Today was a challenging day! I felt like the day just didn’t have enough hours in it.
Due to the ongoing power issues, we had to keep shutting servers down each night and turning them back on in the morning. This process took up between 1 and 2 hours each morning as inevitably some servers didn’t start up all their services correctly so they had to be restarted again. Servers are designed to be left on and they can get unstable when keep being turned off.
Once everything was on, Steve and I started with getting the Wi-Fi network up and running. We plugged in the Wi-Fi access point and logged onto the server to register it but struggled to connect to the access point. We tried various things to get the server to register the access point but it wasn’t working. We thought it may be an issue with EMI (Engineering Ministries International, based upstairs) again but they were still unplugged, we did a factory reset on the device, changed cables but nothing. We then moved the Wi-Fi to another network port and VOILA! What are the chances of that? A dead network port.
We managed to get 4 access points set up, 2 in the office, 1 in the hangar and 1 in the passenger terminal.
We then tried to set up the VOIP (Voice over IP) system. Unfortunately we still didn’t have the satellite connection for the phone line so we couldn’t get any VOIP calls but we thought we would at least set the server up. The phone server is a virtual server and so you can only connect to it by a Remote Desktop Connection or by VMWare’s client connection tool vSphere. Because we had made the IP address changes on the network and the phone server was still on the old IP address scheme, the only way to connect was by vSphere. This tool was only installed on Kalumba’s laptop and he was working at the old office today to set up a satellite office internet router. So we were out of luck and had to leave this until tomorrow.
I then attempted to create some VLANs on the network to route EMI’s network traffic through our switch but only be allowed to communicate with the Internet and not any of our servers or PCs. I spent the rest of the day trying to get this working with the IT director from EMI but by 4.30pm we still couldn’t get it to work. We decided that due to our limited time frame (we were flying home Friday, and he was flying back to the states) that we would abandon that idea and he would get a couple of extra switches to place in the office and hangar to allow his network to be completely separate from ours all the way out to the internet.
Steve managed to get the Site to Site VPN up and running between Ashford and Kajjansi by linking up a secure tunnel between the 2 firewalls and he also managed to get a client VPN for users in the Uganda programme to connect to the Uganda servers from home… well, while the servers are turned on that is!
So in summary, quite a frustrating day but we have all enjoyed the challenges. I felt the pressure a bit more as I knew I wasn’t going to be in the office tomorrow. Read why in tomorrow’s blog.
Tuesday, 1 September 2015
Wednesday, 26 August 2015
Day 9, Tuesday - cracking firewalls and fileservers
Another bright and early start. In the convoy and on the road by 7.30am. First on the agenda was to try and crack the firewall. The issue with having a cloud managed firewall is the device has to see the cloud portal to be able to download its settings. The firewall also acted as our DHCP server and so without it online, no one’s PC or laptop could get an IP address in order to communicate on the network.
We had to check cables were wired correctly, check ISP settings, make sure the satellite link was receiving a connection and try many different configurations but we got there. With the fibre link also working between the hangar and the office, the PC’s were now also picking up their IP addresses from the firewall.
Now everyone could turn on their PCs, the pressure was on!
Fileservers needed to be communicating so they could get their files, database servers had to work for finance and operations for flight management, printers all had to be communicating and emails had to be coming through.
Emails to all the staff in Uganda are routed through servers in the UK. Whilst the office move was happening, this server in the UK was holding the emails until we went live again in the new office. We logged on and there were just short of 1,000 emails waiting to come down to the staff. This had built up over 4 days! It just shows you how busy our programmes can be.
After a full day of configuring servers, running round all the users helping them get set up, ensuring they can connect to things, print and access files, we were so glad we had got to the stage of a functioning network with staff all able to work.
At one point in the day, a spanner was thrown into the works by EMI upstairs turned on their server which started to also hand out IP addresses, so our PC’s started to not communicate properly as they had wrong IP addresses. We quickly realised and so unplugged their network from ours until we can separate the traffic on the switches to not conflict with each other.
This is a fun job for tomorrow!
While I was in the hangar helping some staff with their printers, I also checked in to see the Cessna 182 which has now had all of its vortex generators installed. It looks really neat!
The remaining things for us to do tomorrow will also be to get the Wi-Fi network up and running and talking to the unifying server and then to setup the VOIP phone system.
We hope that by the end of Wednesday, we may have just completed the office move from an IT perspective! Let’s hope and see!
We were invited to dinner at Simon and Pam Wunderli’s house this evening. Simon is a pilot for MAF and they have served in Uganda for 13 years! Amazing. It was great to hear their passion still for the programme after so many years. We had a lovely dinner and a cappuccino! Mmm, that was soo good!
After around an hour, we cracked it!! Hurrah!
We had to check cables were wired correctly, check ISP settings, make sure the satellite link was receiving a connection and try many different configurations but we got there. With the fibre link also working between the hangar and the office, the PC’s were now also picking up their IP addresses from the firewall.
Now everyone could turn on their PCs, the pressure was on!
Fileservers needed to be communicating so they could get their files, database servers had to work for finance and operations for flight management, printers all had to be communicating and emails had to be coming through.
Emails to all the staff in Uganda are routed through servers in the UK. Whilst the office move was happening, this server in the UK was holding the emails until we went live again in the new office. We logged on and there were just short of 1,000 emails waiting to come down to the staff. This had built up over 4 days! It just shows you how busy our programmes can be.
After a full day of configuring servers, running round all the users helping them get set up, ensuring they can connect to things, print and access files, we were so glad we had got to the stage of a functioning network with staff all able to work.
At one point in the day, a spanner was thrown into the works by EMI upstairs turned on their server which started to also hand out IP addresses, so our PC’s started to not communicate properly as they had wrong IP addresses. We quickly realised and so unplugged their network from ours until we can separate the traffic on the switches to not conflict with each other.
This is a fun job for tomorrow!
While I was in the hangar helping some staff with their printers, I also checked in to see the Cessna 182 which has now had all of its vortex generators installed. It looks really neat!
The remaining things for us to do tomorrow will also be to get the Wi-Fi network up and running and talking to the unifying server and then to setup the VOIP phone system.
We hope that by the end of Wednesday, we may have just completed the office move from an IT perspective! Let’s hope and see!
We were invited to dinner at Simon and Pam Wunderli’s house this evening. Simon is a pilot for MAF and they have served in Uganda for 13 years! Amazing. It was great to hear their passion still for the programme after so many years. We had a lovely dinner and a cappuccino! Mmm, that was soo good!
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