Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Home Desktop Upgrade 2011

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It was that time again for yet another upgrade to the old home desktop.

I thought I had posted about my last upgrade but I can’t seem to find the post right now. In any case this time it was the impending release of Battlefield 3 that ultimately drove me to replace my aging Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB with a MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB. I’ve been lumbering along with the 8800GTS for the past 4 years so it was time for an upgrade.

While doing my research between the NVIDIA and AMD options I came across a lot of cooling issues between both the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series and the NVIDIA GeForce 560, 570 and 580 series. In the end I decided to give AMD a try since the last few cards I’ve purchased where NVIDIA and I decided to go with the pricier MSI R6590 Twin Frozr II since it had some great reviews and in user feedback it was reported to be one of the cooler running cards on the market.

I also took the opportunity (while the case was open) to replace my dying power supply. I chose a Rosewill Xtreme Series RX750-S-B 750W power supply. I’ve gone through two Antec power supplies in the past three years and last year I used a Rosewill 650W in my wife’s computer and it’s still going strong, despite running almost 24×7.

What am I running these days?

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.83Ghz
  • 8GB G.Skill PC2-6400 DDR2 memory (4 sticks)
  • Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard
  • 150GB Western Digital Raptor SATA II hard disk
  • 1TB Western Digital SATA II hard disk
  • Antec P180 case
  • Rosewill RX750 power supply
  • Logitech G15 keyboard
  • Logitech G5 mouse
  • Logitech C910 webcam
  • ASUS 27″ LCD display

I won’t waste to much ink here but let me just say that the map(s) in Battlefield 3 beta are just spectacular with this card. I definitely need to go back and play a few rounds of Battlefield Bad Company 2 with this video card just to see what the maps really look like now that I have the hardware to play it on high settings. It amazing how much eye candy is lost when you need to dial down the settings so you can play a newer game on older hardware.

While on the topic of gaming let me give a shout out to Tactical Gamer.

If you’re a mature gamer looking for some good times and teamwork orientated tactics give Tactical Gamer a look.

I know your all embarrassed to admit it but you can’t be all work and no play.

Anyone else a gamer? If so what games do you enjoy?

Cheers!

Thycotic Software – New Sponsor

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I’m happy to announce that Thycotic Software has become a long-term supporting sponsor of this blog. You might have noticed their ad running at the top of the right column for the past few months (I feel like that guy screaming in the ad on a daily basis). You can find Thycotic on Twitter at @Thycotic. Thanks to Jonathan and all the folks over at Thycotic for their past, current and future support.

I’d encourage anyone interested in password management solutions to give Thycotic’s Secret Server and Password Reset Server products serious consideration.

Thycotic Software

Thycotic is a Microsoft Silver Certified partner that has provided secure software products, development and training to the information technology industry, individual consumer and small business markets since 1996.

Thycotic Software leads in the field of Microsoft .NET-based Agile development using Test Driven Development (TDD) and other lean techniques to deliver reliable code that meets the user’s needs. Secret Server, their password management software, has been tested by Veritest, featured on Larkware’s Daily Grind, download.com, and is trusted and depended on by small businesses and large corporations every day.

Secret Server

Enterprise Password Management for IT Administrators.

Manage and protect your organization’s most vulnerable secrets: your privileged passwords.

With Secret Server enterprise password management software, you and your colleagues can control access to critical enterprise passwords in one centralized, web-based repository. Our password management software offers permissioned users secure access to passwords and other privileged information.

Store, distribute, change, audit in a secure environment.

Password Reset Server

Self-Service Password Reset Tool for End-users

Stop wasting your time doing password resets for employees.

Reduce calls to your Help Desk and let employees reset their own forgotten passwords through a series of secure questions and images, and even telephone verification.

A self service password reset, Password Reset Server combines ease-of-use with advanced security, and meets Section 508 compliance standards. And our free 500-user trial means you have 30 days of full access to the kind of self-service software your Help Desk will appreciate.

You’ll find trial copies of both Secret Server and Password Reset Server on Thycotic’s website.

Thanks again to Thycotic Software for their support!

Data Center Power Failure?

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1383156_45853970I thought it was a joke at first, but no the power actually failed on a large portion of the CoLo4 Data Center in Dallas, TX today. Unfortunately the issue impacted a large number of CoLo4 customers including RIMU hosting who provides the server that I run both this blog and the discussion forums from.

Thankfully full service was restored around 12:00AM midnight last night. You can following the updates provided by CoLo4 here.

I’ve been involved in quite a few data center designs. A single bus power failure is always a possibility no mater what you do to minimize that impact. In this case it seems that they didn’t have their A and B power bus being fed from different electrical plants, no sure why.

Thanks for your patience.

Cheers!

Google’s Android – Root and Intermediate Certificate Issues

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I recently helped stand up a pair of NetScaler MPX 7500 appliances as a public Internet facing front-end to large Citrix implementation. The goal was to utilize the NetScalers to provide basic Access Gateway functionality similar to the legacy Citrix Secure Gateway (CSG) and Citrix Access Gateway (CAG) solutions. It’s not rocket science by any means and it was pretty straight forward until we started testing some Google Android devices and quickly found that as usual nothing is ever that simple.

I had two devices with which to test, an original Motorola Droid (Verizon Wireless) running Android 2.2.2 and a Motorola Xoom (Wi-Fi Only) running Android 3.1. The SSL certificate installed on the pair of MPX 7500s was purchased from VeriSign and issued from an intermediate certificate authority – “VeriSign Class 3 International Server CA – G3” (February 2010) which was in turn issued by “VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority – G5” (November 2006). I’m was guessing that the November 2006 certificate is probably part of the base Android operating system but the February 2010 is probably missing. Unfortunately there’s no way to actual view the installed root certificates on either device? What’s up with that?

There are some well documented issues here and here with Google’s Android around the inability of the operating system to import private or additional root and intermediate certificates. It appears that you can import additional root certificates for VPN and wireless authentication but not for web based SSL or email authentication. That’s essentially what I found on both the Motorola Droid and Motorola Xoom, however, a friend showed me a Motorola Blur running Android 2.2.1 today that actually allows you to import additional root and intermediate certificates and it appeared to work for both web browser SSL sessions as well as the Citrix receiver. Is this an add-on feature by Motorola that’s not included in the base operating system? Is there anyone reading this that can enlighten me?

In the end I discovered that the certificate installed into the NetScaler wasn’t chained properly to the VeriSign intermediate certificate. SSL Shopper has a great tool to check the certificate chaining. And thanks to this post from Jason I was able to configure the NetScaler properly and now both the Motorola Droid and Xoom can make an SSL connection without any certificate warnings.

Cheers!

Windows 7 x64 Service Pack 1 Installation Failed

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This weekend I decided to install Service Pack 1 on my home Windows 7 x64 personal computer. As luck would have it the installation failed. The installation reported error 0x800f0a12 when I clicked on the details link. When I check the System Log I found the following event;

Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80070643: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 for x64-based Systems (KB976932).

I examined the Component Based Servicing log (C:\Windows\Logs\CBS.log) and found the following two entries;

2011-06-25 09:27:36, Error                 CBS    SPI: (CSPInstall::AutoMountDisableCheck:1026)Bcdedit failed with error code 0x1 hr=0x800f0a12
2011-06-25 09:27:36, Error                 CBS    SPI: (CSPInstall::CompatibilityApplicabilityScan:1471)AutoMountDisable check failed hr=0x800f0a12

With that information I turned to the great and powerful Google in search of enlightenment and found a reference to the following blog post on TechNet, Windows 7/2008 R2 Service Pack 1 fails with 0x800f0a12. That article provided a link to another Microsoft article entitled, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) installation error: 0x800F0A12.

Apparently the error code 0x800f0a12 means the installer cannot access the system partition of the personal computer to update the files. This error can be caused by a few different issues including, the system partition isn’t automatically mounted, Windows is running on a storage area network (SAN), or a disk management tool from another software manufacturer was used to copy (or clone) the disk or partition on which you’re trying to install SP1.

The TechNet article advises users to run Diskpart which is the disk partitioning tool in Windows. However, the Microsoft article provides a command line solution by running the command mountvol /E as an administrator and then rebooting the computer.

Cheers!

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