Uncategorized – StorageHacker

New Job

storagehacker — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:27:05 +0000

After two years of working for Enventis as a consultant focusing on Data Center technologies (primarily EMC VNX and Cisco UCS) am moving back into a role that is more fulfilling. Starting on February 25th I will begin working at QLogic. My title is Associate Principal Enterprise Applications Architect, which really means that I will get to work on how QLogic’s products work with Virtualization technologies and how they can benefit those environments. In the last 8 years I have been trying to remain focused on Virtualization technologies, but have somehow landed in the Storage world one way or another. I love storage the challenge that it presents but my true passion is the virtualization. While almost every Storage manufacturer uses some type of virtualization in their products to allow for advanced functionality, it is not the same as virtualizing and Operating System or Application.

The challenge at QLogic will be with how their infrastructure components (HBAs, CNAs and switches) can have a positive impact on performance and functionality with any storage product that utilizes their products. This one challenge I am really looking for to as I love a good puzzle/problem to tackle.

How to create a customized OpenVPN Client Installation for Windows

storagehacker — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:06:38 +0000

While on a recent trip I decided that should finally setup the VPN on my Endian Community Firewall. Using a forum article from endian firewall unofficial support forum I was able to get a VPN connection up and running fairly easy.

However, I started thinking about how to distribute the OpenVPN client software with the necessary .OPVN configuration file and the Certificate from the firewall. While I found a large number of articles, most required the administrator to compile the OpenVPN client from source or involved a two different binary installations (one for the client and one for the config/certificate files). I stumbled across an article that creates a OpenVPN installer wrapper which will let you download the OpenVPN installation files on-the-fly, validate them by a simple MD5 and install a pre-configured configuration ZIP file in the proper place automatically. I was able to create the wrapper as explained in the article, but it was limited to a single client type (32-bit or 64-bit). I was able to tweak the provided NSI file to properly work with the 64-bit clients by updating the $PROGRAMFILES variable to $PROGRAMFILES64. However, I wanted to create a single wrapper that would based on architecture (removing the human element to decide if the platform was 32-bit or 64-bit) choose the correct client to install.

After a couple of hours of tinkering and reading through the NSIS documentation, I have been able to create a single wrapper that will detect the architecture of the system that the client is being installed on and correctly download and install the proper prebuilt client. Using the same instructions from the Secure Computing Networks article and using this OpenVPN-InstCfgWiz.nsi file it is possible to create a single OpenVPN-InstCfgWiz.exe file that is both 32-bit and 64-bit compatible using the prebuilt OpenVPN Client binaries.

I do recommend that the website that the wrapper and client files are uploaded to be SSL capable this will allow for future enhancements to the script to allow the ZIP files to be published and downloaded from the same site.

The required first post

storagehacker — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:18:04 +0000

Every blog must have must start somewhere with the required first post. Here at Storagehacker.com it was decided that this first post should give a little background on the focus of this blog. Storagehacker.com will focus on the topics of storage products with a focus on uses in Server and Desktop Virtualization. While I work for Xiotech Corporation, the goal is to cover not only Xiotech products but trends, general practices and interesting facts around the uses of storage.

While this is new territory for me, it is my hope that I will be able provide useful information for uses of storage. As I have other interests beyond storage and virtualization, there will from time to time be items that outside of the normal posts.

Thanks for stopping by and please return from time to time.

– Storagehacker