Getting Started with Hand Loading

So my first kit is on the way, after about a week of research I settled on something so simple, I didn't think it existed. Hand Loading.

http://leeprecision.com/lee-loader-38-spl.html

All you need is a rubber mallet and the supplies: powder and slugs.

The die set itself costs $26 from midwayusa, a box of 50 38S new runs about $21 here. Initial estimates put the reloading costs at about $10/50, probably cheaper if I use lead rounds. I also purchased associated hand tools for case prepping and a Lee manual. Overall, including shipping the cost to date is $78.

It's about as dirty as cleaning a gun, if not less and I can do it anywhere. Still being an apartment dweller space is a premium.

In the meanwhile I'll get lots of experience with something before I go spend a couple hundred bucks on a fancy press and associated gadgets. Even gathering brass will be easy as I can dump it straight from the gun into the brass bucket. Keep you posted, hope I don't burn my eyebrows off :)

Automating FC SAN failover using pexpect

The code is on github and is fairly straight forward. One of these days I'll figure out how to do this using SMI-S or other XML magic pixie dust. The Cisco MDS is a little obnoxious in that it requires you to entire config mode to toggle vsans. The switch is already configured for pubkey authentication. Here it is in action,

ppetraki@mark21:~/Sandbox/cisco-automation$ ./cisco_pexpect.py 
logging in...
logged in
entered config mode
enable both vsans, wait 30 secs
disable vsan 10, wait 60 secs
enable vsan 10
exit config mode
exit fc switch
terminated True

In a separate window I have 'watch -d multipath -ll' on the client and confirm during the 60 sec sleep that the path group did indeed go out of service and then return.

$ git clone git://github.com/ppetraki/cisco-fc-failover.git

and enjoy!