Justin's IT Blog

Zerto: The Missing Manual

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Justin Paul | 8 Comments

If you are a follower of my blog you might remember the Veeam Missing Manuals I put together a long time ago, they were pretty popular and seemed to help a bunch of people. With that said I thought, why…

Unofficial Cisco UCS Wallpaper

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments

I snapped some screenshots of the Cisco UCS bootup process and found that they can make some cool wallpaper. So if you’re a UCS geek… here ya go! Disclaimer: all Cisco logos etc etc are property of Cisco (duh). Cisco…

Hands on with the new EMC VNX5400

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Justin Paul | 15 Comments

This week I was onsite with a customer setting up their new virtualization environment and got to play with a couple of the new EMC VNX5400’s. I wont go through all the marketing stuff as there are plenty of places…

Things to keep in mind if upgrading to vSphere 5.5

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments

If you are a super early adopter there are a few KB articles that you will want to keep an eye on if you are looking to go to vSphere 5.5 already. Thanks to Marcel @ Lumenate for pointing these…

MS SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups, a better way to cluster

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Justin Paul | 3 Comments

I’ve done posts before about how much I hate Microsoft Clusters, mainly because of their shared disk requirements. While VMware does support a virtualized Microsoft cluster with shared disks, the bottom line is that its just a pain in the…

Using the VMware OS Optimization Tool for VDI locally

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments

In July VMware released a new fling on the VMware Labs site that is designed to help you apply all VMware best practices for virtual desktops in one easy swoop. There are two ways to run the tool, locally and…

Meet Lumenate

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment

Recently DPSciences merged with a Dallas based technical consulting firm called Lumenate. Lumenate has a similar focus as DPS but with offices in different cities and a slightly different skill set. The merger began as a way to combine Lumenate’s…

Get started with Big Data using Hortonworks Sandbox

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Justin Paul | 2 Comments

I tried a couple of times to get Hadoop installed on Ubuntu from the group up, and while there are a bunch of how to guides out there, many of them are designed for older versions of Hadoop or Ubuntu.…

Why are people interested in Big Data?

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Justin Paul | 1 Comment

Recently, I have been reading up on big data mainly because I’m a geek and partly because of all the buzz floating around about it. I also got to sit down at VMworld and try out the new Big Data…

Finally, vSphere 5.1 and Win2012 Support for Backup Exec

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Justin Paul | 0 Comments

If you are a Backup Exec shop and also a vSphere 5.1 or Windows 2012 shop, you are going to want to get your Backup Exec updated today. It’s hard to believe that its taken Symantec almost a year to…

Zerto Docs MCP — Part 2: Hybrid Search and a Curated Knowledge Layer

AI-Powered Grain Market Tracking for Farmers

My Zerto Docs MCP Server: Ask Claude (or Copilot, or Cursor) Real Questions

Introducing Webhook Server: Windows-Native Webhooks for Zerto (and Anything Else)

Troubleshooting Keycloak Authentication

DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 2

DIY Precision Agriculture: Fertilizer Monitor with Raspberry Pi Pico Part 1

Automated Rotation of Keycloak LDAP Federation Password for Zerto

A Water Heater Breakdown Was the Best Thing for My Utility Bills!

DIY Stratum 1 NTP Server: Secure Time Sync with Raspberry Pi Under $200