List of Solution Providers | Cisco Partners | Karachi

While exploring Cisco Partner locator feature few days back, I compiled a small list of  Solution Providers (focusing Cisco Partners) who are, in addition to other places, running their business in Karachi, Pakistan. These companies offer varied services which include Network Management, IT Infrastructure, Data Center Designs, contact centers, Network Security, Managed Network  services and others.

I compiled only the Titles and postal addresses of the companies. Their core business and services can be seen from the respective websites. (Just google the company title to get their website)

So here is the list:

DWP Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd. – Ground Floor, Nelson Chambers, I.I Chundrigar Road, Karachi

Plexus Technologies – 1st Floor, Bahria Complex III, M.T. Khan Road, Karachi – 74000

Access Group – First floor, Block F, Meharsons Estate Building, Talpur Road near I.I Chundrigur Road, Karachi–74000, Pakistan.

Future Technology – 311, Park Avenue, Shara-e-Faisal, Karachi – 75400

4sight Technologies – Suite # 2B, 45-C, 27th Street, Tauheed Commercial Area, DHA, Phase V, Ext

Corvit Networks – House No 18, Sasi Town Houses, Civil Lines, Abdullah Haroon Road, Near Marriot Hotel, Karachi, Pakistan

Arwen Tech – 37 G, Block 6, P.E.C.H.S, Karachi

Wateen Solutions – Dawood Center, 6th Floor, M.T Khan Road near PIDC, Karachi, 75300

Gulf Business Machines – 5C-6C Prime Point Building, Mezzanine Floor, Main Khayaban-e-Ittehad, Phase VII, Defense Housing Authority, Karachi, Pakistan

Insiyabi Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd – 5th Floor, ILACO House Abdullah Haroon Road Karachi Pakistan

Premier Systems Pvt. Ltd. –  2nd Floor, Business Plaza, Mumtaz Hassan Road, off I.I. Chundigarh road Karachi-74000 Pakistan.

Innovative Integration – 5th Floor KDLB Buidling, 58 west wharf Road, Karachi, Pakistan

IBM Italia SPA – 1-2 Floors, Nice Trade Orbit Building, Plot # 44-A, Block 6, PECHS Sharah-e- Faisal Karachi

CNS Engineering – Banglow No# 19/G-1, P.E.C.H.S, Block 6,  Shahra-e-Faisal Karachi

Infotech – 188-1-A-1/2, P.E.C.H.S II, Main Shahrah-e- Faisal, Karachi, Pakistan.

Jaffer Business Systems – Citi Tower, 33 – A, Block – 6, P.E.C.H.S, Shahrah-e-Faisal, Karachi – 75400

Seven IT Technologies – 172/P, 3rd Floor, PECHS Block-2, Tariq Road, Karachi. Pakistan.

Silicon Technologies – 77-E Block # 2 P.E.C.H.S, Ghazali Road, Karachi

Tech Access – 3rd Floor, Nacon House, 270/1, MD Wafai Street, Strachen Road, Karachi

Siemens – B-72, Estate Avenue, S.I.T.E, P.O. BOX 7158 Karachi

Systems Innovations – State Life Building 1-B, I.I Chundrigar Road, Karachi, 74000

COMMTEL – C-37, Block 4, Clifton Karachi, Pakistan

Arthur Lawrence – Suite 413, Business Avenue Building, PECHS, Block 6, Karachi, Pakistan

Ovex Technologies – Office # 203, 2nd Floor,  Business Center, 19/1 – A, Block 6, P.E.C.H.S, Main Shahrah-e-Faisal, Karachi.

Huawei Technologies – Plot #23,Khayaban-e-Hafiz, Opp. Saudia Embassy, D.H.A Phase-V Karachi

Sysnet Pakistan – 79-B, Tipu Sultan Road, Karachi 75350

Innolytix Pakistan – 817 8th Floor Saima Trade Tower, I.I.Chundrigar Road, Karachi-Pakistan

Ericsson Pakistan – 44- Modern Cooperative Housing Society, Block 7/8, Tipu Sultan Road, Karachi

Rehmat Taj Enterprises – Building # 63-C, Second Floor, 15th Commercial Street, Defense Housing Authority Phase-II Extensions, Karachi

GCS Pvt. Ltd. – 43/16-D1, Block-6, PECHS Shahrah-e-Faisal, Karachi

Makkays – B-26, Block-15, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi – Pakistan

Install Cacti (Network Monitoring) on RHEL/CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x and Fedora

Cacti tool is an open source web based network monitoring and system monitoring graphing solution for IT business. Cacti enables a user to poll services at regular intervals to create graphs on resulting data using RRDtool. Generally, it is used to graph time-series data of metrics such as network bandwidth utilization, CPU load, running processes, disk space etc.

In this how-to we are going to show you how to install and setup complete network monitoring application called Cacti using Net-SNMP tool on RHEL 7.x/6.x/5.x, CentOS 7.x/6.x/5.x and Fedora systems using YUM package manager tool.

The Cacti required several packages to be installed on your Linux operating systems like RHEL / CentOS / Fedora.

# yum install httpd httpd-devel

# yum install mysql mysql-server

MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL database project, and provides a replacement for MySQL. Previously the official supported database was MySQl under RHEL/CentOS 6.x/5.x and Fedora.
Recently, RedHat makes a new transaction from MySQl to MariaDB, as MariaDB is the default implementation of MySQL in RHEL/CentOS 7.x and Fedora 19 onwards.

# yum install mariadb-server –y

# yum install php-mysql php-pear php-common php-gd php-devel php php-mbstring php-cli

# yum install php-snmp

# yum install net-snmp-utils net-snmp-libs

# yum install rrdtool

Once you’ve installed all the required software’s for Cacti installation, lets start them one-by-one using following commands.

# service httpd start

# service mysqld start

# service snmpd start

Configuring Apache, MySQL and SNMP Services to start on boot.

# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 httpd on

# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 mysqld on

# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 snmpd on

Here, you need to install and enable EPEL Repository. Once you’ve enabled repository, type the following command to install Cacti application.

# yum install cacti

Extract the distribution tarball.

# tar xzvf cacti-version.tar.gz

We need to configure MySQL for Cacti, to do this we need to set password for our newly installed MySQL server and then we will create Cacti database with user Cacti.

# mysqladmin -u root password your-password-here

# mysql -u root –p

mysql> create database cacti;

mysql> GRANT ALL ON cacti.* TO cacti@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'cacti';

mysql> FLUSH privileges;

mysql> quit;

# rpm -ql cacti | grep cacti.sql

Now we’ve of the location of Cacti.sql file, type the following command to install tables, here you need to type the Cacti user password.

# mysql -u cacti -p cacti < /usr/share/doc/cacti-0.8.8b/cacti.sql

Open the file called /etc/cacti/db.php with any editor.

# vi /etc/cacti/db.php

Make the following changes and save the file. Make sure you set password correctly.

/* make sure these values reflect your actual database/host/user/password */

$database_type = "mysql";

$database_default = "cacti";

$database_hostname = "localhost";

$database_username = "cactiuser";

$database_password = "your-password-here";

$database_port = "3306";

$database_ssl = false;

Now configuring firewall for Cacti

# iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

# service iptables save

#service httpd restart

Set the appropriate permissions on cacti's directories for graph/log generation. You should execute these commands from inside cacti's directory to change the permissions. 

shell> chown -R cactiuser rra/ log/

(Enter a valid username for cactiuser, this user will also be used in the next step for data gathering.)

Add a line to your /etc/crontab file similar to:

*/5 * * * * cactiuser php /var/www/html/cacti/poller.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Replace cactiuser with the valid user specified in the previous step.

Replace /var/www/html/cacti/ with your full Cacti path.

Finally, Cacti is ready, just go to

http://your-IP-Here/cacti/

Log in the with a username/password of admin. You will be required to change this password immediately. Make sure to fill in all of the path variables carefully and correctly on the following screen.

LACP Portchannel Configuration VMware Interface to Cisco

Use the link aggregation feature to aggregate one or more Ethernet interfaces to form a logical point-to-point link, known as a LAG, virtual link, or bundle. We would like to add LACP EtherChannels to one of my 2960 switches to connect VMWare ESXi (vSphere 6.5) host’s via teamed NICs.

Does enabling Route based on IP hash without 802.ad aggregation or vise-versa disrupt networking?
Yes, if you must enable 802.ad Static mode ON and configure the vSwitch to route based on IP Hash, configure route based on IP hash inside ESX/ESXi first, then enable the LAG on the physical network. You will loose connectivity to the ESX/ESXi host temporarily until you configure the physical side.

Does VMware support any other algorithm other than IP HASH when using EtherChannel?
No, only route based on IP hash is supported when configuring based on EtherChannel.

How many Ether channels exist per vSwitch or vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS)?
One and only one Ether channel per vSwitch or vDS.

Can I use beacon probing with IP Hash load balancing?
No. Beacon probing with IP Hash load balancing is not supported. Beacon probing is most useful in detecting networking failures which do not result in a link down condition. This could be a mis-configuration resulting in link that is still up, but not operating as expected.

What is the difference between Active and Passive Mode for LACP configuration?
Active - The port will actively negotiate the link state by initiating negotiation and send LACP frames.
Passive - The port is passive state and will respond to LACP frames sent during LACP negotiation.

Can I configure standby or unused up-links while using IP Hash?
No. Do not configure standby or unused up-links with IP Hash. IEEE 802.3ad dynamic: Only supported in ESXi 5.1 vDS. Pior to ESXi 5.1 VMware only supported static link aggregation. With ESXi 5.1 Dynamic LACP is supported only vSphere Distributed Switches (vDS). Static LAG are still supported on vSwithes and vDS. Dynamic LACP provides additional support for Plug and Play automatic configuration and negotiation between host and physical switch. Dynamic LACP will detect link failures and cabling errors and automatically reconfigure the links.

Cisco and Huawei Port channel Configuration

Configuring a LACP link aggregation, EtherChannel, or port-channel or Eth-trunk between Huawei and Cisco switch is something very common but the configuration syntax between the two vendors is different, it can be confusing.