Python: Amazon Glacier Storage Archiver

As part of my drive to get comfortable with Python I decided to build a script to easily archive files to Amazon Glacier. Since I am cautious and perhaps a little paranoid, I wanted to make sure that the archives were encrypted. Next, since Glacier is cheap to send files too but expensive to restore from I wanted to make sure I could bring back my archives in smaller chunks as well as keep an inventory of what I have uploaded. So my script allows you to do the following: Create Glacier Vaults Delete Glacier Vaults Inventory / View the …

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Netbackup Cloud Storage Server and Amazon S3

Recently I was playing around with Netbackup’s cloud server integration and after reading through their manual and the related doc’s I thought that the subject could use a much simpler explanation and perhaps a walk-through. So far from what I have seen the Netbackup Cloud Storage Server seems to work quite well. The setup wizard is relatively straight-forward and I was definitely impressed with how quickly data was backed up to S3. Basically, after everything is all said and done, backing up to S3 should behave pretty much the same way as backing up to a local tape or disk. …

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Syslog-NG with TLS setup for centralized logging

Sure, I know this is more of a dull topic for most people as most of us have setup centralized syslog servers many times but when attempting to get Syslog-NG setup on Debian 6.0.6 I noticed that the majority of documentation was RedHat specific and I thought this topic could use a Debian walk through. My intent with this setup is to get a centralized syslog server where my remote clients (including network devices) could send their log files. I wanted to use the built in TLS encryption that Syslog-NG versions greater than 3.1 now support. This configuration is using …

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Exchange ActiveSync and the Cisco ASA HTTPS Timeout

If you are running Exchange ActiveSync behind a Cisco ASA firewall you may receive Event ID: 1040 in your application event log. The event basically says: The average of the most recent heartbeat intervals [470] for request [Sync] used by clients is less than or equal to [540]. Make sure that your firewall configuration is set to work correctly with Exchange ActiveSync and direct push technology. Specifically, make sure that your firewall is configured so that requests to Exchange ActiveSync do not expire before they have the opportunity to be processed. To resolve this error we can bump up the …

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Python: File System Storage Report

Recently I have been updating my scripting skills and learning Python. I have been using some of the great resources out there such as Codeacademy and the book “Dive into Python” but after getting about half way through I found a need to build some apps. So, please forgive me if the code looks horrible or if things could be done a better way but this is literally my first Python program… Anyways, on to the program. I needed a way to parse through terabytes of data and locate files that I could archive to different storage. The scan had …

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ownCloud quick setup for Debian

First off I wanted to say that the documentation and installation of ownCloud is incredibly easy. I just wanted to add a few notes for people who are setting it up on a Debian distro as there is a slight difference from Ubuntu as well as offer some more assistance for Active Directory users. The following is the apt-get install string to install all needed dependencies for Debian. The apt-get string provided in ownCloud’s documentation should work fine for Ubuntu but you will get some missing package errors for php-pdo, php-xml, php-mbstring and php-zip in Debian: apt-get install apache2 php5 …

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An alternative to Dropbox

With the popularity and ease of use of services such as Dropbox/box.net I have heard a lot of rumblings from users and companies looking for “business” solutions to the file sharing problem. While there does appear to be a multitude of cloud-based solutions the number of companies offering non-cloud based alternatives appear to be pretty slim and (in my opinion) overpriced with prices ranging anywhere between $1,600 to $11,000 a year for only 20 users. Based on my experience purchasing business software over the years I was anticipating something standard such as a one time software purchase ($1,000-$11,000+) with a …

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Solaris 11 Samba / ZFS Configuration

The following is a summary detailing step-by-step how to setup Solaris 11 as an active directory integrated file server using Samba and ZFS. Most of this configuration comes from a tested configuration on Solaris 10 as well as Linux, but with the release of Solaris 11 and some changes in ZFS my previous instructions needed to be updated. The configuration has currently only been built and tested in a virtualized environment and though I do try and test as vigorously as possible please make sure to test before putting into production. I make no promises/warranties regarding any of this information. …

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2008 Citrix Profiles

The more time I spend building Citrix/TS servers on Windows 2008 the more I realize that even though some of these changes have made things more difficult at first they ultimately will make creating new servers a bit easier once everything is scripted properly. The following document contains registry entries and script information and is provided for informational purposes only. Use at your own risk. Customizing the Start Menu It used to be possible to create a user account, customize the profile and then copy the profile over the Default User profile. This method is not possible in 2008 and …

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Windows 2008 Policy Settings for a Citrix Server

Lately I have been setting up a few Citrix XenApp Servers using Windows 2008 R2. I was surprised to learn that some of the things I took for granted in 2003 policy are not available in 2008 R2 and I needed to either create registry hacks or file policies. So I thought I would take some time to document some of these setup procedures. Windows Explorer In the left hand pane of Windows explorer I wanted to remove the Favorites, Libraries and Network folders. To do this you first need to navigate to the ShellFolder keys below and grant Full …

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