some headway on my monitoring controller though, just ordered a load more components from RS tonight.

Some stuff is going to have to be re-done (or re-worked, not entirely re-done) but it shouldn’t be too tricky now i know what im doing and have all the right components! Will update soon with some pics i think.

I should write some more about the 2k3/exchange migration, so here goes:

I’m now runnign two exchange servers, my one in the wirral is MX 10 so is reached first, any mail for the rest of the family is autoforwarded to @lewthwaite.no-ip.org so it will go directly to the server at home and be accepted. The server at home is MX 20 for @lewty.org.uk so should my server be down it will go to home, outlook at my end collects my mail via pop3 for any of my mail which ends up on the home server.

It would appear exchange does NOT collect POP mail from other accounts on your behalf?� unless you use a 3rd party connector – which is expensive. This in contrast to somthing like Scalix which will do all this clever stuff for you.

Thats right, my battle against British Telecommunications Plc has drawn to a close, and i have won.

They finally called me today, after i submitted a second complaint to complain that they hadn’t responded to my first complaint. They immediatly without arguement offered to wipe the ??125 extortion ‘install’ fee and reduce my minimum contract to 3 months instead of 12.

I didn’t bother to argue about getting money back for my ??50 mobile bill, compensation for the 7 hours wasted time on hold and the days leave from work i had to waste. I’m satisfied now really, i could have persued it further, the woman on the phone was ready for an arguement but i decided not to.

In other news, i’ve not really done much since my last post, other than plan what i needed to buy for my projects (now comes to around ??160 and this is before any of the control components – relays, PICs, USB GPIO etc) which i may spend the bank holiday weekend doing.

So, finally got my vmware2k3 box up and running!

It has three VM’s (all 2k3) -

DC/DNS/AD
‘Incoming’
Exchange

Ive installed all the latest updates and service packs for the software and it all appears to be running nicely – now.

It took some effort to get my mailbox over from home – the silly exchange migration tools didn’t work, in the end i had to do it the client side way – export a PST backup form Outlook, then import once i’d changed over the server settings in Outlook.

I had to swap over my domain user accounts at the same time as it wouldnt login to exchange on one domain whilst logged into the machine on another (why this should be a problem when its supposed to be using FQDN’s i don’t know)

Bottom line? Make sure you get your AD domain name and Exchange organisation right the first time or you’re in for a lot of hassle if you ever want to change it…

The server is short of ram however – starting the 3 vm’s takes some luck in order for vmware server not to crash! I have however, ordered more ram (another 1Gb) and it should be with me within the next few days, i also need to get a gigabit card but then this server will be finished and i can start thinking about both the fileserver and the replacement firewall/backup DC/DNS at home.

Quite a few other things i want to buy, but all in due course, i may spend the next few weeks picking up little things – ram, gigabit card, new graphics card for mecie centre etc (i want to have keystone correction support for the projector).

My other new server arrived this morning, and quite beasty it is too!

I have decided to install Ubuntu 6.10 Server. This allows me to software RAID-1 the boot disk (2x 72Gb) and RAID-0 the ‘incoming’ disks (2x 36Gb). I’ve had to do this as there is no hardware RAID card with it, although it did come with the DELL DRAC2 Card and another Dual Intel Pro/100! So now i have one spare…

I’ve also gone for the free VMWare as GSX was too hard to get hold of and ESX was out of the question (the whole non supporting software RAID and that).

Currently i’m installing Server 2k3 into a VM, i think this first one will be the ‘incoming’ server, then after that i need to create VMs for Exchange and AD/DNS.

A busy week for me then! Hopefully it won’t take too long to get sorted, in the intervening time im going to run mail servers both here and home and simply use seperate MX records for accepting the mail.

Thats right, my new firewall/webserver is in comission, only one problem with it!

Copying over the old server’s settings and details wasn’t as hard as i thought -

PHPMyAdmin for exporting/importing SQL
Webmin for Config
Copied over DHCP and IPTables rules directly (made sure the NICs were labelled the same using /etc/iftab)
apt-getted everything else!

I initially had a few problems with the Ubuntu Server repositories, but all is well now, the only problem is that SSL Exploder refuses to run which is a bit odd. I think i will go for a re-install, that will probably fix it.

Final spec is as follows:

Viglen SX110 1U
Dual Pentium III 1Ghz
1Gb ECC SD133 RAM
2x Compaq 10k RPM U160 18Gb SCSI Disks (RAID-1)
On Board Dual Intel Pro/100
PCI Dual Intel Pro/100

Its a bit noisier than the old gateway, well ok, a lot noisier, but it is more compact which is good. It’s fully VPN’d up to Matt’s and Home, as well as Hamachified. This consolidates the old webserver and uni-gateway, so theres two machines out of comission now going spare. I will either have to dream up a use or scrap/keep for spares.

The other new server should arrive tomorrow, i had hoped for today but nevermind. This will take a while get running, VMWare 2k3′s, and then getting it setup for AD/Exchange and DNS. This will allow retirement of the Incoming box, and eventually the current 2k3 box , though there will be a need for a backup DC at the remote location. I did have one idea for this – virtualisation! I could get a new firewall box for home, and VM the backup DC and DNS within this box – one single neat solution for home, instead of multiple boxes.

In other news, my car has died – it sprung a coolant leak and although it is a ??10 part, it will cost me ??80 to have replaced since you have to take most of the engine apart to get to it! Nevermind i suppose, these things happen.

Will update you more when the new server arrives tomorrow.

Yes thats right!

One more is on it’s way to me as we speak!

Spec:

Dell Poweredge 2500 (a lot more U than i realised!)
Dual PIII 1.4Ghz
1Gb RAM
2x 36Gb HDD
2x 72Gb HDD

This is going to be my ‘virtual’ datacentre – many 2k3 VM’s each doing singular tasks – AD, DNS, Exchange and so forth, this should make reliability better.

I’m moving the webserver – see the service status below on how this affects services. But should all be sorted within a few days.

There are a couple of scheduled Outages planned for the next few days:

Sunday 5th August:
Web services will be intermittant all day, this affects:

www.lewty.org.uk
gallery.lewty.org.uk
forum.lewty.org.uk
intranet.lewty.org.uk
download.lewty.org.uk
mongol-rally.lewty.org.uk
www.crazydave.org.uk
www.salfordunion.co.uk

Webmail may also be affected for a short while.

Monday 6th August

E-mail, Webmail, DNS, SSL Explorer and AD Auth will be unavailable all day, service should resume by 8pm.

@lewty.org.uk
@crazydave.org.uk
mail.lewty.org.uk
ssl.lewty.org.uk
vpn.lewty.org.uk