VM-Aware

The Fantastic ESX Manager tool published by ESXGuide has been updated to version 2.3.  First and foremost it now supports VI3.5 & VC2.5.

I’m sure there are many out that have been waiting for this like I have, so here’s a little synopsis of the new features:

• Virtual Center independent
• Keeps track of Virtual Machine Host Registration, Migrations and Status
• Manage Virtual Machine Configuration
• Display and work in the Virtual Machine Console
• Kill Virtual Machine Process (if the VM can’t be powered off)
• Rename Virtual Disks of registered Virtual Machines
• Move Virtual Disks and keep the disk attached to the Virtual Machine
• Virtual Machine Registration, Start , Restart , Reset, Power Off, Suspend
• Extend Virtual Disks
• View-Search-Filter Logfiles on the ESX Host.
• Define and save custom SSH commands with Parameter handling

All excellent stuff and it is an essential part of my kit bag.  Download it here.

I found a bunch of great cmdlets that have now been bundled into the free Quest ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory package.  They include:

• Add-QADPermission
• Get-QADObjectSecurity
• Get-QADPermission
• Get-QADRootDSE
• Get-QARSAccessTemplate
• Get-QARSAccessTemplateLink
• New-QARSAccessTemplateLink
• Remove-QADPermission
• Remove-QARSAccessTemplateLink
• Set-QADObjectSecurity
• Set-QARSAccessTemplateLink

These helped no end in the management of AD permissions with PowerShell.  I found the original post discussing the package here, but you can download the Quest AD cmdlets here completely free of charge.

A blog at the Washington Post offers some little tidbits on how to make your websites more secure.

You can read the post here, bear in mind that it is totally IIS focussed, but pretty useful nonetheless.

Following on from an earlier post NetApp have released an updated best practices guide for the Open Systems SnapVault.

A 24 page beauty that will get you heading in the right direction with this new development.

Download the pdf here.

Something that I had suspected for a while now has been ‘confirmed’  by VMware - Virtual web servers scale and perform better than physical servers.

Now I know that evidence could be produced to the contrary, but the stats are quite impressive.  The following graph show the SPECweb2005 aggregate metric values are twice that of physical boxes once scaled up to 6 nodes.

AS I said I suspected for a long time that some workloads are more suited to virtualisation and it is nice to seem some justification of this.  Read for yourself here.

I know everybody loves Dilbert, but two of my favourites of recent times are below:

Also this little beauty from last week:

I’ve been on a bit of a mission of late to find articles that make the sometimes complex seem more simple.

I don’t know about you, but I find navigating around the Sharepoint licensing model a complete and utter nightmare. So how pleased was I when I found Lady Licensing. Simple diagrams covering the following scenarios:

• Intranet Portal
• Intranet/Extranet
• Internet

Brilliant! It even comes with pictures. Need I say more? I thought not, check it out here.

Sanbarrow has released a masterpiece for all administrators out there. The MOA LiveCD is a fine example of what true dedication can bring you.

3 years in the making the LiveCD allows you to boot into BartPE style environment with VMware related applications installed. The idea being that you can attach a physical disk for forensic/repair purposes etc.

Other useful applications include RoboCopy to get your important files off before the hard drive fails for good. Registry backup tools, VMware Converter and a multitude of others.

It comes in at 500mb, but you can run it from a USB key (if you have a degree of dedication) or CD.

Download it here, read all about it here.