Props to Netgear support

A few weeks ago a series of severe storms rolled past the area where I live and in its wake left a lot of damage. I was affected in a way that put me out of commission for a couple of days.

The motherboard in my primary PC, the one I do work on, was fried as was a Netgear 24-port Gigabit network switch. I also lost a 20-year old stereo receiver. That one may have been a coincidence, although I do not really believe in coincidences. The strangest part was that all three devices were in separate rooms, connected to either battery backups (Netgear) or chained surge protectors.

I ended up getting a couple of new, smaller, Netgear switches to help me get my network back up. I ended up getting a new motherboard for my PC and also replaced the receiver with a new unit.

Losing the Netgear switch was a big problem because a temporary switches didn't have enough ports and new unit 24-port would have cost me $199. On a whim I decided to give Netgear a call to see if there was anything they could do for me. Without hesitation they created an RMA an told me to send the switch back. Two week later a had a brand new switch in my hands. I honestly did not expect that but I am so very happy to have received it.

Thank you Netgear. You rock!

Citrix support...you have disappointed me today

I had a weird problem with the NetScaler gateways where my VPN connection would occasionally not allow me to connect to any hosts on one of the internal networks. It would allow me to get to the the same network where the NetScaler cluster was located but not any other. This was very intermittent and very annoying.

I finally called Citrix support on the issue and spoke with a tech and based on his name and accent he was definitely located off-shore...I am guessing somewhere in the land of the sacred cow. I can't complain too much about this chap as he was relatively knowledgeable. After the initial troubleshooting he recommended that I upgrade my NetScaler cluster to the most recent stable version of the software. He said that the upgrade process was fairly straight forward and that I only needed to make sure I upgraded one device at a time and that HA cluster/replication was disabled for the duration of the upgrade.

One of my concerns was that I may lose all of the customization I had done to the login pages within the NetScaler infrastructure. He assured me that my customization would remain intact.

Well, imagine my surprise when upon logging on to Citrix I noticed that my customization was GONE! Yup, the little bastard lied to me. Luckily I had backed up all the pertinent files prior to the upgrade so I was able to get things up and running in a short amount of time.

Well Citrix support, you have disappointed me today.

RSA Documentation blows as well

Trying to figure out how to install a secondary RSA server and to configure a replica. Since I am using Radius to authenticate I also need to configure that on the new server. Here is what the RSA documentation states:

Note: RADIUS can only be installed on a 32-bit Windows or Linux platform. When you install the 64-bit version of Authentication Manager software on a supported 64-bit operating system, the installer does not present the RADIUS option. If you want to install RADIUS in this situation, make sure that you use the Authentication Manager DVD or download kit containing the 32-bit installation program. Install RADIUS on a separate 32-bit machine running the same operating system as Authentication Manager.

Interesting, considering that I am already running AM 7.1 64-bit on Windows 2008 R2 and have Radius installed and configured. So now I have to call these buffoons to clarify. So frustrating.

RSA support blows

Busy day today. I was on the phone for a good part of my day dealing with RSA and Citrix tech support. Citrix support is good 99% of the time. I wish I could say the same about RSA. Every time I open a support case I end up dealing with some dumb-ass from India. Half the time I cannot understand what he is saying to me and the other half the time he sends me on a while goose chase within the system because he clearly does know the product. It is really frustrating when I know what he is saying is incorrect, yet he insists on pushing me around.

I've already sent feedback to my account rep letting him know how horrendous RSA support is. He promised to forward this on to the upper levels within the organization.