AUTOMATING MY HOME PART 6: Wireless Security cameras revisited, wireless segmentation, and flood lights

Previously I talked about looking a the Lorex security camera system using wired Power over Ethernet, PoE.  From a physical security perspective, and a not being restricted by the location of power outlets it made sense.

As usual though the “Wife Acceptance Factor” was the real test.  I have learned she, as my primary user, gives me the best feedback on what is a good idea.  I started asking her what she wanted out of a camera system.  It turn out, it is less about security, and more about her checking in on the kids when they got home from school, and looking in on the dog, and making sure the front door was closed.  This lead us to look at wireless cameras, due to the challenges of running wires between floors of the house.

We settled on the Samsung Smartcam HD for the simple reason it supports local recording to an SD card.  While this was not critical, it was helpful for some short term replays to keep an eye on the house, but more importantly to capture hilarious incidents like nerf gun wars with the kids, or she and I trying to get our Christmas tree out of the house.  The quality is very solid, and we have had no major complaints after 6 weeks now.

With the cameras and the ecobee3 thermostat, we started to see a number of devices that simply need internet access, but do not need to access the local lan.  When I put in the Ubiquity WAP I initially gave us 3 SSID’s all on separate VLAN’s, the main wireless for media and work, the kids, and the guest network.  This weekend I added the fourth for our home automation devices.  While this is not strictly necessary, it is nice to keep them separated from the rest of our devices, and limits our exposure if there is a problem.

Recently we had some weird sounds in our backyard well after dark.  It sounded like a bobcat or a coyote had gotten ahold of a house cat or small dog.  We checked in the morning and didn’t see signs of anything, but to be honest it was a bit disconcerting.  My newest project is to put up floodlights in the back yard, enough to scare off anything that comes in to visit.  The main challenge has been how to make it look professional, and how to involve some type of automation.  I looked at pure motion sensors, but that didn’t seem to be what we wanted.  I am considering some type of smart lighting system, but ultimately it may come down to a simple remote switch connected to the light.

The backyard lighting gets more important as we move into spring and summer where we will get more time outdoors.  We are also building a fire pit soon, not automation related, but I am working on how to include something electronic, probably a bluetooth speaker or something similar.  Always fun, and always one more project.

AUTOMATING MY HOME PART 6: Wireless Security cameras revisited, wireless segmentation, and flood lights

Ravello Systems: a very good replacement for home labs, almost.

As a vExpert I have been privileged to have the use of Ravello Systems, https://www.ravellosystems.com/.  For those not familiar with it, basically they front end AWS and Google Cloud Platform enabling you to run most modern operating systems with a simple interface, including VMware vSphere.

As a technologist, I always have a number of projects going.  I am a hands on type of person, and I like to understand how things work by building and breaking them.  This normally happens on various lab equipment I purchase, or inherit, which works for the most part, although it is an expensive hobby.

Ravello Systems was intriguing beyond AWS or Google Cloud mainly because of their simple interface, blueprint based approach, and the ease of spinning up a quick vSphere lab, or even some random things that I needed to test such as a Vyatta based firewall, don’t ask.  The most time consuming part of creating a system was simply the time it took to upload ISO’s if I needed something custom.  The price for what I do is pretty reasonable, when you consider the cost of the infrastructure, and the time I am actually running things in the lab.

Of course no system is perfect.  My biggest issue was the inability to run a VMware vCenter 6 Appliance in their cloud.  I tried a number of hacks, but the only thing that worked was running it nested, which was just too slow for what I needed.  I also struggled with some security concerns, not their issue, my own concerns when I debated testing my Unifi controller for my home wifi as a cloud service.

One of my favorite uses was digging deeper into docker.  While I can deploy containers as VM’s in Fusion on my laptop, it seemed more logical to run some tests that were actually in the cloud.  Impressively simple again, and reasonable responsive since they were running as nested systems.

Going forward, the future of not just labs, but many production applications is likely spread across multiple cloud service providers and probably some internal systems.  For my purposes this model works quite well.  I appreciate this service from Ravello Systems, and I would suggest that this could make a good home lab replacement if we can just stop hugging our home lab systems.

Ravello Systems: a very good replacement for home labs, almost.

AUTOMATING MY HOME PART 5: Ubiquity Wireless

Today my UAP-AC-PRO finally showed up.  UAPAfter months of trying to find one at a distributor, I was able to snag one of the few from shopblt.com.  There are a few parts to setting this up, it is not a simple home wireless setup, but I am very impressed with the ease of use and the extremely good coverage.

My previous wireless setup involved a Ubiquity Edgemax Router with 3 Apple Airport Express routers in bridge mode.  The initial configuration of the Ubiquity system was pretty simple with just a few more moving pieces.  The UAP-AC-PRO is a WAP only, requiring a management server.  In my case, I happened to have a home media server which was available to serve as a wireless controller.  The install was very straight forward once I changed the port on another application running on port 8080.

Because I am using a TP-Link switch and a Ubiquity EdgeMax router it took me a few tries to understand the management interface on the controller. Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 10.01.26 PMThe Networks section was confusing until I realized that it was only for managing an end to end Unifi system with their UniFi Secure Gateway as a router and their UniFi Switch.  For an enterprise deployment this is impressive, an incredibly simple way of managing and end to end network.

Once I got past that, it was simply a matter of adding wireless networks and configuring the guest access. Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 10.08.00 PM I opted for one network for my wife and I, one for the kids, and a separate guest network.  These are all on separate VLANs, with firewall restrictions.  This is obviously overkill, but hey it is what I do.

My final configuration looks something like this. Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 9.42.03 PM  I did end up with one oddball, my kids XBOX does not have a wireless NIC.  Since the XBOX is nearly 7 years old now, I decided to use an old Powerline network adapter to connect it.

So not exactly automation, but a critical infrastructure component.  So far I am very happy with this choice, and design.   Using the UniFi WAP I have removed two network switches, two wireless access points, and several meters of network cable.  The POE on the WAP makes it far easier to place, and the level of control and ease of use is exactly what I wanted.  The only minor dark spot on this system is every change to one of the wireless networks does take them all down for a few seconds, not a huge issue, just a little frustrating if you aren’t prepared for it.  

All in all the perfect system for someone who needs more than a basic home wifi router can provide but doesn’t want to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.

AUTOMATING MY HOME PART 5: Ubiquity Wireless

Configuring a guest VLAN on an Apple Airport in Bridge Mode

I recently had to replace my Linksys WRT-1900-AC router after less than a year due to a failure in the 2.4GHz radio.  I opted to try the Apple Airport Extreme again, expanding my two Apple Airport Express network.  Since I am running a Ubiquiti Edge Max router, I run everything in bridge mode.  I wanted a guest network, but when I turned it on, I could connect but DHCP wouldn’t work.  A little digging revealed that Apple uses VLAN 1003 for their guest network.
I am running TP-Link managed switches which support VLAN tagging, so I tagged the ports to VLAN 1003 and configured the VLAN on the Router as a child of my primary internal interface.
Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 8.30.50 PM
After Assigning DHCP, I tested, and while I got an IP and could ping by address, I was still having DNS issues.  Since I could ping google’s DNS, I assumed it was not appropriately forwarding DNS.  I looked in the router configuration and under DNS I added the new VLAN interface as a listening interface.  Problem solved.

Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 8.36.31 PM

A few final thoughts, I put in firewall rules to block traffic to and from the guest and management VLANs I run.  I am going to test out the Circle with Disney, http://www.disneystore.com/circle-with-disney/mn/1026902/, as a network monitor, so I am using the guest plan for my children, and guests, so it was important to ensure the VLAN was isolated.  The only major downside is I have to leave VLAN 1 untagged for my standard VLAN, and there are some limitations around AirPlay, AirPrint, and anything using mDNS, but all in all not bad, a good temporary solution until I can find my Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO-US Access Points.
Configuring a guest VLAN on an Apple Airport in Bridge Mode

He who controls the management software controls the universe.

No one ever got fired for buying IBM.  Well…how did that work out?

When I started working in storage, it was a major portion of our capital budget.  When we made a decision on a storage platform, we had to write the proposal for the CIO to change to another brand, and we had better be sure we didn’t have issues on the new platform.  We didn’t buy on price, we bought on brand, period.

I was speaking with a customer recently, and they were talking about how they were moving to a storage startup which recently went through an IPO.  I asked them how happy they were about it, and the response was, something to the effect, it is great, but we will likely make a change in a few years when someone comes out with something new and cool.  This wasn’t an smb account, not a startup, this was a major healthcare account.  They were moving away from a major enterprise storage vendor, and they were not the first one I had spoken to who is going down this path.

I remember when virtualization really started to take off.  The concept was amazing, we thought we were going to see massive reduction in data-centers and physical servers.  Please raise your hand if you have less physical servers than you did 10 years ago.  Maybe you do, but for the most part I rarely see that anyone has significantly reduced the number of workloads.  I guess virtualization failed and was a bad idea, time to move on to something else?  Of course not, we just got more efficient and started to run more workloads on the same number of systems.  We got more efficient and better at what we do, we prevented server sprawl, and thus realized cost savings through cost avoidance.  What has changed though is moving from one server vendor to another is pretty simple.

If I were still in the business of running datacenters I would probably spread over two or more vendors with some standard builds to keep costs down, and provide better availability.  From a storage perspective I wouldn’t really care who my storage vendors were provided they could meet my requirements.  Honestly I would probably build a patchwork datacenter.  Sure it would be a bit more work with patching and such, but if there are API’s, and we can do centralized management to deploy firmware to each system, why not, why be loyal.  For that matter, why have a single switch vendor?

See what I did there?  It is all about the software.  Whether you believe VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, or someone else will win, the reality is it is a software world.  If your hardware will play nice with my hypervisor, and my management tool, why should I use only one vendor, if it won’t, why should I use it?  It is all about applications and portability.  Hardware isn’t going away, but it is sure getting dumber, as it should, and we are pushing more value through software.  He who controls the management software controls the universe.

 

He who controls the management software controls the universe.

Getting hired into IT as a Veteran

With Veterans Day coming, this seemed like a logical time to talk about getting hired into the IT field as a Veteran.  As someone who started out with no degree and no formal training, but a strong desire to work in the tech industry, I thought it would be interesting to share my story, with the hopes that it will help others break into the field.

Don’t let anyone tell you no.  I was medically retired from the Army, and the Vocational Rehabilitation counselor from the VA told me  that he would not authorize payment for school if I chose IT as my major.  My only options were to go for a Bachelors in Business Accounting, or use my G.I. Bill to pay for school.  I opted for my G.I. Bill, I am so glad I did, I would have been a terrible accountant.  I also applied to every IT job, both entry level and not, I stretched my skills, and I clawed my way into a help desk contract job at a school district after being rejected for a lower level position at the same school district.

Read everything you can, if you don’t know something, ask, or look it up, but don’t ever stop learning.  Don’t just look for technical learning either, consider yourself a business person with technical skills.  Some of the best sources for learning are books, podcasts, and blogs.  Here are a few lists that I have used and personally recommend.  Some of these are technical, but all of these will help you develop yourself, and show that you aren’t afraid of getting outside your comfort zone.

  • Books
    • Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us – Seth Godin
    • EntreLeadership – Dave Ramsey
    • Start – Jon Acuff
    • The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win – Gene Kim
    • The juggling act bringing balance to your faith family and work – Pat Gelsinger
    • The New Kingmakers – Stephen O’Grady
    • The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google – Nicholas Carr
  • Podcasts
    • Geek Wisperers
    • In Tech We Trust
    • Speaking in Tech
    • Entreleadership Podcast
    • Chat with Champions
    • DevOps Cafe Podcast
    • The Cloudcast
  • Blogs

Get involved in every community activity, technical meetup, and usergroup you can.  When I wanted to get my name out there, I started showing up at my local VMware Users Group, and started writing this blog.  I watched some of the presenters, and I was hooked.  I started learning the materials and practicing, and pretty soon I was presenting.  I started getting more into it, looking for more opportunities to present.  Next I plan to start with Toastmasters, and taking a few classes on presenting.  I make community events a priority when they focus on IT, and the user.  Finding people who do what you want to do and asking them if they can help, offer to buy them coffee, find out their reading list, ask them how they were successful, ask them if they will mentor you, but make sure you are bringing them some value and some perspective.

There is no magic formula for success.  Veterans tend to be driven, and turn our skills from being soldiers into technical skills.  One day you will wake up and realize you are well on you way, but you never stop learning.  Focus on community and on developing your skills.  Learn everything you can, be a good team player, and you will never find yourself lacking opportunities.

Getting hired into IT as a Veteran

There can be only one…or at least less than there are now.

Since the recent announcement  of Dell acquiring EMC, there has been great speculation on the future of the storage industry.  In previous articles I have observed that small storage startups are eating the world of big storage.  I suspect that this trend had something to do with the position EMC found themselves in recently.

Watching Nimble, Pure, and a few others IPO recently, one cannot help but notice there are still far more storage vendors standing, with new ones coming out regularly, and the storage market has not consolidated as we thought it would.  During recent conversations with some of the sales teams for  a couple storage startups, we discussed what their act two was to be.  I was surprised to learn that for a number of them, it is simply more of the same, perhaps less a less expensive solution to sell down market, perhaps some new features, but nothing really new.

Looking at the landscape, there has to be a “quickening” eventually.  With EMC being acquired, HP not doing a stellar job of marketing the 3Par product they acquired, Netapp floundering, and Cisco killing their Whiptail acquisition, we are in a sea of storage vendors with no end in sight.  HP splitting into two companies bodes well for their storage division, but the biggest challenge for most of these vendors is they are focused on hardware.

For most of the storage vendors, it is likely that lack of customers will eventually drive them out of business when the finally run out of funding.  For some, they will survive, get acquired, or merge to create a larger storage company, and probably go away eventually anyway.  For a few they will continue to operate in their niche, but for the ones who intend to have long term viability, it is likely they are going to need to find a better act two, something akin to hyper converged infrastructure, or more likely simply move to a software approach.  While neither are a guarantee, they do have higher margins, and are more inline with where the industry is moving.

We are clearly at a point where hardware is becoming commoditized.  If your storage array can’t provide performance, and most of the features we now assume to be standard, then you shouldn’t even bother coming to the table.  The differentiation has to be something else, something outside the norm.  Provide some additional value with the data, turn it into software, integrate it with other software, make it standards based.  Being the best technology, the cheapest price, or simply the biggest company doesn’t matter any more.  Storage startups, watch out, your 800lb gorilla of a nemesis being acquired might make you even bigger targets.  You better come up with something now or your days are numbered.

There can be only one…or at least less than there are now.

What is Dell really buying?

Standard disclaimer, this is my personal opinions, and does not reflect those of my employer, or of any insider knowledge, take it for what it is worth.

When I heard rumors of the Dell EMC deal, I was pretty skeptical.  I am a numbers guy, and the amount of debt that would be required is a bit staggering.  Why would a company like Dell even want to acquire a company like EMC?  Especially after we all watched the pain they went through to take the company private.  Why would EMC want to go through the pain of being taken private, by a former competitor no less?  With the HP breakup, and IBM selling off a number of their product lines over the past decade or so, this almost seems counterintuitive, an attempt to recreate the big tech companies of the 90’s & 2000’s which are all but gone.

Sales and Engineering Talent

I have many friends at Dell, I was even a customer when I worked for some small startups many years ago.  In my experience, Dell is really good at putting together commodity products, and pricing them to move.  Their sales teams are good, but the compensation model makes them tough to partner with.

EMC has a world class sales and marketing organization.  EMC enterprise sales reps are all about the customer experience.  They are machines with amazing relationship skills, and they are well taken care of.  Engineering at EMC is a huge priority as well.  EMC’s higher end support offerings, while costly, are worth every penny.  I have seen them fly in engineers for some larger customers to fix problems.  EMC products are all about the customer experience.  Even though I have not been a fan of their hardware lately, they have done some amazing things around making the experience second to none.

An Enterprise Storage & Software product

Let’s be honest, Dell has not been a truly enterprise player in the storage and software arena.  If we look at the products they have acquired, a majority of them are mid market plays.  Compellent was supposed to be their big enterprise storage play, but that is mid market at best.  From a software perspective, most of the products are low end, and they don’t tend to develop them further.

EMC on the other hand has enterprise class storage.  Say what you want about the complexity of the VMAX line, it is pretty solid.  It may be a pain to manage sometimes, but it does set the standard in enterprise storage.  EMC has also done amazing things with software.  ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM are impressive technologies when implemented appropriately.  EMC has also done quite well with some of their other software products, but more so they treat software as a critical part of the stack.

VMware

Enough said, the real value for Dell is getting a good stake in VMware.  Like it or not VMware is the market leader in Hypervisors, Cloud Management, Software Defined Networking, and making incredible strides in Automation, and Software Defined Storage.  The best thing that EMC has done is allowing VMware to continue to be independant.  If Dell can stick to that plan, the rewards can be incredible.

The reality is this deal won’t change much in the short term from an IT industry perspective.  Large storage companies such as EMC and HP Storage are getting their lunch eaten by smaller more agile storage startups.  Servers are becoming more of a commodity, and software continues to be the path forward for many enterprises.  This is a good deal for both Dell and EMC, the challenge will be not to go the way of HP.  If I could give Michael Dell one piece of advice, it would be to hire smart people and listen to them.  Culture matters and the culture is what makes EMC and VMware what they are so don’t try to change it.  Culture is the true value of this acquisition.

What is Dell really buying?

Automating my Home Part 4: Ecobee3 Thermostat

Lots of craziness going on recently with VMworld and VMware’s tech summit, I haven’t had the time to get as much done as I would like.  More to come on home networking soon, but today the Ecobee3 Thermostat is officially up and running.

When researching, the Ecobee3 gave me the best options, multi sensors, and most importantly my first apple home kit device.  As we are nearly an all apple family, sticking with the eco system just made sense.  In Oregon, there is an energy rebate, not a ton, but it helps.  I am hoping between the rebate, multiple sensors, and trending we can use this to help cut energy costs to pay for it.  Besides it looks really good in the house.

20151010103733

Install was pretty simple, the Ecobee.com website has some good videos I watched, but as it turned out I didn’t even need those.  I have never worked on an HVAC system, but the directions were straight forward.  I just killed power, disconnected the wires from the old thermostat, connected the new one, and gave it power.  The setup took a few min, mostly waiting for it to register with Ecobee, and then about 10 min to calibrate.

For me the biggest thing is it is so simple I don’t need to spend time trying to figure it out, and even my wife and kids, who don’t want to have to struggle with tech find it very straight forward so far.  I am also pretty excited about the trending, hoping to see some savings, but also to understand where we are using energy.  I suspect HVAC is one of the largest consumers of power, so this should help.

Next more networking but for now, I give the Ecobee3 smart thermostat a big thumbs up, very simple and elegant.

Automating my Home Part 4: Ecobee3 Thermostat

Always Read the Comments

I do not enjoy public speaking.  I am a pretty quiet person, and I am very uncomfortable being the center of attention, especially when it comes to presenting.  My first VMworld, in 2011, I was sitting in a session and I was amazed.  I decided when I was good enough to speak at a conference like that, I had arrived, and my career would have reached it’s pinicle.  I am now looking for my next pinnacle, I am to young to have peaked.

This year at VMworld I got up on stage, introduced myself, and presented something that started as a conversation with a customer.  It was one of the most frightening moments I have experienced, but I survived, and I am better for it.  Part of what I needed to understand is the process, how to get a speaking session submitted, and more importantly accepted.  What does the audience like to hear, what is going to make them want to come back, and what is going to provide them value.

One thing I didn’t expect was the feedback from the surveys.  It was mostly positive, some constructive criticism, which I appreciated, but all in all for a first time at that venue, I was happy.  There are some areas I knew when I finished I need to work on.  I didn’t engage my audience as I had done in my practice runs, I forgot some of my key points, and I may have tried to hard with the jokes to cover up for being nervous.  All things I can work on and improve on.  What was great to hear was that the topic was relevant, and despite my stumbles, it seemed like there was interest.  I think with practice, I can turn it into just a conversation with the audience, discuss the topic, and invite them to actively participate in something that is likely impacting them in their daily lives.

As I have written before, I am very focused on community engagement.  I am working very hard to be a humble and involved person, to help others, and to just give something back.  I feel like so many have helped me along the way, and I want to make that a part of my life, helping others to succeed, and lifting them up, pushing them to new heights.  One of the biggest lessons I took from this session is how things work, what it is like, and how I can help others.  I plan to be back next year as a speaker, but this time with customers on stage.  I also plan to help others, who like me would find this to be a terrifying but rewarding experience.

My biggest regret when I was a soldier was that I was afraid to succeed, so I played it safe.  I turned down schools, promotion opportunities, and I didn’t push myself to succeed.  I am not letting that happen again, no longer will I let fear stand in my way.  My challenge to you, the reader, is whatever your fears are, ask yourself if they are rational.  Push yourself, be better, and seek mentorship.  I didn’t do this alone, and now it is my turn to help others.  I and hundreds or even thousands like me want to help you succeed so see out someone who has done this before, and get up there, and always read the comments.  Don’t take it personally, use it as a growth opportunity.

Always Read the Comments