220+ deep technical articles. 27+ years of enterprise technology experience shared since 2008. 350,000+ words of real-world enterprise IT solutions.
That is more technical depth than nearly 4 PhD dissertations.
If all your backend web servers go down, you can have the NetScaler serve a maintenance page directly. Beats browser timeouts and keeps users informed.
Not sure which edition is on your NetScaler VPX? Here are three quick ways to check (Licenses UI, license file, and CLI) instead of guessing from feature availability.
Here's the exact Responder Policy expression and 301 redirect action to force all HTTP traffic to HTTPS on a NetScaler, sitewide, without touching individual vservers.
Microsoft never released Exchange 2003 ESM tools for Windows 7. You can bypass the OS check with a silent install of the Vista ESM package. Works on both x86 and x64.
If Altiris Service Desk 7 throws XML errors on Windows 2003 x64 with IIS 6, switch the app pools to 32-bit mode. That fixes the XML processing failure.
LogParser's DATAGRID output gives you IIS error 500 results and page load times in a readable GUI window. No CSV exports needed. Instant visual output.
If you need to verify SSLv2 and weak ciphers are disabled for PCI or SOX, here are four tools that work across IIS, Apache, NetScaler, and F5 BigIP.
If you're getting broken chain warnings on your NetScaler, you need to install and link the root and intermediate CAs properly. Here's how to do it right.
If your NetScaler SNIP is masking real client IPs in IIS logs, you can insert the true client IP via a custom HTTP header and ISAPI filter. No USIP mode needed.
The NetScaler GUI only updates every 7 seconds, which isn't real-time. Use nsconmsg and connectiontable over SSH for accurate live traffic, connections, and throughput stats.
If the 6-foot cable on your Harmony 900 IR mini blaster isn't long enough, a cheap 2.5mm extension cable works perfectly through walls and ceilings with no signal loss.
If MSMQ messages are stuck in outgoing queues after you cloned a server, you skipped sysprep and now you've got duplicate QMIds. Run sysprep on the clone to fix it.
If you need to wipe a corrupted NetScaler to a truly factory-new state, the standard config wipe isn't enough. Here's the serial console procedure that deletes everything.
If your NetScaler HA nodes have mismatched dates, you'll get cookie persistency failures during failover. Here's how to check and sync FreeBSD system time via SSH.
Here's how to reset a NetScaler to factory defaults using 'clear ns config level'. I'll walk through basic, extended, and full levels so you know exactly what gets wiped.
Here's how to upgrade NetScaler firmware on MPX, VPX, and legacy appliances. Upload the .tgz via WinSCP, extract, and run the install script over SSH.
Got an IP conflict and traced it to a MAC address in your VMware cluster? This PowerCLI one-liner finds the exact VM and NIC causing it across all your ESX hosts.
Your Cisco WLC needs the full SSL chain, not just the server cert. Here's how to generate the CSR, export the complete PFX, and install it properly on the Wireless LAN Controller.
Glen
Excellent article. Thank you. I have FireFox working with pass-through authentication! In addition to the changes ident...
Charles
Excellent guide Jason! I successfully reached step #69, but after rebooting the Base Image (Win 7 VM) and moving to ste...
Eric
Jason, amazing post for not only home automation newbies, but even veterans such as yourself. I really got a lot out of...
