Create Your Own Network Assessment Appliance: Additional Tools

Introduction

I previously did a write up on a personal virtual machine I like to keep at hand for performing network analysis and discovery. I’ve since added a few tools to the VM and documented how they were installed so I figured I’d share on how it was done. Even if you don’t setup everything in this post it may be worthwhile to glance through it for some network engineering tools which are free to setup and use but not highly publicized. Anyone who cares to read this post has likely heard of Solarwinds but I highly doubt you have heard of all the tools in this list (let alone how to set them up). Regardless, I’ll start with a tool anyone worth their salt has heard of though, Cacti…

Exchange 2010: Poor Mans Monitoring 1.5

Just a quick upgrade to the script I posted earlier. This script is for monitoring and/or maintaining your Exchange 2010 mailboxes. It is meant to help an admin be proactive in their exchange environment. I updated the script to be a bit more customizable and fixed some obvious issues. The primary changes are removing the requirement for the MS chart controls as well as introducing an area of code just for custom scripts. There is always room for improvement but this version is a good start. Download Troubleshoot-MailboxServeror. Or Grab the recent updates at the MS script repository (Edit: Just to to the script repository as any newest version will be dropped there first. I already have a 1.6 version available there).

Lync 2010: IP/DNS Workbook

I just ran across a Lync article with all kinds of nice tables which distilled the myriad of DNS/IP addresses in a Lync deployment down to an easy to read format. I happen to have created one of these tables myself for a Lync deployment which included a standard Lync pool, XMPP gateway, Lync Mobility, and a single edge server. I figured others may find some use from it as it auto-populates the dns entries and what they are supposed to point to based on what you fill out for the highlighted cells. Sure you get some of this in the Lync Server 2010 Planning Tool but this offers a slightly different view of the environment as well as a nice one page overview.

Create Your Own Network Assessment Appliance

In this write-up I setup several network assessment tools which can be used in the discovery process of a new environment. This can be useful for a newly hired sysadmin or a consultant in rapidly gathering information to assess the health and/or state of a network.

Introduction

I often find myself assessing a foreign network infrastructure for performance or other issues. Depending on the size of the environment, digesting everything can be daunting without the help of some third party tools. I’ve been using a custom Linux VM on my workstation that has all kinds of tools specifically for gathering information about a network’s performance, layout, and statistics. I’ve decided to retool the VM I currently use and take better notes on what I install so others may do the same if they so desire.

Windows: 2003 to 2008 R2 RADIUS Migration

I found myself doing yet another Windows 2003 IAS Radius server migration to 2008 R2 NPS. I found that I had my prior notes and was able to do this quickly but, hell, if I’m looking this up in my own notes I may as well just post this succinct little procedure.