Prism Results So Far

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Tom

So I had a number of adventures getting there, but I moved from DirecTV + DSL to Centurylink Prism.   I wanted to document some of my experiences with it.

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Cisco 5000 vs 5500 FCoE Gotcha

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Tom

Let’s say you work in a lab environment and have been setting up FCoE on Cisco 5010s and 5020s for years. You get a new shiny 5548 and since they run the same level of Cisco iOS you just copy the running config from your 5020 to your 5548.

You fire it up, hook up your FCoE card, aaaaand….

Nothin.

show flogi Database shows the adapter is logged in

show fcns database shows the adapter, but it’s missing the FC4 Type.

So, to save you from beating your head against the wall for a few hours trying to figure out ‘what’s different’ I’m just going to link you to this right here.

In a nutshell, in the 5548 The FCoE class-fcoe system class is not enabled in the QoS configuration by default anymore, and needs to be configured. The above link takes you to an example config that when I pasted it into my 5548 my problems with the IBM Virtual Fabric Adapter 2 connecting to it vanished.

Now maybe this is obvious and everyone knows this, but I spent a week telling the people responsible for this switch that it was a configuration issue with their switch and they spent a week telling me my FCoE card is broken. In the end I turned out correct, and we found the missing setting. This was after I was told that several ‘switch experts’ reviewed the configuration and it was correct (HINT: It Wasn’t) so I wanted to document this because it took us several hours of google hints and trial and error trying to identify what was different between the 50xx switches and the 5548 we had.

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Getting Lucky Part Deux

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Tom

So this happened.  And now, February 25th, 2012 is the due date for Quinn Rose Boucher.   Guess we got our four kids after all.

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Centurylink Lurkers, Help me Find this Guy

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Tom

I was supposed to get Prism installed today.   There was a problem upstream from my house and that isn’t my problem.

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Google+

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Tom

So I got invited to Google+ and have set up an initial account.  I will admit to not being all that excited about the concept as I have been one of the few people it seems that worries about Google’s want to index everything about me and then throw ads at me.   So far, they have a lot to go.   Other than having a ‘Wall’ equivalent and following/friending equivalent there isn’t much there.

No applications, no way to integrated other social media outlets into it.

The web interface is great though.  However they gimp it if you view from iPad.  I can view stuff, I just couldn’t figure out how to add more people or anything of that nature.

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Grey Skies Are Gonna CLEAR up.

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Tom

It’s been quite some time since I mentioned anything about my experience with CLEAR.   I’ve had them now almost a year since I originally signed up and thought I’d provide some information for random google searches out there on my experience the first year.

 

 

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How to properly configure a BNT (Now IBM) Switch for a VMware VST environment when using the Emulex Virftual Fabric family of adapters in pNIC (two port) mode.

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Tom

I would like to provide some technical details for a configuration error I ran into this week. A Customer was setting up a proof of concept using vSphere 4.0 U1 and attempting to use VMware’s Virtual Switch Tagging (VST) in their environment.

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Time for a Reset

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Tom

I’ve moved some things around and updated my hosting, and I plan on trying to use this a bit more in the future.

I’m going to start blogging a bit more about what I do for a living on my own here, comment on industry trends, that kind of stuff.

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Starting Off on the CLEARly Wrong Foot

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Tom

Well, as the game Gauntlet would say ‘That was a valiant effort’.

Hoping to get some shipment information I tried to access my Clear account information I was told I would be getting sometime soon.   Today it finally let me log in and see how things were going.   They’re not going well.

First off, when I completed my transaction it told me that I would be getting a charge of of $59.76 for the first two months, and then $80 something and change after that.   The first charge to my account was a whopping $107.72.  A huge discrepancy.   That’s *after* the ‘discounts’ were applied for free activation.  The $80.98 I was told my internet would cost is now $129.71.   Another huge problem.   $80 for mobile/home internet was a bit steep to begin with but tack on another $49.71 and I have a big problem.

Of course, you can’t talk to a person on a phone.  You have to fill out a form.   There is a forum customers have access too that is full of nothing but complaints about it not working, being hard to cancel, and all sorts of junk.   Not getting the warm fuzzies now.

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How Not To Make a Mobile Gaming Platform

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Tom

Back around Christmas time my kids decided that since we had a Playstation 3 that I needed a PSP Go.  At first, it looks pretty slick.   But after six months of owning it, along with a lot of time it has spent sitting gathering dust the last few months, I’ve got a lot of thoughts about how much of a fail the platform is.

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