Known Element Enterprises Corporate Blog

I am currently downloading the OpenNMS vmware image. I will be looking at that and OSSIM over the next few days. I like the fact that both of those projects provide Vmware images. These are two enterprise class systems that use trapping/SNMP. I am also continuing to evaluate Zabbix. I believe that I will use Zabbix for the immediate future while I am setting up OpenNMS and OSSIM.

I am off to bed for an hour and then I have some DLR work to do tonight.

Will write more about my monitoring tool evaluation tomorrow.

So I was doing some searches for jffnms vmware images and lo and behold my blog post from today was the first result! Wild huh?

So some of you may be wondering why I suddenly decided to start focusing on clustering and by extension shoring up of my infrastructure. Well the way I see it, is that by setting up the clusters I will learn a lot about Xen/Networking/Security etc. The lessons learned there will apply to the other items on my TODO list. Plus the various infrastructure items are a good idea anyway and will allow me to have a solid base to perform the various items on my TOOD list plus whatever else comes along

For example building out the SoCal Lug Cloud (item 4 of my TODO list). Having a better understanding of Xen/Vmware as well as networking and security will allow me to provide an excellent service (a vmware xen dom0 image that auto joins a high availability/high performance cloud).

Now some of the items on my TODO list (such as the phone net access and the remote control configuration) probably won’t benefit from the cluster research However I will have a more stable base to work from which is always a plus for any project.

So the first task on my infrastructure TODO list is deploying a monitoring solution. I am currently evaluating several of them:

• Groundworks Open Source (http://www.groundworkopensource.com/downloads/full_download.html) Naturally I am using the provided vmware image/appliance (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=160654&package_id=222764) It is quite nice and has a large feature set out of the box. It is a nice mix of a number of open source tools (rrdtool/fruity/nagios etc). However the interface is a bit funky and hard to use. It looks pretty but can be quite confusing.
• Zabbix (http://zabbix.com/) I really like Zabbix. Its got a great GUI and is easy to setup both the server and the client. I have setup all of my physical machines and several of my virtual ones. I have a couple minor issues here and there but nothing I shouldn’t be able to sort out. I am currently running the stable version but am thinking about deploying the beta version to see whats new.

Here is what I am going to be deploying and evaluating this week (and probably next)

• There is a convincing argument made by the author of OSSIM (http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1553/) that security and host availability etc should be integrated into one system. The OSSIM (http://www.ossim.net/) project seems to do a very good job of that.
• I have looked at Just For Fun Network Management System (JFFNMS http://www.jffnms.org/) a few times. It shows a lot of promise and potential.

So there are really two types of systems out there. Polling (used by zabbix/nagios) and trapping/SNMP (used by JFNNMS/OSSIM/OpenNMS etc). I am not sure if I want to take the time and effort to learn all about trapping and SNMP right now I am used to polling systems and have worked with a number of them (OpenView/Sitescope/Nagios/Zabbix).

Decisions decisions

By the way I should mention that the items I am doing to improve the physical infrastructure aren’t just for clustering. It will allow me to provide a solid base for all of my computing activities.

So I have made some more progress towards setting up clusters at home. I have installed RHEL5 (Centos5) on both my vmware/file server and my media server. I was having trouble with networking under the virtual machine and found the solution at http://bugs.centos.org/print_bug_page.php?bug_id=1813

I did a chmod 666 /dev/vmnet0 and am off to the races. So I will be looking into clusters this week.

When users of your product (in this case the blackberry) use it to check email even when sitting at a computer.

I did just that this morning and I have seen others do it.

By the way this post is being written on a blackberry using the built in web browser.

Been a while since I have blogged.

I just purchased a 500GB hard drive and a UPS. Both of these have been added to the media server.

Heading out to disneyland now for the weekend.

Will be attempting to use a new USB wifi device for war driving.

I made some progress over the weekend toward various items on my TODO list.

1) Sync Server. I have installed the admin tool on my laptop and attempted to connect to the sync server. However I received some Java logging errors and haven’t had a chance to figure out what they mean.

2) VPN. I have installed OpenVPN on my public VmWare host and was able to setup a point to point VPN (from my laptop to the server). I followed this howto. I am now in the process of setting up access to the entire network via the VPN. I will be most likely using this guide.

3) Honeynet. I have checked out the know your enemy book as well as the Intrusion Detection With Snort book.

I have installed the sync4j server and setup Apache and mod_proxy to access it. So I now have a public/dmz host running apache and an internal/private system running mysql/sync4j/tomcat. It was trivial to setup. I just followed
this howto and this one and was off to the races. So now I need to install the client on my blackberry and do the first sync and then I should be all set.

I have just received word that Google bought double click. I am looking forward to the class action and antitrust lawsuits that should follow. 

I will certainly join Microsoft and AT&T in the fight. An advertising monopoly of this scale and magnitude is incredibly dangerous and needs to be brought into control.  

FTC and DOJ are you listening?