Category: Computers
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Gathering Windows, PowerShell and Sysmon Events with Winlogbeat – ELK 7 – Windows Server 2016 (Part II)
In part I of this series, Installing ELK 7 (Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana) on Windows Server 2016, I covered the following: Installing and configuring Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana as Windows services Installing and configuring Winlogbeat to forward logs from the ELK server into ELK Installing and configuring Curator as a scheduled task (optional) Now, in…
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Installing ELK 7 (Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana) – Windows Server 2016 (Part I)
I am a huge fan of the Elastic stack as it can provide a great deal of visibility into even the largest of environments, which can help enable both engineering and security teams rapidly triage technical issues or incidents at scale. There’s also the fact that unlike Splunk, the Elastic software is free to use…
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Manually Updating the Firmwares on a Dell PowerEdge R610
Updating firmwares yet again… Shortly after the last time I posted on updating firmwares on Dell PowerEdge R610, I found out that Dell dropped support for all 11G servers from the SUU package along with the Lifecycle controller packages which basically broke the entire method I posted. However all hope is not lost, and the…
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Home Lab Cooling Upgrade!
In this video I show off my latest project – Upgrading the cooling system on my home lab in hopes of making it a little more efficient while quieting things down a bit. The original setup consisted of the following: 2 x 6″ Ducts with Fans 6″ Flexible Ducting Originally there was just a single…
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PowerShell Script – Set-PowerCfg
Set-PowerCfg is a simple script that can be used to easily set or check the current power scheme being applied on a Windows host, these are the same settings found in Control Panel > Power Options. This is particularly useful on laptops where CPU throttling may be an issue and you need to easily switch…
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ESXi 6.5 – Error Loading /xorg.v00 Fatal Error: 33 (inconsistent data)
The Error During a recent thunderstorm one of the ESXi 6.5 hosts in my lab environment that was not on a UPS, rebooted from a power fluctuation and when it rebooted I received the following error: Error loading /xorg.v00 Compressed MD5: d04cc03dd29bbe3fe547e9566f79674c Decompressed MD5: 00000000000000000000000000000000 As the error indicates, the file /xorg.v00 appears to be…
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PowerEdge R610 – Updating Firmwares When the LifeCycle Controller Fails
Why You Should Always Update Firmwares! Security patches, new features and bug fixes โ These are all very good reasons to ensure firmwares are up to date before moving your new servers into production. Things like the BIOS, RAID Controller, iDrac and network controllers will all usually have updates available. Some of these patches may…
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Installing VMware ESXi on an Internal USB?!
One of the things I get the most questions about with my VMware ESXi posts/videos is about installing ESXi onto USB drives and booting it from there, and that question is usually followed by the concern of someone accidentally or even maliciously removing the drive from the chassis. In the case of the Dell PowerEdge…
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Dell PowerEdge R610 Review – Virtualization On The Cheap
One of the things I always find myself telling anyone wanting to build out a home lab, is that it does not have to be expensive. The Dell PowerEdge R610 is a prime example of this and in this case I was able to pick up a matching pair of decently spec’d R610s that are…
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Home Lab Setup (2017)
In this post and video I give a quick run down of my Home Lab – everything from the rack itself, to the hardware and the basics of what everything is being used for. I started this project towards the end of 2012 with a single Dell PowerEdge 2950 GII and was hoping to teach…
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