I’m still setting things up there, I’m using VirtualBox to host certain functionalities on separate VMs.

So far there are :

• mta1 for incoming mail, running ESVA , love it! (had experience built with that when Importing to VBox)
• web1 for web sites hosting, running Cherokee!

Still need to get my VPN concentrator, Asterisk, Mail Storage moved there from other systems. Not forgetting move my mobygeek.net site as well!

This will allow me to drop my VM in US, as well as remove some of the services from my home server as my Internet access from home is rubbish in a new place.

I actually had the pleasure of flying Marc around EGHH before I went solo.

You can find Marc’s blog at golfcharlie232.blogspot.com

the time has come, I will be leaving my current hosting provider www.1and1.com . Why ? I simply see no value in using hosting providers. I am my self working in that industry and that means I know how it works and stuff and because I have my own servers serving my email, vpns, dns for long time now I am just cutting off some unnecessary spendings.

First, my yllq.net domain got transfered to GKG – why ? Cost and they allow IPv6 glue, as well as they are reasonably technical towards customers.

Next it will be firmahrp.com and then mobygeek.net and blackue.net as I still didn’t decided which server to use for WWW hosting.

I’ve signed up a few days ago and I’m still expanding my lands. What is a good sign that game can be entertaining.

Good thing about it is that it’s real time so you don’t have to be logged in all the time to play. If things like research or building take hours , just close the site and do your own thing, then when you return it will be all done.

If you have 15m a day to play I highly recommend it … so far…

I’ve even started some consultations on what they wish to have there.

So far I have found that :

Palm is thinking that Europe loves only Windows Mobile – I don’t! The two of the latest Treos are not showing in EU – these are 755p and Centro. HEY! I want one of these ( actually two! )

Nokia: E61i would be on my list but it does not feature A2DP what is stupid! E90 has all the features I desire, plus it has a [tab] key on internal keyboard! That is cool,  if you are going to use it for SSH like I have to.  Problem with E90 is price…. probably way over my limit will see when buying time will come.

Sony-Ericsson  has a new P1i which honestly is at the top of my list, it has all what I am looking for and a bonus – Jog-Dial which I alway wished to have in a handheld.

Others ? They are doing Windows Mobile only what makes it not for me.

Maybe you know some gear which has a querty keyboard, wifi/bluetooth(2), voip, 3G, no windows mobile?

I have setup an Asterisk installation on my server, it is still work in progress and so far, I love it! Why I didn’t checked it out earlier?

So far, I have a few SIP users, and a few PSTN gateways in different countries. Started by reading the free ebook available from Asterisk Website. Setup was really simple, had a few bumps, but day on day it gets more interesting, adding more automation, k3wl. This knowledge will be useful at work, where we are going to setup a proper PBX.

VPN, I have done an OpenVPN installation on my own private network, it works like a charm. Unfortunately at work I had to go with a solution more integrated into MS Windows. I really wanted to have IPSec/L2TP … but the complexity of server setup just killed it. When I was switching from IPSec/L2TP to PPTP it was soooo much easier and cleaner to get PPTP up and running.

I think that IPSec/L2TP will have to wait and eventually it will be rolled out. I really don’t want to use PPTP for full access to my networks. To be honest, when I came across OpenVPN first time, it also was too much for me and I left it and used SSH tunnels instead. So I think I have to mature with IPSec/L2TP and try to make it work later.

Unfortunately W2.0 community sites are huge and not only teenagers started to use them. I had to pass. My first was orkut, were I have created an account just to stay in contact with a blacky_ . A few year later, in the beginning of 2007 when I was considering moving jobs, I was invited to LinkedIn a W2.0CW for professionals. Yesterday … FaceBook .

I hope that is it, I really refuse to have any connection to myspace.

One thing is certain, I will still use my MobyGeek site as a primary place to host my content.

For some thoughts about the second type, read more

The most popular are Nagios and MRTG. Nagios is usually for alerting while MRTG based on RRD tools is used for plotting SNMP data.

I can understand why Nagios is so popular, it is just great, does its job beautifully. Configuring Nagios is also just a breeze and what really takes time is putting your requirements down, configurations is very easy to understand and can be arranged in many ways so you can choose the most convenient way for you. In my case configuring it for multiple systems was just a matter of using sed to replace hosts name and IP address and redirect it to a new file. When using web interface constantly host groups and service groups are extremely useful to arrange data on the screen. Plugins system is very useful as well. You can write your own plugin in any language or you can download from free repository.

For plotting … MRTG is not my best choice. I have some experience with it when I have been using it to monitor bandwidth usage on my ASDL connection, also we are using it to monitor load on our servers. When I was setting it up it wasn’t clear … some randomness all around me. Configuration file is just amazingly cluttered, navigating is only possibly with search function build into your text editor. Not really admin friendly.
Because MRTG was so annoying to setup I went on a safari to pickup some better tool for that job and I have found a real beauty ( Really!, even graphs look nicer ). It is Munin.

Munin is great, it has agent-server architecture. That approach helps a lot in diverse networks. You can have multiple agents monitored by multiple servers. You can have server with agents deployed in different parts of your network and monitoring equipment not accessible from server.

Agents can monitor not only host which they are residing on, but SNMP anable devices as well. Munin calls agents nodes. Configuring node is literally symlinking between plugins repository and plugin configuration folder, some plugins require to run as a specific user or group, not problem add it to very clean nodes config file, you can pass environmental variables that way as well. Did I mention that it uses plugins ? Which you can easily write yourself in any language?

Server is the place where all the data are collected from agents and plotted. This part of Munin is easy to configure as well. It even allows you to group your nodes in domains, put multiple sources into one graph and feature which I didn’t employed yet … it allows you to setups alarms and it works very good with Nagios.

From my perspective, winning team is Nagios + Munin. Both suited for their job , expandable with simple plugins, plus they can cooperate. Worth trying at least.