2014/01/30
by Piotr Pisz
0 comments

Digital Home

No, this is not the so-called entry. smart home, it will be an entry about new technologies and how they fasten together everything just to impress your mother-in- :)

Fasten? And specifically what and what and how? Imagine a situation in which the image (delightful mother-in at obiadku) taken with our camera (generally, any) a few seconds later you can see on the TV screen and print from your tablet on our printer. Sounds good? And when it does, our non-technical girlfriend or wife without our involvement? Well it’s poetry :)

The world of consumer electronics goes slowly toward unification, but the process is slow. The blame can burden the one hand, the so-called. ordinary people, for whom a password such as ” WiFi Direct “is completely empty, and the other producers who do not educate consumers (for a invent catchy names (eg Mirror View (Sony) is nothing like WiFi Direct) for standard and universal solutions ). Therefore, the most even as someone already has a home beginnings of the “digital living”, it is usually not even aware of what is and how he could use this.

At the moment we have a whole group of proven technologies such as Bluetooth , DLNA , Wi-Fi Direct ( WiDi ), and devices that can have very smooth to use. And as imagined in the “old” days, you can see here .

Let us assume that at home, the world of consumer electronics consists of a set (available as “normal” money) which includes:

TV (of course, in “Smart”)
Receiver (eventually cinema, but under certain conditions)
Blu-ray player or games console
Laptop
Tablet
Printer
Camera (DSLR as a challenge in connecting)
NAS (not just as a network drive but also as a media server)

When choosing equipment should be guided by the following criteria:

Smart TV with just one processor (a richer version of two or more), support DLNA, WiFi, WiFi Direct and WiDi, the ability to connect a network cable to the existing infrastructure at home (optimal but not necessary) so. “PC connections.” Supports HDMI 1.4 is absolutely crucial input card (CIM will cancel the cable box or satellite receiver). Receiver or home theater should support HDMI 1.4 technology ARC (audio return channel), so you can be the use of one remote control both devices, 3D discretion (this also applies to the TV).

Continue Reading →

2014/01/29
by Piotr Pisz
0 comments

Eye-Fi Pro X2 and Synology DSM

In this post, I will try to show how using the Eye-Fi Pro X2 8GB SDHC card, fasten our camera and NAS in one, fully automatic machinery.

I am an amateur photographer, so a little more advanced, but still an amateur. Nikon D90 Pictures I’m doing with kit lens 18-105, write them as RAW files which later conjure in Adobe Lightroom 5 This has its advantages, by calling I have more control over the final appearance of the photo, but it has also disadvantages. Usually, I take a call only when accumulates a greater number of shots, then sit down to a long session of the Lightroom. The disadvantage of this solution is that the rest of the household (wife), do not have access to images, as long as I do not call out. You know what might be the consequences

After analyzing the situation and the available solutions, I decided to purchase an SD card with WiFi. When viewing cards available, guided by only one indicator of the power of WiFi antenna (and support for RAW files). Let’s take it to the logic, tiny card enclosed in the box, which can be reached? Something like bluetooth. In this statement the Eye-Fi has proved to be unbeatable and as far as I can tell after purchase, the card works in my entire apartment and sometimes I have the impression that he has a better antenna than the tablet.

I made it up myself so that the camera will record images as RAW + JPG, jpg will be “flew” on the NAS and indexed, will be immediately available on the TV through the media server. Everyone will be happy, the wife will have an immediate insight into the picture, and I’ll call when I have time (NEF will fly to another location). From the top I note that eye-fi applications on Windows and Android operating system run very well, their configuration is simple and is not the subject of this entry (Polish distributor distributes the manual of the cards after buying instructions (in Polish) type step by step ). Unfortunately, the circuit card with Synology has not proved easy, hence this blog entry.

Make cards, invented it so that if you want to send a photo without their software, we need to use to their server. The only way to upload our photos in to NAS server, configure the FTP server on the Synology. A photo from the card, through our WiFi, is sent to the server efy.fi and from there, via FTP, uploaded to our server. This has the advantage, we can be configured with multiple access points (including public) WiFi and thus acting to “endless” space on the card. It also has the disadvantage that it is a serious breach of security, we give an external company to access our server. Let’s say that we trust this company, but I was easily able to imagine a hacker attack on the servers eye.fi and gain their account data. EHHHHH …

So much for a lengthy introduction, now let’s do it, but safely

Turn on FTP on DSM 4.3:

Turn FTPS, or encrypted FTP on port 21 As a result, no one overheard username and password. It is very important to select the PASV mode in the WAN IP enter into what we are visible on the outside (without the FTPS will not function correctly, they will write their files with zero size). Configure the firewall on the NAS is known, the control panel is an appropriate option, the router can be set by the upnp port 21, the NAS panel’s “Configure router”. Eye.fi Manager connects us with only one IP address, so we can prepare the appropriate rule that will accept traffic to our FTP server with only that one address (199.192.198.3):

It is also the ultimate defense against server compromise eye.fi, stolen accounts do not give if you can only connect to the original address.

In the next step we assume a shared folder (select the option indexing files and hide in a network environment) called ftp, and a dedicated user (and necessarily a group, other than the standard), which will only have access to this folder:

In the Control Panel, in the Indexing media, we add our FTP directory:

The media server, add the appropriate directory:

And it’s all on the side of DSM, we automatically synchronized JPG images that are immediately indexed and available through the media server (DLNA).

Configuring side eye.fi is simple (define appropriate ftp account) and does not require any particular translation, the only note is that if you want to make modifications in the ftp account, it is better to remove them entirely and define anew.

On the Internet you can find various versions of “standalone eye-fi server” in this one, which can be installed directly on our NAS as a SPK . Apparently the work, but I decided not to install and configure them. Why? The use of such a solution closes our “mobile” solution in the framework of our apartment, it is safer, but the definition of the card can only specify one server to which you want to communicate it, and for that you can specify multiple WiFi network. If the server is not accessible from the outside, many WiFi networks will not do anything. You can have fun with manual changes to your account eye.fi, but why? It has to be fully automatic solution if you configure a WiFi network all within which we show up and we take pictures (for example, house parents, aunts, a favorite eatery or Hot-Spot) that we forget that we ever had to play in the stills camera !

And finally, the greatest magic, my camera is old, I bought it a few years ago on auction sites as “used”, the firmware version which gives it 1.0, ie as in a factory loaded. When you insert an SD card (Eye-Fi) in to camera, We have a new option in menu!

As you can see, upload photos is not mandatory and can be disabled with the camera.

SOURCE

2014/01/28
by Piotr Pisz
0 comments

Horizon View and SCEP

Let me start by truism, running VMware without its own Certification Authority, is pointless. Self signed certificates are the same problems, in more complex configurations, even blocking further expansion of the environment. If in our environment we rely on Microsoft’s Active Directory domain, then it is best to use the CA that comes with Windows Server (in our case, 2008 R2).

Installing and configuring the environment View, sooner or later we come to the time at which it would be best to have all the hardware terminals had issued its own certificates. In this post I’ll tell you how to run a whole to the terminals of the company Teradici PCoIP processor (in our case the HP T310 ). We will do this by using the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol and to facilitate, the management console terminals (Teradici PCoIP Management Console).

SCEP protocol implementation by Microsoft is a Network Device Enrollment Service (NDES). It is the role of the Active Directory Certificate Service, according to the documentation, this role should be installed on a different server than the server root CA (Enterprise). The best and easiest way is to install the DHCP server role enabled terminals. Installation of NDES is described here and here , and as you can see, it is very simple.

The only place where you can cut, a record in which we give the name of the standard certificates (template). In the figure below, the first line we have the correct entry, or own name default certificate IPSec (Offline Request) and in the following, incorrect (default) entries IPSec Intermediate.

Continue Reading →

2014/01/27
by Piotr Pisz
0 comments

Well, I was VCA

It’s been a long week, a man attends a culturally on the Fast Track, what a surprise. On the occasion of the introduction of a new level of certification (and training), VMware exchange among participants of all sorts, rozprowadziło voucher allows free your mind of all currently available, VCA certificate. Sounds good? Micro fact is that the voucher is valid until November 14, so we had to compress.

By far the easiest of the exams, for anyone who has to deal with vSphere is a pure formality. I approached him with the march without accompanying training materials listen and got 420 points (300 minimum, 500 maximum).

This exam for me was the hardest, I just go for the second time and it is the minimum number of points. I also had to listen to the entire course , or could not advice. Subject Cloud VMware is clearly the most developed (products and links). Although I have to deal with vCloud Director and several modules vFabrica this practical knowledge was not sufficient.

This exam is fairly simple, VMware View, Horizon and Mirage are relatively small in terms of the level of complexity (in terms of logic and not the technology). Anyone who installs LAB whole time though, should pass this exam. I personally scored it for the first time on 400 points, listen to the material proved to be helpful.

But what exactly are these certificates? Are positioned below the VCP, but VCP certifications confirm the technical knowledge, whereas here we have confirmation of the knowledge of knowledge of products and solutions (including ongoing interaction between them). This does not sound interesting? Not really, “knowledge” is not just what you read in the press materials, the knowledge of what can be achieved using the product and, above all, how to address specific business challenges and how to find solutions in the portfolio of VMware for specific needs.

I personally think it was worth spending some time to deal with the VCA, I all three exams and feel of this very well

Edit 2014.01.06: I remember about the ongoing promotion exam, you can pass through the Internet, simply ask for it while you are logged in educational portal . The whole procedure is described in the appropriate format in the section Whats Next (after confirmation of willingness to take the exam). Voucher realize immediately before the exam at Pearson VUE . Time for passing the exam is 3 days, counting from the time in which “hit” confirmation of Accession.

2014/01/26
by Piotr Pisz
0 comments

VMware Lab, part 0

Part zero or a little theory at the outset.

A long time trying to find an answer to the question of whether the household (or just your own), the laboratory is needed? At the moment I have more in mind training virtualization technologies, but over the years I have had various phases. From the train Solaris (still in the archive have developed a wiki on this subject, the effect of seven years of working with Solaris 8,10,11), the fatigue of tens of technologies and servers on different Linux distributions (including a successful attempt to use it as a workstation only a few years). Times and technology is changing, and this intrusive the problem returns and returns, where to learn? In operation since I always have to deal with testing environments and developerskimi, but it does not it. Someone’s always something there, “tinkering” and requires that everything worked quite well. A study in the profession of Computer Science (read: Administrator) requires that from time to time to cross the last frontier, and something to spoil.

Well, because what we really own laboratory? In fact, I can think of two situations:

1 For something to sweat out the end.

Spoil, check, click (or press enter) without fear of consequences can hurt someone and we will have to reverse the pace of everything. And when you think about perfecting never exceed this limit after which often all you need to “plow” (or reverse from a snapshot or backup).

2 To prove something.

From years of working in teams, sometimes more, sometimes less. Always in the band is so that we have the “old”, “new”, hardworking, lazy, etc, etc. The level of knowledge is varied and often clashing different visions and concepts. In terms “front”, is usually always chosen direction, which I call “success as quickly as possible, with the least amount of effort.” Nobody is interested in your vision, come is correct it is not real, no resources, no time, a new project is started.

A thirst for knowledge is not satisfied, the need to prove that my vision is real and enormous. If only for my satisfaction and the knowledge they have acquired and which may someday be useful. For me personally, this thirst for knowledge brought to the position of Information Systems Architect, so I know that it is worth to learn and constantly look for the New.

But back to the merits, VMware Lab is a laboratory to prove the vision, and testing of new technologies and concepts. For now, in the form of a virtual (virtual (nested) ESXi stuffed at work) but built to be able to move the physical environment hosts. I decided to build a home mini truancy. I already have quite thoroughly thought-out concept, but, as usual funds mean that whole stretch over time. In the subsequent parts of the series “VMware Lab” I introduced new elements and development environment, and I hope that at some time, I could also introduce physical development laba!

To this entry was not just the spanking of water, I will present here also another opportunity to gain knowledge of VMware technologies. Not everyone knows that this company, provides portal, let’s call it education, in which you can test every, even the pre-release solution! This portal is a VMware Hands-On Labs (in fact it is virtually beta, but the beta VMware is performed as a stopgap Poland, operates and is eternal ). Portal offers courses and laboratories available through the Website, the fact that this is not just any old, ordinary boring to listen to webinars (webcast, webinar). The laboratories provide access to a fully configured and working environment, the whole works as access to virtual machines in Horizon View (access HTML), or by BLAST protocol in the browser window log on to a workstation (on the same principle as RDP). For someone who does not know what is BLAST, it may sound strange, but I repeat , in a browser tab opens for us a window to the workstation from which we have access to the entire vSphere environment prepared especially for us (of course, this is the template directory)! There is also a support portal where you can complain if something does not work

And it all looks like this:

At present, the technology of VMware NSX is not available for download, the opportunity to see in practice what this is about, before the official release, in my opinion, a huge value of this portal. But if he is able to replace their own idleness? Definitely not prepared laboratories are temporary and tailored so as to courses, they can only do what has been planned by the authors. However, the “association” with such a laboratory will definitely answer the question of whether it makes sense to install and test this particular resolved in our LAB (well, not everything is for us, we may never reach for something like the NSX). In any case, to work, in the end without us, pizza alone with the clouds do not jump !

SOURCE

Piszki Lab | EN

My case study in the clouds…

Digital Home

Eye-Fi Pro X2 and Synology DSM

Horizon View and SCEP

Well, I was VCA

VMware Lab, part 0