We has tubez!

So many of you may find this site looking to see where I’ve gone, and why I’m not on Hak5 any longer.

While this is a brief post I promise I will write up a longer more appropriate post for you shortly.

Short and sweet of it is, I’ve decided to move on and focus my energy on my career, business opportunities and my undying love of internet radio.

I’ll be bringing back my internet talk show soon, and if you’re ever at an SAP conference focusing on infrastructure or virtualization, you might see me presenting

Like I said, a more thought out post is coming shortly, and I’ll be posting on my blog pretty regularly with updates on things going on in my life.

Thanks to all the great I’ve met over the last 2.5 years, you have truly made them unforgettable!

Recently on Hak5 I showed how easy it was to setup a Windows based IP-PBX using software by 3CX, a company out of the small country of Cypress.

After having an urgent need to replace our aging PSTN based telephone system which costs $100/hr for some monkey to come in and make a simple extension change, my company decided it was time for something we could control.

I had been through this motion about a year prior, and in that time, came away with a solution from Mitel which ended up costing around $30,000.  Now this was a great platform, (IP3300 if I remember correctly) Office Communications Server 2007 integration, remote site support, Exchange 2007 UM integration, all of the key features that I had spent tireless hours implementing in our infrastructure to hopefully take advantage of in a new phone system.

However, the current economic conditions as they are, we could no longer justify a $30,000 price tag for a new phone system;  Enter 3CX.

After searching google for about a half hour, and looking at all of the asterisk based IP-PBX systems, I came across the 3CX IP-PBX platform which ran on top of Windows.  Now I know there are those of you out there that may be reading this thinking to yourselves, AHHH MORE WINDOWS.  Well you can go to hell, seriously.  My company is a Microsoft shop, end of story.  I have no need, nor the time to do something in linux that would take me personally longer than it would in Windows.  You may be quicker, and that’s good for you, but I can’t be bothered.  Windows works for my company, and that’s all that you need to know.

Back on track…  After downloading the free version (yes it’s completely free if you don’t need some of the advanced features such as Exchange 2007 UM integration, or call parking, etc.) I literally had a functioning internal phone system up and running in about 10 minutes.  The installation is painless, and the configuration steps a breeze.

So I decided to kick it up a notch.  I ordered a single Linksys SPA962 IP Phone from 888voipstore (I highly recommend these guys, sure you can find stuff for 10-15 bucks cheaper, but at the end of the day, I’m speaking to someone I understand, and who is very attentive to their customer)  After receiving said phone, I plugged in the mac address to the 3CX back end, and auto provisioned the phone.  CAKE!  Nice and moist, just the way I like it.

Next came the all important decision of how many people we’re going to roll this out to in Phase 1.  Answer? 16
I can handle 16, and apparently so can 3CX.  I had 16 extensions and phones configured in about 2 hours.  That includes the time it takes to upgrade the phones to the latest 6.1.5a firmware available from Cisco.

All in all I’m pretty satisfied with the 3CX package.  While I can’t get into every nitty gritty detail of my phone system, I don’t need to.  The software works, a few small issues not withstanding) and I can eventually turn over basic user maintenance to someone who isn’t an IT person because it really is that easy to use.

I really would suggest anyone with a Windows machine lying around the house who has a need for a basic PBX for use with either a VOIP provider, or a PSTN gateway look at 3CX.  I know I’ll be deploying a server here at the hakhouse for some other business purposes, and don’t have to worry about much beyond which machine I’m actually going to throw it on.

For more info on 3CX or to download the free version OR their enterprise version with a free demo license which unlocks all of the software’s functionality, but limit’s it to 2 concurrent calls should visit http://www.3cx.com

Recently I had the pleasure of being a part of the Napera Indigo Beta program in which Napera, (a networking company founded by Todd Hooper formerly of Watchguard) sent me a 24 port gigabit switch with their new embedded switch platform installed on it.

The Napera beta is basically a test of a network software platform for installation by companies interested in the features that Napera is spearheading.  With the recent release of Windows XP SP3, Vista and the upcoming release of Windows 7, microsoft has taken the bold move of having the ability to offload the monitoring and auditing of machines connected to your internal network and checking them for things like up to date OS patches, firewalls and antivirus.

The program focused on a couple key components.
1. Set-up and Activation
2. Enable NAP and Health Reporting
3. Health Enforcement
4. Identity Enforcement
5. Guest Access

You can read a little more on exactly what NAP is here : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/nap/napoverview.mspx

All of that aside, in the most recent episodes of Hak5, I dived into the interface and health reporting functionality of the Napera switch and it’s ability to limit workstation access based on Health and Authentication with Active Directory.

I’m a steadfast believer that anything that makes my life easier as a Systems Admin, or now in my case a CTO for a small company, is a great advancement and something that I think is sorely lacking in the industry.

I can go on and on about the functions of the napera software but I think it’s best experienced from the horse’s mouth.

For more information on Napera, head on over to http://www.napera.com/indigo/Napera%20Indigo%20User%20Guide.pdf for the Users’s guide on Indigo.

On the latest episode I showed an alternative to windows terminal services.

The website is located at http://www.xpunlimited.nl there is a large list of benefits at http://xpunlimited.nl/benefits.html

One of the really nice features is the ability to repurpose an old XP machine to use as a terminal server.

The setup couldn’t be easier, and is pretty much a standard application installer, customization is a very simple process from limiting application launches, to customizing the initial desktop, and even advanced functions which replicate the microsoft terminal services security settings.

Questions or alternatives?
Please leave a comment.

Hey guys, just a post here giving a little more info on what I talked about on episode 415 of Hak5.

After installing a fresh copy of your Windows OS of choice, the biggest headache for most of us is the arduous task of trying to locate drivers for all of our different components. So this post is all about making your reinstall a little less troublesome.

Here’s a list of some of the better driver backup utilities!

DriverBackup2 is a lightweight driver-backup tool. The application is portable with a caveat: you’ll need administrative privileges for full use. You can opt to backup one or all of your drivers, the backed up files are dumped into a tree structure based on driver name. DriverBackup2 also allows you to restore and delete unnecessary drivers. If you ever hunted for obscure drivers online, when installing legacy or obscure hardware for instance, DriverBackup2 will save you the hassle of searching them out again.

Double Driver lists all the hardware drivers installed on your system and creates backups of both the actual drivers and lists of the driver names. While handy with any computer, Double Driver really shines if you have a computer that came with pre-installed drivers that are hard if not impossible to come by. With a few clicks you’ll have those archaic laptop drivers backed up and ready to put back to work after a fresh install.

DriverMax allows you to easily reinstall all your Windows drivers. No more searching for rare drivers on discs or on the web or inserting one installation CD after the other. Simply export all your drivers (or just the ones that work ok) to a folder or a compressed file. After reinstalling Windows all drivers can be back in place in less than 5 minutes.

DriverView is a helpful upgrade from looking through devices individually in the Device Manager, but the real value here is in the list generation. Create an HTML-formatted backup list for your future troubleshooting needs or export to text to show friends or forum members just what’s gone wrong.  While it doesn’t actually backup drivers, if you’re still into doing things the old fashion way, DriverView is a great choice!

Now that we’ve got all of the corporate slogans and descriptions out of the way, my personal favorite is the first link we’ve talked about here.  The interface is the least cluttered, and the process really couldn’t be any easier.  For those of you who are looking to deploy driver backups in an automated fashion, there’s a built in commandline builder!  Like I said, I’ve personally used it and really does make life alot easier after a reinstall.

So check it out and if you have any questions, remember: matt@hak5.org – http://revision3.com/forum/  or http://forums.hak5.org

Till Next Week!
Trust Your Technolust