David Houde's questions

I have a XenServer 6.2 host, and I am trying to get a FreeBSD-9.1-i386 guest to run in PV mode.

The installation of the guest is fine, but after a reboot with the new kernel the system does not boot.

make buildkernel KERNCONF=XEN
make installkernel KERNCONF=XEN
reboot

This is all I see on boot:

FreeBSD/x86 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
([email protected], Tue Dec  4 06:18:06 UTC 2012)
Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x43bc20 _

I have found others with the same problem, but no responses to the bug submissions. I am not fully sure this is a bug, possibly me just missing something with the configuration. I appreciate any and all help/advise.

I am having issues with my IPv6 connectivity via Windows Server 2008.

External traceroute shows each hop along the path, including the servers gateway. It then times out, never reaching the host.

From the host, I am able to ping the same gateway, cannot reach anything past it.

I have tried setting static routes to some external IP's I own, resetting the routes, and every combination that I can think of without luck.

Right now, I cannot help but think the router is not forwarding ipv6 packets...but I have been assured by netops that it is functioning correctly. As I am not completely familiar with ipv6 and Windows, I am hoping there is something trivial that I am missing.

Any help is appreciated. I will update this question with any information requested.

Server->Gateway{2001:db8:1:6::1} - Ping OK
Internet->Gateway{2001:db8:1:6::1} - Ping OK

Server->Gateway{2001:db8:1:6::1}->Internet - Not OK
Internet->Gateway{2001:db8:1:6::1}->Server - Not OK


Server IP Address: 2001:db8:5678:7890:65c2:c257:37c3:40f7

**First 64 of all IP's changed. All ping/traces have been done exclusively with IPv6.

netsh interface ipv6>sh route

Publish  Type      Met  Prefix                    Idx  Gateway/Interface Name
-------  --------  ---  ------------------------  ---  ------------------------
No       Manual    256  ::/0                       11  fe80::20c:dbff:fef8:8900
No       Manual    256  ::1/128                     1  Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1
No       Manual    8    2001:db8:1:6::/64         11  WAN
No       Manual    256  2001:db8:1:6:65c2:c257:37c3:40f7/128   11  WAN
No       Manual    8    2001:db8:1:8:240::/96     11  WAN
No       Manual    256  fe80::/64                  13  Local Area Connection 2
No       Manual    256  fe80::/64                  15  Local Area Connection 3
No       Manual    256  fe80::/64                  17  Local Area Connection 4
No       Manual    256  fe80::/64                  11  WAN
No       Manual    256  fe80::69c2:c957:37b3:90f7/128   11  WAN
No       Manual    256  fe80::9dbb:be36:50c4:2e71/128   15  Local Area Connection 3
No       Manual    256  fe80::c9f3:3379:14f0:e48/128   17  Local Area Connection 4
No       Manual    256  fe80::f061:419e:da95:3f30/128   13  Local Area Connection 2
No       Manual    256  ff00::/8                    1  Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1
No       Manual    256  ff00::/8                   13  Local Area Connection 2
No       Manual    256  ff00::/8                   15  Local Area Connection 3
No       Manual    256  ff00::/8                   17  Local Area Connection 4
No       Manual    256  ff00::/8                   11  WAN

I have been tasked with finding a price for a battery backup solution for our printers. Each printer is listed at 240v 24a <5.5kW and each workstation is using a 500w power supply.

We are probably going to add more batteries to our existing UPS to provide power for all our printers, but we would like to price our individual UPS's just incase.

Does anyone have any recommendations for an adequate UPS that can be used free-standing, as there's no racks near the printers.

I have a script that periodically checks /var/log/system.log and I've noticed across our network that some machines keep logfiles for a month through reboots and other activities, while some purge the file each night or each reboot.

Does anyone know the exact rules here, or if I can specify intervals? Thanks in advance.

We are currently doing a complete remote backup of our VM's once a week. This takes the whole weekend, and I'd like to speed up the process some if possible.

We are backing up the VM's using Dedup, and the backup size is 300GB using a 128KB block size. Our small office connection can do 10mbit upstream at its best, and this would roughly translate to 3 days for 300GB.

Do you think 128kb is too large a block size for this application? Should it be lowered at the cost of system overhead and the benefit of smaller backup volume?

Can we do differential backups via rsync with Dedup, eliminating the need for complete backups?

Any and all advise/suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Our networking components consist of (3) x D-Link DGS 1248T Switches, and a router.

We have 4-5 servers running as VMWare Host, HTTPD, and Storage.

The clients on the network are connected to the switches via a patch panel.

For the most part, our department requires the most bandwidth to and from the servers. The servers also require significant bandwidth between one another. The clients in the rest of the office however, do not require nearly as much bandwidth.

We do have a Storage server that works as a network backup, and client machines are set to backup at daily intervals (0-10GB each), with the times staggered about an hour apart.

I am not really sure if these backups are what is causing latency issues, or not.

Our switches are currently connected to each other and to the router via a Fiber link.

What I need to know is what the best configuration would be to get maximum network throughput for our production servers and our dept.

Should we all sit on the top tier switch, and connect clients/printers on the 2nd tier? They are connected via fiber, but we do have plenty of open ports, and the switches support STP and Trunking. Should we be using more ports between the switches for additional bandwidth?

Any insight would be appreciated.