A very nice article regarding Exchange 2007 server sizing can be found here at msexchange.org.

It talks about how to size depending on the amount of mailboxes, mailstores and users.

Scott Lowe has written an article that discusses the pros & cons of FlexClone & A-SIS when used in conjunction with a VMware environment.

If you are just getting to grips with these technolgies (like me) it is a very useful starting point to understand how the two technologies may work with VMware.

I was investigating it when used with VMware VDI so there are a few very useful tips indeed.

I found an excellent article written on DABCC.com discussing ways to make Windows XP essentially a thin client. Some of the tweaks include:

• Desktop Folder Redirection
• Start Menu Redirection
• Autologin
• Loading iexplore As Shell

Very useful for all those people running VMware VDI as you can use these tips to load VDM in kiosk mode.

I found a fantastic article that talks about a free method of monitoring the event viewer for NMV related warnings. I know this functionality should be included in the product, but until it is try using blat as described in this article.

Daemon Behr has written a nice and succinct article on when and how to use more than one virtual CPU in a Virtual Machine.

A few of the highlights:

• Be very selective with vSMP only use it when applications can take advantage
• Don’t assign a VM the same amount of vCPUs as you have pCPUs
• Remember to change HALs for migrated physical machines if necessary

I know most of this is taught during the training courses, but you’d be surprised how many installs I have been to that have ignored them.

Always useful to keep in mind.

I was wondering if there’’s a GUI that sits on top of iptables to make creation of lengthy firewall policies a bit more straightforward and it turns out there most certainly is.  fwbuilder.org have written a magnificent multi-platform tool that presents a GUI to not only iptables, but PIX, FWSM, ipfilter & more.

You can download the installers for Windows, Mac & Linux as well as some extra modules here.

It really does work a charm.