Stuff I Do

Follow these steps to copy all the IAS RADIUS configuration from one Windows 2003 server to another. This is useful if you are migrating to a new server or for setting up redundant RADIUS servers.

On the original RADIUS server drop to a command prompt and type:

netsh aaaa show config > radius.txt

Copy the file over to the new RADIUS server. On the new server drop to a command prompt and enter:

Netsh exec radius.txt

It will give you a message if it copied correctly or not. The only thing that does not come across is the settings for SQL logging. For this you will have to go in the SQL logging portion of IAS RADIUS and setup the connection to your logging database if you are using the SQL logging option.

I am in the process of moving a bunch of network services from a physical server to one in VMWare. Among the services that need to be moved is DHCP. While this is a simple service I have many subnets and many more IP reservation with no desire to type all this information again on the new server. This is also very useful to setup the recommended 80/20 dual DHCP configuration. Below are the steps to be used to do a wholesale export and import of all the DHCP setting from one Windows 2003 server to another.

On your original DHCP server drop to a command line and type:

Netsh dhcp server export c:\dhcp-export.txt all

Copy this file over to the new DHCP server and type:

Netsh dhcp server import c:\dhcp-import.txt all

Now the new DHCP server will have all the settings that you have on the original DHCP server. Make sure to change you ip helper-address on your routers to point to the new DHCP server before deactivating the original DHCP server.

We have gotten the approvals and filled out the capitol expenditures so that the order has been placed for our new switches and routers. The new gear is needed because of the new building we are building so we are not going to be able to use it right away, then again the excitement of new switches might just overwhelm us and we could use them sooner then later.

It is so exciting and I can’t wait until they arrive, it is like Christmas for a big network geek. We have ordered 6 Cisco Catalyst 3750 GB with PoE switches for the production floor and for the datacenter core switch we have gone with the Cisco Catalyst 6513 with redundant sup blades. That 6513 is an amazing box with modular software so you don’t have to reboot the whole switch for a update on one of the modules. This is important for us now as in the new manufacturing facility some of our production equipment cannot loose network connection at anytime for any amount of time.

We also picked up two Cisco 2851 routers. One of them is free because Cisco gave that and some access points for free due to the size of the project. These routers will have the full security pack which will allow us to turn in our Pix since you can now do everything plus some on this router that could be done on the Pix.

Ran into an issue with the Infrant NAS devices. Apparently there is a problem with the MTU size that the Infrant device likes and when I am trying to do an Rsync between the two devices over the WAN they will just time out and die. If possible you can set the MTU of the port the NAS device is connected on to 1492. Unfortunately for me there is no way to do this on the HP ProCurve switch I am currently using, can’t wait until I get the new Cisco gear in! When P10 firmware comes out it is suppose to deal with this problem where you can set the MTU on the NAS itself, but until then I have to NFS mount the NAS device from one of my Linux servers and use Rsync on the Linux server to the remote NAS to keep the devices in sync.