littlecharva's questions

I have an ASP.NET MVC web app running in Azure. I'm making a change to some of the resources it uses in the background but I want to be sure it's not going to have an adverse effect on the performance of the app.

Is there a way I can run any kind of benchmarking on the app as it currently is, over the period of a day or a week, so that once I put the changes live I can then run the same process and see if the app is running slower or faster?

Or am I missing the boat - is there a way I should be profiling the app now before I even consider putting the changes live?

I have OpenVPN server running on a Windows 2012 server. It works perfectly and from my iPhone and iPad I can connect to the VPN, all my web traffic routes over the VPN and I can use the iOS Remote Desktop app to remote into devices on my network.

I installed the OpenVPN app on my Windows 10 laptop with the same client profile as the iOS devices and while it allows me to connect, I then can't access the internet or any of the devices on the LAN.

It seems the DNS is working as when I try to ping a domain name it resolves the IP, but then I get Request Timed Out.

I can't even ping the VPN gateway 10.8.0.1.

This is my server config:

port 1194
proto udp
dev tun
server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
push "route 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0"
push "redirect-gateway local def1"
push "dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8"
client-to-client
keepalive 10 120
comp-lzo
persist-key
persist-tun
status openvpn-status.log
verb 3
ca "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\ca.crt"
cert "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\server.crt"
key "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\server.key"
dh "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\OpenVPN\\config\\dh1024.pem"

This is my client config:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
ns-cert-type server
comp-lzo
verb 3

And this is the log from my most recent connection:

Mon Jan 16 13:45:08 2017 OpenVPN 2.4.0 x86_64-w64-mingw32 [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [PKCS11] [AEAD] built on Dec 27 2016
Mon Jan 16 13:45:08 2017 Windows version 6.2 (Windows 8 or greater) 64bit
Mon Jan 16 13:45:08 2017 library versions: OpenSSL 1.0.2i  22 Sep 2016, LZO 2.09
Enter Management Password:
Mon Jan 16 13:45:08 2017 MANAGEMENT: TCP Socket listening on [AF_INET]127.0.0.1:25340
Mon Jan 16 13:45:08 2017 Need hold release from management interface, waiting...
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: Client connected from [AF_INET]127.0.0.1:25340
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'state on'
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'log all on'
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'hold off'
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'hold release'
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574309,RESOLVE,,,,,,
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1194
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 Socket Buffers: R=[65536->65536] S=[65536->65536]
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 UDP link local: (not bound)
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 UDP link remote: [AF_INET]xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1194
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574309,WAIT,,,,,,
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574309,AUTH,,,,,,
Mon Jan 16 13:45:09 2017 TLS: Initial packet from [AF_INET]xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1194, sid=153bc069 fc314ff6
Mon Jan 16 13:45:10 2017 VERIFY OK: depth=1, C=UK, ST=...
Mon Jan 16 13:45:10 2017 VERIFY OK: nsCertType=SERVER
Mon Jan 16 13:45:10 2017 VERIFY OK: depth=0, C=UK, ST=...
Mon Jan 16 13:45:10 2017 Control Channel: TLSv1, cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, 1024 bit RSA
Mon Jan 16 13:45:10 2017 [server] Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1194
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574311,GET_CONFIG,,,,,,
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 SENT CONTROL [server]: 'PUSH_REQUEST' (status=1)
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,route 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0,redirect-gateway local def1,dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8,route 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0,topology net30,ping 10,ping-restart 120,ifconfig 10.8.0.6 10.8.0.5'
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 OPTIONS IMPORT: timers and/or timeouts modified
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 OPTIONS IMPORT: --ifconfig/up options modified
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 OPTIONS IMPORT: route options modified
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 OPTIONS IMPORT: --ip-win32 and/or --dhcp-option options modified
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 Data Channel Encrypt: Cipher 'BF-CBC' initialized with 128 bit key
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 WARNING: INSECURE cipher with block size less than 128 bit (64 bit).  This allows attacks like SWEET32.  Mitigate by using a --cipher with a larger block size (e.g. AES-256-CBC).
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 Data Channel Encrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 Data Channel Decrypt: Cipher 'BF-CBC' initialized with 128 bit key
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 WARNING: INSECURE cipher with block size less than 128 bit (64 bit).  This allows attacks like SWEET32.  Mitigate by using a --cipher with a larger block size (e.g. AES-256-CBC).
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 Data Channel Decrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 WARNING: cipher with small block size in use, reducing reneg-bytes to 64MB to mitigate SWEET32 attacks.
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 interactive service msg_channel=536
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 ROUTE_GATEWAY 172.20.10.1/255.255.255.240 I=12 HWADDR=14:10:9f:ce:13:73
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 open_tun
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 TAP-WIN32 device [Ethernet 4] opened: \\.\Global\{27AC27A1-A13C-4E12-B90F-C2797B3E8157}.tap
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 TAP-Windows Driver Version 9.21 
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 Notified TAP-Windows driver to set a DHCP IP/netmask of 10.8.0.6/255.255.255.252 on interface {27AC27A1-A13C-4E12-B90F-C2797B3E8157} [DHCP-serv: 10.8.0.5, lease-time: 31536000]
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 Successful ARP Flush on interface [6] {27AC27A1-A13C-4E12-B90F-C2797B3E8157}
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 do_ifconfig, tt->did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=0
Mon Jan 16 13:45:11 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574311,ASSIGN_IP,,10.8.0.6,,,,
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 TEST ROUTES: 3/3 succeeded len=2 ret=1 a=0 u/d=up
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 0.0.0.0 MASK 128.0.0.0 10.8.0.5
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 Route addition via service succeeded
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 128.0.0.0 MASK 128.0.0.0 10.8.0.5
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 Route addition via service succeeded
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574316,ADD_ROUTES,,,,,,
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 192.168.0.0 MASK 255.255.255.0 10.8.0.5
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 Route addition via service succeeded
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 C:\WINDOWS\system32\route.exe ADD 10.8.0.0 MASK 255.255.255.0 10.8.0.5
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 Route addition via service succeeded
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 Initialization Sequence Completed
Mon Jan 16 13:45:16 2017 MANAGEMENT: >STATE:1484574316,CONNECTED,SUCCESS,10.8.0.6,xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx,1194,,

Any ideas where to start?

I have five apps in an Azure App Service Plan, all different copies of the same app for different clients. It's an ASP.NET MVC app with an SQL database.

This morning I woke up to slow and non-responsive sites, sometimes resulting in a 503 error. Upon checking the CPU/Memory metrics for the App Service Plan I discovered the CPU pegged at 100%:

And the graph of the individual sites' CPU time shows them all going off at the same time, though some worse than others:

I tried to resolve the issue by doing an Advanced Application Restart, but the blade wouldn't load - I assume because it was trying to get information from the server that couldn't respond.

In the end I tried stopping each of the sites one by one, which brought the CPU back to zero, then starting them back up again, which seemed to have resolved the issue, but now a few of them are starting to climb back up.

I experienced a similar issue a couple of weeks ago and assumed I was growing too big for my App Plan, so upgraded from S1 to S2 and it'd been fine until today.

I'm at a total loss as to how to figure out what the cause of this CPU hungry behaviour is. Can anyone point me in the right direction of how I can start to diagnose this?

We have a domain controller server and a web server. The web server is a member of the domain. There are shares on both servers.

I can access the shares on both server from my office based machine which is a member of the domain. From home (over VPN) I can access the shares on the domain controller - it prompts me for credentials.

However when trying to access the shares on the web server I just get "You do not have permission to access...". It doesn't prompt for credentials and there seems to be no way to provide them.

We have an ageing Windows webserver hosting web applications through IIS and contains an SQL Server 2005 instance. It runs a range of websites from standard HTML, through classic ASP and up to ASP.NET MVC.

It's currently hosted in our office and has always been accessed by our remote staff over broadband, though lately we have started to build portals for some of our clients to access too, so this is becoming an unreliable situation. We're looking to replace the server this year, and I'm considering moving it to the cloud.

I've looked into Azure Cloud services, but as our requirements include classic ASP, it's not feasible to re-write everything to work with that, so I'm now looking at their virtual machines.

My question is, are there any potential pitfalls from moving from a dedicated server to a VM? Our web apps aren't particularly processor intensive and we don't have hundreds of users, but are we likely to run into any performance issues.

Anything else I should consider?

I've been running a FreeNAS box for a few years now and have learned a little bit about the *nix architecture and command line in the process. I'm now running into the limitations of FreeNAS and there's some things I want to install that don't support FreeBSD.

I feel confident enough in my skills to setup a full Linux distro with samba and afp shares, which is pretty much all I need from the FreeNAS setup, so I'm wondering what benefit I get from running FreeNAS over a full Linux distro. Obviously I get the ability to administer it over the web, but I kinda like SSH-ing in from my Mac and tinkering that way. I don't use the ZFS file system that FreeNAS has, so my only concern is that I'm missing something in my assessment?

If I do go with a full distro, can people recommend one that befits my needs. I've played with Ubuntu recently, but as it seems more engineered to a desktop environment (I say that because it boots straight into a GUI) I wonder whether I be better off with something more low key?

Thanks in advance, Anthony

One of our accounts on our Exchange 2003 server does not always receive emails. Unfortunately it's the boss' account. The emails that never arrive, seem to be mainly from one external source.

I've checked the SMTP logs and the emails appear there, I've also checked the Message Tracking Centre in the Exchange System Manager and they appear there, along with the message "Delivered Locally to ...", but they don't appear in the user's Outlook.

I've tried getting him to turn off his Blackberry and shutdown his PC, so we know nothing is interfering with the mailbox, then getting a test mail sent and checking via OWA, but the mail still doesn't arrive.

Is there anywhere else I can check for more information on where the emails have gone?

Anthony