Automation Consulting

I'm an advanced Tcl/Tk programmer and especially fond of Expect, the powerful automation language.  I love writing software that saves people from tedious work!

Here are five automation programs that I've written:

• fcmap.tcl

  This SAN management automation script provides an FC cable map for one or more SAN fabrics.  It works with Brocade SAN switches.

  This can save hours (or days, depending on the size of the fabrics) of tedious, physical cable inspection.  And unlike the physical inspection method, this can be re-run on demand to show up-to-date cable maps.

  It works by logging in to the Brocade FC switches, gathering the WWPNs associated with each port, gathering the alias information from "zoneshow," and correlating them.

• sshBrutes.tcl

  This security script reduces the effectiveness of brute-force (password guessing) login attacks against OpenBSD servers.

  It monitors the OpenBSD ssh daemon log file. When a remote host initiaties over four failed login attempts within an hour, pf's asked to block all packets from that host.

  This script's currently active on this Web server!

• maxVdisks.tcl

  This limits testing script adds a number of virtual hard disks to a VMware ESX Server version 3 virtual machine.

  Since the VMware Infrastructure management software corresponding to this ESX Server version doesn't include the ability to create a large number of virtual disks all at once, this script can save a lot of time.

• ac

  This is a command-line client to the Hitachi Host Data Collector product, which is part of the Hitachi Command Suite.

  It allows Host Data Collector to be automated from within scripts, providing an alternative to the Command Suite GUI.  It works by sending HTTP POST operations to the Host Data Collector server process containing SOAP messages that "make it go."

• ssth.tcl

  This security script reads a Sun SunScreen firewall log file and prints a list of the remote hosts that have sent the highest number of dropped packets.

  It's useful for identifying which hosts have been generating the largest mount of undesired traffic, so that these hosts can be blocked wholesale.  "ssth" stands for SunScreen Top Hosts.  It was written to work with SunScreen 3.2.