Don’t judge me dog, it’s been one of those days.

Speaking for all of these SAMIT videos...

If you would literally rip the audio from these videos, and put these on a podcast, my drive to the office could be more educational...

Setting one of these up for an office.

Hi Mangolassi! I've been stalking this site for a while and thought it's time for my first post here.

I'm currently hosting a FreeBPX box on a VPS. Lately, the performance has been subpar to say the least. Lots of jitter, and drops. The VPS provider is looking into it, but I'm looking for plan B. Does anyone here have any experience with FreePBX on a VPS? If so, which provider would be best? I am located in Pennsylvania, so NY, NJ, or better still, Ashburn, VA would be the best location for us.

I've been reading up on Linode, Backspace, Vultr, and DO. Ideally, the ability to upload my own ISO (the FreePBX distro ISO) would be the easiest, but I am open to other options as well.

I'll be using the VPS exclusively for FreePBX systems, so obviously, the main requirement is voice quality. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

2 things: First, Unifi makes some pretty nice looking phones. Android based) Second, Mangolassi displays just fine on this phone.

That is all...

th

I recently setup my EdgeRouter X as a L2TP server with local user authentication. We've been using this for the past few days without any issues. Connecting from various platforms/OS's works perfectly. Let me know if anyone has an alternative method or if this guide should be tweaked at all.

Assumes outside WAN interface is eth0

configure

set vpn ipsec ipsec-interfaces interface eth0
set vpn ipsec nat-traversal enable
set vpn ipsec nat-networks allowed-network 0.0.0.0/0
set vpn l2tp remote-access ipsec-settings ike-lifetime 3600

If you have a static IP from your ISP, issue the following command, where x.x.x.x is your IP:

set vpn l2tp remote-access outside-address x.x.x.x

Gateway/next hop for public IP above:

set vpn l2tp remote-access outside-nexthop x.x.x.x

set vpn l2tp remote-access client-ip-pool start 10.0.1.10
set vpn l2tp remote-access client-ip-pool stop 10.0.1.20

set vpn l2tp remote-access ipsec-settings authentication mode pre-shared-secret

set vpn l2tp remote-access ipsec-settings authentication pre-shared-secret horsebatterystaple

set vpn l2tp remote-access authentication mode local

set vpn l2tp remote-access authentication local-users username adam password adampassword

set vpn l2tp remote-access mtu 1492

set vpn l2tp remote-access dns-servers server-1 8.8.8.8
set vpn l2tp remote-access dns-servers server-2 8.8.4.4

commit 

To verify the server is setup, the following command can be used.

show vpn l2tp remote-access

Save to keep changes on reboot

save

Set firewall rules for VPN traffic:
This can be done via the GUI as well, but I used CLI. Just make sure to pay attention to your rule numbers and order.

set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 20 action accept
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 20 description Allow_L2TP
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 20 destination port 500,1701,4500
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 20 log disable
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 20 protocol udp
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 30 action accept
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 30 description Allow_ESP
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 30 log disable
set firewall name WAN_LOCAL rule 30 protocol 50

That's it! Now setup the built in client on your OS of choice and you should be good to go.

Actual video of me programming my coffee pot to brew coffee...

Coffee Programming

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Dominica said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I'm about to throw my effing laptop across the room if wordpress doesn't let me start customizing my damn website template. Argh!

Isn't this a Wordpress issue, and not a laptop one?

Yeah, but she cant physically throw wordpress. The laptop is the closest accomplice.

Thought I would circle back on this one and give a review of OrangeComputers.

I purchased an R710 from OrangeComputers a few months ago. They were very willing to work with me on price and upgrade components for a very reasonable price. I believe they even upgraded the controller from a Perc6i to an H710 for little to no cost. The server arrived within about 2-3 days, very well packaged, and all firmware up to date. The condition of the server was great, and it has been running 24/7 ever since I booted it with 4-5 VMs on it.

In summary, after 3 months of usage, I would recommend this company for refurb servers, as long as warranty is not a huge issue for you. Their warranty is 90 days standard, but you can pay a little extra and get a 1 year warranty. If you want a 3 year warranty, then these are not the guys to go with. For home use, or even small business, I'd buy from them again. Their pricing is excellent.

Do we have a date and location for this yet? For planning purposes.

@scottalanmiller said in MeshCentral Future:

1.1.21 is out now. Updating...

How did this go for you, @scottalanmiller ? I tried updating last evening and the gui never came back. Then after a reboot, the proper ports weren't even open on the web server. I didn't have time to troubleshoot at the time, so I rolled back from a snapshot. Any "gotchas" to be aware of?

@JaredBusch

That's what I figured. Thanks for the report back, that's great to hear. Also curious if your clients(or you) purchase support plans from Proxmox?

Re: Creating a Windows 2022 Server VM on Proxmox 7

@JaredBusch

How has this specific project ( 2 nodes with single disk ZFS on top of hardware RAID) been going? Any issues since you put this into production?

I am looking to do the same exact thing and keep reading all about how "ZFS hates hardware RAID", blah blah blah. Real world example, can you share your experience?

Thanks!

@scottalanmiller said in COLO Switching & Power:

How many switches do you anticipate needing in the colo?

I'm just looking 2 replace 2 at this point.

@scottalanmiller said in COLO Switching & Power:

@AdamF said in COLO Switching & Power:

@travisdh1 Thanks for that info. I've used HP switching before, but that was probably 15 years ago. I know Juniper is fantastic, and so is the price tag.

If my environment was really big, I might choose Juniper, for sure. For small, both our full CoLo deployments and our "might as well be colo" scenarios, we've found the Unifi system just gives us the visibility that we need.

I always thought of Unifi as "local small office" equipment. I even have Unifi in my local office. I've not even considered it in the past for full CoLo.

@scottalanmiller said in COLO Switching & Power:

@AdamF said in COLO Switching & Power:

For those of you that have workloads in a COLO facility, what are you all using for network switching? Ideally, I'd like to upgrade a network switch I have to a new switch with dual power supplies. (1 power supply goes to PDU 1 in the rack and the other goes to PDU2 in the rack) Any product recommendations for a 24 or 48 port managed switch with dual power supplies?

What products/solutions are you using for single corded equipment for power redundancy? An automatic transfer switch of some sort?

We used to use Ubiquiti EdgeSwitches in CoLo. Now we use their Unifi switches.

That's exactly what I use (Edgemax). But they are aging, and I'm starting to look for replacements.

@travisdh1 Thanks for that info. I've used HP switching before, but that was probably 15 years ago. I know Juniper is fantastic, and so is the price tag.

For those of you that have workloads in a COLO facility, what are you all using for network switching? Ideally, I'd like to upgrade a network switch I have to a new switch with dual power supplies. (1 power supply goes to PDU 1 in the rack and the other goes to PDU2 in the rack) Any product recommendations for a 24 or 48 port managed switch with dual power supplies?

What products/solutions are you using for single corded equipment for power redundancy? An automatic transfer switch of some sort?

Proxmox is great so far. 2 servers, setup and available for replication/migration via separate 10G NICs that are direct connected. Then a PBS server where everything is backed up to. So far, so good.

@AdamF said in Proxmox install / setup questions:

I am changing over 2 Hyper-V servers to ProxMox. I run Proxmox at home, but am going to give this a go at the office. As I understand it, I can setup 2 identical servers, and replicate the VMs back and forth. (not HA, just simply replicate for backup/maintenance windows, etc.)

Assuming this is the case, 2 questions.

1. What is the best storage format to use in Proxmox? ( I have SSDs on these servers in case it matters...I heard that ZFS is hard on SSDs?)
2. I have multiple NICs on the servers, specifically, 2 10 G NICs. Can I specify a NIC when replicating VMs between the 2 servers? For example, if I can direct connect the 2 server's 10G NICs with an ethernet cable for replication, that would be the best scenario.

Thanks!

Found my answer to item 2. Apparently you can do this via a config file.