Category: Hardware

2 Comments

When you can’t Connect HP Version Control Agent (VCA) to the Version Control Repository Manager (VCRM).

  By , , , , , ,

As a self-taught Systems Administrator, I tend to learn by the process of trial and error.  And boy have I erred a lot recently.  I’ve been banging my head against this particular brick wall (not being able to connect the HP VCA to the HP VCRM) in earnest the last couple of weeks:

HP VCA Connect

It seemed that no matter how I input the info on the screen above, the two would never see each other.  Credentials were confirmed, permissions vetted, yet every time I filled out this screen and clicked “next”, I would inevitably get the message “The specified repository, servername.domainname.com, is invalid or not reachable.”. I was just going around and around, in a downward spiral that didn’t bode well for my sanity.

I was therefore EXTREMELY happy when I found this gem in the HP Systems Insight Manager Support forums in a post talking about an upgrade from version 7.2.2.0 to 7.3.0.0:

I’ve got answer form HP TS regarding HP VCA 7.2.2.0 working with HP VCRM 7.3.0.0

I did not got full answer of root cause of this issue but form provided command I suspect that it is is realted with SSL Cipher configuration.

For me these commands solved th issue.

Please try run follwing commands on server with HP VCRM 7.3.0.0:

C:\HP\hpsmh\bin>smhconfig.exe -Z ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:!EXPORT40:DES-CBC3-SHA:RC4-MD5:RC4-SHA:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-SSLv2:+EXP:!LOW:!eNULL:!aNULL

C:\HP\hpsmh\bin>smhconfig.exe -r

For me these commands solved the issue.

 

Sadly, I wasn’t sure this would resolve my problems, since I had never been able to get VCA and VCRM to talk initially, therefore my problems obviously were not due to an upgrade like everyone else’s.  However, some of the connectivity issues mirrored those I was experiencing, so I applied the fix as a batch-file (copy/paste commands to text file to avoid fat-fingering any characters, saved as .BAT file, issued command line “run as administrator”), and voila!  Suddenly I can connect the two together!   

Sadly, I have no breakdown of the intimate details involved with what the commands do exactly, or how they accomplish the resolution, but it was made clear that the problem was due to an SSL Cipher configuration.  My take is that it appears that HP had actually removed some expected ciphers from 7.3.x.x of VCRM, which then prevented the communication from VCA Agents.

But, all good now!

No comments

Windows Phone 7 Launch Event in NYC

  By ,

This morning’s Windows Phone 7 Launch Event, while appearing in a somewhat subdued fashion, ended on such a very high note that I considered the launch a rousing succcess!  

The lack of an impressive Microsoft presence in the Windows Mobile field over the last few years has kept the fanboys and girls from becoming overly excited at the event, like Apple fanboys are with just about any Steve Jobs announcement.   Heck, even Antenna-gate showed a lot more Apple fan enthusiasm than this launch event.   However, I really think that Windows Phone 7 is such a different OS that it will quickly gain mindshare with consumers who have yet to purchase an iPhone.   It *may* even convert a few existing iPhone/iPod users.

I also appreciated Steve Ballmer’s enthusiasm, and Ralph de la Vega provided some very interesting details on AT&T’s future device line-up!

Joe’s presentation, with all the demos and live interaction was a complete joy to watch.   I especially enjoyed watching his bravery and true faith in taking a second shot at connecting to the Tell Me servers to complete his online search for Alaskan Airlines flight number 7.  VERY IMPRESSIVE.

In all honesty, I can truly say that I cannot wait until November 8 to get a new Windows Phone 7 device!

No comments

Getting a new HP ProLiant DL380 G4 Server

  By , , ,

I am making arrangements to obtain an HP ProLiant DL380 G4 64-bit Rack Server.   This is a professional-grade server, but it’s about two generations old, so it can be had at a totally reasonable price.   Here are some of the specs:

Processors:

  • (2) 64-bit Intel® Xeonâ„¢ processors at 3.4 GHz.
  • 800MHz Front Side Bus and 2MB of L2 cache.
  • Intel E7520 Chipset.

Memory:

  • (6) 2 GB PC2-3200R 400MHz DDR2 Ready Slots with online spare capabilities.
  • 6x 2048MB (12288MB total) HP PC2-3200 DDR2 RAM.
  • Support for dual-rank 400MHz DDR2 memory.

Storage Controller:

  • SCSI model includes the integrated Smart Array 6i Ultra320 Array Controller with optional 128MB of Battery Backed Write Cache (BBWC standard).

Internal Drive Support:

  • HP Smart Array 6i Ultra320 SCSI Controller with Internal hot plug capacity 1.8TB standard (6 x 300GB HDD).
  • (6) hot-plug U320 SCSI drive bays, of which (1) 1.6″ bay that supports a hot-plug DAT tape backup drive.
  • (6) 72.4GB HP 10K Wide Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drives.
  • (1) 1x IDE CD-ROM.
  • Optional PCI-X Hot-plug cage or Optional PCI Express Non-hot plug Cage.
  • Optional dual channel drive backplane (2/4 split) for U320 SCSI models.

Network Controller:

  • Embedded NC7782 PCI-X Gigabit Server Adapter.
  • Embedded “Integrated Lights Out” (iLO) port for Remote Admin.

Expansion Slots:

  • 3 Total Available Slots : (2) non-hot plug 64-bit/100MHz PCI-X slots and (1) non-hot plug 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X slot.

USB 2.0 Ports:

  • 3 Total: (1) front, (2) rear accessible ports.

Redundancy:

  • (8) Hot Plug Fans with optional full redundancy.
  • (2) Hot Plug Power Supply with optional redundancy.

Management:

  • HP Power Regulator for ProLiant, delivering server level, policy based power management with industry leading energy efficiency and savings on system power and cooling costs.
  • Integrated Lights-Out industry leading remote management with new support for two-factor authentication, schema-free Microsoft Active Directory integration, Power Regulator p-state reporting, USB key virtual media and VLAN on the shared network port.
  • Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) Standard Management on system board.
  • Support for new iLO Shared Network Port enables access to the iLO management processor through one of the embedded system NICs.
  • Automatic Server Recovery (ASR), ROM Based Setup Utility (RBSU), HP System Insight Manager, Status LEDs including system health and UID and SmartStart.

Form Factor:

  • Rack (2U), (3.5-inch).

 

Pretty sweet, huh?

I”m going to be installing Microsoft’s Small Business Server OS on top of it, and see how well that works out.   I’m hoping that this new (to me) server will take good care of me and my business for years to come!

No comments

Server died… Twice!

  By ,

My IBM Server’s Power Supply died unexpectedly on Saturday or Sunday.   I honestly didn’t even notice it until Jana pointed out that she couldn’t access the server on Sunday.

A quick check of the system proved the Power Supply had gone bad.   Pulled it out and tried a spare and it worked fine.  Just one problem.   The spare wouldn’t fit inside long-term (the original server Power Supply is odd-sized, and the spare is standard-sized).   So Monday after work, I was attempting to salvage parts from another system to add to the server, another component blew-up right in front of me, and took the IBM server with it entirely.

Not wanting to attempt to isolate further if the whole motherboard was bad, or just the processor, or memory, I decided to try another system entirely.  Luckily I had recently obtained an older Celeron Server, which I had stored in Mothball, so I hauled it out Monday and started to add components to it as well. 

Luckily, the mothballed system board still had the CPU and memory, so it was just a matter of adding the original server’s hard drive.  Unfortunately, the Power Supply on that machine was defunct as well.  It gave out with a bang in the dining room on Monday night, right in front of me and Jana (she was NOT happy with that).  That ended Monday’s attempt to troubleshoot further.

Fortunately, the spare power supply that I had would fit into that case, so I was able to get it up and running later Tuesday.

Unfortunately (sense a pattern here?), it was an older motherboard and I didn’t have all the drivers, so I stayed up until about 1:00am this morning trying to get the right drivers loaded.

But, happily, everything is up and working.  Yeow, what an adventure!

No comments

Sent off the DV9000 Laptop for Left-Hinge Repair

  By ,

I boxed up the laptop last night (Sunday), and Jana was able to get it down to one of the FedEx locations nearby for shipment back to HP. 

Hopefully they’ll get it later tomorrow and we can get a decent start on the 5-7 day repair cycle that HP needs.

Update: Per the FedEx tracking number, they have received the shipment in less than 15 hours.  Pretty quick!

No comments

No further Response from Porter Novelli or HP

  By

pn_logo Well, I didn’t get any further response from Bill Robbins from Porter Novelli in the last day and a half.  So I decided to followup on this.  Granted, it’s already 5:45pm, so I don’t really expect a response tonight…

By the same token, I can’t really afford to wait on this, as I hope to cover CES 2009 January 8th thru the 11th, and that’ll be hard to do without a laptop.   I figure if I wait too long, then my package will have to compete with all of the Christmas mail traffic.    Sigh…