VM-Aware » Applications

SQL Server Install Checklists

Paul Shannon — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:44:32 +0000

Brent Ozar has been writing excellent articles for a long, long time, so I’m not sure how I managed to take so long to find these two little beauties:

Pre-Install Checklist

Post-Install Checklist

These puppies are firmly in the indispensable section of my bookmarks.

Thanks Brent

SysInternals Suite Updated

Paul Shannon — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:56:52 +0000

Just a quickie to let you know that the incredibly useful SysInternals Suite has been updated recently and can be downloaded here.

The following packages are included:

AccessChk
AccessEnum
AdExplorer
AdRestore
Autologon
Autoruns
BgInfo
CacheSet
ClockRes
Contig
Coreinfo
Ctrl2Cap
DebugView
Desktops
DiskExt
DiskMon
DiskView
Disk Usage (DU)
EFSDump
FileMon
Handle
Hex2dec
Junction
LDMDump
ListDLLs
LiveKd
LoadOrder
LogonSessions
NewSid
NTFSInfo
PageDefrag
PendMoves
PortMon
ProcessExplorer
Process Monitor
ProcFeatures
PsExec
PsFile
PsGetSid
PsInfo
PsKill
PsList
PsLoggedOn
PsLogList
PsPasswd
PsService
PsShutdown
PsSuspend
RegDelNull
RegJump
RegMon
RootkitRevealer
SDelete
ShareEnum
ShellRunas
SigCheck
Streams
Strings
Sync
TCPView
VolumeID
WhoIs
WinObj
ZoomIt

Virtual Floppy Drive Application

Paul Shannon — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:39:15 +0000

I had a need for a floppy drive for a server that didn’t have a physical device. I know I could use a USB floppy, but the customer didn’t want a USB floppy hanging off the brand spanking new IBM x3650 servers.

The need arose from a feature in DataCore’s SANMelody software that allows any modifications of the configuration to be written to a backup floppy for config recovery purposes. This is a great feature that I really wanted the customer to use so I hunted for a Virtual Floppy drive that would allow it to be presented to Windows as though it was a physical device.

I ended up with a fantastic piece of software called Virtual Floppy Drive 2.1. This software acts as a proper read/write floppy drive that can mount existing floppy images and add, remove, edit files. It can also create a blank floppy image and have applications write to it directly.

Best of all it is freeware. Perfect!

Multi-Operating System Administration

Paul Shannon — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:23:46 +0000

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.

MCS StorageView

Paul Shannon — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:57:33 +0000

Alongside a few other cool tools MightyCare Solutions have released StorageView.

This handy little app will give you visibility of your Virtual Machines’ disk status in a very friendly GUI.

Read all about it here and download it here.

FastSCP Timing Out

Paul Shannon — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:03:15 +0000

Ever found that FastSCP (the best file copying tool around for ESX!!) times out when trying to copy files to your ESX box? Do you get the following error:

Transfer timeout. No data transferred in the last 20 seconds
Operation canceled

I did and I worked out what the problem was!

It’s all to do with the ESX firewall. FastSCP uses a range of ports from 2000 – 2500 by default. These ports are not open by default in ESX so you either open them, fairly easy to do using the command line, or you do what I did and used the GUI to do it for me.

Edit the properties on the ESX Server that is giving you problems within FastSCP:

No go to FastSCP and change the ports it uses ( from 2000 – 2500, to 8000 – 9000):

You have to change the second port value first (i.e change 9000) otherwise you get an error message about the range being invalid.

Now all that is left is to enable the EMC Networker Agent option in the Security Profile section under configuration of the ESX Host within the VI Client:

All is done and you shouldnow be able to transfer files.

VI Client & x64 Vista

Paul Shannon — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:49:44 +0000

The Internet is a wonderful thing. I had a problem ‘VI Client doesn’t install on Vista x64′ and the Internet solved it.

Well to be more specific somebody over at DABCC solved my problem with a fantastic walkthrough document that can be found here.

It provides links to a couple of useful MSI editing tools and gives in depth how to references for each point.

Great!!

Booting A LiveCD Over IP

Paul Shannon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:44:10 +0000

Here is a very interesting article about how you would go about mounting a LiveCD across the interenet:

http://vamosproject.org/InternetBoot

One day I seriously believe all Operating Systems will run in some derivative of this format.

This one is nice and easy to implement if you are running VMware Player/Workstation on Linux, but it does work on Windows using httpfs. It wasn’t as fast on Windows for me, by a long shot, but it still worked and illustrates the point really well.

PlateSpin Bought Buy Novell

Paul Shannon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:37:55 +0000

As is becoming the norm of late another buyout has occurred, this time it is Vizioncore rivals and generally great software providers PlateSpin.

The acquisition comes from Novell, not content with buying all of these companies:

SUSE
e-Security
SiteScape
SiliconRepublic
Ximian

Now that the Xen hypervisor has been integrated into SUSE, you can see where this acquisition may be going.

As usual virtulization.info got this story first, read the original article here.

GParted

Paul Shannon — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:13:45 +0000

If you are irritated by the feature oversight in VMware Converter that bugs me the most then I have a solution document for you attached.

I hate the way that you cannot create multiple VMDK disks when a source machine has a single disk with multiple logical partitions. There are a number of long winded ways to get round this, but here’s mine.

Click here.