Flashing LSI HBA to IT mode or IR Mode

I wanted to share a good guide I found for those needing to flash their lsi hba over to IT mode

IT MODE basically makes it in pass through mode so no RAID is being used by the controller. You might ask why would you do this. Well the simple answer is that is needed for ZFS or freenas so it handles the raid setup for you ans doesn’t act as a raid controller card. Once again i take no responsibility in the unlikely event you incorrectly flash your card wrong. Please read this carefully before you make any changes,  Following information comes from

IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 4: Cross flashing to a LSI9211-8i in IT or IR mode

 

 

One of the most popular SAS 6.0gbps/ SATA III controllers for enthusiasts is the IBM M1015. In its native form, it is a very capable host bus adapter (HBA) based on the LSI SAS2008 chip. With the low price on places such as ebay (see here for an ebay search for the M1015) and an enthusiastic community that has learned to unlock many features, it has quickly become a go-to choice for low-cost SATA III connectivity. This series of articles was written by Pieter Schaar perhaps best known as the one behind laptopvideo2go.com. He has been a regular contributor in the STH forums and has been detailing his learning in threads such as these. I do want to note that these modifications are not endorsed by this site, LSI, IBM or others and the information herein is purely for educational purposes. If you do encounter problems, you are solely responsible for those consequences.

There are now quite a few parts to this piece including:

• • IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 1: Getting Started with the LSI 9220-8i
  • IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 2: Performance of the LSI 9220-8i
  • IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 3: SMART Passthrough on the LSI 9220-8i

Why crossflash?
In the previous 3 articles I’ve discussed the ins and outs of what the IBM M1015 is capable of in various modes. Now if you were to proceed and purchase an IBM M1015 and wanted to use it in other than it’s default LSI9240/9220 mode you will need to crossflash the card to a LSI9211 HBA 6.0gbps SAS / SATA III adaptor.
To recap:
LSI9211-IT = Straight pass through no RAID, best for ZFS file system etc
LSI9211-IR = Pass through as in IT mode, but you also have RAID options (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 1e and RAID 10), better for RAID 0 Windows boot SSDs etc, and possibly run Software RAID 5 on the other drives.
LSI9240 = default mode, only really useful feature this mode has is RAID1/ RAID 10, drives have to be set to JBOD (single) or RAID to be seen by OS, can be annoying when adding removing drives often.

How to cross flash
First things first, we take no responsibility for anything going wrong.
Please read carefully, don’t take shortcuts, and BE CAREFUL.
If in doubt or you can’t afford a replacement should it go wrong then ‘walk a away’
Warnings are done, lets flash:

Make a bootable USB stick, needs to be DOS bootable for the flasher etc to work, there are number ways to do it, ask Google
Download the files I have compressed over here
Self Extract the files somewhere, then place onto the USB stick
Turn machine off grab the SAS address of the card, it’s on the back on a green sticker (ie 500605B0xxxxxxxx)
Turn machine on (with card back in) choose USB stick at boot option, for all the below it is assumed you are booted to USB stick in the directory with the files from download.

Convert LSI9240(IBM M1015) to a LSI9211-IT mode
Type in the following exactly:
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0
<reboot, back to USB stick >
sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom (sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin if OptionROM is not needed)
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)
<reboot>
Done!

Convert LSI9240(IBM M1015) to a LSI9211-IR mode
Type in the following exactly:
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0
<reboot, back to USB stick>
sas2flsh -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b0xxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)
<reboot>
Done!

Convert LSI9211-IT or IR to LSI9211 IR or IT
Type in the following exactly:
Megarec -cleanflash 0
<reboot, back to USB stick>
sas2flsh -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom (2118it.bin = IT mode Firmware, change according to which way to flash)
sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx (x= numbers for SAS address)
<reboot>
Done!

Convert LSI9211-IT/IR back to LSI9240 (IBM M1015)
Type in the following exactly:
Megarec -cleanflash 0
Megarec -writesbr 0 sbrm1015.bin
<reboot, back to USB stick>
Megarec -m0flash 0 0061_lsi.rom (for latest LSI firmware, also included 2x IBM roms too, just change name)
<reboot>
Done!

Tweaks
Of possible use to ZFS fanatics, when flashing the card to IT mode, do not flash the mptsas2.rom, this then will not load the boot BIOS
Any SAS or SATA IIIdrives added will just passthrough as normal, as there is nothing to see or do in the BIOS in IT mode, you may as well not load it. This makes boot and reboot time faster as it doesn’t have to load the BIOS and wait for a key press. BUT you will need it if you are booting from one of the drives attached to the IBM M1015. You will also need it if you are running IR mode to access to the BIOS to setup RAID functions. This might be of use to some users.

Story I wanted to share about the slippery slope of privacy vs law vs decryption

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/justice-naps-man-jailed-16-months-for-refusing-to-reveal-passwords/

 

Francis Rawls, a former Philadelphia police sergeant, has been in the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center for more than 16 months. His crime: the fired police officer has been found in contempt of court for refusing a judge’s order to unlock two hard drives the authorities believe contain child pornography. Theoretically, Rawls can remain jailed indefinitely until he complies.

The federal court system appears to be in no hurry to resolve an unresolved legal issue: does the Fifth Amendment protect the public from being forced to decrypt their digital belongings? Until this is answered, Rawls is likely to continue to languish behind bars. A federal appeals court heard oral arguments about Rawls’ plight last September. So far, there’s been no response from the US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Philadelphia.

Rawls was thrown in the slammer on September 30, 2015 “until such time that he fully complies” (PDF) with a court order to unlock his hard drives. A child-porn investigation focused on Rawls when prosecutors were monitoring the online network, Freenet. They executed a search warrant in 2015 at Rawls’ home. The authorities say it’s a “foregone conclusion” that illicit porn is on those drives. But they cannot know for sure unless Rawls hands them the alleged evidence that is encrypted with Apple’s standard FileVault software.

His plight is not garnering public sympathy. Men suspected of possessing child pornography never do. But his case highlights a vexing legal vacuum in this digital era, when encryption is becoming part of the national discussion. For years, both Apple and Microsoft have offered desktop users the ability to turn on full disk encryption. And data on Android and Apple mobile phones can easily be encrypted.

Rawls’ attorney, Federal Public Defender Keith Donoghue, declined comment for this story. But he has argued in court that his client is being “held without charges” (PDF) and that he should be released immediately.

FURTHER READING

Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, feds say

In winning the contempt-of-court order, the authorities cited a 1789 law known as the All Writs Act to compel (PDF) Rawls to decrypt—and he refused. The All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Department asserted in its legal battle with Apple, in which a magistrate judge ordered Apple to produce code to enable the FBI to decrypt the iPhone used by one of two shooters who killed 14 people at a San Bernardino County government building. The government dropped the case when the authorities paid a reported $1 million for a hack.

The reason why Rawls is idling behind bars without charges is twofold: first, the nation’s appellate courts have no deadlines on when they must issue an opinion. And second, the Supreme Court has never addressed the compelled decryption issue.

The Supreme Court in 2000, however, ruled that demanding too much assistance from a suspect is unconstitutional because it would be akin to “telling an inquisitor the combination of a wall safe.” However, the closest federal appellate case on point was decided by the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2012. That court, based in Denver, said a bank-fraud defendant must decrypt her laptop. But that ruling wasn’t enforced because prosecutors obtained the password elsewhere.

At issue in the decryption battle is the Fifth Amendment. At its core, it says people cannot be compelled to testify against themselves. But that is the real-world view. When it comes to the virtual world, things change—at least insofar as the government is concerned. The government claims that Rawls isn’t being ordered to testify against himself and that he isn’t even being ordered to produce his passwords.

FURTHER READING

Child porn suspect jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives

Rawls, the government argues, (PDF) “repeatedly asserts that the All Writs Act order requires him to divulge his passcodes, but he is incorrect: the order requires no testimony from [Rawls], and he may keep his passcodes to himself. Instead, the order requires only that [Rawls] produce his computer and hard drives in an unencrypted state.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation told the court in a friend-of-the-court brief (PDF) that “compelled decryption is inherently testimonial because it compels a suspect to use the contents of their mind to translate unintelligible evidence into a form that can be used against them. The Fifth Amendment provides an absolute privilege against such self-incriminating compelled decryption.”

When the appeals court finally rules on Rawls’ plight, it won’t be the final word on the topic. That’s because the nation’s circuit courts of appeal are not obligated to follow the decisions of their sister circuits. This means uncertainty over this issue could linger until the nation’s highest court weighs in.

All the while, a jailed man named Francis Rawls, who the authorities believe is hiding kid smut, remains the poster child surrounding the debate on forced decryption.

Those of you with ESXI hosts needing plugins

 

Like many of you here I have an ESXI host for my vm lab. I am actually kind of surprised there is a lot of free good plugins that you can use on your host to improve, or add to the functionality. Please do keep in mind a lot of these tools aren’t official supported, nor do i take any responsibility for anything that might happen. I wanted to share some tools that I found to be useful  and take no credit for the making of these tools.

 

vSphere Utilities & ProgramsRVTools – uses the VI SDK 2.5 to display information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts.VMVision Manager – A new way to view the virtual machines in your environmentCPUID System Information – shows the VMHost CPU Info by NTPROVMware CPU Host Info 2.01 – allow you to read out all CPU information from all your ESX Servers by querying your VC server. It will show what features are available on your CPUs and if they are compatible to vmotion VMs and if FT is supported.Vizioncore vOptimizer WasteFinder – 3.0 – scans vCenter and can shrink VMDKs to reclaim storage and can also realign VMDKs to 64k on 2 VMs for free.

PHD Virtual Patch Downloader 6.2.0.5 – simplifies the task of downloading patches for various ESX and ESXi versions (including vSphere) by automating the task.

Loadstorm – utility to generate CPU and/or memory load within a virtual machine. Great for testing out DRS

vmClient – a lightweight tool which enables you to control the power of your virtual machines, it’s also capable of presenting the MKS console of your virtual machines (Read More)

 

vDisk Informer – demonstrates which virtual disks have potentially wasted space on them and which virtual disks are misaligned causing a performance impact

VMware Scanner 1.4 –  scan for VMware Servers (ESX, ESXi, VirtualCenter and VMware Server). It uses the VMware API to identify a VMware server and query the product name, version and build number.

ESXi Customizer – automates the process of customizing the ESXi install-ISO with drivers that are not originally included

UBERAlign – free and powerful tool to resolve alignment of VMs

SolarWinds VM-to-Cloud Calculator – Discovers Virtual Machines & Estimates the Cost to Move to the Cloud

Documentation Downloader by Xtravirt – A practical and intelligent tool for offline access to VMware product documentation

sfvAlarms – A windows utility to allow the export and import of VMware vCenter Alarms

DoubleCloud Client – a wrapper around a Web browser so that the vSphere Web Client user experience is similar to a standalone C# application.

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition – virtualization freeware suite is comprised of six utilities that provide virtualization administrators with 360-degree visibility into heterogeneous virtualized environments (Snapshot Explorer, Storage Explorer, Change Explorer, Environment Explorer, vScope Explorer, SearchMyVM Explorer)

vOptimizer WasteFinder – quickly locate and reclaim over-allocated VM storage and dramatically reduce unnecessary storage costs

Virtual Mac Address management – Virtual Mac management tool that allows you easily to manage the MAC addresses of your virtual machine’s NICs. (not tested on latest vSphere releases)

JAM HeavyLoad – freeware stress test tool HeavyLoad. HeavyLoad puts your workstation or server PC under a heavy load and lets you test whether they will still run reliably.

PowerCLI GUI to edit VM hardware version 10 – A .NET like graphical user interface (GUI) in PowerCLI from which perform all operations for VM editing without using the vSphere Web Client

DBC-VMfinder – search for VMware virtual machines by name, MAC, or IP to retrieve their information. Page is in spanish, use google translation.

 

Operations and Monitoring

Turbonomic Operations Manager Lite – an application performance control system. It continuously matches any application workload demand to any infrastructure supply.

Turbonomic Virtual Health Monitor – a complete suite of Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring capabilities that also includes reporting. Seen many times on the top 10 Free Tools edition.

Xangati Free – VMs, networks, storage, apps, end-user devices in one pane of glass. Real-time continuous UI with ability to DVR record anything. Rich historical reporting on VM and application activity

Solarwinds SAN Monitor – Gain Visibility into Storage Performance & Stay Ahead of SAN Slowdowns

VKernel Capacity View – provides quick visibility and alerting to the storage and server capacity issues in your VMware virtualized infrastructure.

• Take a look at my Home Lab w/ Capacity View. Be sure to include the referral from kendrickcoleman [@] gmail [dot] com for validation(without the brackets of course).

vSphere Mini Monitor 2.0 – VMM will now monitor a large number of changes to multiple objects within the vCenter environment

vAlarm – Windows based application which monitors alarms generated by VMware vCenter.

Vdisk Waste Finder – report which disks are over-allocated

IgniteFreeVM – pinpoints the root cause of database performance issues in the query, virtual server, or physical host

Veeam Extended Generic Report Library – gives you the ability to analyze the health and performance of infrastructure objects without being limited to physical or virtual environments, or specific management packs for Microsoft System Center reporting

Veeam ONE Free Edition – Free powerful and easy-to-use monitoring and reporting. Combination of the previous Monitor and Business View products

Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V – displays a real-time view of both host and VM compute resource consumption

SolarWinds Storage Response Time Monitor – Identifies VMs With High Storage Latency

MindArray Monitoring – free vSphere monitoring for up to 5 hosts

ManageEngine Free VM Configuration Tool – Configure VMware Virtual server (VM) resources such as CPU, RAM, execute Power operations and change the name of the VM’s using the free VMware Configuration Tool. Monitor CPU usage and view memory, provisioned storage, and network adapter details of VMware host server and its VMs. (not tested with latest vSphere releases)

ManageEngine VM Health Monitor Free Tool – Monitor VMware Esx and Esxi servers using VM Health Monitor Tool. This tool helps monitor disk read/write and network Rx/ Tx for virtual servers along with CPU and memory utilization for each guest OS. You can monitor two VMware servers simultaneously. (not tested with latest vSphere releases)

3-year IT budget template – Keep track of your IT budgets for the next 3 years

 

Backup & Recovery

Thinware vBackup – an actual FREE backup solution for virtual infrastructure that can be easily implemented in any environment.

Veeam Backup & Replication (2 socket license) – If you are a VMware vExpert, VMware Certified Professional (VCP), VMware Certified Instructor (VCI) or VMware User Group (VMUG) member, you can get a FREE 2-socket NFR license for your home or work lab.

Unitrends Enterprise Backup™ Free Edition – Free Edition to protect 4 VMs for free

VeeamZIP – Backup, archive or copy a VM—without pausing or powering it off. Restore data from inside a VM. Migrate and manage VMs and files

Trilead VM Explorer – Backup & Restore & Browse for ESX virtual machines

33Hops XSIBackup – Backup System for ESXi – XSIBackup will copy your virtual machines to a defined backup device in ESXi Hypervisor

SLYM Software vSphere Configuration Backup – an automating tool for saving configurations of multiple ESXi and SQL databases.

PHDVirutual Disaster Recovery Time Actual Calculator – with the use of snapshotting and linked clonesthe tool powers up the VMs and times the process, calculating the total time it will take to recover your VMs. Read my blog post about it at What’s Your RTO? Check out this new free tool

 

vCenter Plug-Ins

vSphere Plugin Wizard 2.0 – create a tabbed plugin of your favorite website or admin page inside vCenter

sshAutoConnect vCenter Plug-in – creates a direct SSH icon to your ESXi hosts using PuTTy

Auto Deploy GUI – a front end interface to the Auto Deploy/Stateless infrastructure (now a VMware Fling)

vCloud Connector – lets you view, operate on and transfer your computing resources across vSphere and vCloud Director in your private cloud environment as well as public clouds from vCloud Service Providers. Walkthru provided by Chris Colotti

VMware vCenter Support Assistant – provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop BOTH for creating and managing service requests AND generating and uploading logs.

 

Scripting tools

PowerGUI – a GUI for all those neat powershell scripts 🙂

PowerGUI VMware Community PowerPack – everything from the VESI PowerPack v3 and much much more!

vGhetto – a nice consolidation of all the scripts written by William Lam and some members of the VMTN community (VMware vSphere CLI & Perl)

Image Builder & Auto Deploy Powerpack – a PowerGUI Powerpack which enables us as VMware admins to have a graphical interface to Image Builder and Auto Deploy which are currently released as PowerShell snap-ins only.

DoubleCloud Proxy – Code Generator for vSphere Java API. Similar to Onyx by VMware Labs.

PHP with vSphere5 Examples – contains examples of PHP code to communicate with vSphere using the vSphere API. it contains the nusoap library files and a small vc_lib file.

vCloud Director REST API Shell (RAS) – provides an alternative interface for interacting with vCloud Director. Rather than using a web browser, this Fling allows you to interact with vCloud Director through the command-line using a small python script.

PAPI, the Performance API project – specifies a standard application-programming interface (API) for accessing hardware performance counters available on most modern microprocessors.

Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) – is a Linux console UI for vSphere, built on the RbVmomi bindings to the vSphere API. RVC is a console UI for VMware ESX and VirtualCenter.

PowerCLI GUI to edit VM hardware version 10 – A .NET like graphical user interface (GUI) in PowerCLI from which perform all operations for VM editing without using the vSphere Web Client

 

Free tools brought to you by VMware

VMmark – Get an accurate measurement of application performance in virtualized environments with VMmark, the industry’s first virtualization benchmark for x86-based computers

vCenter Converter – of course we all know this appliance for easy P2V migrations

vSphere Management Assistant – allows administrators and developers to run scripts and agents to manage ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server systems.

PowerCLI – a powerful command line tool that lets you automate all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM, guest OS and more.

VMware Support Toolbar – have a direct way for all the necessary links, downloads, RSS feed news for all things from VMware. Compatible w/ Firefox, IE, and Safari

VMware SiteSurvey – Produces a report showing hardware compatibility and software configuration compatibility with advanced VMware features such as Fault Tolerance.

CPU Identification Utility – Displays CPU features for VMotion compatibility, EVC and indicates 64-bit VMware support.

VMware Studio – an integrated development tool that packages software applications into virtual appliances and vApps that are ready to run and optimized for VMware product platforms and the cloud.

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.1 Sizing Estimator – get the right answer to your question whether to install the VMware vCenter Update Manager database on the same DB as vCenter DB or not. And also if yes or not to install VUM at the same host as the vCenter Server host

VMware Compliance Checker for vSphere – Check the compliance of your IT infrastructure against specific standards and best practices that are applicable for the environment

VMware vCenter Orchestrator Appliance – Begin automating your vSphere environment

Wavemaker – a rapid application development environment for building, maintaining and modernizing business-critical Web 2.0 applications

VMware Posters – VMware posters which were created by Technical Marketing and have been released at VMworld and VMUGs around the world

 

Free Tools From VMware Labs

Apache Pivot – Like most modern development platforms, Pivot provides a comprehensive set of foundation classes that together comprise a “framework”. These classes form the building blocks upon which more complex and sophisticated applications can be built.

Dynamo RIO – exports an interface for building dynamic tools for a wide variety of uses: program analysis and understanding, profiling, instrumentation, optimization, translation, etc.

esxplot –  GUI based tool that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop in batch mode.

Onyx –  standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script.

SVGA Sonar – demo application for SVGADevTap

vApprun – vApp features become available to both Workstation and Fusion users

vCMA –  VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) – vCMA allows you to monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices.

VGC – VMware Guest Console, too many cool things to list

VI Java – vSphere Java API is a set of Java libraries that sits on top of existing vSphere SDK Web Services interfaces

Virtual USB Analyzer – free and open source tool for visualizing logs of USB packets, from hardware or software USB sniffer tools

Weasel – insert the ESX Installation DVD, this program guides you through the steps of network configuration, disk selection, etc. Or it can perform an automated install based on a script similar to Redhat kickstart scripts.

IOBlazer – a multi-platform storage stack micro-benchmark.

PXE Manager for vCenter – enables ESXi host state (firmware) management and provisioning

Thinapped vSphere Client – Run vSphere client 4.1 in a snap. No install, just download the EXE and double-click.

vCenter XVP Manager and Converter – provides basic virtualization management capabilities for non-vSphere hypervisor platforms towards enabling centralized visibility and control across heterogeneous virtual infrastructures

VMware Auto Deploy – supports automatic PXE boot and customization of large numbers of ESXi systems

Boomerang – allows you to use multiple vSphere servers simultaneously

I/O Analyzer – a simple and standardized way of measuring storage performance in a VMware vSphere virtualized environments.

ESX System Analyzer – help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi

CloudCleaner – It selectively (or completely) removes all vCD-created virtual machines, resource pools, network pools, and networks. It can also unprepare hosts that have been prepared by vCD.

InventorySnapshot – allows a user to “snapshot” a given vCenter inventory configuration and then reproduce it.

vCD-nclient – aims to be a quick start for using the new Notifications feature in vCloud Director v1.5.

Auto Deploy GUI – a front end interface to the Auto Deploy/Stateless infrastructure

SilverLining – allows you to build a simplified interface for vCloud Director that works from any modern web-browser that supports HTML5, CSS and Javascript

Lctree – designed for the visualization of linked clone VM trees created by VMware vCloud Director.

VCD-nclient – a quick start for using the Notifications feature in vCloud Director

ThinApp Factory – brings centralized administration and automation to the process of creating virtualized Windows applications with VMware ThinApp technology

VMware OS Optimization Tool – helps optimize Windows 7 desktops for use with VMware Horizon View. The optimization tool includes customizable templates to enable or disable Windows system services and features, per VMware recommendations and best practices, across multiple systems.

VisualEsxtop – is an enhanced version of resxtop and esxtop. VisualEsxtop can connect to VMware vCenter Server or ESX hosts, and display ESX server stats with a better user interface and more advanced features.

Statsfeeder – is a tool that enables performance metrics to be retrieved from vCenter and sent to multiple destinations, including 3rd party systems.

ESXi Google Authenticator – is a project that provides two-factor authentication by using both a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) module and a mobile application for generating one-time passcodes.

View Pool Manager – is a Fling that allows VMware View administrators to easily manage users across desktop pools and security groups.

DrmDiagnose – attempts to make this easier by providing resource management recommendations based on inventory dumps of the existing environment. It compares the current resource demands of a VM and suggests changes to the resource allocation settings to achieve the performance you are looking for. It will also let you know how it impacts the other VMs.

vCloud Director REST API Shell (RAS) – provides an alternative interface for interacting with vCloud Director. Rather than using a web browser, this Fling allows you to interact with vCloud Director through the command-line using a small python script.

vCenter 5.1 Pre-Install Check Script – PowerShell script written to help customers validate their environment and assess if it is ready for a 5.1.x upgrade. The script checks against known misconfiguration and issues raised with VMware Support.

Makyo – lets you copy virtual machines and vApps from one vCenter Server to another using a wizard in the vSphere Web Client.

Controlled Recompose of a VMware View Linked Clone Pool of Virtual Desktops – It first identifies a free desktop and recomposes it to create the first Replica Desktop.

Lctree – is a tool designed for the visualization of linked clone VM trees created by VMware vCloud Director.

PAPI, the Performance API project – specifies a standard application-programming interface (API) for accessing hardware performance counters available on most modern microprocessors.

Guest Reclaim – reclaims dead space from NTFS volumes hosted on a thin provisioned SCSI disk.

vBenchmark measures the performance of a VMware virtualized infrastructure across three categories: Efficiency, Operational Agility, Quality of Service

InventorySnapshot – allows a user to “snapshot” a given vCenter inventory configuration and then reproduce it.

 

VMware View

vAudit 1.5 – a utility for VMware View environments (3.01 and 3.1). The tool will display when your users are logging in to their virtual machines and it can also display and unsuccessful login attempts

VDI Calculator – VDI calculator is targeted for VMware View designs, however you can use the calculator for any VDI running on top of vSphere infrastructure

Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer – 40 optimizations to tweak your golden image.

PCoIP Log Viewer 2.0 – provides capabilities to visualize and analyze PCoIP performance metrics collected from PCoIP server log files and real-time WMI counters.

TS Tweaker – This Application will allow you to tweak some common registry changes to optimise Terminal Server

VMware OS Optimization Tool – helps optimize Windows 7 desktops for use with VMware Horizon View. The optimization tool includes customizable templates to enable or disable Windows system services and features, per VMware recommendations and best practices, across multiple systems.

Controlled Recompose of a VMware View Linked Clone Pool of Virtual Desktops – It first identifies a free desktop and recomposes it to create the first Replica Desktop.

VDI (Display) Protocol Calculator – calculator from Andre

 

Virtual Storage Appliances (VSA)

Celerra UBER VSA v3 – A VSA of EMC’s Celerra

UBER VNX (NFS) v1 – A VSA of EMC’s VNX currently only working with NFS

Nexenta – VSA of Nexenta

NetApp VSA – must login to your NetApp Account to download and must be a NetApp customer

OpenFiler – OpenFiler – Download the best up-to-date appliance here -> Openfiler 2.99 ESA in a VMware vSphere Virtual Appliance.

FreeNAS – FreeNAS

StarWind Free Edition – iSCSI SAN with Deduplication

FalconStor Virtual SAN appliance – a feature-limited edition of the FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) Virtual Appliance.

QuadStor – Enterprise Ready Open Source Storage Virtualizatio

 

Visio Stencils

Turbonomic Datacenter Stencils – for Microsoft Visio® and OmniGraffle

VMware vSphere Visio Stencils from Maish- Box Shots, Icons, and Products. Get them all here.

Presentation Pack by Xtravirt – 350 high quality icons to superbly illustrate any virtualization solution

Veeam Stencils – free collection of VMware and Hyper-V virtualization Visio stencils

VCE Vblock Visio Stencils – free Vblock Visios

VisioCafe – This site has probably every single Visio you need for your entire datacenter

 

Deprecated Tools No Longer Available

Veeam Monitor Free Edition – VMware monitoring solution designed to meet the day-to-day needs of VMware administrators who need real-time performance monitoring and alerting.

Veeam Business View – an add-on that works with other Veeam products to provide business categorization for your VMware vSphere environment.

Veeam FastSCP – FastSCP provides a fast, secure and easy way to manage files and bulk copy VMs across your VMware ESX environment. Now Part of VeeamZIP

SolarWinds Free VM Monitor – continuously monitors a VMware ESX Server and its virtual machines. Track virtualization health at-a-glance and impress your boss with X-ray vision into your ESX Servers! <– not vSphere compatible

VKernel VM Stats – Provides key summary statistics for your VMware environment

VKernel SearchMyVM – “Google–like” SearchMyVM tool, delivered as a virtual appliance, instantly connects to VMware vCenter (VirtualCenter)and indexes the entire VMware ESX environment. Now a part of Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition from Dell

VKernel SnapshotMyVM – completely automates the time–consuming process of documenting all virtual machines (VMs) in the dynamic data center . Now a part of the Free vOPS™ Server Explorer

ESX Manager 2.3  by ESXGuide – lots and lots and lots of management tools. ESX Manager 3.0 is on the horizon and looks very promising. Not sure how well this version works w/ vSphere. Now a Part of VM Vision Manager

EMC Ionix Compliance Checker for VMware ESX – providing detailed compliance checks against both the VMware Hardening Guidelines and the CIS benchmarks for ESX <– not vSphere compatible

Hyper9 Virtual Machine Manager – Open source solution to manage VMware VI3/vSphere4, Citrix XenServer 5 or Microsoft Hyper-V from your mobile device or cell phone. Disappeared

Plugin Wizard for vSphere vCenter – allows you to register websites or web portals within your vCenter VI Client.

Vizioncore vConverter SC – 4.2 – Freeware enterprise-class P2V and V2V solution that significantly reduces the time and effort in converting servers. Replaced with vConverter DR which is not free.

Vizioncore vOptimizer WasteFinder – 2.2 – scans vCenter Servers (Virtual Centers) and alerts customers as to how much over allocated virtual storage they have and provides potential savings estimates if this wasted space is reclaimed.

EMBOTICS V-Scout – agent-less tool for tracking and reporting on VMs in VMware VirtualCenter enabled environments (End Of Life September 2010)

Novell PlateSpin Recon 3.7 for Inventory – enables users to take a complete hardware, software and services inventory of x86-based physical servers or virtual machines running VMware or Microsoft Virtual Server with absolutely no manual effort or disruptive agent technology. No longer free.

PHD Virtual Patch Downloader 6.01 – simplifies the task of downloading patches for various ESX versions by automating the task <– not vSphere compatible

vFoglight QuickView – performance monitoring solution that provides essential alerts and data to enable administrators to quickly detect, diagnose and resolve critical issues within the virtual infrastructure.

CloudCleaner v2.5 – Luke Terheyden of VMware, coded a clean-up tool for vSphere environments prepared and managed by VMware vCloud Director. Now a VMware Labs Fling

VMTurbo Monitor – Discover all physical and virtual resources, View virtual infrastructure hotspots at a glance through a color-coded heat map, Identify overutilized and underutilized resources, Keep your virtual infrastructure healthy while assuring application performance Rolled into the Pay for Product VMTurbo Monitor

VMTurbo Watchdog – detects and troubleshoots problems in real time and helps you analyzes their impact. Rolled into the Pay for Product VMTurbo Monitor

VMTurbo Performance and Efficiency Reporter – Free Right-sizing and Six Other Actionable Reports

Hyper9 Search Plug-in – Enables users to jump directly to a VM in the Hyper9 Virtualization Manager for a VI3 or vSphere 4.0 client. Disappeared. No clue where where Solarwinds hid all the Hyper-9 stuff.

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) – an appliance dedicated to deploying ESX servers fast and easy. It has a scriptbuilder to quickly create %post-scripts. No Longer Free

VKernel vScope Explorer – Enterprise wide visualization of performance, capacity and efficiency issues across multiple vCenters and resources – Now a part of Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition from Dell

VKernel StorageVIEW – instant visibility into the top five host/datastore pairs and their associated VMs with the highest latency. Now a part of Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition from Dell

vOPS™ Server Explorer – suite of five free utilities for VM administrators. Storage, Change, Environment, vScope, SearchMyVM. Wow!.. Now rebranded as vFoglight Free Edition

vOptimizer Free – helps prevent VMs from running out of space while also  identifying misaligned disk partitions to boost storage performance… now vOptimizer WasteFinder No longer a free product

vLogView – a Windows based application which manages VMware ESX Server log files. Can’t find the product any more

VKernel Capacity Modeler – allows you to easily assess the performance impact of capacity changes to your existing virtualized environment… Now a part of Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition from Dell

VMDK Stub File Generator – The PHD Virtual Stub File Generator lets you recreate the .vmdk STUB file so that you can re-attach and access the data in the -flat.vmdk, eliminating any data loss from within the virtual disk making it very useful for vmware systems administrators and disaster recover experts. Can’t find the product any longer

VKernel AppVIEW – Monitor your five most important VMs and see detailed data on how these applications are running in your virtual environment. Read my latest blog post VKernel AppVIEW and Your Hidden VI Issues . Now a part of Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition from Dell

Hyper9 GuessMyOS Plug-in – replaces generic VM icons in the VI3 and vSphere4 client inventory trees with OS-specific icons for both Windows and Linux guests. Disappeared. No clue where where Solarwinds hid all the Hyper-9 stuff.

vSphere Client RDP Plug-in – Xtravirt vSphere RDP Plug-in provides integration of the Windows Remote Desktop tool with the VMware vSphere Client. <- Only vSphere 4 Compatible

vEcoShell – enables IT administrators to unlock the full potential of their virtual infrastructure and reduce the daily operating costs of managing multi-platform environments. Fostered and supported by The Virtualization EcoShell Initiative (VESI) – an online community-driven Web site sponsored by Vizioncore – the Virtualization EcoShell is enhanced by the participation of community members through the exchange of new ideas, value-add services and extensible scripts (PowerCLI) – Project is dead and now PowerGUI is the predecessor.

VESI PowerPack V3 – A huge power pack developed by Alan Renouf for vEcoShell that is more than just a one-trick pony tool (PowerCLI). Now held at PowerGUI VMware Community PowerPack

 

The following information was found at http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools.html

Rant about social media and term hacker

I want to clear the air when it comes to the media and hackers. Media tends to claim everything and everyone is a hacker when they have no idea what the differences are.

 

Not all hackers are inherently bad. When used in mainstream media, the word, “hacker,” is usually used in relation to cyber criminals, but a hacker can actually be anyone, regardless of their intentions, who utilizes their knowledge of computer software and hardware to break down and bypass security measures on a computer, device or network. Hacking itself is not an illegal activity unless the hacker is compromising a system without the owner’s permission.  Many companies and government agencies actually employ hackers to help them secure their systems.

Hackers are generally categorized by type of metaphorical “hat” they don: “white hat”, “grey hat”, and “black hat”. The terms come from old spaghetti westerns, where the bad guy wears a black cowboy hat, and the good guy wears a white hat. There are two main factors that determine the type of hacker you’re dealing with: their motivations, and whether or not they are breaking the law.

Black Hat Hackers

Like all hackers, black hat hackers usually have extensive knowledge about breaking into computer networks and bypassing security protocols. They are also responsible for writing malware, which is a method used to gain access to these systems.

Their primary motivation is usually for personal or financial gain, but they can also be involved in cyber espionage, protest or perhaps are just addicted to the thrill of cybercrime. Black hat hackers can range from amateurs getting their feet wet by spreading malware, to experienced hackers that aim to steal data, specifically financial information, personal information and login credentials. Not only do black hat hackers seek to steal data, they also seek to modify or destroy data as well.

White Hat Hackers

White hat hackers choose to use their powers for good rather than evil. Also known as “ethical hackers,” white hat hackers can sometimes be paid employees or contractors working for companies as security specialists that attempt to find security holes via hacking.

White hat hackers employ the same methods of hacking as black hats, with one exception- they do it with permission from the owner of the system first, which makes the process completely legal. White hat hackers perform penetration testing, test in-place security systems and perform vulnerability assessments for companies. There are even courses, training, conferences and certifications for ethical hacking.

Grey Hat Hackers

As in life, there are grey areas that are neither black nor white. Grey hat hackers are a blend of both black hat and white hat activities. Often, grey hat hackers will look for vulnerabilities in a system without the owner’s permission or knowledge. If issues are found, they will report them to the owner, sometimes requesting a small fee to fix the issue. If the owner does not respond or comply, then sometimes the hackers will post the newly found exploit online for the world to see.

These types of hackers are not inherently malicious with their intentions; they’re just looking to get something out of their discoveries for themselves. Usually, grey hat hackers will not exploit the found vulnerabilities. However, this type of hacking is still considered illegal because the hacker did not receive permission from the owner prior to attempting to attack the system.

Although the word hacker tends to evoke negative connotations when referred to, it is important to remember that all hackers are not created equal. If we didn’t have white hat hackers diligently seeking out threats and vulnerabilities before the black hats can find them, then there would probably be a lot more activity involving cybercriminals exploiting vulnerabilities and collecting sensitive data than there is now.

 

The above information came from https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/norton-protection-blog/what-difference-between-black-white-and-grey-hat-hackers

SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O Review

I was in the market for a new storage server motherboard and spent a good amount of time researching the perfect board to suite my needs. I had a few things the board had to have feature wise:

At least 12 sata ports minimum (Yes I have that many hdds)

built in hba compatible with Freenas platform

IPMI

dual gig interfaces

Let me tell you there isn’t that many one socket motherboards out there that have a hba built in and 12 sata ports that don’t cost a small fortune.  After many upon many hours of searching i came up with this board. I can honestly say this is a very strong board for vm server,storage server platform, or even pfsense. I originally had planned to use this for freenas which I did for awhile, but the board I received was flaky and ended up being sent off for rma ( back luck of draw) . I love this board and would purchase it again in a heart beat. At this point I have this board in my pfense box paired with a pentium g cpu for low power and very effecient . Anyone looking for a server build with lots of sata ports should deffinately take a long look at this motherboard for their next purchase.

Lets go over pros and cons 

 

cons:

this is a spendy motherboad at times

one socket cpu capable

lga 1150 so older socket

max 32gig ddr3 ecc capacity

only 4 ram slots

no 10gbe support built in

 

pros

ipmi

dual gig interfaces

built in hba

lots of sata connections

ecc  ram

See specs below

Supported CPU

CPU Socket Type

LGA 1150

CPU Type

Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3 / v4 and 4th Gen Core i3, Pentium, Celeron processors

Chipsets

North Bridge

Intel C222

Memory

Number of DDR3 Slots

4 x 240pin

DDR3 Standard

DDR3 1600

Maximum Memory Supported

32GB

ECC Supported

Yes

Expansion Slots

Other Slots

1 x PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16) slot
1 x PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8) slot

Storage Devices

SATA

4 x SATA 3.0Gb/s + 2 x SATA 6.0Gb/s

SATA RAID

SATA3 (6 Gbps) w/ RAID 0, 1
SATA2 (3 Gbps) w/ RAID 0, 1, 5, 10

SAS

8 x SAS2 (6 Gbps) ports via LSI 2308

SAS RAID

SW RAID 0, 1, 1E, 10 support

Onboard Video

Onboard Video Chipset

Aspeed AST2400

Onboard LAN

LAN Chipset

Intel I210-AT

LAN Speed

10/100/1000Mbps

Max LAN Speed

Dual 10/100/1000Mbps

Rear Panel Ports

COM

1

Video Ports

D-Sub

USB 1.1/2.0

4 x USB 2.0

Features

Features

Single socket H3 (LGA 1150) supports Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3 / v4, 4th gen. Core i3, Pentium, Celeron processors

Intel C222 Express PCH

Up to 32GB DDR3 ECC 1600 MHz UDIMMs in 4 sockets

Dual Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports via Intel i210AT

2 x SATA (6 Gbps), 4 x SATA (3 Gbps)

8 x SAS2 (6 Gbps) via LSI 2308

Expansion slots: 1 x PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16), 1 x PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8)

2 x USB 3.0 (1 Type-A + 1 via header), 6 x USB 2.0 (4 rear + 2 via header)

Integrated IPMI 2.0 with KVM and Dedicated LAN

SATA DOM power connector support

VGA D-sub connector, TPM header

Common Guidelines to use in order to protect against identify theft and common scams

 

 

Another topic I wanted to bring to attention with all the scams and identify theft that happens daily. I put together some information from a few places I pulled from in order to bring to attention scams to avoid and information you can use to keep your information and identity safe.

 

I take no credit for following information found on https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0272-how-keep-your-personal-information-secure

 

Most common scams found from http://www.kcentv.com/news/local/five-scams-to-be-aware-of-in-2017/381345747

1. IRS SCAMS

Phony IRS calls have declined slightly since September, but the BBB anticipates calls will increase again in January, ahead of tax season. Frequently, con artists will pose as IRS employees and threaten victims with prosecution if they fail to wire money.

2. DEBT COLLECTION SCAMS

Debt collection scams remained a mainstay among scammers in 2016, and experts believe they will continue during the new year. Like IRS scammers, fake debt collectors call consumers and demand payment, often in a threatening manner.

3. LOTTERY, SWEEPSTAKES AND GIFT SCAMS

Despite increased awareness, thousands of victims continue to fall for lottery and sweepstakes scams each year. Often, scammers will tell victims they won money and ask them to wire the taxes in return.

4. EMPLOYMENT SCAMS

Despite improving employment rates in 2016, employment scams still made the top five list because many consumers remain underemployed and are seeking part-time jobs. Scammers prey on that economic hardship, offering victims work as secret shoppers or promoters who agree to wrap their vehicles with advertising logos for a third party. In the case of the vehicle wrap technique, the con artists often send fake checks for $1000 and demand $300 back to pay for the wrapping. Soon after, the check will bounce and the victim will have lost $300 to the scammer.

5. ONLINE PURCHASE SCAMS

Rounding out the top five list, scammers frequently sell fake merchandise online and pocket the money. If you are buying something online, make sure to use reputable websites and always look for the “https” at the start of the web address in your browser.

 

Better Business Bureau Regional Director Adam Price said these scams only continue because they are working. In fact, the BBB estimates nearly one in five people lose money to a scam each year with annual losses of approximately $50 billion.

Major news events like severe weather or the upcoming presidental inauguration are prime scam opportunities for con artists.

“Any current event, whether it’s a natural disaster or a current political event, is an opportunity for con men and scam artists to strike when the iron is hot. So, if there’s something that’s in the news, you can bet that there’s somebody behind a computer screen trying to take advantage of you,” Price said.

The Better Business Bureau did a study in 2016, which found millenials were even more likely than senior citizens to be conned because they grew up with the technology scammers are most frequently using these days.

 

Another good place to check often 

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/scam-alerts

 

 

Keeping Your Personal Information Secure Offline

Lock your financial documents and records in a safe place at home, and lock your wallet or purse in a safe place at work. Keep your information secure from roommates or workers who come into your home.

Limit what you carry. When you go out, take only the identification, credit, and debit cards you need. Leave your Social Security card at home. Make a copy of your Medicare card and black out all but the last four digits on the copy. Carry the copy with you  — unless you are going to use your card at the doctor’s office.

Before you share information at your workplace, a business, your child’s school, or a doctor’s office, ask why they need it, how they will safeguard it, and the consequences of not sharing.

Shred receipts, credit offers, credit applications, insurance forms, physician statements, checks, bank statements, expired charge cards, and similar documents when you don’t need them any longer.

Destroy the labels on prescription bottles before you throw them out. Don’t share your health plan information with anyone who offers free health services or products.

Take outgoing mail to post office collection boxes or the post office. Promptly remove mail that arrives in your mailbox. If you won’t be home for several days, request a vacation hold on your mail.

When you order new checks, don’t have them mailed to your home, unless you have a secure mailbox with a lock.

Consider opting out of prescreened offers of credit and insurance by mail. You can opt out for 5 years or permanently. To opt out, call 1-888-567-8688 or go to optoutprescreen.com. The 3 nationwide credit reporting companies operate the phone number and website. Prescreened offers can provide many benefits. If you opt out, you may miss out on some offers of credit.

Keeping Your Personal Information Secure Online

Know who you share your information with. Store and dispose of your personal information securely.

Be Alert to Impersonators

Make sure you know who is getting your personal or financial information. Don’t give out personal information on the phone, through the mail or over the Internet unless you’ve initiated the contact or know who you’re dealing with. If a company that claims to have an account with you sends email asking for personal information, don’t click on links in the email. Instead, type the company name into your web browser, go to their site, and contact them through customer service. Or, call the customer service number listed on your account statement. Ask whether the company really sent a request.

Safely Dispose of Personal Information

Before you dispose of a computer, get rid of all the personal information it stores. Use a wipe utility program to overwrite the entire hard drive.

Before you dispose of a mobile device, check your owner’s manual, the service provider’s website, or the device manufacturer’s website for information on how to delete information permanently, and how to save or transfer information to a new device. Remove the memory or subscriber identity module (SIM) card from a mobile device. Remove the phone book, lists of calls made and received, voicemails, messages sent and received, organizer folders, web search history, and photos.

Encrypt Your Data

Keep your browser secure. To guard your online transactions, use encryption software that scrambles information you send over the internet. A “lock” icon on the status bar of your internet browser means your information will be safe when it’s transmitted. Look for the lock before you send personal or financial information online.

Keep Passwords Private

Use strong passwords with your laptop, credit, bank, and other accounts. Be creative: think of a special phrase and use the first letter of each word as your password. Substitute numbers for some words or letters. For example, “I want to see the Pacific Ocean” could become 1W2CtPo.

Don’t Overshare on Social Networking Sites

If you post too much information about yourself, an identity thief can find information about your life, use it to answer ‘challenge’ questions on your accounts, and get access to your money and personal information. Consider limiting access to your networking page to a small group of people. Never post your full name, Social Security number, address, phone number, or account numbers in publicly accessible sites.

Securing Your Social Security Number

Keep a close hold on your Social Security number and ask questions before deciding to share it. Ask if you can use a different kind of identification. If someone asks you to share your SSN or your child’s, ask:

• why they need it
• how it will be used
• how they will protect it
• what happens if you don’t share the number

The decision to share is yours. A business may not provide you with a service or benefit if you don’t provide your number. Sometimes you will have to share your number. Your employer and financial institutions need your SSN for wage and tax reporting purposes. A business may ask for your SSN so they can check your credit when you apply for a loan, rent an apartment, or sign up for utility service.

Keeping Your Devices Secure

Use Security Software

Install anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, and a firewall. Set your preference to update these protections often. Protect against intrusions and infections that can compromise your computer files or passwords by installing security patches for your operating system and other software programs.

Avoid Phishing Emails

Don’t open files, click on links, or download programs sent by strangers. Opening a file from someone you don’t know could expose your system to a computer virus or spyware that captures your passwords or other information you type.

Be Wise About Wi-Fi

Before you send personal information over your laptop or smartphone on a public wireless network in a coffee shop, library, airport, hotel, or other public place, see if your information will be protected. If you use an encrypted website, it protects only the information you send to and from that site. If you use a secure wireless network, all the information you send on that network is protected.

Lock Up Your Laptop

Keep financial information on your laptop only when necessary. Don’t use an automatic login feature that saves your user name and password, and always log off when you’re finished. That way, if your laptop is stolen, it will be harder for a thief to get at your personal information.

Read Privacy Policies

Yes, they can be long and complex, but they tell you how the site maintains accuracy, access, security, and control of the personal information it collects; how it uses the information, and whether it provides information to third parties. If you don’t see or understand a site’s privacy policy, consider doing business elsewhere.

Password Security Guidelines and Common Mistakes

Lets face it in today’s world everyone needs to get more secure passwords because human nature we are lazy and pretty much break every known guide on bad passwords cause of laziness and not wanting to remember a complicated password.

 

THE TOP 25 MOST COMMON PASSWORDS OF 2016:

1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. 12345678
5. 111111
6. 1234567890
7. 1234567
8. password
9. 123123
10. 987654321
11. qwertyuiop
12. mynoob
13. 123321
14. 666666
15. 18atcskd2w
16. 7777777
17. 1q2w3e4r
18. 654321
19. 555555
20. 3rjs1la7qe
21. google
22. 1q2w3e4r5t
23. 123qwe
24. zxcvbnm
25. 1q2w3e

1. Don’t make assumptions

Assuming that everyone in your company is already using passwords that meet security requirements is a big mistake. As TechCrunch reported in its list of the worst passwords of 2014, users are still relying on “123456” and “password.” As an IT security professional, it’s up to you to set and enforce the use of secure passwords across your organisation. Start with the basics and work from there.

2. Be unique

Above all, make sure users haven’t created the same password for use at multiple web sites. A recent survey by mobile identity firm TeleSign of more than 2,000 UK consumers found that 62 per cent put their credentials at risk by reusing their passwords across multiple online accounts. Hackers are counting on this bad user behaviour, so they can crack one password and help themselves to multiple accounts.

3. Go long

Passwords should be in excess of 14 characters so they can withstand password-hacking tools. They should also be a mix of words, numbers, symbols, and both upper- and lower-case letters. Encourage users to avoid passwords based on personal details such as birth dates, addresses or phone numbers, or names of family members. If employees have trouble trying to remember long passwords passphrases may be a better option. Passphrase use a full sentence, including spaces, punctuation characters, and some capitalisation. Since it’s a natural sentence, it will be easy to remember but tougher to crack.

4. Get an assist

The challenge with issuing and enforcing a corporate password security policy is that now, your team must manage all of these different and complex credentials, and supply passwords to staff when they forget them. Using a password manager simplifies the process and can help ensure compliance by generating random, 14-character passwords and managing them automatically.

5.  Activate two-factor authentication (2FA)

Asking any third-party vendors you work with, such as cloud providers, to activate 2FA helps to mitigate the damage of a stolen password. One of the most popular methods of 2FA that is easily implemented is the use of SMS authentication codes. They offer an easy second token that almost anyone with a mobile phone number can use.

It’s hard to predict what the future of user credentials will be. The FIDO Alliance has published a new set of standards for software and hardware makers to help tighten password and identity security, including provisions for biometrics, 2FA and even facial recognition. But getting consumers to buy into these methods is going to take time, and it’s doubtful that biometrics will eliminate cyber attacks entirely, as they present their own risks. For now, the best we can do as IT security pros is to reduce bad user behavior, stay vigilant, and swap out those passwords regularly.

Corey Nachreiner is Global Head of Security Strategy & Research at WatchGuard Technologies.Corey has operated at the frontline of cybersecurity for 16 years. Primary author for WatchGuard’s Security Centre blog, he has written thousands of security alerts, is a prolific speaker, frequently conducts educational webinars and his video feeds have accumulated hundreds of thousands of views.

 

(Common password mistakes often made)

1. Easy to Locate

If your passwords are written on Post-It notes, hidden under your keyboard, typed on your smartphone or tablet, tucked in your Day-Timer…then you are not the only one who can easily find them there. If you absolutely have to, record them in a secure location or use a password manager program. The best option are passwords that are memorable and unique enough that you don’t have to write them down.

2. Too Common

Your password consists of common phrases, obvious patterns, “real” words or combinations of words. Hackers frequently use attack dictionaries of English and foreign languages that look for whole words or words pieced together. It is no longer safe to try odd combinations like paperbagel or purpletiger.

3. Based on Personal Data

Does your password use information that can easily be obtained about you? Avoid the name of your spouse, pet, kids; don’t use birth dates, phone numbers, addresses and so on. I once worked with a woman who simply switched between the names of her grandsons whenever she needed to change her password; easy to remember for her…and for most people she worked with.

4. Based On a Personal Name or Login

Avoid passwords that are a form of a network login ID in any form (reversed, capitalized, or doubled). Don’t use a first, middle, or last name, your initials or anyone’s nickname.

5. Simple to Guess

Although they may not consist of personal information, many other passwords are easy for automated programs or even other people to decipher. Some people have passwords based on common items or brands on their desk or choose a password around a dream car or favorite vacation. Do pick a password that can be typed quickly without having to look at the keyboard. This makes it harder for someone to steal your password by looking at your keyboard.

6. Letters Only

More secure passwords consist of combinations of numbers, special characters or punctuation marks as well as a mix of upper and lower case letters throughout the password.

7. Short in Length

The shorter a password, the more opportunities for observing, guessing, and cracking it. A strong password is at least 8 characters long. Some organizations now enforce a minimum length and variety of characters to help strength the company passwords.

8. Too Old

You’ve used the same password for years. Usually it will take a hacker a very long time to crack a long, complex password. If you change your password every 90 days or as required by your computer network, then the chances of your password being cracked are even more diminished.

9. Always the Same

You have 1 bad password and use it everywhere. Instead have several different ones in place so all of your accounts, logins, and computers are not at risk if your password is discovered or cracked.

10. You Can’t Keep Secrets

How many other people know your password? Even if you shared your password for a good reason, your computer access is no longer secure. Change your password and keep it a secret from everyone!

 

If you want to know how good, or bad your password is try link below to see how long it would take to break

https://password.kaspersky.com/

My plunge into Freenas

First of all let me start with some advice I wish I would have known  before I started. Never start a storage server product without the right amount of drives equal to the space and redundancy needed for you. Please see  https://www.servethehome.com/raid-calculator/ to determine what works best for you.

Next lets take a look at some information Iam borrowing from http://www.zfsbuild.com/2010/05/26/zfs-raid-levels/ regarding what each raid level does. I take no credit for this part of the information please see above link.

RAIDZ (RAID5)   

I would not use this (personally) myself because one drive redundancy is not a good idea. If a drive dies it puts a lot more strain  on the rest of array during rebuild and chances are higher another drive can die. If that were to happen all data in that pool would be lost
RAIDZ is very popular among many users because it gives you the best tradeoff of hardware failure protection vs useable storage. It is very similar to RAID5, but without the write-hole penalty that RAID5 encounters. The drawback is that when reading the checksum data, you are limited to basically the speed of one drive since the checksum data is spread across all drives in the zvol. This causes slowdowns when doing random reads of small chunks of data. It is very popular for storage archives where the data is written once and accessed infrequently.  How To Create RAIDZ Zpool

RAIDZ2 (RAID6)   

This is the most commonly used  level among most freenas user and the most suggested use drive. Keep in mind you loose to drives worth of space when making your decision. 
RAIDZ2 is like RAID6. You get double parity to tolerate multiple disk failures. The performance is very similar to RAIDZ.  How To Create RAIDZ2 Zpool

RAIDZ3
This is like RAIDZ and RAIDZ2, but with a third parity point. This allows you to tolerate 3 disk failures before losing data. Again, performance is very similar to RAIDZ and RAIDZ2.

 

Now that is out of the way. We can go over a few more things. For the love of all things holy please use a recommended  raid/hhba  card on the supported list.  I would take a good look at https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

Please keep in mind the guide is somewhat dated, but should get point across. There is a very large argument in the freenas community about ECC ram and that is highly recommended with how zfs works. I don’t personally used it myself, but knowing this I have a fully backed up 1 to 1 mirror of all my data. I am going to skip this part for better part of not starting another war.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use good working hard drives and h ave the amount needed BEFORE jumping in. a BIG thing to keep in mind once you start and build a vdev you CANT CHANGE OR ADD to that pool. You can however create a brand new vdev keeping like drives recommended. See guides for more details on that.

I have been using freenas for better part of a year now. I think its a very rock solid storage platform. There is always pros and  cons to each  solution out there. This mights my needs perfectly and there is a good amount of plugins as well. Another thing I like is zfs which is a rock solid platform. Zfs will recognize signs of hard drives failing long before nfts will due to how it interacts and checks the health of hard drives. I am very happy moving away from windows and nfts for my main storage needs. I hope this helps you out if you are in the market for nas units, or looking to build your own. If you have anymore questions feel free to use my contact me page .

Lab updates and my entry into R/Homelab

Top computer PFSENSE

newest build

pentium g 3460 16gig ddr3 ECC 500gb sata hard drive

Rackmountable manged pdu 8 port

24port business class switch

just added lenovo laptop (failover AD/DHCP/DNS Bottom

 

Left Dell T5500

dual xeon x5687 72gig ram Ddr3 ECC 3 512gb ssds in zfs zfs1

Use: ESXI 6.0 U2 hypervisor

use: AD/DHCP/DNS Plex Download Vm Playon Vm TS Jump Box another 10 vms i spin up and down as needed

 

Middle Computer

Case: HAF 932 Advanced with two icy dock modules

i 7 4790 32gig ddr3 120gb ssd windows 10

Use: Secondary Plex server/flexraid backup storage array /HTPC

 

Right Freenas storage server

Fractal Design R5

I7 4770k

1 6gb DDR3

16gb usb

4tb x 6 ZFS2 (MEDIA)

4tb x 6 ZFS2 (storage,photos,backup, and misc)

 

Its official I have reached R/datahoarder level

Well I have had nas/file servers for many years now and I have finally found the perfect combination of redunancy and storage capacity. At this point most would say this is probally overkill , but hey go big or go home right.

 

Main storage server is my freenas box with is

Freenas 9.10.U2

Core I7 4770k

16GB ddr3

16gig usb stick for OS

4tb x 6 zfs2 all western digital Reds  (media )

4tb x 6 zfs2  all Western Digital Reds (games,photos,backups,misc)

zfs2= I can have  up to two hard drives fail and resilver without losing any data. If i loose third one then I loose entire pool

 

 

 

My secondary Server is a dual purpose system.. It is built  around windows 10 . I currently use as my HTPC, backup raid, and secondary plex server. I am using whats called Flexraid which is software over windows. This is nice software cause you can have as many hard drives as you want in the pool. There is a few rules  such as  biggest drive has to be the parity drive and there is a cost in licensing. Please see http://www.flexraid.com/ for more information regarding this product.

This system specs

I7 4790

32gig ddr3

250gig ssd for os and plex caching of meta data

I have a mix of 4tb and 5tb drives in this pool. Please see photos for setup