Ryan Is Rambling On Again

In my last post I was pretty discouraged and I believe I described our project as “hosed”. I may have been a little premature with that assessment.

Al, who was just as discouraged as I was, had a brainstorm and started searching for simulators that can handle MPLS. He came across one called GNS3. It’s an open source simulator that allows you to load an IOS .bin file to the router in the simulator. This allows you to give the router a modern enough OS to be able to configue it for MPLS. It comes in both Linux and Windows flavors and not knowing which would work better we decided to try to load both. I fired up VMware on my laptop and loaded my Fedora 11 machine and he grabbed his laptop with 64 bit Windows Vista on it. We both went to SourceForge and downloaded the program and set out to get it working. After a brief 3.5 hours of extreme frustration I decided to shut down my Fedora virtual machine and try to install it on my laptop’s 64 bit Windows 7 OS. A brief hour and a half later I finally had success!  The simulator FINALLY worked!  Al had one little box checked that was preventing him from getting it to work on his computer (isn’t that always the way). So we both loaded up a .bin file of IOS version 12 or newer and tried to configure a router. IT WORKED! I think that Al and I may have burned out a few of Google’s servers figuring that out tonight. Now we just need to figure out how to configure an MPLS network. Hahahahaha (imagine the Joker laughing here).

I’m happy that we should now be able to stick with our original plan. I’m also a little intimidated by the prospect of having to learn all of the new command line stuff in the next few weeks. But I’m no longer discouraged about this project.

To infinity and beyond…

It’s official…Microsoft Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 sp1 DO NOT play well together.  After almost 2 hours of trying to install Exchange 2007, I finally gave up.  I downloaded Exchange Server 2010 and PRESTO…no problems!  It installed with no errors on the first try!  As you can imagine I was thrilled and disgusted all at the same time.  So, we will be using Exchange 2010 for certain.

BIND DNS may be the most widely used DNS server on the planet, but like all things open source it has NO GUI, numerous little “quirks”, and no decent documentation.  I installed BIND, configured it, started it and was able to verify it was working.  Then I shut down VMWare and my computer and went to bed.  When I came back this afternoon to work on it some more, BIND was not working.  I tried to start it manually…no luck.  I tried to reload it…no joy.  AAAARRRGGGH!  Time to fire up the primary resource for the open source community, Google, and figure out what is going wrong.  I found numerous blogs about this problem, but none of the solutions seem to work.  I think that when I shut down the server last night it installed an update.  According to a few of the posts I’ve read, those automatic updates from Microsoft have a habit of blowing out BIND DNS and reloading Microsoft’s DNS (shocking that Microsoft would do something like that *said dripping with sarcasm*).  But, after shutting down Microsoft’s DNS, rebooting and shutting down Microsoft’s DNS again, and finally shouting and swearing at my monitor I still can’t start BIND.  If you heard a hollow thudding sound earlier today it was just the sound of my head repeatedly banging against my desk.  I’m thinking that I’m just going to reinstall BIND from scratch RIGHT AFTER I DISABLE THE AUTOMATIC UPDATES FROM MICRO$OFT!!

I learned a lot of good stuff about an MPLS network over the weekend.  Now I’m not sure that we can do it at the school.  It seems that we don’t have routers at the school that can be configured for MPLS.  They want a live demo, not a simulated one, but when the equipment is older than the current technology out there (ex., not a single 64 bit PC in the building except the student’s laptops), they may need to loosen up the rules just a touch.  When I see my instructor this week I’m going to ask if we can do our demo through Packet Tracer.  Does anyone know if MPLS can be configured in Packet Tracer?  If the answer is yes, does anyone know how?

My next task is to turn Fedora 11 into our web server and integrate it into our network.  I feel many hours spent with SAMBA, SWAT and/or Webmin coming on.

Other than all of the problems caused by Microsoft’s brilliant (again, *sarcasm*) software, I’m feeling good about the progress we are making.  Al was here today working on the IP address scheme and finishing up the documentation that needs to be turned in.  Tomorrow Al, Trish and I will be meeting up at the school for a few hours to finish up the stuff that’s due later this week.  Also, we will be getting Tom back now that his medical woes seem to be coming to an end.  That will be fantastic!  Things are moving along.

More to come…

We have decided to use Microsoft Server 2008 R2 for our servers.  We were going to use Exchange Server 2007 but I’m having MAJOR issues getting it to install.  I’m not sure if its a compatibility issue with Server 08 R2 or if it’s a problem with VMWare 7.  I’m going to try to install Exchange Server 2010 and see if that goes a little smoother.  We may be switching to Server 2010.  Also, to make one of the instructors happy, we have decided to configure BIND DNS instead of Microsoft’s DDNS.  We may even get crazy and make our web server Linux based and make the sample webpage using Fedora 11 and WordPress.  I enjoyed working with Linux and spent half my time in class helping everyone else so it looks like I get to go a few more rounds with SAMBA.  WOOHOO!!

Again, wish me luck (I’m seriously going to need all I can get).

**Update**

I created a new page just for the posts about this Capstone project.  All future updates will be there.

**ANOTHER UPDATE**

I can’t post directly to a new page.  It seems all but one page in a blog are static.  So I have created a category called Capstone and deleted the page called Capstone.  If you wish to follow along with my progress please click that category.  Sorry for the confusion, but I’m a newbie at this.

Welcome to my new WordPress blog!  This is my first time creating a real blog site.  I used what I learned in Mr. Peter’s Linux classes to build this.  Using Fedora 11, I downloaded XAMPP and WordPress and configured them.  I then downloaded FileZilla and learned how to use it to FTP my data to the web host.  I bought my domain name from 1&1 Internet and, after about an hour of tweaking, had my brand new blog site up and running!

Please let me know what you think about it.  Any constructive criticism would be appreciated.

Thanks.