Rick Gouin

Hardening Dell Storage Center (SC) – Compellent

· Rick Gouin

Over the last year or so, I’ve helped multiple companies recover from ransomware events utilizing snapshots on their storage arrays.  In several of these instances, the customer’s backups were compromised along with their production environment.  A storage array can be a nice part of a recovery strategy, as they seem to be targeted less frequently than other parts of your data-center. If you want to help make sure that your storage array is there for you when you need it, however, you need to make sure it is as secure as possible.  Most of these steps are applicable to any […]

New Dell PowerStore OS 2.0 Really is Future Ready

· Rick Gouin
PowerStore OS Version 2 Updates List

Dell just announced PowerStore OS version 2.0.  It will be available for download on 6/10/2021. If you are new to PowerStore, check out this intro post here.  As you can see, the platform launched a year ago was a little  lean from a feature set perspective.  Dell is rapidly filling out those capabilities, and is doing so in a very forward looking way.  PowerStore, particularly with version 2, is thinking ahead, and has several capabilities that many customers aren’t sure they need… yet.  Lets walk through some of the major new features in PowerStore OS version 2. Whats in PowerStore […]

Dell’s PowerStore reaches down market with new entry level PS500T

· Rick Gouin

Dell is expanding the reach of the PowerStore mid-range storage platform further down-market with the introduction of the entry level PowerStore 500T.  This smaller system is aimed at competing with the lower-end storage requirements found in SMB or ROBO deployments.  The system is supposed to come in around $30k for a base config with minimal storage.   This is one post from a 2 part series.  The other post details the software updates that go along with this hardware, and is available here. With the addition of the 500, there are now 6 different PowerStore models: 500, 1000, 3000, 5000, […]

Self host Bitwarden in AWS

· Rick Gouin

I’ve used a number of different password managers over the years.  I was a LastPass user for a long time, but recently felt compelled to take a look at other options in this space.  After a number of evaluations, I’ve settled on a new option: Bitwarden. My two favorite parts about BitWarden: There is a self-host option, and the project is open source.  There are a number of different open source implementations of various aspects of the project, which is awesome. I decided to deploy my self-hosted Bitwarden deployment in AWS.  My first decision to make was “how should I […]

Run a Windows 10 Instance in AWS EC2

· Rick Gouin

You want a Microsoft Windows 10 instance in your EC2 environment.  Maybe its for a jump box, maybe its for direct access to some RDS instances or other services.  Whatever the case, you went to AWS figuring you’d launch a new Windows 10 instance, and then you realized: Windows 10 isn’t one of the choices. Its true, Windows 10 is not one of the pre-built AMIs offered by AWS.  So how do you get yourself a Windows 10 instance running up there?  Fear not!  Thats what this guide is for.  I’ll show you all the steps to get a Windows […]