What a shame, not only that you have to by the OEM Windows 8 License for your new lenovo notebook, also you will not get the license.  Normally i would be a sticker under your notebook, that would reveal this number.  But this license is only in the BIOS of your notebook.  So you are not able to get the license.  Lenovo does also not react on license requests.  Even after opening a ticket and a complaint, it was not possible to get the license.  So i do not use Windows 8 Professional on my new notebook.  And i was forced to buy a windows 8 professional license and now i even can not use it on another pc, because i won’t get the license from lenovo. 

What a shame on customer treatment and user rights.  Lenovo was not answering questions, also you are not informed during your order of this handling of licenses.  Even after your order, they have not been able to show you some paper, where it is said, that you would not get the actual license.  As a customer, you will be just ignored and no questions will be ansered upon your request, regarding the license. 

Also there will be no Software CD delivered with your new notebook.  You have to order a recovery CD for extra money.  So you might ending up 2000-3000$ and have to pay extra for the software you have already payed. 

I was shortly thinking about building a home lab for the data center path, but when i looked at the price list for the nexus 7000 i thought, maybe not.  You can get quickly in ranges, where someone would buy a house for that price. 

Altogether that you easily come to more than 100.000$. If you will get as NFR (Not for Resale) you will get a 70% discount from the global price list, but it will still be above 100.000 $. 

So i redefined my requirements upon that and thought about a data center lab with regard to vmware and microsoft.  Many new products also have been virtualized like the Cisco 1000V Router and the ASA Cloud Firewall.  The ASA Cloud Firewall is currently available as a promo and you can quote it freely to get a license for e-delivery. 

So after nearly exactly 6 years i decided to upgrade my old T60.  So not really upgrade, but exchange it into an W530 from lenovo.  It took me quite some time to decide weather to go for apple or a remote solution, but after all, i decided to get real horsepower and a notebook, that i can use with 32GB RAM. 

This has been my old one for a long time.  Did not had problems with it and it had been very good quality and it lasted very long now.  I think six years in IT is like an era.  My old setup had about 3 GB RAM max.  Now i can use 32 GB at max.  The main reason for the W530 was the ability to upgrade to 32 GB RAM and the processor with enough power.  And i like the idea to keep the hardware for some time and not to renew it every year or two.  Maybe my wife can use my “old” one still for surfing. 

I had to get a win 8 license also, but i have planned to install ubuntu.  There should be enough place for vsphere and two esxi.  Currently i have “only 8GB” of RAM installed, but after i have tested things a bit, i will update when necessary. 

I will follow up with an installation and how things have worked out.  Most things should do this out of the box. 

There are also plans to integrate an Synology box.  Currently i have a DS212 and another one might join the lab.  There is only connectivity with iSCSI or NFS / SMB and no fibrechannel, but anyway a start. 

I’m currently not able to catch up with my aim.  I have been in setting up partnership with cisco for a company and now i start to get again more into the technical topics.  As for the partnership there are a lot of tools and other things you might have been never come along as a ccie.  But they are also needed and definitely necessary, when you want at least to reach a partner status up from premier.  You will have to complete all points from an audit list and that is not little, especially for a first time audit. 

But i will catch up and want to stick again more in writing here to also catch up with technologies, as they are changing. 

I have been to Cisco Live in the beginning of this year and there have been many new topics around.  Some of them what is quite new are still UCE, but also Cloupia, OpenStack, SDN (Software Defined Networking) as these are some examples about things developing at cisco.  Still UCS and Nexus is currently the part, that catches up and customers getting more and more into it, as HP is loosing market shares, maybe, they do not have invested that much in new developments and also have the problem to support all the old stuff.  Cisco has started with a new product and does not have these problems.  There are many improvements in comparison to cisco.  Cisco does have stateless computing, has much more settings in their service profiles

Anyway, it up to you how you start or how you go for it.  What you should do is to organise your studies.  That would probably take some burden from your shoulders and could be a great chance for your future be be solid enough for upcoming tasks.  Take the time to plan your path.  So first might be to make a timetable where you roughly plan your way.  It might look like this:
1: Collect Basic Informations, Plan your Study, make a timetable. 
2.  Study design and product and technologies on a high level
You need to understand what would be where and why at first
3.  Go for Labs, train and look at the details and at least mybe to some labs

So what is that for me.  Currently there seems to be like many vendors doing starting with datacenter.  You should take the one, that best matches to you. 
Ask yourself how you can learn the best and what would be a good way to learn about new stuff. 
Make a list of books, you would need to read or for reference. 
Labs are still not available from the different vendors.  Seems like, it could take still some months for them.  In the meantime it would be nice to focus on technologies to know them really well. 
So that could be a plan:
October: Basic Informations
November: Technology studies
December: Technology studies
January: Lab details, maybe written
February: Lab details
March: Some complete labs –
April: Might be neccessary to take a bootcamp before the lab also
April: take the lab

As i’m not really new to server and dc infrastrukture and since cisco announce a new ccie track, i will focus the next months from now on with going for the dc path and learning on new topics for dc.  Since my involvement on security is not ongoing and i have found the new track a good challenge, i will start and continue with dc for the next months.  In serveral weeks the new lab will be available and i plan to certify next year. 

I just start over all organisation and planning for the new track and currently i’m looking for new workbook providers.  Having seen that ine and ipexpert are not already there, but have promisingly new products, i will start with going for the theory.  Thanks Cisco to this great track. 

How to install on a not Red Hat Distribution Enterprise Linux Server.  I used CentOS 5.6, as a i386 and 32-Bit version.  I had to also add libXp after installalling everything by default from the netinstall. 

Ininstalled everything on a vmware machine with the following settings:

CentOS 4/5 32-bit

1 CPU

2000 MB RAM

50 GB disk

and everything else with default settings.  You could maybe just use smaller values, but i used just the smallest settings for a minimal installation advised by cisco installation guide. 

After the default installation of CentOS i had to adjust the following settings or add the following things:

I had to install libXp from the software center

I changed the hostname, cause you have to enter the hostname in later on for the testing license.  There you have to change the hostname in:

/etc/sysconfig/network
and you have to add additional entry in /etc/hosts for the 127.0.0.1

Then you should also change the Release name:

/etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5

Afterwards i also changed the updater, so that it would not check for updates periodically. 

You have also to enable HTTP or HTTPS in the firewall.  You could enable these ports or you can also disable the firewall. 

as i move across a boarder up to Switzerland from Germany and also to another employee.  I have decided to startup with my preparation for the sec lab again.  I managed to setup gns3 version 0.7.4.  Here is my .net file.  I have implemented all related devices for http://ine.com compatibility. 

I find it really great.  Seems like it’s possible to simulate 100% of the lab equipment and functions on my laptop.  I have a notebook with the intel m620 processor (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43560) and 4 gb ram (windows 7, 64-bit).  After adjusting idle values i got about 30-40% processor usage after starting all 14 devices (ASA1, ASA2, IDS/IPS, R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, SW1, SW2, BB1, BB2, BB3).  ASA1, ASA2 and IDS/IPS is producing most of the load.  While “only” the routers are doing about 5-10% when idle and with no configuration. 

Here is my gns3 .net file for version 0.7.4.  You have to adapt the directories to your environment. 

Just had the problem with vmware workstation 6.5.3 that the ACS 5.1 installation would not find the SCSI hard disc.  It’s always claiming the the hard disc size is “0”.  The problem with the vmware workstation installation is, that for the ACS bootdisc it’s not possible to identify the SCSI controller.  I must be an LSI SCSI controller. 

With vmware version 6.5 it seems not possible to configure the SCSI controller version over the GUI.  So you will have to change the value directly in the machines vmx file. 

You have to add the controller device in the vmx vmware configuration file for the virtual machine itself.  It should look like:

scsiX.virtualDev = “lsilogic”

where X is the controller number.  For the ACS insstallation it would be

scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”

After this change the Installation should work fine. 

Other defaults i took have been:

OS: Red Hat

Mem 512

Disc: min 60 GB SCSI

Processors: 2

After booting from the iso image you will have to enter “1” and wait for some minutes.  Then login with “setup” and enter the defaults for the device. 

Then the installation will complete. 

You will have to obtain a valid license after login in. 

Use “ACSAdmin” and your given password (or use “default”) from the setup process. 

After changing to a new password, you will have to add a valid license file. 

Long time no update.  I have done different things and also just came from a holiday.  My son is now nearly 2 years old on he is about to make great steps further into the future. 

In my current job i have done some migrations and audits for example.  Also i made my Prince2 (project management) certification in the meantime. 

Time to go deeper again.  Time to go in depth with the current sec lab. 

In two weeks i will be at the INE bootcamp end of april near london for a week.  Currently i’m still trying to setup my lab alltogether.  I’m still not having a IDS/IPS solution.  I’m hoping the cisco aset lab will open soon to be able to train mor on this equipment. 

I was in trouble motivating myself for the next path.  But i’m starting again.  Currently looking at ACS and IOS authentification. 

I still haven’t booked my sec lab yet.  But i think this will be at the end of august/september.  So here we go. 

Glad having gns3 on my side.  There have been numerous changes since version 3 and 4.  I use it quite often while travelling for example.  Great work guys.