Hardware

APC UPS — Replacing RBC43 Batteries in a SUA3000RM2U UPS

So it finally happened. The Batteries in my APC SUA3000RM2U finally went bad. I’ve had them for over 5 years so I am happy with there life. I’ve had to replace UPS Battery Cartridges and Packs before when working as a Data Center consultant. It is usually a simple and straight forward task. I would RMA the Battery Cartridge or Pack, if it’s under warranty, and then the manufacturer would send me back a new Battery Cartridge or Pack already filled with new batteries. Hot swap it with the old one and you are done.

However, this time it was my home unit and I don’t have warranty coverage or the extended one(usually purchased by an enterprise). So I went online looking for a Battery Cartridge replacement, $300-400!!!, o my! So I decided to try and replace the batteries themselves rather than the entire Battery Cartridge. I was able to find a pack of 8 batteries for around $83 with free expedite shipping. The following steps were what I did to replace each APC RBC43 battery inside the battery cartridge.

1. Tools needed, New Batteries, Sharpie, Phillips Screwdriver, Utility knife(was in picture for cutting the new box of batteries open only, haha).

January 17, 2016 by jim Uncategorized 2

Linux — Reset ethX naming for Ubuntu/Debian

I stumbled across this issue a long time ago and it is still present today. Adding or removing NIC’s from a Linux box, or even replacing them renumbers or messes with the numbering for each NIC. For example if you have 1 NIC and add a second, sometimes it won’t show up as eth0 and eth1, it will show up as eth0 and rename1. Or even sometimes, your original eth0 will be renamed to rename1 and the new NIC will be named eth0 when added. Yikes! Talk about confusion.

It appears that this naming information is stored in a file located in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

So if you want to reset the numbering completely, delete this file and reboot! Now you have clean eth# numbering again!

rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules 
reboot

NOTE: You can also manipulate and edit this file rather than deleting it.

March 5, 2014 by jim Linux 0

Cisco ASA 5505 Memory Upgrade

Hi Folks! So I was trying to update my Cisco ASA 5505 my buddy gave me from version 8.2 to 9.1. However upon reloading the device with the new 9.1 image file I got a warning on the console! I received the error of purchase Cisco item “ASA5505-MEM-512=”

December 1, 2013 by jim Cisco 0

Inter-VLAN routing with Linux & PowerConnect 5324

I recently purchased a 24-port Gigabit Layer 2 Switch that supports VLAN tagging and trunking. Dell PowerConnect 5324, see here, has 24 Ethernet ports and is capable of tagging and untagging Frames at wire speed. It is a discontinued model, however doing some googling I found a updated firmware and IOS image!

Physical Topology

The topology is pretty typical of “routing-on-a-stick” for Multiple VLANs. I have a Linux server running Ubuntu 12.04 with a single NIC and the Dell PowerConnect switch.

Port configuration:
Network 1 = g1 – g16
Network 2 = g17 -g23

802.1q Information:
Switch Trunk Port = g24
Router Trunk Port = eth1

Logical Topology

I have a single LAN I want logically separated using a single switch. The VLAN IDs are 100 & 200. The VLAN subnets and ports will be as follows;

Subnets:
VLAN 100 = 192.168.1.1/24
VLAN 200 = 192.168.2.1/24

VLAN Access Ports:
VLAN 100 = g1 – g16
VLAN 200 = g17 -g23

March 11, 2013 by jim Linux Network 4

Tools needed, New Batteries, Sharpie, Phillips Screwdriver, Utility knife(was in picture for cutting the new box of batteries open only, haha).

Physical Topology

Logical Topology