Category Archives: Technology

Student Tip: Stopping WinSCP filepart errors

October 3rd, 2007 | Posted in Technology, VMWARE

 

Last week a student on my course gave me a tip. Personally, I perfer to use Veeam’s FastSCP for ESX Server when transferring files from my Windows Desktop to ESX 3. However, occasionally in the lab environments I work in I have to use WinSCP which is slower. One thing I have observed is if I copy a file such as an ISO to a VMFS volume, then WinSCP gives me an error. Basically, what happens is though the files get copied to the VMFS volume - and error occours when renaming the file from say - w2k3sp2.iso.filepart to w2k3sp2.iso. This is caused by the “Resume” feature in WinSCP which is intended to pickup an upload when it fails from where it failed, rather than starting the upload from the beginning. It appears as VMFS doesn’t support this functionality.

The solution to this problem is a work-around. To disable the “Resume” feature in the WinSCP software. I don’t mind doing this. Everything is gigabit in the lab environments I work in and very reliable so I don’t really need the resume feature. To disable the WinSCP “Resume” feature do the following:

In the menu choose, Options and Preferrences
Under Transfer, select Resume
Under “Enable transfer resume for”, select Disable
Under “Automatic Reconnect“, disable “Automatic reconnect session, if it breaks during transfer“

Student Tip: Stopping WinSCP filepart errors
mikelaverick
Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:09:50 GMT

Popularity: 56% [?]

Tags: VMWARE

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Using ESXTOP to collect performance statistics

October 3rd, 2007 | Posted in Technology, VMWARE

 

RTFM Reader and regular contributor, Michael Knight has contacted me with some experiences and resources concerning gathering performance statistics using esxtop at the Service Console. It’s taken me sometime to blog about this, as I have been so busy with other work - Sorry about that Michael. Anyway, this is what Michael found:

“I was recently involved in trying to troubleshoot a VM that was performing badly. During the investigation I was experimenting with methods of capturing statistics of the Host and resident VMs both from VC and ESX. I was interested in capturing the %RDY time of a VM to determine if the VM was being hindered by others on the same host. For some reason VC reports a ready time in milliseconds and not a percentage like ESXTOP which was hard to interpret easily.
Whilst tinkering I discovered that by running ESXTOP in batch capture mode for a period I could stop the capture and then load the data file straight into Microsoft’s Perfmon tool and then manipulate the various counters I was interested in if as the data was from a Windows machine. Obviously the VI3 platform has different counters but it using a familiar tool it was easier to track the info.
I have created a spreadsheet listing the available Perfmon counters. Some are self explanatory others lack detail at this time.  The information captured looks more extensive than the interactive esxtop or VC performance data. ESXTOP batch mode can be invoked as   esxtop -b > /tmp/myesxtop.csv
Please note that depending on your sample rate these files can grow very large.”

You can download Michael’s XL spreedsheet from here

Using ESXTOP to collect performance statistics
mikelaverick
Mon, 01 Oct 2007 09:49:39 GMT

Popularity: 41% [?]

Tags: VMWARE

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Antivirus Software Configuration Guidelines for Presentation Server

September 27th, 2007 | Posted in Technology

After having a major issue with Trend AV on our citrix servers about 2 months ago, I’ll be digging into this kb.

Al though this support document is nothing earth shattering it is nice to see an "official" statement from Citrix on this. Antivirus Software Configuration Guidelines for Presentation Server provides guidelines for configuring an antivirus software solution in Citrix environments. Of course the bulk of the article is about limiting the overhead virus scanning incurs (because it always does). The article includes specific suggestions on what not to scan. Some of the tips are obvious while others are less obvious. Actually I was kind of impressed with the less obvious suggested location to exclude in the Antivirus that I’ve decided to list [more ...]

Antivirus Software Configuration Guidelines for Presentation Server
Michel Roth - mrdizzz@thincomputing.net
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:15:00 GMT

Popularity: 27% [?]

Tags: citrix

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How can I Remove Backgrounds From A Picture Quickly in Photoshop?

September 25th, 2007 | Posted in Technology

I’m just posting this for my own knowledge, so I didn’t include the whole article.

I don’t have photoshop, but I’ll try it will the GIMP or see if I can figure it out using Paint .NET

This answer is pulled in its entirety by permission from ThemBid.com
This tutorial was created using Adobe Photoshop CS2. When I first started with Photoshop, many years ago, I remember removing backgrounds manually using the eraser tool. Very tedious, but you can sometimes get good results. Here I will show you how to do remove backgrounds very quickly with good results using Photoshop’s extract feature.
Click here for the GIMP version.

More at source…..

How can I Remove Backgrounds From A Picture Quickly in Photoshop?
Karl L. Gechlik
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Popularity: 24% [?]

Tags: gimp, paint, photoshop

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VMware: Stopping a Virtual Machine gone haywire

September 22nd, 2007 | Posted in Technology, VMWARE

 

Sometimes a Virtual Machine can’t be stopped via the VIClient. The job just hangs. There are a number of options to stop your Virtual Machine from within the Service Console. Keep in mind that these are last resort options!

  • Stopping the virtual machine by issuing the command vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/<datastorename>/<vmname>/<vmname>.vmx stop. This must be done on the ESX host where the Virtual Machine is running!
  • If this does not work, one can issue the following command: vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/<datastorename>/<vmname>/<vmname>.vmx stop hard. This will try to kill the Virtual Machine instantly.
  • A final solution is to kill the PID (process ID). Issue the following command: ps auxfww | grep <vmname> to locate the correct PID (BTW: this cannot be done via ESXTOP). The first number to appear in the output is your PID. The PID can be used to terminate the process by issuing kill -9 PID.

VMware: Stopping a Virtual Machine gone haywire
Vincent Vlieghe
Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:50:00 GMT

Popularity: 41% [?]

Tags: VMWARE

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More ESX3i Resources

September 22nd, 2007 | Posted in Technology, VMWARE

 

I had hoped this week to release on RTFM some video recordings of the ESX3i product which VMworld delegates were given a complimentary copy on a memory stick. However, after further research it became clear that if I did so I would be in breach of the EULA.

Not to worry - VMware have come up with the own resources which I’ve listed below:

PDF Datasheet
PowerPoint Presentation
WebEx Webcast

More ESX3i Resources
mikelaverick
Fri, 21 Sep 2007 07:35:36 GMT

Popularity: 42% [?]

Tags: VMWARE

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ESX 3i Presentation

September 22nd, 2007 | Posted in Technology, VMWARE

 

Want to learn more about the new version of ESX 3, dubbed ESX 3i (Intergrated?). Then download this presentation (PDF format) it has all the information you need:

Link:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/ESX_Server_3i_presentation.pdf

ESX 3i Presentation
mikelaverick
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:14:16 GMT

Popularity: 34% [?]

Tags: VMWARE

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Can your backup solution do this?

September 17th, 2007 | Posted in Microsoft, Technology

We’ve been looking for a new backup solution. I think we’ll have to take a look at this.

 DPM200706smal_thumb

No?

Well then you need to head on over to the DPM Team blog or Jason Buffington’s blog and start learning about Data Protection Manager 2007 and the other magic he has up his sleeve.  In fact, Jason just posted a nice screencast at http://blogs.technet.com/jbuff/archive/2007/08/20/how-dpm-filter-technology-really-works.aspx on the VSS writers that are used to backup the workloads we expect to be important to you.  Check it out!!!

Can your backup solution do this?
Keith Combs
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:03:24 GMT

Popularity: 38% [?]

Tags: backup, DPM, windows

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Hacking SAM database on offline Windows

September 15th, 2007 | Posted in Microsoft, Technology, security

I found too much good information on my 600 feeds in feed demon to not pass some of them onto you…Here’s a nice tool to reset the local admin account if you forget it.

Today I had presentation for my colleagues - they had to prepare few vmware machines for me to test some functionalities…

However there was old local administrator password on these boxes - the one that no one was able to remember…

So I tried to use one of my "oldies goldies" tools called Offline NT Password & Registry Editor. This utility (or should I say Linux distro? ;)) is using known security issues of windows with local SAM file (hope so it is fixed once and for all in Windows Vista).

You can download it here: http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

You download CD image (you can burn it or mount it to virtual CD drive), boot from it, hit enter few times (default configuration) and voila - you local administrator password is empty - and you were able to do it in few minutes….

I know that I shouldnt be happy about such security bug (specially if even SysKey is not able to protect you), however it helped me too many times… And hope so it will help you too :)

Hacking SAM database on offline Windows
martin
Wed, 23 May 2007 21:14:00 GMT

Popularity: 61% [?]

Tags: admin, hacking, password, windows

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VMworld 2007 Top Support Issues Session

September 15th, 2007 | Posted in Technology, VMWARE

Some great information from vmware, I’m going to have to find a way to go next year…

My last session of Day 3, and of the entire conference, was a super-session on the top support issues and how to resolve them.  For someone who wasn’t already familiar with some of the Service Console command-line utilities (such as esxcfg-vswitch, esxcfg-vmknic, esxcfg-vswif, etc.), this was a great session.  For someone already pretty comfortable with these tools, the session was less helpful.

The session centered around six or seven top support issues:

  1. Unable to connect to the Service Console
  2. NICs in a bond are not in the same broadcast domain
  3. Expanding a VMDK when there is an existing snapshot
  4. Corrupt snapshot (.VMSD) file
  5. Corrupt snapshot
  6. Adding extents to VMFS volumes
  7. Recovering a VMFS partition

Possible causes of problem #1 include deleting the vSwitch that houses the vswif.  To fix the problem, you can probably just switch out NICs (and use esxcfg-nics to unassign and reassign NICs to the appropriate vSwitch), adjust VLAN properties (using the esxcfg-vswitch command to modify the port group), or recreate the vswif interface (using the esxcfg-vswif command).  In some cases, it may be necessary to completely recreate the networking configuration.  The process for completely rebuilding the networking configuration looks like this:

  1. Use esxcfg-vswitch to delete all vSwitches
  2. Create a new vSwitch using esxcfg-vswitch
  3. Create a new port group for the Service Console (again, using esxcfg-vswitch)
  4. Link a physical NIC to the vSwitch
  5. Create a vswif interface (using esxcfg-vswif) and configure it with the correct IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway

Many Service Console issues relate to changing the Service Console configuration.  It’s recommended to create a “backup” Service Console connection before modifying the primary connection, in case something doesn’t work as expected.

More at Source…….

VMworld 2007 Top Support Issues Session
slowe
Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:02:57 GMT

Popularity: 39% [?]

Tags: VMWARE, vmworld

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