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AstriCon September 27-29, 2016

AstriCon 2016 was held at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa in Phoenix (Glendale), Arizona. It sounds like the type of place you might find cosplayers representing Halo’s United Nations Space Command Defense Force, but it is actually 3-days all about Asterisk – www.asterisk.org. So, although attendance isn’t quite what you’ll find at DragonCon, you will find lots of tasty talks and new friends that wanna geek out on just about all things telecom.

I was invited to speak on running Asterisk within an OpenStack cloud, a copy of the talk can be found here (link to shameless self-promotion coming […]

By |September 28th, 2016|Blog, OpenStack, SIP|0 Comments
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What is OpenStack CirrOS?

If you have worked with OpenStack, then you’ve likely reached for a CirrOS (cirros) image more than once.

So, what is CirrOS?

CirrOS (x86_64) is a stripped down Linux (free) distro that can be used for proof-of-concept testing; use it to establish that instances (VMs) can be launched. If you are running an OpenStack environment, then the Glance (imaging) service would be called on to manage the storage of the CirrOS image (either by caching locally, or storing as an object via Swift). Nova-Compute (running on a Compute Node), could then be provided the location of this image to launch an […]

By |April 19th, 2016|Blog, OpenStack|1 Comment
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    OpenStack pre-Mitaka users should watch 1984’s The Terminator

OpenStack pre-Mitaka users should watch 1984’s The Terminator

In the OpenStack pre-Mitaka release, the Horizon dashboard interface includes a button labeled, “Terminate Instances”. As a fan of James Cameron’s 1984 film, “The Terminator”, I had no problem wrapping my mind around what this button did. However, as an instructor of the OpenStack suite, I can say from experience that many people do struggle with what this button does.

I have to assume in 1984, the same people walked into “The Terminator” unsure of the motives of the Cyberdyne System Model 101 (CSM-101) as portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In Cameron’s world, in OpenStack’s world, and in Merriam-Webster’s world, the word […]

By |April 18th, 2016|Blog, OpenStack|0 Comments
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Reset Avaya System Manager Password

Working with the Avaya Aura System Manager (SMGR), you will eventually find yourself locked out of the web GUI. This most commonly happens if a password times out, and the ‘new’ password change goes unrecorded. The following steps will outline how to reset the admin password for Avaya Aura System Manager web GUI.

These steps were used in conjunction with Avaya Aura System Manager version 6.3.10.2657 (deployed from System Manager Mid-Size Enterprise 6.2.2 template with SP4). See the end of this posting for any other software (and corresponding versions) used in conjunction with these steps. I’m certainly they’ll work with […]

By |June 10th, 2015|Avaya, Blog|3 Comments
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Installing VMware Tools from the Linux CLI

This posting outlines the steps required to install VMware Tools in a Linux environment. Specifically, it lists the commands that should be issued at the command line to mount the VMware Tools CD-ROM image, unpack, and then install the VMware Tools tarball.

While these steps should work in almost any Linux environment, I created them using the Linux Mint OS. Mint is a fork of the Ubuntu project. Ubuntu has its roots in Debian. Check out the Linux Mint OS if you are looking for a friendly Linux GUI.

The only caveat that should be observed is that some Linux distributions […]

By |June 8th, 2015|Blog, VMware|0 Comments
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VMware VM – ‘I moved it’ vs ‘I copied it’

If you’ve worked with VMware products before, you may have (at at some point likely will), encounter a pop-up similar to this one.

What is it asking? What prompted this question? Why does VMware want the default to be, ‘I copied it’? The short answer is that VMware ‘thinks’ that it is possible that this VM was cloned from a pre-existing VM (i.e. ‘I copied it’). If that is the case, VMware needs to change the unique identifiers within the cloned machine, so that potential hardware & software conflicts are avoided. Choosing ‘I copied it’, therefore, is preferred over ‘I […]

By |June 5th, 2015|Blog, VMware|1 Comment
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traceSM – Avaya Aura Session Manager

You can learn quite a bit about how the Avaya Aura Session Manager works (or doesn’t work) with the built in packet capture tool, traceSM. If you’ve ever worked with this tool, you may have experienced the following error while trying to launch it:

ERROR: traceSM is already running. Only one instance is allowed.

This error can occur if an admin does not exit the trace tool or terminal session properly. It can also occur if some other administrator is currently running traceSM. By default, Avaya does not want customers launching multiple instances of a potentially resource intensive application, like a […]

By |May 11th, 2015|Avaya, Blog|0 Comments
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Avaya Compatibility Matrix – How to patch Avaya products

Anyone that works with Avaya products should know about the Avaya Compatibility Matrix. It is Avaya’s tool for navigating through the onslaught Avaya patches, service packs, and feature packs.

It is a bit hidden on the Avaya website, which is why I’m writing a blog post on it. There is a link to it hidden on the bottom of the Avaya Support page, or, find it by clicking here. Note, you’ll need to log in with your PLDS credentials to get access to the site: Avaya Compatibility Matrix

Once you are logged in, choose the platform you are interested in […]

By |April 10th, 2015|Avaya, Blog|0 Comments
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Star Trek The Rewatch (podcast)

“Star Trek The Rewatch” is a podcast I discovered while laid over at O’Hare International on the way back from a week of teaching SIP & Voice over LTE. Each show is devoted to a discussion of a single episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. The episode is reviewed for likability, but also has the science presented within critically examined, as the hosts are both astrophysicists at Oxford. Graeme McRae and Robert Simpson cheeky rapport and infectious laughter is plentiful as they praise and admonish the scientific blunders compounding the voyage of Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise.

If listening to […]

By |March 9th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments
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Driver installation order for a Dell Latitude E6420

I recently rebuilt a friend’s Dell Latitude E6420. After a fresh Windows 7 install, I installed the relevant drivers in a haphazard manner, and found that many of the devices were still failing to be recognized in the Windows Device Manager. After a quick Googling, I found that Dell has a specific order that must be observed when the drivers are installed onto the laptop after a fresh Windows install.

Just in case anyone else is looking for this information, I thought I’d repost it. Remember that your laptop may not require all of the following drivers. For example, if […]

By |January 2nd, 2015|Blog|0 Comments
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