Recent Political Revelations

Don't worry, this isn't a post about gay marriage and I don't intend on starting an argument.  Let me be clear, I am going to try to ensure that this post isn't about either side of the argument.

That said, I would like to let people know the rules that I play by when engaging in passionate debate with others on political or religious topics.

How to Argue

• I'm not going to argue with my good friends trying to convince them that they should think or choose one way or the other.  I'll let our democratic republic system of government determine that.  
• I don't feel a particular need to broadcast the side of the issue on which I stand.  
• I will not berate anyone for announcing their own position, nor will I berate anyone for trying to convince others of the reasons behind their position.  
• I will play fair and make statements like 'I believe...' and 'I think...' instead of statements like 'It is a fact that...'.  I will not say, 'You are wrong' nor 'I am right'.
• I will probably choose to not engage with people who try get me to contravene these rules.  If someone can't have an argument within these constraints, I don't think arguing will produce any meaningful results.
• I will be concise and logical in my arguments.
• I will admit I am wrong when someone points out the logic in my arguments.
• I will allow others time to rephrase or explain their arguments if I point out a flaw in their reasoning.

So, where on the moral-issues-that-are-laws scale does gay marriage fall?  Let me give the boundaries of my moral scale: murder and coffee.  I morally believe murder is wrong and it should be outlawed.  I morally believe drinking coffee is wrong, but it should not be outlawed.  My question is not whether or not gay marriage actually is morally wrong.  My question is not really whether or not it should be outlawed because everyone is free to choose and that free will engenders disagreement.  My question is whether or not the majority of the people think it should be outlawed.  

I stand on one side of the gay marriage issue, and my conviction is such that no amount of argument will sway me.  I am open to any discussion about the issue, pending my availability after work and family responsibilities.

SNMP Counter32 vs. Gauge32

I ran into a problem recently where a manufacturer had built a MIB that contained an OID for 'objects in cache' with syntax Counter32.  However, when polling the value of that OID, it was discovered that the OID didn't behave like a Counter32; it went up and down (Counter32 is supposed to only go up; a lower value than the previous poll indicates a roll-over).  It occurred to me that the manufacturer probably meant to indicate the current number of objects in cache and mistakenly set the syntax to Counter32.  Since the actual number of objects in cache can rise or fall, a Counter32 wouldn't accurately represent this.  Instead, a Counter32 would indicate how many items had been added/removed from the cache since the previous poll (since most NMS systems would take the delta between the previous counter value and the current counter value).  While knowing how many items had been added or removed from the cache since the previous poll might be useful, what is probably more useful would be the total count.  The difference actually has nothing to do with the value returned by the device.  The problem is that since the MIB indicated that the OID is a Counter32, most NMS systems interpret that type of object differently, performing a delta instead of reporting the actual number returned by the device.

The fix for this is to change the way the NMS system interprets the returned value by changing the MIB.  In this case, the syntax needs to be changed from Counter32 to Gauge32.

Here is what the MIB contained originally:

 proxyNumObjects OBJECT-TYPE
  SYNTAX Counter32
  MAX-ACCESS read-only
  STATUS current
  DESCRIPTION
   "The number of objects currently held by the proxy."
 ::= { proxySysPerf 2 }

Here is what the MIB needs to be changed to:

 proxyNumObjects OBJECT-TYPE
  SYNTAX Gauge32
  MAX-ACCESS read-only
  STATUS current
  DESCRIPTION
   "The number of objects currently held by the proxy."
 ::= { proxySysPerf 2 }

Changing this syntax in the MIB and recompiling into the NMS system instructs the NMS to use the raw value returned instead of performing a delta with the previously obtained value.

In NetVoyant, recompiling the newly edited MIB will be sufficient to correct this problem.  However, a restart of the Mibs service is required before the newly compiled syntax gets used.  Since everything depends on the Mibs service, everything will get restarted.

How to use a CD/DVD on a Computer That Doesn't Have a CD/DVD Drive

A friend of mine asked me today how to use a CD on a computer that doesn't have a CD drive.  Luckily, this is an easy, albeit technical, one.  The overall strategy goes like this: create an ISO file of the CD, get the ISO file onto the CD-drive-less computer, open the ISO file with an emulator.

Creating an ISO file of the disc

This is where half the magic happens.  An ISO file is basically a file that exists on your hard drive that contains everything about an optical disc.  It's just like a Word document or an Excel workbook.  Except instead of opening in Word or Excel, you have to open it in a special program (don't worry, it's as easy as double clicking the ISO file).
The first thing to do is download and install ISO Recorder by Alex Feinman.  This will allow you to copy the CD to your computer's hard drive in the form of an ISO file.  After you've installed it, put the disc in your drive and look in 'My Computer'.  You should see the CD-drive icon change to the icon of the disc inserted.  Right click on that drive and click "Create Image from CD/DVD".
ISO Recorder will pop up asking where you want to save the new ISO file.  Pick a good place for it and hit next.  Wait for it to finish and you're ready for the next step.

Moving the ISO file to the CD-drive-less computer

This part can be accomplished via whatever method you choose.  The easiest (and least technical) is to just copy the ISO to a USB flash drive.  Then copy the ISO from the flash drive to the new computer.  Other options are to copy via the network or via torrent (depending on the size).

Opening the ISO File with an Emulator

This is the fun part.  Download and install Daemon Tools Lite on the CD-drive-less computer.  You may need to reboot after the installation; do that before continuing.  Once that's finished, find the ISO file and double click it.  You should get a message saying "Mounting Image to Virtual Drive".  After your mouse stops showing the hour glass and/or the message goes away, look in your 'My Computer'.  You should see a CD-drive.  WHAT?!  This is the virtual drive.  It should have your virtual CD in it.  You can now use the CD as if it were installed in a real drive.  And guess what, this CD can't get scratches on it.

ISO version of discs are a very handy way of keeping backups of discs.  Especially if you are worried that kids may destroy the originals.  Of course, DVDs manufactured by the movie industry usually have copy protection on them, so you might not be able to do this for just any disc.

Managing NetVoyant through Web Services

Web services can be used to manage NetVoyant devices.  I've had at least one customer who built auto-provisioning of NV monitoring through web services.  It can be a headache, but it is possible.  I won't go into details about how to actually automate the use of the web services; go take a class for that.  This practice actually goes against my preferred method of adding all devices to NV and using class designations, auto-discovery rules, and auto-enable rules to manage what gets monitored.  However, in some cases, that can't be done.  Here are the details on the web services.

In any distributed system, there are two types of systems: NV Master Console and NV Poller.  NV uses scopes to manage the devices to be monitored.  Each scope details an IP address to be monitored, a subnet mask, and the poller responsible for monitoring it.  The process of adding and removing devices from NV involves manipulating the scope that corresponds to the device to be added or removed.

Adding a device to NetVoyant

If you are using web services to add devices to a distributed NetVoyant system, you'll either want to add the device to the poller responsible for polling all the devices in that region OR you'll want to add it to the poller that is least loaded (in terms of total number of devices).  It's also possible that you may have multiple pollers covering a single region and need to determine which poller is least loaded.In order to find out the number of devices on each poller, the GetDeviceCount operation of the NetVoyantService should be invoked on each poller (and not the master console).
The NetVoyantService can be found at /pollerwebservice/NetVoyantService.asmx?WSDL on each poller.  By invoking this procedure without any arguments, the result will be XML indicating how many devices total are on that particular poller.  Unfortunately, this must be run against each poller to get that poller's count.  Below is shown a sample output.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<int xmlns="http://netqos.com/NetVoyantWS/">41</int>

Using the browser view to add custom content to NPC

A while ago I started making flash videos using Camstudio as a way of teaching people how to use NPC. Camstudio outputs a swf with accompanying html to make it easy to post the video to a website. I wanted this to be added to NPC so i started using the browser view. I needed a place to post the html and swf files so that the browser view could access the files through a url. So, i went into IIS on the npc system and added a virtual directory pointing to a folder on the D: drive. I put the swf and html files into that folder and pointed the browser view to the url. It worked pretty well. Given a little skill with html, anyone could insert anything into NPC pages.
One handy way to use this would be to insert small snippets that help people understand what specific views mean, or how to use/interpret specific pages.

Understanding SuperAgent Network Regions

I've found that many people don't understand the concept of regions in a network definition in SuperAgent.  Given the power of a region to make defining networks easier and give more granular reports, I'm actually quite surprised that it hasn't been evangelized a bit more.  So, here's my explanation:

SuperAgent organizes data according into buckets.  SA could store the analysis data for every single client IP address in its own bucket in the database, but that's kind of the point of MTP.  Also, having reports that are that granular are only helpful if you already know where the problem is.  In addition, if you think about it, storing the analysis of two client IP addresses in two individual buckets in the database doesn't make sense if those two client IP addresses are connected to the same switch, which is using the same router to get to the WAN which is coming into the same network hardware in the datacenter.  If the two clients are using all the same network hardware, measuring two different network round trip times for those two clients is virtually impossible.  Think about it, the only thing that is different is the client's NIC, which doesn't really affect SA metrics, due to modern technologies like TCP offload engine (TOE) which bring the ACK turn around time on the NIC down to sub-millisecond.

Ok, so there's the reason to summarize networks according to the network path.  If a bunch of IP addresses use the same network path to get back to the servers monitored by SA, there's not much value in storing the analysis on a per-IP basis.

However, for groups of IP addresses that do use different network infrastructure, it is imperative to separate them so that the differentiating network hardware can be isolated and therefore identified and troubleshot (troubleshooted?).

Therefore SA provides the ability to define client networks.  Each client network instructs SA how to group IP address blocks together and treat them as one unit for analysis and storage.  Each network definition should only contain the IP addresses that share all of their network infrastructure.

This is nice because it cuts down on the amount of configuration required in SA.  To illustrate, let me give an example.  A US company has decided that its IP address scheme is to allocate an entire /10 block of IP addresses to each time zone (e.g. 10.0.0.0/10 for Eastern, 10.64.0.0/10 for Central, 10.128.0.0/10 for Mountain, and 10.192.0.0/10 for Pacific).  It then decides to allocate an entire /19 block of IP addresses to each site within that time zone (e.g. 10.30.0.0/19 for NYC, 10.74.32.0/19 for Chicago, & 10.200.128.0/19 for LAX, among others).  This is actually really easy to configure in SA.  The networks would be defined in SA as such:

Network Name	Network	Mask
EST	10.0.0.0	10
CST	10.64.0.0	10
MST	10.128.0.0	10
PST	10.192.0.0	10
NYC	10.30.0.0	19
...	...	19
CHI	10.74.32.0	19
...	...	19
LAX	10.200.128.0	19
...	...	19

Each of the time zone IP address blocks should be configured so that any clients in the time zone that don't match a site definition get categorized somewhere.  Any traffic showing up in those networks is an indicator that a site is missing.  On a side note, the time zone networks could be given their own network type and special, tighter thresholds could be applied so that incidents trip immediately for any amount of NRTT.  A special network incident response could be setup to send an email to the SA admin to notify him/her that traffic has been seen on a time zone network (indicating a site network definition that is either missing or incomplete).

While this is great, the network administrators at the US based company decided that a standard of 32 VLANs should be implemented at every site.  Each VLAN should be a /24 subnet and each VLAN has a standard use (floor 1, floor 2, floor 3, printers, servers, wireless, etc.).  With the networks above defined in SA, the network administrator won't be able to differentiate between bad performance on a wireless VLAN and bad performance on a wired VLAN.  At this point the administrator has two options: 1) either he can rebuild all the network definitions defining every single /24 subnet or 2) he can define 32 regions in each of the site network definitions.  The better option is #2.  Here's why:

Defining 32 regions on a /19 network definition in SA is equivalent to defining all 32 /24 sub-subnets within that /19 network.  It's shorthand.  Once defined, the /19 network definition will have a plus sign (+) next to it.  When clicked, the admin can see that SA actually has 32 networks defined within that /19.  The nice thing is that they are all grouped together according to site (/19 network).

One disadvantage is that the name originally assigned to the /19 network is the same one originally assigned to all the sub-subnets (regions).  This however can be overcome by expanding a /19 (hitting the plus sign) and renaming the VLANs as necessary.  Each region can be named individually.  The way to get around this is to use option 1 and create a CSV containing all the /24 networks each with a site name prefix and a VLAN designator (name and/or VLAN number).

Understanding SA Discovery and Pruning/Grooming

First of all, a little conceptual history around SuperAgent:

SuperAgent was meant to automate the task of analyzing packet captures for essential metrics indicating server or network latency.  An engineer wanted a better way to do it than manually and SA was born.  Since its inception, it has grown by leaps and bounds increasing its capabilities.  Despite the growth, one major concept has remained: SA is meant to automate a manual process for your top applications.  This is not a scalability issue.  It's something fundamental to the through process behind every revision of the product.  SA is meant to analyze the transactions of applications of interest to determine where latency lies.

With the most recent version, SA added a feature that automatically discovers and configures applications.  This opened up a whole new area of SA since admins didn't have to automatically configure the applications they were interested in.  All they had to do was identify the servers that might be involved and SA did the rest.  Expectations began to rise since admins could now easily increase the bounds of what was considered an 'application of interest'.

In order to prevent performance problems that might arise in very complex environments, the developers imposed a limit on the discovery process.  When the discovery process has discovered and configured 1000 servers or 1000 applications (whichever comes first) a pruning process will begin.  This algorithm reevaluates the active combinations every 5 minutes to determine which 1000 servers and which 1000 applications will remain in the configuration.  This doesn't affect any applications configured by the administrator and shouldn't affect the largest, most active applications.  Administrators have to understand that this is by design and that the applications configured in SA don't necessarily represent all the applications hosted by a server.

Luckily, the server and application limits can be raised with a simple query in the database.  To view the current limits execute the following query:

select * from parameter_descriptions where parameter like 'maxNumAuto%';

Updating those values will change the limits.  Remember, those limits were put into place to prevent performance problems.  Also SA hasn't been tested by CA's QA department with any limit other than 1000, so if you run into any problems after changing those limits, you'll get push back from support because of it.  This is one of the things included in the CIG, which is basically required for every case, so support will know that you did it.  

I have increased the limits by 500 in some cases, just to push the envelope a little.  I didn't experience severe, immediate problems.  If you need much more than that, consider more infrastructure (read more SA master consoles).

Disabling SuperAgent Relationship Groups

When an application is configured in SuperAgent, the application actually consists of two parts: the application configuration item itself and the servers assigned to the application.  In order to grant permissions to specific applications, administrators would need to create a group in NPC containing both the application configuration item and the servers.  The problem with this is that the group that would be created would be static; any time the application configuration changed in SuperAgent, the group would have to be updated.

The answer to this problem is a pair of group sets created by SuperAgent that contain these items.  One set contains a group for every application in SuperAgent containing the application CI and the servers assigned to it.  The other set contains a group for every server containing the server and any application CIs the server belongs to.

This worked well in the past when applications were manually configured.  This only resulted in twice as many groups as the number of applications/servers that the admin was willing to configure.  However, with the advent of automatic application discovery and configuration in SuperAgent, it is possible that the number of these groups could skyrocket.  This high number of groups can degrade the performance of NPC sync.  As a result, there is a need to disable them.  The only bad part about disabling them is that you no longer can take advantage of the dynamic groups for permissions purposes.

In order to disable these groups, you have to go to SuperAgent and execute a couple of queries.  Before executing any queries you find on the internet, you should backup your database.  There.  You have been warned.

REPLACE INTO parameter_descriptions(Parameter, Level, Type, DefaultValue, Description) VALUES ('SyncRelationshipGroups',   'ProductSync', 'boolean', 'false', 'Sends App/Svr relationship groups to the performance center'), ('SyncRelationshipsEnabled', 'ProductSync', 'boolean', 'true',  'Sends App/Svr relationship combinations to the performance center');

UPDATE parameter_descriptions SET DefaultValue = '0' WHERE Parameter IN ('pullLastFullSyncTime', 'pushLastFullSyncTime', 'pullLastIncrSyncTime', 'pushLastIncrSyncTime');

UPDATE parameter_descriptions SET DefaultValue = 'true' WHERE Parameter = 'pullForceFullSync';

After running these queries, kick off a full resync of NPC.  It may take some time for all those groups to get deleted from NPC.  I don't suggest doing this on multiple SA MCs at once.  Do them one at a time and let NPC sync with one before moving on to the next.

How to Build or Modify Groups in NPC by using XML

In a previous post, I discussed how to build application reporting groups using dynamic system groups.  While this strategy is the recommended way of building application reporting groups, it can become tedious to actually copy and paste all the system groups into your application group.  Especially if you have the most recent version of SuperAgent and it has discovered a ton of applications and networks.  Luckily, there is an unpublished easier way: XML.  NPC has the ability to use XML to modify the group structure.  This includes the ability to put referential copies of system groups into custom application reporting groups.

The following is an excerpt from some documentation I wrote about how to use the web service to modify various portions of the NetQoS systems:

Group management in NPC is performed through the AdminCommand web service (found at PortalWebService/AdminCommandWS.asmx?WSDL ).  Adding or removing groups and adding or removing members from groups is accomplished by invoking the UpdateGroups operation (found at PortalWebService/AdminCommandWS.asmx?op=UpdateGroups).  Three main parameters are required: (1)useIDs, (2)allowDeletes, and (3) XML defining the groups (the groups to be added/removed/updated).  Groups themselves are defined explicitly in the XML while membership of groups is managed by a set of rules applied to each group.  Managed objects that match the rules are included as members of the group, objects that don’t match are excluded.  

The first two parameters are global and don’t change often.  The parameter useIDs instructs the operation whether or not to use the group ID values from the XML definition when identifying the group to be updated.  The useIDs parameter will need to be set to ‘true’ to ensure the correct groups are updated.  The only time a value of false would be used is when a single XML file is being used to import a group structure from one NPC system to another.

Fighting SOPA and PIPA

SOPA and PIPA are two pieces of legislation aimed at decreasing the amount of illegal piracy that happens on the internet.  They could, if passed in their current version, grant the government powers that could cause problems for legitimate web sites.  I can't say it much better than Wikipedia and Google.  Read the information available before making any decision.

One thing I can do is help spread the message.  If you have a Twitter account and live in Texas, the following links will tweet a message to the Texas congressmen and women asking them to represent their constituents by opposing SOPA/PIPA.

Brought the bill to the house:
Lamar Smith

Texan representatives on Twitter:
Joe Barton
Kevin Brady
Michael Burgess
John Culberson
John Carter
John Cornyn
Henry Cuellar
Quico Canseco
Lloyd Doggett
Bill Flores
Kay Granger
Gene Green
Charlie Gonzalez
Louie Gohmert
Al Green
Ruben Hinojosa
Kay Hutchison
Jeb Hensarling
Sheila Jackson Lee
Eddie Johnson
Michael McCaul
Kenny Marchant
Randy Neugebauer
Pete Olson
Ron Paul
Ted Poe
Silver Reyes
Pete Sessions

How to Use Poll Instance Properties in a View

If you aren't completely, 100% comfortable with manipulating the database manually, stop reading this post now.  If you continue reading this post, you do so at your own risk.

In NV (and NPC if you've jailbroken it), you can create views using the NV Custom View Wizard.  One of the things the developers did but didn't really publicize is that you can pull poll instance properties into those views.  This includes any custom properties you may have added to the poll instance.  By default all poll instances have at least two properties: 'Name' and 'Description'.  Built in dataset poll instances (like ifstats) will have other properties which you can also use.  The trick is that you have to manipulate the database slightly in order to instruct the view to even look at the properties.  It isn't too bad, but like I said before, if you don't know how to do this with your eyes closed, don't try it.

1. First you have to get the control id of the view (technically called a control) you have just created and will be modifying.  This is pretty easy to get, just open the view in the wizard and look in the url for the controlid parameter.  In this example, the id is 1200031.
2. Next you need to get into the database and take a look at the control properties for your control.  Something like this: 'select * from control_properties where controlid=1200031 order by pageid, propertiesid, userid, propertyname;'

That should result in something like the following.

ControlID	PageID	PropertiesID	UserID	PropertyName	PropertyType	PropertyValue	Editable	Enabled
1200031	0	0	0	ColumnNames	string	latencymin,latencyaverage,latencymax	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	ControlType	string	PollInstance	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	Create.Date	string	Added at 1/13/2012 9:05:07 AM by nqadmin	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	data.chartType	string	Table	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	DataSetName	string	ISILONPerf	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	Description	string	This report focuses on the worst values for the specified parameter and therefore may be more prone to problems or failure.	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	DisplayFormats	string	ms|ms|ms	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	DisplayNames	string	Minimum,Average,Maximum	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	drillDown.target	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	FieldNames	string	latencymin;latencyaverage;latencymax	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	FieldNames2	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	FieldNames3	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	FieldNames4	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	FieldNames5	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	Filepath	string	/nqWidgets/Poller/wptTopN.ascx	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	footer.text	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	Limit	string	10	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	MibTables	string	ISILON_MIB.nodeProtocolPerfEntry	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	OrderBy	string	latencyaverage DESC	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	PropertyNames	string	Description,Name	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	RedThreshold	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	Title	string	Isilon Node Performance Table by Protocol	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	Wizard.Action	string	ReportWizard('/npc/ReportWizard.aspx?PageID={PageID}&CtrlID={CtrlID}&PropertiesID={PropertiesID}');	Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	yaxis2.ColumnNames	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	yaxis2.DisplayColors	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	yaxis2.DisplayFormats	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	yaxis2.DisplayNames	string		Y	Y
1200031	0	0	0	YellowThreshold	string		Y	Y

3. You'll notice that I have a property called PropertyNames.  This is the entry you need to add to this table.  The propertyname will be 'PropertyNames' as shown.  The propertyvalue will be a comma separated list of the properties you would like to be available to this view.  For example, since I want both the description and the name properties available to this view, I added them both in there.
   You would normally add this record using an insert SQL statement.  A 0 in the pageid, propertyid, and/or userid fields represents a wildcard.  Technically, a view can exist multiple times on a page.  If it does, the pageid will contain the id of the page on which the control instance(s) exist(s).  The propertyid refers to which instance of the view on the page.  The userid refers to any properties that the user may have modified and saved to only their account.  If you want this change to apply to all instances of the view, the easiest would be to make the change to the default (pageid=0, propertyid=0, userid=0) then re-customize any views that have been customized.
4. Once you've got that done, you can go back to the view wizard.  Go to the 4th step.  You can now use the property values within expressions or the 'Where' field.  The syntax is as follows: p_PropertyName.property_value, where PropertyName is the name from the comma separated list you entered into the database.  In my case, if I wanted to display the description, I would create an expression called 'Description' and the expression formula would be 'p_Description.property_value'.

One of the nice things about exposing properties is that you can use the properties in the 'Where' field of the view.  The where field allows you to pre-filter the view so that only certain objects show up.  For example, if I knew that the description contained an enumerated set of values (cifs, nfs, http, other), I could create a view that only shows the cifs objects by putting "p_Description.property_value = 'cifs'" in the Where field.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for device properties like sysLocation, sysContact, sysName, sysObject, etc.  However, there is a script floating around that will take those parameters and store them in custom poll instance properties, which could then be exposed using this method.

How to convert VHS to DVD

We don't have that many VHS tapes lying around our house.  However, our wedding video is one important exception.  As a present for my wife on our 10 year anniversary, I decided to see if I had enough junk in my garage to do a conversion to a digital format so we could watch it.  Turns out I do.

The first think I would obviously need is a VHS player, also known as a VCR.  Fairly simple, nothing special.  I might have gotten a little better quality if the VCR had an S-video output instead of RCA composite video.  Maybe.

How to Wipe a Computer

I find myself leaving another job in favor of a better job.  Has happened quite a bit recently.  I wonder what that says about the economy?

Anyway, I've got another laptop I need to wipe clean before I can turn it back into my previous employer.  I figure, while I'm doing it, I might as well write down the various techniques.  You may want to do this anytime you're turning in an old computer or recycling it or giving it away.  Who wants to leave all that personal information on a computer!?

There are basically two options, the preference will be up to you.

How to get Free HD TV

I hinted in my previous post that I made Hulu obsolete at our house at the time that I installed my Apple TV.  I didn't perform any real magic, but I do want to explain how I did it in case anyone out there is looking to do the magic that I do.

I normally only watch Hulu for ABC shows since I don't get good reception on our TV for the ABC affiliate here in Houston.  Let me explain.  Before I added the Apple TV to the mix, I used an antenna mounted in my attic which fed a signal to a pair of USB HDTV tuners connected to a pc connected to my TV.  I used Windows Media Center (WMC: a free piece of software included in every version of Windows Vista and Windows7) to watch and record TV.  WMC has a free guide built in and since I used two tuners, I could record/watch up to two shows at one time.  It was great.  I could pause live TV, I could schedule my favorite shows to record, and since it was a full blown PC, I could watch Netflix and use Hulu Desktop for online content.  I could even watch general conference via the internet browser.

All of this was great, except that the position of the antenna didn't give me great reception on ABC and I only got fair reception on some channels, missing out on the secondary channels altogether in some cases.  So, at the same time that I installed the Apple TV, I chose to get one other piece of hardware to alleviate the need of having a PC connected to the TV.  After all, I had to have the PC turned on all the time in order to ensure that all my shows would get recorded.  That combined with a big external hard drive that I had hooked up for TV show storage added to the power and heat inside my little entertainment cabinet.  I knew that I could use my XBOX as a media center extender, so I knew I could shift the load from the TV PC to my office PC.  The only problem was that I would have to run coax cable from the antenna down to my office and then plug in the two USB HDTV tuners.  I didn't want to have to run more cable through the wall.

The solution was to get a SiliconDust HD HomeRun Dual.  I found it used on the internet (thank you Amazon) for around $75.  The advantage of this device is that it combines the two tuners into one device and it uses Ethernet as opposed to USB for connectivity to the Windows Media Center PC.  This means that instead of running a coax cable from the antenna through the walls to my office PC, I could just run an Ethernet cable from the antenna/HomeRun Dual to my home router.  Since this is much easier due to the placement of my router, this became the optimum solution.

So, I installed the HomeRun Dual in the attic and connected it to the antenna.  I ran an Ethernet cable from there down to my punch-down and from there patched it into my router.  I installed the little utility on my office PC and fired up WMC.  WMC found the tuner on the network without any real work and before I knew it, I was watching TV on my office PC.  As it turns out, any other PC on my network can use one or both of the tuners as long as another PC isn't using them.  They are a pool of tuners available to everyone on the network.  Awesome!

The only problems was that the reception had changed.  I wasn't getting all the channels I was getting before or I was getting them, but not well enough to watch.  This wasn't unexpected since any time you change wiring in regards to an antenna, things can change.  I decided I needed to get my antenna higher so it would get better reception for those channels.  I mounted the antenna on the chimney and checked things out.  Lo and behold, I got wonderful reception on all the channels I used to get and I also now get very good reception on ABC and the affiliates.  I even now get 3 sub-channels to PBS!

Now that I get ABC, I don't really need Hulu.  If there is something I want to watch that I don't get through Netflix, over the air HDTV, or isn't in my collection of DVDs, I can always check Hulu.  If all else fails, Amazon and gohastings.com are always there to help with a used DVD.

NPC Application Groups

As mentioned in a previous series of posts, when building groups in NPC, there needs to be a 'Reporting Groups' group.  Expanding on the need for reporting groups, I figured I'd detail exactly what should go into that group and how to work with it.

The most important group that should exist in the reporting groups is an application group.  This application group doesn't contain any objects of itself and really isn't used for any reporting.  It's just there to assist in managing the groups that it will contain, namely application groups.  While the strategies outlined in my previous posts build the groups needed to organize the geographical layout of your infrastructure, the Applications group is where the logical layout of your applications is built to facilitate reporting on individual applications.

What a unified object model means

After spending some time talking with customers at CA World, I've realized that not everyone gets the vision of a unified object model.  The other observation is that even though QR codes are everywhere (and I mean everywhere people, open your eyes!), half of the self proclaimed "techies" out there have no clue what a QR code is.  To continue with this tangent, I can't wait until we have 3D detectors on our phones and can keep them in our pockets.  Along the same line, just wait until a phone in your pocket can pickup and store the information encoded in 3D QR codes you pass by every day.  But I digress.

A unified object model is a method of designing systems so that they all have a concept of the types of data objects with which they will all interact.  For example, gohastings.com knows what a DVD is.  When I search, I can search for just DVD's or I can include books and video games.  This is a simple example, but the fundamentals are the same.

As for network monitoring software, it is essential that any user interaction interface know about the different types of objects contained there.  It is my understanding that this is one of the main goals of the Catalyst project at CA.  Before anyone out there begins to argue, I'm not saying that this is the most technically direct definition. I'm trying to boil it down.

NPC actually already utilized a somewhat unified object model, implementing a concept called context.  Context is refers to the object of focus of a control or page.  For example, one type of context in NPC is the interface context.  The interface context allows NPC to understand what an interface is and what products report data pertaining to interfaces.  ReporterAnalyzer (aka NFA), eHealth, and NetVoyant all deliver interface based statistics.  Since NPC knows what an interface is due to the object model implemented, it can deliver a mix of information from all three products.  The object model in NPC has its limitations, however CA has promised to expand that model (Catalyst).

For me, some of the most important contexts are group, site, application, server, router, switch, generic IP based device, interface, CPU, and memory, among others.  While it would be good to have a complete list of all the basic and intermediately complex contexts, what is most important is that context be extensible.

NetVoyant actually accomplished this in part due to the nature of the self certification process.  While top level contexts were fixed (group, router, switch, server), the child objects could be extended by building a new certification.  The advantage of this is that NetVoyant knew about every different type of child object.  Whether it was a temperature probe, a UPS battery, or a server case intrusion detection switch.  Also, every context had its own set of pages.  Which meant that when I drill into a battery, I always see battery related data.  When I drill into an interface, I always see the same interface report with the same layout, with the same types of graphs.  The only difference was the object focused on.

One of the limitations of the NetVoyant object model was that it only partially allowed for different types of devices.  While drilling into a server, a switch, or a router took me to their individually designed and tailored pages, any other type of device (firewall, WAP, wan accelerator, et al) would always take me to the same set of 'generic device' pages.

To some extent, this is the point of a unified object model.  Implementing the knowledge of how objects interact with each other and what kind of data is associated with each type of object.  Along with this, Catalyst seeks to unify how systems interact with each other when requesting information about each type of data.  By unifying and classifying this data and standardizing how the data is shared, more integrations can be made with less effort.  And that's the whole point of a unified object model.

Automatically Tweeting with a QR Code

To continue with my QR fever, I've been looking into what can be easily automated using QR codes.

Twitter
The first thing I found is how to tweet from a QR.  This is fairly easy since any QR can contain a URL; So, the only thing needed is a URL that will tweet.  A quick search on the web revealed this.

http://twitter.com/home?status=insert%20your%20message%20here

Use these codes for special characters – (%20 is a space) (%40 is @) (%25 is #) (More here).  Given that, you could even include a mention, a hash tag, or even a tiny url.  I'm trying to figure out how to include a location in a tweet, but that's proving more difficult.  If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know.  Once you have the text, you can put it into the QR code generator on Google's chart API.

Facebook
The next thing I found is how to make a QR code to get someone to Facebook.  Unfortunately, there's not really an easy way to get people to 'like' something on Facebook by just scanning the code.  What you can do is point people to your Facebook page (or to any URL really) and hope they like it from there.  One thing you can do is point them directly to a 'like' page within Facebook.  This is accomplished by creating a URL like this:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://stuart.weenig.com

Click on the link above to see what this looks like.  You can replace the href=http://stuart.weenig.com with your own URL (like href=http://www.facebook.com/NetQoS).  This will bring up a very small like button that the user can then click on.  The nice thing about this is that if they're already logged into Facebook in their browser, they'll get a richer experience.

LinkedIn
Turns out sharing something to LinkedIn is pretty easy.  I used the qr generator at QR Stuff to figure out the link:

http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http%3A//stuart.weenig.com


I thought it was weird that the colon needed to be translated but that the forward slashes did not.  If you find that you need it, the URL code for a forward slash is %2F.  As you can see by clicking on the link above, the forward slashes do not need to be encoded for the share to work.

Locations
My next goal will be to figure out how to enable location based check-ins through Facebook and twitter.  If anyone already knows how to do that, let me know.

Using QR Codes to Share Contact Information

I recently saw a QR code at the entrance to a local hobby store here in town and decided to see what would happen if I scanned it with my camera. Since I already have a QR reader app on my phone, I fired it up and took the shot. I was startled to see that my phone now had a contact screen showing the contact information for the store, hours, website, etc. It was pretty cool, especially since the store is a local store that has nothing to do with high technology.

Since then, I've decided to get ready for CA World by seeing how hard it would be to put my own contact information into a QR code. Then I could paste the QR code onto my badge and quickly and easily share my contact information with other people at the convention. It took a while and I learned a little bit, but here are the results:

The best place I've found to generate a barcode was (surprise, surprise) Google. They have a chart API that you can use to build charts and display them on web pages. Very cool. As it turns out, all QR codes are really just text. You start by embedding contact information in a very simple markup (popularized by NTT DoCoMo), then pasting that into the QrCode chart type.  Tweak the parameters and you end up with a nice little code that can be read by most scanners.

The trickiest part is to format the text using the markup language.  For example:
MECARD:N:Stuart Weenig;URL:http://stuart.weenig.com;

would result in this QR Code:


In order to embed more information into the code, just add fields.  For example, you can add one or more telephone numbers.

Name	N:	Designates a text string to be set as the name in the phonebook. (0 or more characters) When a field is divided by a comma (,), the first half is treated as the last name and the second half is treated as the first name
Phone Number	TEL:	Designates a text string to be set as the telephone number in the phonebook. (1 to 24 digits)
Video Phone Number	TEL-AV:	Designates a text string to be set as the videophone number in the phonebook. (1 to 24 digits)
E-mail	EMAIL:	Designates a text string to be set as the e-mail address in the phonebook. (0 or more characters)
Memo	NOTE:	Designates a text string to be set as the memo in the phonebook. (0 or more characters)
Birthday	BDAY:	Designates a text string to be set as the birthday in the phonebook. (8 digits) The 8 digits consist of the year (4 digits), month (2 digits) and day (2 digits), in order.
Address	ADR:	Designates a text string to be set as the address in the phonebook. (0 or more characters) The fields divided by commas (,) denote PO box, room number, house number, city, prefecture, zip code and country, in order.
URL	URL:	Designates a text string to be set as the homepage URL in the phonebook. (0 or more characters)
Nickname	NICKNAME:	Designates a text string to be set as the nickname in the phonebook. (0 or more characters)

Another idea I had was to tape a QR code on the back of my phone. So that in case it gets lost, someone can at least know who it originally belonged to. This would also make it easier to share contact information with just about anybody.

Techno Nursery

We're getting ready for 2 pair of little feet destined to arrive around February.  As such, I've been preparing the nursery.  I finished the moulding (still need to touch up a couple places) and got some bookshelves in.  As usual, I wasn't satisfied.  I needed to tech-ify the room.  So, I had a couple ideas:

Idea #1: Remote Lullaby
Over the last few months, I started collecting lullaby music into a playlist (thanks, Jewel for the inspiration and the starting tracks).  I even burned a CD so I could pop it into the little CD player/radio we put in there.  However, I knew that wouldn't do.  So, I dusted off the old Dell Hybrid pc and installed it behind some books on one of the bookshelves.  I dropped a network jack into that room and set it up as a headless pc.  The idea is to connect some small speakers and use the remote app on my iPhone to control the streaming of the lullaby playlist from my desktop to the nursery.  The idea being that I could roll over in bed and start up a lullaby without even getting out of bed.  So far so good.  Just gotta pick the speakers that are going to be connected to the pc.

Idea #2: Baby Monitor
Luckily for me, someone had already come up with a good way of doing this.  It only took about 20 minutes of searching on the web before I found JumiTech.  They have built an agent and an iOS app that work together to stream video from a webcam to an iOS device.  So, I installed their agent, plugged in a very, very old webcam from the garage, spent 20 minutes getting a driver that would install, and installed the app on my phone.  I started up the agent then started up the app on my phone.  After a couple of clicks (no serious configuration) I was looking at my face on my iPhone from the point of view of my little old webcam.  Very slick.  Next step is to purchase a night vision enabled webcam to see if it will work.  I should also be able to view the webcam from anywhere on the internet, thanks to UPnP.  I've disabled that for now, but we'll see if it becomes something I will enable later.  The agent supports audio, but since the webcam doesn't have a microphone and also since it only streams audio when connected, this won't work as a complete baby monitor replacement.  However, it's very cool that I can just rollover to my nightstand and within a couple clicks see into my nursery.

If you have any ideas for cool technology improvements for the nursery, I'd love to hear about them.  What else can I do with a network connected PC in the nursery?

How to use APD

APD (Application Performance Dashboard) is a very useful widget in NPC.  It allows the report designer to create a crosstab-like report showing the performance of a single set of networks when connecting to multiple applications.  The nice thing about this is that application traffic can be consolidated into a single view that is easy to troubleshoot.
The first thing you do is determine which network group to focus on.  If you've followed my best practice and created and 'All Sites' group, this usually becomes a great group to use for the network.
The next thing to do is to configure which applications these networks should connect to.  In order to see which of your SA configured applications are your front end, you can go to SA and look at the performance map filtered by the 'All Sites' network group.  The applications listed with the highest observation counts are probably your front ends.
After that, you can configure the back end applications.  The easiest way to do this is within the wizard itself.  Click 'add second tier' and look for the application with the highest observation counts.  APD counts a second tier application whenever it sees the server(s) of a front tier application acting as a network and connecting to the second tier application.  The same applies to a third tier application.

If you have a load balancer that only changes the destination address (and not the source address) on incoming packets, the true second tier application will appear as a first tier application.  In that case, add the true second tier application as a first tier application to the APD.