@lamp_scaler Home routers have slower (usually MIPS) CPUs, tiny amounts of RAM, you can't configure NAT hairpins on them (even though @ewwhite won't on his ASAs either!), and they're just plain not built to be reliable
I'll say it now. Enterprise stuff is expensive, very so, but with a good support contract, plus warranty, plus it's designed for the stuff you're trying to do it's worth it.
Or buy a Belkin SOHO bit of kit and we'll see you back here when you have performance issues. In which case we'll close it as off-topic for home hardware :P
Also, ASA5505 on eBay are cheaper... if you can swing that. Doesn't come with the warranty however.
@lamp_scaler Every computer connecting to the Internet will have a few dozen connections (or more) open for various things. If the firewall/router can't handle that many then either the old ones are dropped or the new attempts are dropped.
tl;dr if someone torrents on your network you can saturate a home router and kill connections for everyone. If you use a decicated unit such as an ASA and proper switches you can handle more connections and with proper switches implement traffic management and policies.
I can only guess that he meant something like the 5505 with the "20M to 50M, no problems" comment. I've never seen a Linksys or Buffalo that could do more than a few thousand. The typical house only has a couple computers online at the same time, those devices are built to be as cheap as possible....
say for example i have 3 different deparments. each department should have their own bandwidth limits and internet site visiting restrictions. one router cant handle that type of management?
@lamp_scaler Network hardware usually falls into a few categories Piece of shit box ($100 or under): Lousy firewall glued onto a cheap switch. Might be "gigabit" if you're lucky, might not be able to give gigabit throughput on all ports. Cheap All-In-One box ($500ish): Might combine a firewall and a switch, might actually not suck too bad. Cisco makes stuff in this category. Real Enterprise Hardware: Expect to spend a few hundred for the switch, and a more for the firewall
@lamp_scaler We currently handle around 1000 devices. These would likely handle double or triple that - granted you don't need to spend that much money.
The pieces of shit can handle MAYBE 5 machines (on a good day, with the moon in the right alignment) The cheap stuff can handle roughly as many as they have ports for, but really shouldn't be scaled much above that. After that you're looking at dedicated firewalls (or a FWSM in a chassis) and dedicated switches with a well-designed architecture (or switch blades in a chassis).
i see. thanks for the advice guys. my takeaway right now is that as we go into enterprise level, these devices start to specialize. and then they get expensive fast. and the spec i need to look for in terms of stability is max concurrent connections. is that right?
@lamp_scaler it's not that simple. If it were nobody would hire netadmins - they'd buy networking hardware like they buy cars ("38 packets to the gallon and it can do 2 gigabits if you have a big enough pipe to open it up!")
Your router has to be adequately sized to handle the routing table it's going to be dealing with. Your firewall has to be adequately sized to handle all your rules. If you have a content switch or other load balancer it needs to be able to deal with (a) the traffic and (b) the rulesets you're going to define. Your switches need to be able to move packets as fast as they arrive (which is environment dependent - some environments can get away with a cheap gig-E switch that barely has gigabit internal switching capacity.
@voretaq7 Oh gosh, SFaaC (Server Fault as a Consultant) -- Some agents try to help you in earnest. Others scream at you, kick you and take your money. YMMV.
Be careful taking that number too literally, as it's only a snapshot of what the computer's doing "right now" and might be a poor reflection of actual use.
@ChrisS Lets say you have a VM on an individual LUN and it's not configured for HA. The server hosting that VM dies. What do you do to bring it up on another server?
Just present the LUN to the other server, rescan for disks, and import into Hyper-V?
@lamp_scaler There's a reason you come into a room of networking professionals and get almost exclusively Cisco recommendations. Don't take that lightly.
You also got ProCurve recommendations for your switches because of your budget
Yeah, you'd have to map the LUNs and recreate the best you can. The VM Config is stored in a XML file on the Host, so if that's dead the New host has no way of knowing the configuration
@lamp_scaler If you're just looking for the cheapest think you can find, Extreme has a very low cost-per-port and I have experience with them in a large environment
In my experience they've very reliable, but there's no mindshare
CSVs require the Clustering Service, which keeps a copy of the Config, but the hosting server still has a copy of the config in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Virtual Machines by default.
I have been looking around at installing PHP 5.4 also. Finally, I found something that might help people in the future. The site below details everything you need to install PHP 5.4 and Apache 2.4:
http://www.codingsteps.com/install-apache-2-4-php-5-4-php-apc-on-amazon-ec2-with-amazon-linux/
It ...
You might want to look at the link below for PHP 5.4:
http://www.codingsteps.com/install-apache-2-4-php-5-4-php-apc-on-amazon-ec2-with-amazon-linux/
If you do not need PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.3.x will do, then check out:
http://www.codingsteps.com/install-apache-php-apc-mysql-on-amazon-ec2-with-amazon...
Blog post was posted this morning. Linked from two answers by the same user within the last hour.
I'm trying to figure out operation's master roles, I know that there must be exactly one of each forest wide operation's master, and that there must be at least one of the domainwide operation's master, but is it possible to have more then one of each type of domain wide operations master? I've looked on a few sites but no-one mentions this (probably because it's "too obvious")
@Jikag support.microsoft.com/kb/324801?wa=wsignin1.0 <-- Explains what they do in very generic terms, their scope, where to view what server has the role, and how to transfer them.
@Jikag From the linked page: Relative ID (RID) Master: The RID master is responsible for processing RID pool requests from all domain controllers in a particular domain. At any one time, **there can be only one domain controller acting as the RID master in the domain.**
@Jikag Domain Controllers are generally multi-master peers, meaning that anything one can do, the others can do. The reason that FSMO roles exist is because there are a handful of things that can't work in this situation, like RID Pool issuance, Schema modification, authentication tie-breaking, etc. This is why these roles exist. They're there for when a single server must serve a specific purpose
This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory.
What is Active Directory? What does it do and how does it work?
I find myself explaining some of what I assume is common knowledge about it almost daily. This question will, hopefully, serve as a canonical question and answer for most b...
I do it for manuals all the time. I have about 20MB of System Center manuals in a onenote notebook and my notes are on top of them for install instructions, caveats, divergences in reality from "best practice" :)
Evernote is way better on iPad, so I'd love to switch, but I can't.
Everytime I try to install an application that requires the 'sa' user account for installation to allow creation of a database and admin user account I receive the following message:
Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server Connection........
When you install MSSQL 2000, is the 'sa' user...
Get out. Just... just leave. and don't come back until you've eaten something served to you by a middle eastern man in a wagon with a propane grill and a little generator to run the lights.
This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory.
What is Active Directory? What does it do and how does it work?
I find myself explaining some of what I assume is common knowledge about it almost daily. This question will, hopefully, serve as a canonical question and answer for most b...
