Virtuall BLOG for hbr

Script bits (update 4)

hbr@pqr.nl — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100

This post is a quick gathering of a few small scripts I wrote with my IT-life's motto: "Never do anything twice"

None of them are very special but each of them is a result of a short moment of frustration and a few minutes of gvim typing (yes, I use 'vi' on windows too).

so far this article contains:

Add wallpapers from a lot of subdirs to a Windows 7 Theme Change everybody's manager in Active Directory Execute one command on all you [...]

Archiving email attachments

hbr@pqr.nl — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:00:00 +0100

I had a discussion last week with a colleague about archiving messages in outlook. I have a 7GB mailbox on the server because I never delete mail. That may seem overdone but it has served me well a couple of times in discussions we had. Besides, I see absolutely no point in archiving mail away from the mail server to another store on some fileserver that eventually lands on the same central storage.

But a lot of the older mail contains attachments that are outdated and no longer n [...]

A blog post with Windows Live Writer to Joomla/myBlog

hbr@pqr.nl — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:00:00 +0100

On the server side, take the next steps to install the MetaWebLog XMLRPC plugin in Joomla:

go to http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/metaweblogapi/frs/ and download the file to your local system go to http://yoursite/administrator and go to ‘Extensions’ and ‘Install/Uninstall’ browse and upload the metaweblog zipfile next, go to Site, Global Configuration, System, System Settings and set Enable Web Services to Y [...]

Scheduled View VM refresh

hbr@pqr.nl — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:00:00 +0100

If you use non persistent desktops with VMware View, there are two options to reset the machine to its default state. One is immediately after a user logs off, the other is manually by a View Administrator. Currently, there is no way to schedule a VM reset at, say, 2PM.

A VM reset generates a lot of IOPS. So doing this in a production environment that's strained for IOPS is a performance risk (read http://virtuall.eu/download-document/vdi-storage-deep-impact!). But having adm [...]

The VDI armageddon (about Storage impact of VDI)

hbr@pqr.nl — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, is hot. It’s cool, secure, centrally managed, flexible - it’s an IT manager’s dream.

VDI comes in two flavours; Service Hosted VDI (Centralized, single-user remote vDesktop solution) and Client-Side VDI (local, single-user vDesktop solution).

The advantages of a VDI infrastructure are that virtual desktops are hardware independent and can be accessed from any common OS. It is also much easier to deplo [...]

Creating a VDI template

hbr@pqr.nl — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0100

A basic Windows XP machine can do a lot of things. Apart from facilitating an environment for a user's applications, it can do things like self maintenance, updates, hardware changes, etc. This is nice in a physical environment with lots of different pieces of hardware but in a virtual instance things hardly change, the environment is pretty much set and all tricks to speed things up usually have an adverse effect on the infrastructure. All these virtual instances nee [...]

VMware new product releases

hbr@pqr.nl — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:00:00 +0100

VMware announced a couple of new products today: SRM 4 and WS 7.

VMware Site Recovery Manager 4

Most important features are

vSphere support
NFS support
Shared recovery site support
FT support

They [...]

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) Quick startup and troubleshooting guide

hbr@pqr.nl — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

The current version is 0.90. Download the main appliance from Download v0.90. Don't forget to use the alternate OVF file at the same download location if you need to import the VM into previous Virtual Infrastructure versions. This guide is written for pre-0.90 versions but except for some first time wizards, it still applies to the newest release.

If you have anything to say about this appliance, don't hesitate and go to the VMTN forum for this appliance.

To search through e [...]

vCenter Orchestrator and LabManager 4

hbr@pqr.nl — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

With vCenter 4.0 comes vCenter Orchestrator. This workflow management software was originally developed by Dunes was the base for Lab Manager and Stage Manager.

Orchestrator is installed by default when vCenter server is installed but to use it, you have to enable it. It doesn't require any additional licenses.

To enable Orchestrator, go to services.msc and set the "VMware vCenter Orchestrator Configuration" service to autostart and start the service.

[...]

User pictures from the Active Directory

hbr@pqr.nl — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100

Not many people are aware that the Microsoft Active Directory has properties for pictures. This means that it's possible to add mugshots from people to your AD.

I created a small application that lets you edit these pictures. That means you don't need a seperate fileserver directory or database to store this kind of information. I also added birthday and first working day to the schema of the AD (somehow date properties aren't available in AD??). This makes this a coo [...]

Windows 7 Issues

hbr@pqr.nl — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100

I've been working with Windows 7 since the first beta was released and since that first beta, it's been working much better than Vista ever did on my laptop.

But there are some issues. This list describes what I encountered and how it can be solved. I run 64bit because I have 4GB ram.

VMware vSphere Client won't run properly.

get the system.dll from dotNet 2.0 and follow instructions here.

Connecting to a WebDAV share (like Sharepoint) [...]

Information collection

hbr@pqr.nl — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100

There is so much information that comes by that I sometimes hear of things, recognize that I heard something about that before, but totally forgot where.

This list is an attempt to keep up with all that information by linking keywords and links for quick reference and easy searching.

Check this out:

Atlantis Computing Fast and dynamic storage objectsLiquidware Labs VDI [...]

vSphere Fault Tolerance

hbr@pqr.nl — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100

we did some tests at a customer last week with FT. First ofcourse, it works like a charm. very impressive technology.

one of the things we wanted to know is the bandwidth needed to keep the CPUs in sync.

first we popped up 'calc' and did a 123456789! CPU went up to 100%, bandwidth needed: only 15kB/s.. wow..

next we did a local disk to local disk copy. not very cpu intensive but the FT bandwith went up to 25kB/s. still very low.

[...]

The story of the vSphere client that wanted to run on Windows 7

hbr@pqr.nl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100

The vSphere client expects certain things to be available on the machine it runs on. On all released Windows versions, this is not an issue. But on Windows 7, something is missing that makes the client install correctly, but when it connects to an ESX host, fails with an obscure XML error message.

To get the vSphere to run correctly, you need a SYSTEM.DLL from the dotNet 2.0 stack and have the vSphere client use that DLL instead of the native one. < [...]

Importing an NEWER OVF format VM into an older environment

hbr@pqr.nl — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100

If you have a vSphere or Workstation 7 environment like me and you export a virtual machine to an OVF format, older VMware products are unable to import them. You'll get a message like:

'unsupported hardware family vm-07'

'host does not support the virtual hardware version'

To resolve this follow these simple steps:

create a new VM with the specs of the OVF templateexport that VM to an OVF copy the OVF file to the directory of the VM you're tr [...]

Troubleshooting the EDA

hbr@pqr.nl — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100

The EDA is typically used in enterprise environments where it not only deploys new ESX hosts but also redeploys them in case of an error.

Networks in enterprise environments are almost always using VLANs.

make sure the ESX ip addresses are in the SAME ip range as the EDA. very important, it will not work if they're on different subnets. only if you can enter a VLAN tag in your BIOS for pxe (like some dell machines can), can you use EDA on a tagged network. in all other cases, you [...]

ESX Deployment Appliance aka EDA

hbr@pqr.nl — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0100

The EDA is a linux appliance that is dedicated to deploying ESX in the most efficient, easy and fastest way possible. It will deploy dozens of hosts in minutes. It also has a script-builder that makes creating %post-scripts a breeze so the server automatically gets fully configured to be used as soon as the installation is done. That way the appliance can also be used as a disaster recovery tool. It's faster to redeploy an ESX server (takes only 2 minutes!), fully configured, than to restore it [...]