afokkema Microsoft, Powershell, VI Toolkit, Virtualization, VMware

VMware: esx-configure Powershell script


As part of a larger project I’ve been working on a set of scripts which configure a freshly-installed ESX (or ESXi) system into Virtual Center (after first attempting to remove previous VC state and clean state from the host). Currently they follow a typical post-boot configuration pattern:

  1. Set ESX password
  2. Add to Virtual Center cluster
  3. Configure Virtual Switches
  4. Configure Port Groups
  5. Add NFS partitions
  6. Add iSCSI partitions
  7. Configure NTP
  8. Configure VMotion

Before trying, modify esx-master.ps1 and esx-profile.ps1 to local conditions (or your password will be set to “CHANGEME”).
Command: esx-autoconfigure.ps1 “hostname|ip-address”

 

check out zijn post op http://communities.vmware.com/thread/161304

 

Bron: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/09/02/esx-vs-esxi/

afokkema Microsoft

Manage Mozilla Firefox With a Active Directory (GPO)


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Helaas word er bij Mozilla Firefox standaard geen ADM files meegeleverd. Deze ADM file heb je nodig om via een GPO, op een centrale plek, standaard instellingen te kunnen doorgeven aan de clients op je netwerk. Gelukkig is er een team begonnen met het ontwikkelen van een Custom ADM file voor Mozilla Firefox. Deze ADM files kun je downloaden vanaf hier: Sourceforge.net. Voordat je begint met het importeren en configureren van de ADM files, raad ik je aan om de volgende pdf eerst te lezen: ADM_Deploy.pdf.

Na het lezen van de pdf weet je waarschijnlijk al hoe het deployen van de ADM files in zijn werk gaat. Ik ga het toch nog even kort beschrijven:

  1. Je pakt de zipfile uit.
  2. Je importeert de ADM files
  3. Je plaatst de login/logoff scripts (diverse *.vbs scripts) op de juiste plaats en voegt deze toe.
  4. Je maakt de instellingen, waarvan jij denkt die nodig zijn.

 

Zodra je de ADM file hebt toegevoegd, zie je de nieuwe node Mozilla Firefox Default Settings verschijnen. In deze node kun je dus bijvoorbeeld de proxyserver configureren.

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afokkema Microsoft, Windows

Scalable Networking Pack Rollup Released


De rollup package vind je hier: KB950224

Meer informatie over SNP vind je hier: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/snp/faq.mspx

Verder kwam ik de volgende quote tegen:

As more companies deploy Windows 2008 and Vista, it is crucial, or in my opinion, critical that this hotfix be applied to all Windows 2003 servers that may communicate with these operating systems. One of the main reasons is a new feature called TCP auto-tuning which makes use of RSS to expand and shrink the sizes of your TCP window to increase/decrease throughput based on current network load. This feature greatly increases throughput on your network, but if there is an underlying problem with the network card driver or any of these features between disparate systems, you may experience slower than normal network performance. The good news is that the Chimney feature is disabled by default in Vista/Windows 2008.

Bron: http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/2008/08/28/scalable-networking-pack-rollup-released.aspx

afokkema Virtualization

Xtreaming Technology releases VHD CMS Professional 1.0 of its diskless OS-streaming product


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Xtreaming Technology Inc. is a new US-invested start-up company working out of Shanghai, China investing in building diskless related products.  Their Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) product uses OS-streaming and allows any PC to boot up a full version of Windows XP or Vista from across a network and run it locally.
We’ve seen this technology before with Ardence (later acquired by Citrix) but VHD is a much more advanced diskless system than we’ve seen before.  VHD wants to turn your Office diskless and uses a login so that a unique virtual hard disk follows each user to any workstation.  The system also delivers a menu when the PCs start up so that users can choose which virtual hard disk to boot.  Further VHD features include:

  • Hardware isolation tools so that PCs with different chipsets and cards can boot from a single image.
  • Works with third party DCHP programs so that the system can run across several different LANs (or even the Internet!)
  • VHDs can be set to Persistent (retains users saved data) or Refreshed (every boot provides a fresh Windows environment)
  • Storage format uses .vhd which means you can use Virtual PC or VMware to edit disk images.
  • Concurrent Disk access between multiple disk servers s that even if one disk server fails the PCs can continue to be used.

Their beta version is available on their website:

Server: http://www.vhdsoft.com.cn/download/products/professional/setup.exe

Client: http://www.vhdsoft.com.cn/download/products/client/client.exe

afokkema Virtualization

Sridhar Murthy joins PHD Technologies as Chief Executive Officer


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PHD Technologies, provider of the leading esXPRESS backup and restoration solution for virtualized infrastructures, today announced the appointment of Sridhar Murthy as the company’s chief executive officer.
Murthy has over 18 years of leadership in high growth technology companies. For the past two years he served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer at TicketsNow.com. During his tenure, the company doubled its revenues. Prior to this, Murthy was chief financial officer and vice president of operations at Collabnet, a provider of hosted enterprise solutions for distributed and outsourced software development. Earlier in his career, Murthy held finance and operations leadership positions at Get2Chip, Ariba Inc. and Remedy Corporation.
“The PHD Technologies’ management team unanimously selected Murthy based on his track record of leading fast-growth organizations, as well as his strong executive and personal qualities,” said Ron McKelvey, co-founder and chief technology officer.

“We knew we needed a strong leader with extensive experience to lead our organization to the next level,” said Ken Harbin, co-founder and president. “We found that person in Sridhar. He has the expertise, drive, determination and understanding of the market needed to lead our growth.”

Murthy joins PHD Technologies at an exciting time in the Company’s evolution. The Company recently received a significant equity investment from a top tier venture firm to help fund new product development and geographic expansion. In Q1:2008, esXPRESS surpassed the 1000th customer milestone.

“I was impressed with the innovative technology that PHD has created, the loyalty of the customer base and management’s strength,” Murthy said. “There is an increasing need in the virtualization market to deliver high-quality backup and disaster recovery products; esXPRESS provides the fastest and most cost-effective solution available to virtualized environments. I am excited to be part of a Company that has the executive team, staff and technology in place to win in the market.”

About PHD Technologies
esXPRESS, developed by PHD Technologies, redefined virtual machine backups in 2005 with the introduction of the first differential backup engine for VMware ESX Server. Today, using the Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA), esXPRESS v3.1 uses VMware to backup VMware, without the cost of a dedicated physical server. The advantage for users is simple management and unlimited dynamic growth, no single point of failure, and scaleable performance. esXPRESS is a proud VMware Technology Alliance Partner. Visit www.esxpress.com to download a free trial copy and learn more.

afokkema Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware, Windows

Microsoft: New licensing Flexibility


Microsoft heeft eindelijk de licentie voorwaarden aangepast voor het haar software m.b.t. virtualisatie.

New Licensing Flexibility

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products. With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems, increase agility, and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

 

Expanded Technical Support

Microsoft has updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform. Now customers can get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that they are accustomed to with nonvirtual environments. More information is available at http://support.microsoft.com.

To enable this support policy, Microsoft launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program in June 2008. The program is open to any software vendor to test and validate its virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. To date, Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Virtual Iron Software Inc. are participating in the program.

“Technical support of virtualized images is an industrywide challenge,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell. “Novell and Microsoft continue to collaborate to optimize bidirectional virtualization between Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise with Xen. Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program provides customers with additional peace of mind when they run Windows as a guest in a validated environment such as SUSE Linux Enterprise.”

 

Lees het hele artikel hier: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx