Why you shouldn’t use .local in your Active Directory domain name.

Saving this link for another day. The topic of what gTLD to give your internal AD domain comes up all too often.

Share MS doesn’t have a more up to date page about this. Bonus points if it also talks about their experiences with how best to naming things with Azure and its various identity services.

Source: Why you shouldn’t use .local in your Active Directory domain name.

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Adding your vCenter Web Client as a search provider in Chrome

Most browsers these days offer a function that allows you to add other search engines to them. This function allows you to quickly search for stuff directly from your web browsers search field instead of having to open up the site directly, type in what you want and press enter.

In this article I’m going to show describe how to add your vCenter 6.5U1 HTML5 client as a custom search engine in Google Chrome.

This will allow you to search for vCenter objects directly from Chrome without first opening the HTML5 Web Client.

What you need

• Access to an HTML5 vCenter Web Client (vCenter 6.5U1 on the VCSA was used to write this.)
• Google Chrome (Chrome 60 was used at the time this was written)

Find your vCenter Web Client Search URL

• Browse to your HTML5 vCenter Web Client and sign in. Its usually something like ​https://{FQDN}/ui` where {FQDN} is the URL for your vCenter Web Client.
• From the banner at the top of the page, click on `Menu` and select `Search`.
• Enter the name of a VM you want to search for and press `Search`.
• Copy the URL from the address bar in Chrome. In this example we have something like this. I’ve replaced https://{FQDN}/ui/#?extensionId=vsphere.core.search.domainView&query={SEARCHTERM}&searchType=simple

Add a custom search provider to Chrome

• Follow the steps described [here](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426?visit_id=1-636408548555398702-3960116703&p=settings_omnibox&rd=1) to add custom search engine to Chrome.
• Enter the following information:
  • Search Engine: A meaningful name/label for the search config
  • Keyword: The keyword you want to use in chrome to tell it to search your VC
  • URL: Enter the URL you copied in the step above. Replace `{FQDN}` with the URL for your vCenter Web Client and replace `{SEARCHTERM}` with `%s`

Testing

• Open a new Chrome tab or Window, enter your keyword and the object name you want to search for.
• Chrome will return the vCenter Web Client search page with the term you entered.
• $profit.

mpp files stored in SharePoint open read only in Project Client | Microsoft Office Sharepoint

Yay. I needed to write up a quick project plan for an upcoming engagement. I refuse to do project plans in Excel on principle.

Installed Project 2013 on my Windows 10 VM. Applied pending Windows update. Created plan. Saved to SharePoint Online. Closed Project.

Went and did something else.

Came back to make adjustments to the plan. Everytime I opened the plan from SP in Project it would open as read-only.

This is a known issue and the KB below will help you.

Ill drop Project 2016 on there tomorrow and see if its O365 integration is any saner. In the meantime the patch below worked around the problem.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3114843

Source: mpp files stored in SharePoint open read only in Project Client | Microsoft Office Sharepoint

IPv6 Best Current Practices | APNIC

APNIC has a list of documents and information regarding Best Practices for IPv6 deployments in various types of environments.

FYI, I dislike the term ‘Best Practice’ because in IT solutions are almost never “one size fits all”. I’ll generally refer to Recommended Practices.

Securing the Internet of Things | Homeland Security

DHS has released their v1.0 Security Principles for the IoT.

The growth of network-connected devices, systems and services comprising the Internet of Things (IoT) provides efficiencies and personalization of experience that is attractive to both manufacturers and consumers.

Source: Securing the Internet of Things | Homeland Security

How To Set Timezone and NTP Sync on Ubuntu [Quickstart] | DigitalOcean

It’s been a while since I got under the hood of a linux VM. Nice to see that timekeeping configuration has gotten simpler to implement and manage.

Setting your server’s clock and timezone properly is essential in ensuring the healthy operation of distributed systems and maintaining accurate log timestamps. This tutorial will show you how to configure NTP time synchronization and set the timezone

For brevity and ease of recollection in the future, the command is

timedatectl

Source: How To Set Timezone and NTP Sync on Ubuntu [Quickstart] | DigitalOcean

Also, http://blogging.dragon.org.uk/setting-up-ntp-on-ubuntu-14-04/ has a nifty command that useful for monitoring the status of ntpd on a machine.

watch ntpq -cpe -cas

Will Australian train stations one day be free of turnstiles? – Hardware – iTnews

Before we go gateless, lets first get some wireless networking for commuters huh?

Inside transport ticketing’s gateless future.

Source: Will Australian train stations one day be free of turnstiles? – Hardware – iTnews