Today VMware released the much anticipated vSphere. vSphere 4 is the upgrade to VI3.5 and will replace the VI name. VMware has also restructured their licensing [more]to the following:
Small Business:
Mid-Size & Enterprise Business:
To learn more about vSphere, or to download a free trial, visit http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/
I was trying to add a scsi controller to a ESX box to use in a VM running on the box. The ESX operating system recognized the PCI-based Adaptec controller (it was on the HCL) but when I added the SCSI controller to the VM, it would not boot and displayed the following error:
Unable to open SCSI device 'vmfs/devices/genscsi/vmhba3:5:0:0'(scsi3:0):Could not find the file. Failed to configure scsi3.The problem was that there was an extra “:0” at the end of the file name. I edited the .vmx file for the virtual machine and it worked! Note that also you need to edit with wordpad (not notepad) because of the construct of the .vmx file. [more]
edit vmx file
Edit ******.vmx (wordpad, etc...)(Before)
scsi0:1.present = "true"
scsi0:1.deviceType = "scsi-passthru"
scsi0:1.fileName = "/vmfs/devices/genscsi/vmhba3:5:0:0"
scsi0:1.allowGuestConnectionControl = "false"(After)
scsi0:1.present = "true"
scsi0:1.deviceType = "scsi-passthru"
scsi0:1.fileName = "/vmfs/devices/genscsi/vmhba3:5:0"
scsi0:1.allowGuestConnectionControl = "false"
I was able to find a solution in the following VMware Communities thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/199408
I recently worked on a problem where some PCs at a customer site were not able to login. I checked the server and it showed many group-policy errors in the App OS log listing the 'GPT.INI' file. I also noticed the group-policy mgmt console was not able to open any GPOs - said there was a rights error. 'Net View' only listed the server and no workstations. I had one of the users experiencing the problem reboot and her system said no domain controller was available. Further research indicated that 5 minutes after last server reboot, these services crashed:
The Windows Time was able to restart itself, all others were stopped. Restarting the netbios helper service appears to fix the main problem (all PCs came back in the net view list), including the group policy App errors and mgmt console issues. More research on the Internet indicated others had problems with the webclient service killing the netbios helper on Server 2003 and that SBS was supposed to have the 'webclient' service disabled by default due to security issues
We had a problem with a computer that could not be connected to via RDP. There were no errors. It would blink the connecting message up on the screen and then goes away but it never actually connected. This was a windows XP machine (I think with SP2 or 3) and had all of the configuration set correctly. The server could contact everything on the network regularly and it could be pinged from other PCs, connected to through WMI and SMB. The firewall was disabled as well. After some research I found that some had this same problem and had fixed it by updating the video card drivers. Not really expecting much results but with few options at this point I decided to update the video card drivers on the problem machine. Sure enough updating the Video card drivers fixed the problem.
WinDirStat, Windows Directory Statistics, has been around a long time and is still being updated. WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows. Some of us have used Spacemonger, which presents a treemap view of disk usage. Spacemonger’s biggest advantage over WinDirStat is that it is faster. Here are some advantages that WinDirStat has over Spacemonger:
I suggest you just try it out and start clicking on stuff. Be sure to check the configuration options (you will want to turn off the Pacman Animation).
The most recent version is packaged as an installer. However, I actually extracted the files and it runs fine.
When approving new updates for WSUS recently, the server I was working on ran completely out of space on its drive were the WSUS content folders were stored and this caused WSUS to crash. There is a utility located in WSUS’s ./Tools folder named WSUSUTIL.EXE. This utility can be used for many different WSUS tasks such as copying the WSUS content folders to a new location. The syntax for this is:
wsusutil movecontent contentpath logfile
contentpath = The new root for content files. This must exist ahead of time
logfile = The path and file name of the log file to create
Despite the name of the command, this does not actually “move” the content folder. It only copies the files and redirects WSUS to begin using this new folder instead. You will still need to clean up the old path. [more]
A full list of switches and commands can be found via TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720466.aspx
We recently noticed a situation where our clients systems were not getting Daylight Savings Time (DST) or Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool updates. After researching I found that Microsoft classifies some updates as Update Rollups in WSUS.
So, you must select Update Rollups in order to have them available in WSUS. For any given product or product family, updates could also be available among multiple classifications (for example, Windows XP family Critical Updates and Security Updates).
The following table lists examples of update classifications: [more]
| Update Classifications | Description |
|---|---|
| Connectors | Software components designed to support connection between software. |
| Critical updates | Broadly released fixes for specific problems addressing critical, non-security related bugs. |
| Development kits | Software to aid the writing of new applications that usually includes a visual builder, an editor, and a compiler. |
| Drivers | Software components designed to support new hardware. |
| Feature packs | New product functionality usually included in the next full product release. |
| Guidance | Scripts, sample code, and technical guidance designed to help in the deployment and use of a product or technology. |
| Security updates | Broadly released fixes for specific products, addressing security issues. |
| Service packs | Cumulative sets of all hotfixes, security updates, critical updates, and updates created since the release of the product. Service packs might also contain a limited number of customer requested design changes or features. |
| Tools | Utilities or features that aid in accomplishing a task or set of tasks. |
| Update rollups | Cumulative set of hotfixes, security updates, critical updates, and updates packaged together for easy deployment. A rollup generally targets a specific area, such as security, or a specific component, such as Internet Information Services (IIS). |
| Updates | Broadly released fixes for specific problems addressing non-critical, non-security related bugs. |
A user was having problems opening Adobe PDF files from Internet Explorer getting an error that the file could not be found. The file could be saved to desktop and then opened from there just fine. From what I could tell, IE was trying to save the PDF file to a folder in "%Userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5".
From my admin account, I could browse to the user's Content.IE5 folder, but the user's account was not able to see or browse to this folder at all. This was causing problems being able to save anything to Temporary Internet Files for retreival. I checked the permissions on this folder and they all appeared to have sufficient access.In order to fix this, the Temporary Internet Files for the user needed to be recreated. This was done by going to Tools, Internet Options, clicking "Settings" under Temporary Internet Files, and selecting "Move Folder". It will list the current location, so simply select the same location and it will recreate the entire thing.
After this was done, the user could browse to Content.IE5 folder and save/open PDF files in Internet Explorer.
Just a friendly reminder at how easy it is to gain access to your files if your machine is running. I locked myself out of a Windows Vista virtual machine I was playing with (It wouldn't allow me to log onto the domain and I didn't have the local admin password). After some quick Google searching, I ran across the free Offline NT Password and Registry Editor. You boot to a light distro of linux, it copies the SAM database, asks what you want to do with the password (in this case, clear it), saves the SAM database back, and presto! You're in. This also illustrates the importance of implementing full disk encryption.
One of our clients has an Exchange 2007 environment that has been in production about a year. Recently they have started to get some complaints about performance. From time to time, users will see the pop-up noting Outlook is waiting on Exchange server. I began troubleshooting using the Exchange performance troubleshooting tools that are packaged with the Exchange Management GUI. Results showed that the server was experiencing extremely high RPC/MAPI traffic. I began to look for a tool that I had used several times in Exchange 2003 called ExMon, which is a real-time MAPI connection monitor. I found references to it online, but the download was nowhere to be found. It turns out you have to call Microsoft to get it for Exchange 2007…it isn’t available as a download on the Microsoft.com site. Using the ExMon tool and a lot of google searching led me to the root cause of the issue: Blackberry Enterprise Server.
Turns out that a lot of people fight this exact problem. BES enabled users generate between 4x and 16x the amount of MAPI traffic a regular “high usage” outlook user would generate…its even documented in BES admin guide that you should plan for each BES user to be equivalent to 3.6 users. And this is extremely conservative. [more]From the performance numbers I have gathered, in the case of our client the number is more like 6-6.5x. There are reports online from BES admins noting over 10x in there environments. BES requires a special type of mapi dll in order to function. That is why you have to install the Exchange 2003 Management tools on the BES server. It abuses the mapi protocol using combinations of mailbox notifications and full mailbox scans to implement its functionality. The load increases exponentially as mailbox sizes grow. It just makes sense that the BES enabled users would be the ones with the largest mailboxes. In this case there were a handful of users with > 1GB mailboxes that are BES users…bad combination. Bottom line, if BES will be used enterprise wide, planning should included the increased load BES will create…most importantly the IOPs on the disk subsystem. MAPI calls are expensive disk operations.