Certificate and Key Management - PKI

While I was looking into managing internal certs, I came across this product and thought I'd share with others. I have yet to play around with this, but I plan on it. I figured instead of adding another bookmark to my browser and then forgetting about it, I might as well create a quick blog post and add the link here.

X - Certificate and Key Management (Info and Tutorial)

Microsoft SQL Memory Limit Recomendations

In my quest to look for the best advice in setting limits as to how much RAM a Microsoft SQL server consumes, I came across a few recommendations and ended up settling on this rule of thumb.

Leave 4GB or 10% of total RAM - whichever is higher - for system use. It's a good starting point and you can adjust that figure from there.

For more information behind the methodology, you can go here for a better explanation: Brent Ozar - Memory Dangerously Low or Max Memory Too High.

Marinated Grilled Skirt Steak

Ingredients

• 1 orange, thinly sliced with peel
• 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, halved and smashed
• 2 1/4 lbs skirt steak
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 cup light-colored beer (e.g., lager style)
• 1/2 cup soy sauce

Directions

In a wide, shallow glass baking dish, scatter half of the orange slices, half of the onion slices and half of the garlic pieces on the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle the steak all over with salt and pepper and put in the dish on top of the orange and onion slices. Scatter the remaining orange, onion and garlic over the steak and pour in the beer and soy sauce. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate for 1 hour at room temperature or up to overnight in the refrigerator.

Set grill to medium-high heat. Remove the meat from the marinade and discard the marinade. Grill the steak to desired state, about 4 minutes per side for medium-rare.

Introduction to MS SQL Backup and Restore

In trying to find some explanation for some MS SQL 2012 settings, I came across this video that I found useful, maybe someone else will find some value as well.

Taking Apart HP 15-db0082nr Laptop

I recently purchased an HP 15-db0082nr laptop from TigerDirect when I was looking for a low-priced unit. The most effective upgrade for any laptop with a traditional hard drive is to swap it for a solid state one. Unfortunately, my Google-Fu skills did not yield any results when attempting to find a video on YouTube or a repair manual anywhere else online to attempt the upgrade without breaking anything. 👀

I ended up attempting to disassemble it and figured I'd take a couple of pictures to show what you need to be on the lookout for. You'll need a small phillips screwdriver and either a plastic tool or credit card to separate the plastic cover without damaging it. I definitely do not recommend that you use a flat head screwdriver for this stepor you can risk damaging the cover. As you might be able to see, there are 10 screws total that you will need to remove. Unfortunately 7 of those are hidden under the rubber strips under the laptop. These are attached some double sided tape so be very careful when removing it.

Replacing the HDD with an SDD is pretty simple, just remove some screws to detach the mounting bracket and replace the drive. You'll also need to remove the optical drive before taking apart the cover. Another thing you will notice is that this laptop only has one DIMM so you simply cannot add another stick of RAM, but that's to be expected with a laptop in this price range.

While these are not step-by-step instructions, I hope they help someone that might be in the same situation I was in.

vSphere Update Manager: Status 401 OK

I recently upgraded our vCenter environment to version 6.7 Update 1 and started noticing that Update Manager related tasks and windows were not displaying and instead a red banner with 401 response error kept coming up. Unfortunately I was unable to find any resolution when the issue first came up, but more recently I found that it only manifests itself if you use Firefox as your browser of choice, which is in fact the scenario I've been facing.

VMware suggested workarounds:

1. clear your Firefox browser cache
2. use a different browser.

A fix should be upcoming, until then, those are your possible solutions. Source: VMware KB59696

OS Optimization Tool

I recently came across a tool to optimize your desktop OS as long as it is Windows 7 or newer. This tool does not support server OS, so take that into consideration. Also, this tool is built primarily to optimize virtual desktops, so double check any changes on a physical desktop if you decide to use it for that purpose.

Download Links:

VMware's OS Optimization Tool
VMware OS Optimization Tool Guide