LUN Hide'n'Seek

Come Monday morning after a coffee and a bit of research I had solved my problem. VMWare storage filtering will filter out LUNS if that LUN is; already in use, referenced as an RDM or not available on all ESX Hosts. It was this last condition that made me wonder. I had rebuilt a sandbox ESXi host to ESX to make use of NetApp’s mbralign tools, but I had not reconnected it in vCenter. This host reference was left offline and moved outside of any clusters in vCenter. This lone offline ESXi host was what was blocking the clearly available LUN being listed as an available extent!

Morale of the story: anything registered in the vCenter will be in play, regardless of state or location of the object. More on Storage Filtering is available in the vSphere Online Library.

For quite some time I have been recommending avast! Antivirus to Friends, Family and Colleagues to protect their personal computers. It’s simple, covers all bases and easy to maintain but most of all it’s free!

I was glad to find out recently that they’ve just released their latest major version of their free Antivirus product version 5. They’ve made it easier to use and it looks so much better.

Changes I’m glad to see:

• Simplfied layout in program window
  The previous layout was far to confusing, I had trouble every time I launched it…
• Easy access to Boot-time Scan under ‘Scan Computer’
  My must suggested fix for viruses on a computer, as it scans your disk for viruses before Windows starts making it possible to delete them.
• Gaming mode
  Supresses notifications when a full screen application is launched
• Easy to see protection status
  Nice big letters and colour right up the top so you know everything is running and up to date

If you’re not running antivirus or your currently paying for virus protection I’d strongly recommend avast! 5. Download it here: http://www.avast.com

The access to Vodafone’s 2G network is in addition to the announcement back in April that 3 will roam onto Telstra’s NextG network. ie. When your out of the 3′s CBD coverage, you’ll get the advantage of using Telstra’s wide country coverage. However should you use any data on Telstra’s network it will not be included in any caps. At present the additional usage charge is $1.60/mb, under the new Telstra NextG agreement the roaming data charge will be 50c/mb. This is still quite high, but I do like the fact that I can still get coverage in the country areas of Western Australia for Voice and SMS.

So where is the advantage of gaining access to Vodafone’s 2G (or Voice/SMS/Slow Data) network? The original Whirlpool article suggests that data usage on the Vodafone 2G network will be included in 3′s cap. However what will my phone do when it can’t find 3′s 3G network? Will it drop back to Vodafone 2G or Telstra NextG? Whirlpool Forum members are seeing the Vodafone network appear as “3″ in addition to “3 (3G)”. Perhaps the SIM will instruct the phone to choose anything with “3″ in the network name. This also bring’s 3′s coverage to a mix of their own 3G (Voice/SMS/Fast Data) in the CBDs, Telstra’s 2G/NextG and Vodafone’s 2G in the CBD / Country. I also wonder if this will have any affect on the Telstra NextG whilst roaming agreement ?

Enough of me brain dumping for the morning, time to get back to my email and coffee.

RB

For those of you in the East Australian states, you’ve already switched to Daylight Savings for the 08-09 Summer. We over here in the West were due to switch to Daylight Savings on the 25th of October, but as we’re all pertrified of change it was rejected in a referendum in May earlier this year.

One small problem, your Windows based computer is still set to go forward an hour on the 25th. Microsoft were so confident that WA would vote DST in they configured Windows to switch not just for the 3 year trial but for every year.

Not to worry, Microsoft have kindly put together a website to help you undo Daylight Savings for your version of Windows. Head over to the Microsoft Daylight Savings page and follow the instructions. It’s also a good idea to print out your calendars for Home or Work before the 25th, just in case they get screwed up with preprogrammed Daylight Savings changes.

First up if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Left 4 Dead (L4D) yet, today is your lucky day! Today is “Freaky Free Friday” and for the next 24hours you can download and play L4D via Steam. I highly recommend it, lots of fun! My Steam ID is skitau, feel free add me to your Friends list so we can join up for some Zombie killing action!

Secondly if you do decide to purchase L4D or have been waiting for a sale on L4D to snap it up, your in luck! This weekend L4D is on sale at 40% the normaly price bringing it down to US$23.99, awesome!

Last but not least, once you’ve dedicated your entire weekend to zombie smashing you’ll no doubt have high numbers of kills/pounces/snags/booms against your name. Valve have also released an extended stats page for L4D so you can see the numbers in all their glory! Check out my stats page here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/skitau/stats/L4D

“Stole the set of Steak Knifes” Skit