Astaro Security Gateway 8.2 – E-Mails being rejected due to RDNS

 Astaro  3 Responses »
Aug 192011
 

Recently I upgraded a bunch of ASG’s to version 8.2. While most of the upgrades went smoothly, I did have an issue with a specific box at one of my clients offices.

We had some reports that incomming e-mails were being rejected. After checking the Mail Manager, these e-mails were being rejected due to numerous RDNS failures. While most of the incomming message sources actually didn’t have a properly configured RDNS, I finally noticed in one case that a specific sender actually did have properly configured Reverse DNS…

Googling this specific issue came up with nothing, however I noticed in the DNS proxy on the ASG box, that since the upgrade numerous errors were going through on a daily basis:

mail named: Last message ‘unexpected RCODE (RE’ repeated 2 times, supressed by syslog-ng on host.name

mail named[5466]: lame server resolving ‘X’

These errors were filling the log. I went ahead and logged into WebAdmin and removed the DNS forwarders, hit apply, flushed DNS cache, then re-inserted the DNS forwarders. This resolved the issue.

Shaw Business Internet Plus 100 – First Review

 Calgary, Internet  2 Responses »
Jun 142011
 

Well, I decided to upgrade to Shaw’s new “Business Internet 100 Plus” today. I decided to choose the option to pick up the Cable modem, instead of having scheduled a technition since I wanted to play with it today!

Got it done rather quickly over the phone. The plan also includes a phone line, which actually does have to be scheduled since it uses a different device that has to be installed by a Shaw tech.

Anyways, plugged in the new SMC Cable Modem. Noticed that it was an integrated all-in-one Cable/Router/Wifi. This concerned me as I thought I may have received the wrong unit. Plugged it in, noticed Wifi turn on (which concerned me even more). Shortly however, the WiFi turned off, and the “Bridge Mode” was enabled after it was automaticly provisioned by Shaw. (I confirmed this is what actually was happening later on when I spoke to tech support).

Had a few problems getting online. For some reason my account was limited for only 2 devices to have concurrent internet. This was odd and frusterating considering I have 6 Static IPs and should have over 10 Dynamic IPs. After a phone call to Shaw, they resolved this. I also got them to test the line, and all was good.

One interesting thing is that most of the speed test sites out there, actually don’t provide accurate testing since they can’t actually handle your bandwidth. The Shaw Speed test actually reporting a download speed of 98Mbps, and an upload spead of 4.97Mbps.

So far it ROCKS!

Update – July 21st, 2011

It’s been over a month now, and I’m still very satisfied. We had a few minor problems in the past on our old connection with the limitations of upload speed, both for pushing updates out to clients, along with our VoIP system that runs over our internet connection. With the new service, all issues no longer exist. I can actually utilize the internet connection, get the speeds I expect, at the same time use multiple lines on our VoIP system with absolutely NO issues at all.

The speed is still rock solid, the stability of the connection is also still rock solid. Absolutely no complaints whatsoever…

Microsoft iSCSI Target Software – First Impressions

 iSCSI, Microsoft  No Responses »
Apr 222011
 

Well,

I finally got some time to tinker with the Microsoft iSCSI Target Software that as of recently is now free. I was surprised how easy it was to get this up and running.

First time, it literally took 30 seconds for the install, and with absolutely no experience I created, configured, and setup a 80GB target and mounted it to a Windows 7 initiator. Took me approx an additional 15 seconds to learn how to snapshot volumes, etc…

The interface for configuration is very light, clear, and non-confusing. I was almost surprised there wasn’t more, but at the same time in all reality there’s nothing else to put on there.

Next plan: Get this running on a physical box and test VMware ESXi hosts connecting to it in a clustered environment. I’ll keep you guys posted!

Microsoft iSCSI Target Software is now free!

 ESXi, iSCSI, Microsoft, Storage, VMware, vSphere  No Responses »
Apr 152011
 

I thought I’d pass this on to all you iSCSI enthusiasts out there!

This morning I received an e-mail forwarded on by someone.

Apparently the Microsoft iSCSI Target Software is now free and runs on Windows Server 2008 R2.

Article:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2011/04/05/the-microsoft-iscsi-software-target-is-now-free.aspx

I plan on getting this installed, setup, and configured sometime in the next couple weeks to test with my VMware vSphere environment. I’ll post my results 🙂 Happy SANing!

Update: vSphere and Lio-Target – My Setup and Configuration

 ESXi, iSCSI, Linux, VMware, vSphere  27 Responses »
Jan 102011
 

I notice quite a bit of traffic coming in (alot of it is the same people coming back) searching for information on VMware vSphere using iSCSI, specifically Lio-Target (because of the compatibility with SCSI persistant reservations).

In the past I’ve been jumping all over the place testing Lio-Target on different distrobutions, test scenarios, etc… I’ve officially implemented it into my production network and just wanted to report it’s been running solid for a few months now.

Current Working Configuration (Stable):

Currently at the moment I have numerous HP Servers (ML350s, DL360s) running ESXi off an internal usb-key. These ESXi hosts are accesing numerous iSCSI targets over gigabit hosted on a DL360 G6 with 2 X MSA20 storage units. The server hosting the storage is running Ubuntu 10.10 and has been rock solid with absolutely no issues. I’m fully utilizing VMotion amongst all the hosts, and all hosts have concurrent access to the iSCSI targets. This is running in full production and I’m fully confident in the configuration and setup.

Future Plans:

Lio-Target is going upstream in to the Linux kernel on the next release (2.6.38). With the testing I did (and blogged about) in the past months, I have not been able to get the newer versions of Lio-target running stable on CentOS. Once a new version of CentOS is released, or there is a kernel upgrade available to bring CentOS to 2.6.38, I will be installing CentOS on to the storage server and adding more disk space. Once this change is complete, that will conclude any future changes for a while (excluding adding more ESXi hosts).

If anyone has any questions on my setup, or configuration with something similar, or have any issues with Lio-Target, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll see if I can help!

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