CCNA – CCENT Study Experience

Posted on by Adam Fowler

I thought I’d share with you my experience with taking the first steps to be Cisco certified. I didn’t really know what to expect when I started, but hopefully for anyone else considering doing their CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) or CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician).

This is part 1 of 2, as I’ve only gone so far as doing CCENT. It’s half way to becoming a qualified CCNA, and a lot of good fundementals in general networking. To explain further, the first half of the CCNA course is called CCENT 1 (which is just CCENT) and the second half is CCENT 2. You can either do a seperate exam for CCENT 1 & 2, or just a full CCNA exam which contains questions from both courses.

At this point, I’ll quickly mention that if you’ve done your CCNA pre 2007, the course changed and became a LOT harder. So if you see someone’s resume listing CCNA, find out when they did it. Also, Cisco certs are only valid for 3 years unless you do another exam!

So what did I do? I started by getting my employer to pay for me to do a week at DDLS (Dimension Data Learning Services) to study in a classroom environment. I really enjoyed this. The general topics covered were:

  • What is a Network?
  • OSI 7 layer model
  • TCP/UDP basics
  • Ethernet – LANs, Switches, Hubs, Routers
  • Wireless basics
  • Subnetting and Binary
  • Cisco basic router configuration
  • DHCP router configuration
  • Static and dynamic routing
  • WAN basics, including NAT
  • Management and security of Cisco routers

This is actually a lot to take in for a week. You might look at this list and go ‘yeah I know all that stuff it’s easy!’ But this course really gets down to the whys and hows, not just ‘Do X and Y happens’. You start to understand what’s really involved when you do anything on a network – what data gets put into a packet, how the packet gets from A to B, what changes and stays the same… many people have a general grasp to get by, but you’ll get a proper understanding of how data goes down through the 7 OSI layers and back up again at the other end. What’s the OSI model? Have a quick read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

Anyway, I got through the week and was keenly learning the whole time. I thought I pretty much knew it all, and was ready to go sit the exam. A few things happened, and it ended up being 2 months before I sat it. A few days before I flicked through the books provided to refresh myself, and confidently went in to take the exam.

Now, there’s a few things about the exam you should know. Firstly, it’s 1 1/2 hours long – and you’ll pretty much need all that time even if you know what you’re doing. Secondly, there’s labs in the exam – so it’s not just multiple choice, but you have to log onto routers and switches, run commands, work out what the answers are and pick the correct choice. Thirdly, you can’t go back once you OK a question. This means time management is really important, as you can’t just fly through once then go through again to re-think your difficult questions, or try and work out answers based on previous questions. You can’t even go back and look at what you answered previously.

Despite all this, I had been told subnetting was a really important part of the exam, and that’s what you should focus on so you can calculate it all in your head. I practised and managed to do this, so walked in confidently…and failed. I was also told, people can do these exams 2-4 times on average, so don’t expect to get it right first time.

I took another week to study, and failed again! I’d learnt everything I wasn’t sure in the exam, but the second time I took it none of those questions even came up, and there was a second bunch of questions I really wasn’t sure of! Even more annoyingly though, I failed by ~1 question.

Third time lucky? Yes. I passed, and was very relieved to get it behind me. I can tell you this is a very difficult exam, and you need to know a huge amount of stuff (both logically and just brain dumps of terminoligies and acronyms) to be able to pass. For example, DHCP – you don’t need to just understand what it’s for, but you may need to know what TCP commands are sent between the server and client, and what order they’re in. You’ll need to have a full understanding of the contents of a TCP packet, and what information changes in it depending where it is on the network. You’ll even need a full understanding of a Cisco switch and how it’s configuration might have security risks, and what you’d need to change, plus remember those commands off the top of your head. You’ll need to convert IP addresses like 192.168.1.44/29 into the network mask 255.255.255.248, and know that the network address is 192.168.1.40 with a broadcast address of 192.168.1.47 leaving you 6 available hosts (I hope that’s right as I worked it out as I went along :) ). What are the channels available on wireless, and which ones should you use and why? What are all the differences between 802.11a, b & g?

So the point I’m trying to make here is there’s a lot to know, but it’s all really good information to have. Once I did the course, I went back to work and really had a much better understanding of what was going on generally, instead of just knowing ‘if I put this here, it works’ I now know why.

You don’t need to go to a classroom though, there’s some great books available, as well as resources like CBT Nuggets which are training videos, very similar to a classroom setup.

I’d recommend this course to anyone who deals with networking, even on a fairly basic level. You’ll need to commit yourself to studying and knowing the contents of the course inside out, but you’ll come out the other end much more knowledgeable and confident of what’s happening on the networks you use.

iPad2 Review

Posted on by Adam Fowler

It’s an Apple product launch day, so fanboys and haters are all excited to see what’s come out of the pome factory (an apple is a type of pome, thanks wikipedia).

The iPad 2 by all accounts, is a whole 1 better than the iPad 1, even though the iPad 1 wasn’t actually called an iPad 1. What does this extra 1 mean?

It’s thinner, 33% smaller. Smaller is better!

It’s faster, 100% faster CPU. What that really means is it’s a dual core. It’s also 900% faster in the graphics department, which to me indicates the iPad 1 didn’t have very good graphics. I think part of this is that some high graphics quality games have started to come out in the App Store, and really a lot of people want an iPad as a casual gaming device.

It’s got cameras. Two! Just like your iPhone 4! The front is VGA, so facetime chats are the only thing it’s good for. The back camera will take 5 megapixel stills, and record video at 720p. At least that’s what I can make out, there’s so much misinformation on the web about the iPad 2. One site claimed it was only a 1 megapixel camera, but magical devices have higher resolution cameras than that.

It’s got a battery! You can’t swap over or get to it, and it’s got the same battery life as the iPad 1 – about 10 hours of use.

It’s got a screen! The exact same one as the iPad 1. A bit surprising there, so those of you spoilt with RETINA DISPLAY on your iPhone 4’s may complain about being able to see the pixels. Then again, you’re probably taking your iPad to bed with you and cuddling it as you fall asleep, with your fancy sleep rythm apps and sex positions to study… sorry I’m getting sidetracked here.

It has HDMI out*! *If you buy a US$40 adapter. At first this sounds amazing, but then why would you want to game with an iPad plugged into a TV? isn’t that what consoles are for? In a business environment, I could see someone plugging it in to a projector and displaying fancy pie charts showing how your company could improve profits by 2% if they changed over to single ply toilet paper.

And the big one…

You can get it in black OR white! No longer will whitey be opressed with vague promises of existance to the masses (because you know, Stephen Fry has a white iPhone 4), to be crushed time after time again. Of course you’re probably putting a case over it anyway, but it doesn’t matter what’s on the outside, it’s the inside that counts.

Summary:

It’s a bit better, but even moreso if you have an iPad one, no reason to upgrade unless you can poop money somehow. If so, feel free to use my toilet but don’t flush. Once some more powerful apps and games come out to use the extra power, then maybe you’ve got a good reason. I’m not sure why the normal person would take a picutre of anything using a giant pad, rather than say their mobile phone – but there’s always someone with a specific need.

Sources:

http://www.padgadget.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-specs-out-dual-core-a5-baby/

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ipad-ipad2-ipad-2,news-10329.html

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-to-feature-hdmi-output/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pome

Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) for Internet Explorer 8

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Today I thought it would be worth having a look at this utility!

For starters, here’s where you can download it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb219517

Why download it? What does it do?

The IEAK is used for settings in Internet Explorer 8, and can either be as part of the IE8 deployment, or after initial deployment. If you’re on Windows 7 then you’d really need to use it after since it’s built into the OS already. There are some painful ways to do a lot of this with importing registry keys etc, so this is a much neater and nicer way. There are 100’s of settings in Group Policy and Group Policy preferences for IE8, but IEAK is better for the newer features. Here’s what IEAK does (shamelessly stolen from Microsoft here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/cc889351.aspx).:

Accelerators. You can include custom defaults for Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8.
Web Slices. You can add Web Slices to your custom Internet Explorer 8 package.
First Run Wizard and Welcome Page options. You can configure the First Run Experience for Internet Explorer 8.
Compatibility View. You can choose if content is rendered in Internet Explorer 8 standards mode or Internet Explorer 7 mode.  NoteBy default all sites in the Intranet Zone are rendered in Internet Explorer 7 mode.
Search Enhancements. Internet Explorer 8 supports search providers which offer rich text and image suggestions. Through IEAK 8 you can add and configure these providers for your installer.

The main reason I am interested in this is for Accelerators. We don’t want to use Bing, and that’s probably a whole other blog as to why, but we feel Google search is superior. This will also be for Windows 7, so I’ll be looking at the Configuration-only package (after deployment of IE8).

Installing IEAK

Once you’ve downloaded the program, you’ll get the options of which license mode you want to use. The options are (stolen from here this time, Microsoft doco is really good for this! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff383944)

1.    External Distribution – ISPThis mode is available to Internet Service Providers, to help them create a customized browser for the users of their Internet Service.

2.    External Distribution – ICP (Content Provider or Developer)This mode is available to anyone who wants to create a customized browser for distribution outside their company (e.g., Web sites, ISVs, etc).

3.    Internal Distribution – Corporate IntranetThis mode is available to companies for the creation and distribution of a customized browser to their employees ONLY.

We’ll be choosing the last one of course.

You’ll then be prompted for an Organization (Americans!) Name, which is mandatory and used inside your packages.

The rest is basic – and there you go, it’s installed!

Using IEAK

Run the ‘Internet Explorer Customization Wizard 8 program’ , and it will ask you where you’d like to put your builds. You will then be prompted for what OS version you’re building this for. There’s no option for Windows 7, but you can choose the Windows Vista option for that.

Next, you’ll be asked for the Media Selection. As I’m only doing this after IE8 is installed, I’ll be choosing ‘Configuration-only package’.

The Feature Selection will then ask which features you want to configure. You can remove some if you don’t need them, but I’ve left them all ticked so I can check out all the options.

Next is a nice addition to the wizard – Automatic Version Synchronization. The setup will force you to make sure you have the latest install files for IE8 from the web. At the time of writing, it is only 12.7MB so you won’t have to wait long.

Continuing on, you’ll then get prompted for the User Experience. You can have the user pick lots of options, or just have them see the progress, or silent. I’ll pick silent as my users aren’t interested :) Also there are restart options – Prompt, No Restart or Force Restart. I’ll pick No restart because this will only be used for new machines, which will get rebooted before a user uses them. It’s not critical stuff, but also I can use SCCM to deploy and force a restart if I really wanted to.

Customize Title Bars is next, if you’d like your company name in the IE8 Title Bar. There’s also an option to adjust the amount of additional buttons that appear on the toolbar. Not touching that option…

Search Providers – the one I’ve been waiting for! You can manually specify the settings for your search provider, or go the easy option of just clicking ‘Import’ and it’ll pull whatever you have set up locally on IE8. I’ve got Google and Bing there already, so it’s imported them the way I want it.

Important URLs – Home Page and Support. This gives you the option of forcing IE to open up multiple tabs on execution – could work in some environments but not here. Passing on this one too.

Accelerators – same as Search Providers really, can import or add via XML file.

Favorites, Favorites Bar and Feeds – push out default favorites if you like. Probably not the method I’d use to do this, I’d rather have it in Group Policy Preferences.

…A bunch of other basic stuff continues from here – I didn’t configure any of it as it can all be done via GPP.

Once you’re done, it will crate the package and tell you where it is.

Deploying your settings

Now that you’ve packaged up the settings the way you like, there will be an exe and msi file in the directory specified earlier then under BrndOnly\AMD64_VISTA\EN called IE8-Setup-Branding.*

This is the file you’ll need to deploy (.msi is easy via Group Policy, run once) which you can manually run on a PC or three to test.

All done!

Conclusion

It’s a very straight forward, very customisable and easy to deploy method of pushing out your company’s IE settings. Microsoft have done well on this, so I highly recommend you give it a try.

Systems Center Service Manager (SCSM) – Initial Experiences

Posted on by Adam Fowler

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on Microsoft’s latest addition to the Systems Center suite, Systems Center Service Manager (Yes I’m spelling Center the American way, because it’s the product name :))

For those who haven’t been keeping up, here’s what products come under the suite so far: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/systemcenter/default.aspx

It ends up being a lot of initialisms and acronyms (learn the difference, SCOM is an acronym, SCSM is an initialism) that are all similar and confusing. So today, we are discussing SCSM.

SCSM http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/service-manager.aspx is Microsoft’s offering for a helpdesk which follows ITIL and MOS (acronyms ;) ). It will also integrate with SCCM for your assets and software, and SCOM for alerts and monitoring. It’s more of a framework than an out of the box working helpdesk system.

You want some docs? Here you go http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/04/25/where-s-the-docs.aspx

My environment is all virtual, running on Hyper-V. One server for the SQL backend (2008 minimum required) and two for SCSM, one for the Management Server and one for the Database Warehouse components.

Getting it installed and up and running isn’t too difficult, and if you’ve done something like SCCM before, it’s at that stage you stare at your lovely new console and wonder where to even start. I poured through guides, how to do this and that and started to get a few pieces working. It was very difficult getting any support on this, as Microsoft couldn’t find me anyone in Australia with any knowledge on it, nor could all the companies I could think of. I finally managed to track someone down, who gave me more of a run through of how it worked and what I needed to configure for it to be a working Helpdesk system.

Anyway, it’s very much a v1 product. It can do a lot, and is very customisable… but there’s also a lot it can’t do.

At the time of writing this post, officially the only way of getting emails into SCSM is via a maildrop and IIS, meaning you need to instal IIS6 on your shiny new 2008 R2 server. On top of this, if a technician sends out an email to someone about a job, the end user can’t reply and have the reply added to the job! The recommended way is to have a second mailbox set up, which your technicians use to monitor for replies and copy/paste the information over. I was very disappointed when I got to this step. A lot of searching around found a way to add some powershell 3rd party bits and pieces, and run a script – this was far from ideal though, I don’t want to go through headaches with each update due to using 3rd party scripts unsupported (although suggested) by Microsoft.

I was in luck though, I had sent a few tweets to Travis Wright http://blogs.technet.com/members/twright/ – the Senior Program Manager for SCSM. He’s the man when it comes to SCSM (and a nice guy!) and timing worked out that I could test an extra component (called a Management Pack in SCSM land) which would enable Exchange Mailbox integration, as well as allow jobs to append when replied to! A bit of mucking around and tweaking, finding a bug or two and we got it up and working. This was a huge step-up for SCSM as I was about to go live with it, because our previous software was about to expire and I was trying to avoid us paying several thousand dollars to renew for a while.

Anyway, that’s now up and running and we are live with SCSM. It’s been a decent shift from what we were using before – and there are a few bits and pieces that are missing but coming soon from Microsoft (such as the ability to just email someone with an update – Travis has shown me briefly what he’s got planned and looks like a perfect solution… so that might only be a few weeks away).

Conclusion:

SCSM is a v1 product. It does some things very well, but it’s also missing some features you may expect to be there in a v1 product. It’s highly flexible in that almost everything is customisable one way or another. You can add your own links and commands (launch vnc to connect to the affected computer of a job for example). It even has a nice portal you can get your users to log jobs and see how they’re going through.

If you were looking at a new helpdesk solution, it’s worth investigating – but unless your current software is a disaster, there’s no reason to jump ship. This product is already in use by several internal Microsoft departments, as well as other large companies (heavily customised I’m sure) so development will continue.

Keep an eye on this one if you’re a Microsoft house too because you should be able to save a lot of money by avoiding other costly Helpdesk solutions.

iPhone 4 Review

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Good %timeofday%,

I’ll start by voicing my opinions on what I expected: a 3GS with a ‘torch’ and a slightly nicer screen, and a waste of money for anyone with an existing 3GS. Was this the case? Read on!

My new iPhone 4 (again provided by my lovely workplace) arrived. Packed in a rather small box, I removed the clear plastic and eagerly slid off the lid. Why was I getting excited again? It’s hard to avoid all the hype, and even though this is not a device I would pay for (I’d love an Android!), I still do enjoy the iPhone experience.

The phone is, of course, boxier looking than previous models, but I must say I prefer it. It looks cleaner and neater – the volume buttons, being separate, are nicer to press too. Apart from that, there’s not much difference apart from needing a micro-sim. It’s a bit of an annoyance to have to swap sims over, but I’m sure that extra several millimetres of space saved is utilised somehow. *cough*

Anyway, as I was moving on from my 3GS – I used iTunes *shudder* to back it up. After activating the iPhone 4, the restore process worked first time. This was possibly my first good experience with iTunes, as any other function I try to do with it ends up being a complicated and confusing process. Surprisingly, my iPhone 4 is then up and running, looking exactly the same as my 3GS. I throw away the 3GS in disgust, looking towards the future in a non-pixelated world.

That is really the first thing I notice after having a look. The screen is a big improvement. “Retina Display”, as it’s been called by the Apple marketing department, makes everything (especially text) much nicer to read. It’s also easier to see the icons inside the folders on the main screen, which is handy when you’ve managed to reduce your 12 pages of apps down to one.

It’s at around this stage that I wonder what else is different. Poking around, I don’t see much. I then decide to head to the App store and do a search for iPhone 4 to see if there are any new apps designed for my shiny new phone. Immediately, I find 3 in 1, which includes the one feature I was looking forward to – using the flash as a torch! Oh how I missed using my old BlackBerry Bold 9000 as a torch! Finally, I’ll never be afraid of the dark again. I’m sure there are a bunch of free torch apps that all do the same, but really it’s such a simple and useful app.

Then, of course, is the fabled “Death Grip”. I’ve done some brief tests of holding the phone the “wrong way”, but it didn’t seem to have much impact. Sometimes the bars would drop, and sometimes they wouldn’t. Regardless, I wear a bumper on my fruit, as it was provided free. On top of that, you can currently get a free case by downloading an Apple app and putting your details in. (Info here: http://www.apple.com/au/iphone/case-program/.) Then wait 6-8 weeks if you want one of the better free cases :)

Fast forward a week or so, and not much else has changed. I still haven’t used FaceTime, because I really don’t care about it. We had video calling a few years ago and nobody used it then, and at least it would work over 3G. Now I have to be connected to Wi-Fi and be calling someone else with an iPhone 4 and want to see their face.

Speed was never an issue for me on the 3GS and still isn’t on the 4. Everything is quick and responsive. At one stage, I was listening to an audiobook and the iPhone decided to reboot itself. Very strange, but only happened once with about 24 hours of playing audio so far.

I’ll mention that during the time with my new iPhone 4, I also had the chance to play with some Android devices. I really wish I had the opportunity to own one for a month and have a good play-around, but the best feature I saw was the Swype technology. Have a look at it in use here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCWwuIXxBuI – it’s just typing without having to lift your finger off and on the touchscreen, but really nice and quick to use. I’m hoping Apple keep up with the advances Android is coming out with.

Lastly the camera is a big improvement, at 5MP it takes pictures good enough that you don’t think it’s from a crappy phone. That’s all I need!

Summary: More impressed with the screen than I thought I would be, the rest are things they should have done a long time ago. Definitely not innovative, and really seems to be the minimum to keep them in the game. Plus I have a torch!

It really comes down to this: If you want something you can heavily play around with, get an Android. If you want a basic smartphone where you don’t want to do anything except get apps to play with and sync with your iTunes, then get an iPhone. I don’t see anyone regretting getting an iPhone, but at the same time, if you have a 3GS I see no compelling reason to upgrade (unless you can do it for free/cheap!).

Bonus extra opinion: I really don’t like iTunes, but to go into detail would double the length of this post. Keep in mind you’ll need iTunes to activate your phone (which, again, I really don’t know why this is a necessary one-second step).