How much data? at 19:41

blimey!

SCVMM 2008 - First Screenshots at 09:00

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly code-named “Virtual Machine Manager vNext”) was announced today at the annual Microsoft Management Summit, which enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server.

Techlog has the first screenshots, taken from the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 Keynote:

SCVMM 2008: Announcement
SCVMM 2008: Overview Pane
SCVMM 2008: Virtual Center
SCVMM 2008: VMware Integration
SCVMM 2008: Host Based Rating
SCVMM 2008: HBR for VMware
SCVMM 2008: Powershell
SCVMM 2008: HA options for VM
SCVMM 2008: PRO tips

Free Citrix videos and training at 13:33

f you have missed these presentations and videos from CSEIT 2007 then take a look at them. These presentation are really technical and given mostly by Citrix escalation engineers.

http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx115136

To view the CSEIT presentations and webcast recordings from the Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix NetScaler sessions, please click the appropriate presentation title.

Note: A codec may be necessary to view some of the presentations. The codec is available at http://www.gotomeeting.com/codec.

Citrix Presentation Server

• CTX115207 - CSEIT 2007 - Printer Driver Management

• CTX115208 - CSEIT 2007 - Citrix Presentation Server Health Monitoring

• CTX115192 - CSEIT 2007 - Troubleshooting Tools for a Citrix Presentation Server Environment

• CTX115204 - CSEIT 2007 - Understanding and Troubleshooting the Application Streaming in Citrix Presentation Server 4.5

• CTX115202 - CSEIT 2007 - Brief Troubleshooting Guide

• CTX115225 - CSEIT 2007 - Citrix MFCOM Programming for Administrators

• CTX115228 - CSEIT 2007 - Using and Understanding Citrix EdgeSight 4.5

• CTX115206 - CSEIT 2007 - Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 / Feature Pack 1

Citrix NetScaler

• CTX115222 - CSEIT 2007 - NetScaler Architecture, Concepts and Networking

• CTX115226 - CSEIT 2007 - Monitoring the Citrix NetScaler Application Switch

• CTX115221 - CSEIT 2007 - Command Center 3.0

• CTX115227 - CSEIT 2007 - Printer Driver Management

New angle from Microsoft Virtualisation camp at 13:15

Microsoft is targeting system management as a way to differentiate itself from competitors in the virtualisation market. Anticipating that the market for virtualisation software, such as Microsoft's Hyper-V, will eventually be commoditised, the company sees management as the key revenue opportunity, said Windows Enterprise and Management Division General Manager Larry Orecklin, speaking to reporters on Microsoft's campus recently.

"Management becomes really the thing we believe is critical to ensuring customers can get full value from the virtualisation opportunity," he said.

Orecklin said that for all the hype around virtualization, less than 10% of datacentres are virtualised today, according to research firm IDC. The reason for the slow adoption is that once companies began to virtualise their environments, they realised that the economics and logistics of managing them was quite difficult, he said.

Because of this, Microsoft aims to make easing management headaches the key to its virtualisation strategy rather than to battle competitors purely on the technology, Orecklin said. "Rather than either go fight for that 10%, [we're] actually fighting for the 90%," he said.

Microsoft has been slow to offer built-in virtualisation for its Windows Server platform, letting competitor VMware take a sizeable lead in the virtualisation market. The company had intended to release Hyper-V as part of Windows Server 2008 in February, but delayed it until six months after the OS came out because Microsoft opted to remove some originally planned features.

"I would love to have had this product out sooner," Orecklin acknowledged about Hyper-V, which is currently available in beta as a feature of Windows Server 2008 and will be available in July in full release.

Microsoft is so keen on making management the linchpin of the virtualisation strategy that it plans to open up management for other virtualisation platforms, such as VMware and XenSource, with its Virtual Machine Manager tool, which it released last September. Virtual Machine Manager is part of Microsoft's System Center set of datacentre management products.

The current release of Virtual Machine Manager supports only Virtual Server, Microsoft's stand-alone virtualisation technology. Once it is released simultaneously with the full production release of Hyper-V in July, Virtual Machine Manager will support Hyper-V and VMware ESX virtualisation.

The following version of Virtual Machine Manager, the details of which have not yet been discussed publicly, will extend management to XenSource's virtualisation product, he said.

Virtualisation: Red Pill or Blue? at 13:06

Brilliant, I found this and laughed all the way through (I know, simple things !)....

Virtualization technologies have been compared to the movie, The Matrix. In this, Neo and other humans, are captured in a virtual world. Neo is offered a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill will return him to his normal unreal world in the matrix. The red will set his mind free by exposing the matrix. When it comes to virtualization technologies, the red pill and blue pill have similar meanings.

Red Pill
The red pill is a small piece of code that, when run on a virtual machine, is able to determine if it is running in a virtual system or a real, physical system. It does this by detecting if the operating system is under the control of a hypervisor, the monitoring process that enables virtualization.

Theoretically, programs operating in a virtual instance should not be able to determine anything outside of the virtual instance. This encapsulation is important to ensure that the operating system operates independently.

The red pill is more than a theory. A few lines of C code are all that are needed to create the red pill code. The following sample was developed by Joanna Rutkowska:

int swallow_redpill () {
 unsigned char m[2+4], rpill[] = "\x0f\x01\x0d\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc3";
 *((unsigned*)&rpill[3]) = (unsigned)m;
 ((void(*)())&rpill)();
 return (m[5]>0xd0) ? 1 : 0;
}

More details about how Rutkowska's red pill works can be found at: http://invisiblethings.org/papers/redpill.html

Blue Pill
The blue pill takes the concept of the red pill further to create an exploit using virtualization. The most popular example of this was also developed by Joanna Rutkowska. The blue pill uses virtualization capabilities built into some microprocessors to trap the computer's operating system into a virtual machine. The blue pill acts as the hypervisor and has complete control of the regular operating system, now trapped in the virtual machine.

Rutkowska's blue pill is said to be completely undetectable, although some have disputed this claim. Whether detectable or not, it is a demonstration of one type of exploit made possible by virtualization technologies.

Bottom Line
The bottom line in this discussion of the red and blue pills is that virtualization technologies may become exploitable. This may allow an attacker to gain access to virtual servers or create an undetectable root kit. If you are using virtualization, stay on top of vulnerabilities in your software and patch regularly.

Microsoft How-To Video - "Virtualization in Windows Server" at 16:46

The session features a discussion of the virtualization technology roadmap and an outline of Microsoft's vision for how these technologies will combine with future capabilities in processors, chipsets, and I/O devices to enable unprecedented flexibility by the Windows Server platforms.

Presented by Mike Neil

Length: 51 minutes 59 seconds

 

To watch the above video please visit: Virtualization in Windows Server

Explanation of Virtual Center's customization process at 11:42

Original Article... http://www.blogit.nu/content-15.html

A while ago I was trying to work out how to change the preferences for sysprep outside the Vmware wizard so that I could put more complex items in there, the following explains the customisation process:

I was under the impression that the virtual center customisation part of the cloning process was done using Microsoft's sysprep utility. My impression was correct with one exception ... configuring the IP settings of the network cards.

On a thread there was an instance of whenever a client clone a virtual machine and tell it to join to the domain it fails ..!!
Having a look on the community it turns out that in order to make this work you need to have DHCP enabled on your network which was not the case for this client.
While most companies probably have DHCP enabled, I could not believe that vmware would make an assumption like this,
so I decided to dig a bit deeper and find out how it really works.

You may have already looked in the %program files%\Vmware\Virtual Center\Scripts directory, what you will find there are a bunch of visual basic scripts, when you open them they are encrypted using the vbscript encoder.
I decrypted the scripts, and here are my findings:

At a high level, the customisation process is as following:
Before the actual cloning of the disks start, Virtual Center will call the autoprep.wsf script. The first time it runs, it runs in a probe only mode. In Probe only mode it will validate the steps (which I will describe later) but it does not commit it any changes and deletes the files generated at the end of the process. When the validation passed succesully it will start cloning the disks and when this process is finished it will re-call the autoprep.wsf script:

• re-creates the neccesary files (sysprep,inf, cmdlines.txt, ...)
• mounts the new disk
• assigns a drive letter to the mounted disk
• copies all files to the new disk
• dismount the disk
• and powers on the new virtual machine for the first time

What happens next depends (I will explain later) but either way eventually it will start the sysprep mini wizard. The mini-wizard will use the sysprep.inf as the answer file and if you have requested a join to domain (vmware will use the sysprep.inf file to do this), the mini-wizard will join the new Virtual Machine to the domain or .. at least it tries. As I initially expected vmware does not use the sysprep.inf file to set the static IP addresses for the NICs, so unless you have DHCP enabled the join will fail. After you clicked the error away, the mini-wizard will continue and executes the commands specified in the cmdlines.txt, it reboots virtual machine, and runs its final script to set the IP address information for each NIC!!

The process the described above counts for windows XP and Windows 2003, for Windows 2000 it does not use the sysprep.inf file to join it to the domain, instead it running an extra script joindom.bat but either way it runs it before setting the IP addresses.

Now that we have a high level overview of the process let's have a look at the scripts and see if we can alter the process so the customization will even work for an environment where DHCP is not allowed.

As I have mentioned above at some point in the process, Virtual Center calls the autprep.wsf script to start the its customization and as I explained, it will first validate the parameters given and next it will prepare the Windows system. This is the part where it all happens:

• It will generate a custom sysprep.inf, cmdlines.txt, setnet.cmd (used to call the setnet.wsf in order to set the IP configuration on the NICs), ..
• Next In order to start the sysprep mini-wizards it has to copy some files and modify the registry so the virtual machine will boot the mini-wizard.
  To do this, there are two different approaches possible (I do not really know which one is used in what situation).
  • The first approach it editing the registry by mounting the hives of the image.
  • The other approach is using a trojan horse vmprep.exe.
  
  In the last option the %systemroot%\autochk.exe will be renamed to vmprep.cfg and copy their own %systemroot%\vmprep.exe to autochk.exe, next they will mark the image volume as dirty to make sure on its first boot the autochk.exe will get executed. This provides the process the chance to make whatever modification on the new system, more specific it will read the vmprep.dat which describes what actions it should execute, by default:
  
  
  • reset the NIC to DHCP
  • process the %systemroot%\minisetup.inf file for the registry modifications required for sysprep.
  • reboot the virtual machine
  
  
• Next it will mount the image as a disk volume and assign it a drive letter
• Then it will copy the following files to the new disk:



• vmprep.exe - driveletter:\Windows\System32\autochk.exe
• vmprep.dat - driveletter:\Windows\system32
• minisetup.inf - driveletter:\Windows
• vmprep.exe - driveletter:\Windows\system32
• setupcl.exe - driveletter:\Windows\System32
• setnet.wsf - driveletter:\Windows\vmware_imc
• imc_final.bat - driveletter:\Windows
• bootrun.exe - driveletter:\Windows\vmware_imc
• setnet.bat - driveletter:\Windows\vmware_imc
• sysprep.inf - driveletter:\Sysprep
• cmdlines.txt - driveletter:\Sysprep\i386\$oem$
• setguestinfo.wsf - driveletter:\Windows\vmware_imc


• Power on the Virtual machine

While this process can work perfectly, it does not work if you do not allow DHCP and you have specified that you would like to join the vm to the domain, because it uses the sysprep to join the vm domain, but it only sets the IP Addresses as a post action (setnet.cmd) when the new virtual machine it completely ready .. !!

Virtualisation, Presentation, Application, anyother ions ? at 11:03

If your getting mixed up about all the types of virtualisation at the moment or even just need an overview to send to someone that doesn't quite understand, I recommend reading the following broad overview of the different types of virtualisation.

The Four Flavours of Virtualisation

Microsoft missing the point (Still) at 09:39

OK, have just read HYPER-V QUICK MIGRATION & VMWARE LIVE MIGRATION PART 3, is it just me or is he really missing the point, I do not think that changing your working practices is a way of technically explaining how to do this.

And one big thing is surely that he is missing the 99.9% up time that many companies require for there 24hr running systems.  Not once does he actually say 'We cant do it' but its written all over the article.

Just my humble opinion, I would be interested in your comments.

HA and Continuous Availability for Xenserver at 09:28

Marathon Technologies have released their everRun product for Citrix Xenserver which adds HA/ Continuous Availability to Xenserver. Have a look at the following link, very impressive.....

HA and Continuous Availability for Xenserver

Easily setup all portgroups and VLan IDs on all your ESX Servers at 20:20

Flores Eken from ITQ Consultancy in the Netherlands is also an enthausiast VMware SDK programmer. He wrote this application in C# based on the new ESX3.x /VC2.x SDK. It allows you to easily setup all portgroups and VLan IDs on all your ESX Servers. You can first read out (use the export feature) the network settings of a single ESX Host. With that information you can then setup all your other servers.

The program also allows you to add or delete specific portgroups with the right VLan IDs and it had the option to execute a shell command thru an SSH connection to multiple servers at the same time.

Download ITQ VLan and Portgroup Manager
For more info about the program or about ITQ, contact Paul Geerlings (pgeerlings@itq.nl)

Will VMware still exist in five years? at 20:15

Personally I think yes, I say they have there feet wedged too far under the table for Microsoft to completely get rid of them, they are always one step ahead and I think will continue to be one step ahead for quite a while yet.

Brian Madden has other ideas.... I highly recommend reading his view

Bring the network guys back on side at 15:53

Just after you have told the networking guys that you will now be controlling vlans from your virtual switches (and picked them back up off the floor) you might want to hand them this handy link which explains in their own language (a mixture of clicks and huff's) what VMware does, they may then meet you half way !

Cisco VMware PDF

Citrix: Easy way to publish apps at 14:02

Here's something I didnt know...

Did you know that you can publish multiple applications to a single Citrix Presentation Server in one shot? Not using scripts, but within Citrix Access Management Console itself?

Read more.....

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) at 13:07

Brugh posted a nice "VA" on the Virtual Appliance Marketplace. EDA is an appliance dedicated to deploying ESX servers fast and easy. It has a scriptbuilder to quickly create %postscripts.

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) is a small and easy to use appliance that makes deploying ESX servers a breeze. It has a very intuitive web-interface that can configure and deploy dozens of ESX servers in minutes. It has a script-builder that will allow any admin to create %post-scripts that will do most anything one needs to get the ESX hosts up and running! Even if deploying with RDP/Altiris or the UDA, this script-builder can help setting those up very quickly.

To set it up, just attach a ESX3 iso to it. It will automatically mount it and with one click, import the PXE bootfiles and strip the HBA drivers to do a save install while SAN LUNs are attached!

This appliance is still in beta stage because there's a todo list. But it's fully functional and has been tested to work at least on HP DL380's, BL460, BL480 and Dell 2950 servers.

Virtualization Forum 2008 at 13:05

The VMware Virtualization Forum 2008 is for IT professionals and business decision makers interested in learning more about transforming a traditional, expensive IT environment into a fully optimized, cost-effective, virtualized environment.
Dates & venues (Spain, South Africa coming soon):
Stockholm, Sweden - 02 October 2008
Paris, France - 08 October 2008
Rotterdam, Netherlands - 15 October 2008
Dusseldorf, Germany - 22 October 2008
Vienna, Austria - 29 October 2008
Zurich, Switzerland - 05 November 2008
Milan, Italy - 12 November 2008
Warsaw, Poland - 13 November 2008
London, United Kingdom - 19 November 2008

Please note that VMware is planning to have partner days around the virtualization forum – more information to come soon. Partner Day is a one-day event which showcases the latest partner programs, training programs and marketing initiatives.

Updated Process Monitor at 12:03

The Sysinternals team has updated its Process Monitor utility, an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, registry and process/thread activity. The Process Monitor 1.30 update adds support for importing and exporting filters, records system information in log files, presents more information about specific operations, includes translation of additional operation error codes, and tracks CPU and memory activity that it displays in a revamped process summary. Also check out Mark Russinovich's Blog: The Case of the System Process CPU Spikes, where he shows how he used Process Monitor to track down a device driver causing CPU spikes.

SMTP Check MP for Ops Mgr 2007 at 11:04

Neale from System Center Forum: I have created a MP that will check a target server’s SMTP service by using telnet. The script included in the sample MP will require a command (to run on the target server) and an expected response (usually a string). The VBscript part of this MP uses the Toolsack Baseline dll (from Toolsack Software) to perform the telnet functions. When you import this MP, can you find the example rules by changing the scope of the Rules View in the Authoring pane to Management server. You can implement this MP in a SCE environment as well. (continue at source)

Follow Up: MS Quick Migration V's VMware Vmotion at 19:19

Recently there was an article published on the Microsoft Virtualization Blog which compared Hyper-V’s High Availability/Quick Migration capabilities to VMware’s VMotion. In the second article the writer responds on a large amount of reactions he had regarding VMotion being superior:

After my last blog I received almost two dozen email telling me that VMotion was far superior for unplanned host downtime and that it was a much better HA solution because it could live migrate virtual machines. I’ve heard this fallacy espoused for many years and, folks, this simply isn’t the case.

In the case of unplanned downtime, VMotion can’t live migrate because there is no warning. Instead you must have VMware HA configured and the best it can do is restart the affected virtual machines on other nodes which is the same as what is provided with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Failover Clustering.

I can imagine why people reacted, in the first post the writer only mentioned VMotion. For unplanned downtime VMware doesn’t use VMotion because when it’s unplanned the VM’s get cutoff and will be restarted on another host with the use of HA(VMware High Availability). There’s no need for a migration when a VM is powered off.

Indeed Microsoft can do the same with the use of Clustering. But can you live migrate virtual machines when a server needs maintenance? No, at this moment that’s not possible. In other words, you will have to wait for a suitable moment… planned downtime, probably after business hours. But in a 24×7 environment will there ever be a suitable moment? Even when your business isn’t 24×7, if there’s a possible hardware failure would you want to wait? But when you have a 8:1 consolidation ratio you probably will not be the most popular support engineer when “quick migrating” the file server or the mail server especially when these VM’s have a lot of RAM assigned.

Besides that, with the upcoming new VMware product, Continous Availability, even unplanned downtime will not crash your VM. CA will constantly mirror your VM to another host, like a continous VMotion I guess, and when the active host fails the standby host will become active. In other words, no unplanned downtime anymore.

Enable/Disable TS Logins at 14:12

Ive just come across a handy utility to quickly enable or disable session logins on multiple servers - TSLogins.

TSLOGINS is a command-line tool to set the status of remote logins on Citrix or Terminal Server servers. This utility was written to replace the command CHANGE LOGON currently found in the MS Windows Operating System. This utility offers the ability to enable or disable remote sessions to a single server or host of servers located in a domain, with one command.

TSLOGINS will only function when executed by a user with ADMIN rights.

This utility is FREEWARE and was written by Warren Simondson of Ctrl-Alt-Del IT Consultancy, Australia. www.ctrl-alt-del.com.au

Usage:
TSLOGINS [/QUERY] [ /ON /OFF ] [/SERVER:servername] [/?]

/ON Enable remote user login from sessions.
/OFF Disable remote user login from sessions.
/SERVER:servername [Optional] Specifies the Terminal server to apply
the login status setting. (default is current).
/SERVER:* [Optional] Specifies ALL Terminal servers to apply
the login status setting (Applies to current Domain).
/QUERY Query the status of remote logins.
/? This help information.

TSLOGINS with no parameters displays this help information.

E.G. TSLOGINS /ON
This command will enable remote logins on the current TS or Citrix Server.

E.G. TSLOGINS /OFF
This command will disable remote logins on the current TS or Citrix Server.
Use QUSER.EXE to locate Session ID.

E.G. TSLOGINS /SERVER:MyServer /ON
This command will enable remote logins on the MyServer Server.

E.G. TSLOGINS /QUERY /SERVER:MyServer
This command will query the remote login status on the MyServer Server.

E.G. TSLOGINS /OFF /SERVER:*
This command will disable remote logins on all Citrix Servers and Terminal Servers in the current domain.

For more information and to download the above utility please visit: http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com.au/CAD_TSUtils.htm.

Windows Server 2008 – All you need to know in only an hour at 13:21

You may be interested in these free online walkthrough's for 2008...

In this online briefing you will learn about the key new features within Windows Server 2008, including:

• Technology Investments in Windows Server 2008 including virtualisation, web and security.
  
• Server Manager Roles
  
• Next Generation TCP/IP Stack
  
• Security
  
• Windows Server CORE
  
• Backing Up
  
• Network Access Protection
  
• Windows Deployment Services
  
• Failover Clustering
  
• New Active Directory Features
  
• IIS 7.0
  
• SharePoint Services
  
• Terminal Services
  
• About Microsoft Official Distance Learning (MODL) and our courses.

SCOM Tools at 07:45

Below are a list of tools that all SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) Admins should have:

3rd Party Tools

• Override Explorer - List all overrides in SCOM

• Proxy Settings - Shows all servers and their ‘Act as Proxy Agent’ setting.

• MP2XMLDumper - Shows what a Management Pack exported to XML looks like.

• Proxycfg - Clive Eastwood (MSFT) has writen a neat command line utility to configure/view agent proxying.

• AgentMM - Clive Eastwood (MSFT) has writen this command line tool to place OpsMgr agents into Maintenance mode

Microsoft Tools

• Sample Vista Gadget - A Vista Gadget that enables you to view the active alerts and health states for a specified set of objects from a computer running Windows Vista.

• Operations Manager Inventory - A command-line utility that captures the configuration of your Operations Manager 2007 Management Servers and stores it in a .cab file that can be sent to Microsoft support to assist in problem analysis.

• Operations Manager Cleanup Tool - A command-line utility that enables you to remove any or all of the components of Operations Manager from a local computer in cases where the normal method of uninstallation has failed.

• AEM Validation - A command line utility that will allow you to perform end-to-end validation of Agent-less Exception Monitoring to verify that AEM is properly configured and operational.

• AEM Management Pack - A Management Pack that enables you to identify generic errors sent by Windows Error Reporting (WER) clients to Management Servers that are AEM-enabled. Without this mapping function these errors appear in Operations Manager as “unknown application” and “unknown version”.

• Active Directory Integration Sample Script - A sample script that enables you to extract a list of computer names from your custom SQL Server database and add them to an Active Directory security group. The security group can then be referenced in the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard to automate agent assignments to Management Servers.

• Effective Configuration Viewer - A tool that displays the set of rules and monitors that are running on a computer, distributed application, or any other managed entity after any configured overrides have been applied.

• Action Account Tool - A PowerShell script that allows you to set the action account on groups of computers.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server software version 4.1 Service Pack 5 at 15:32

This service pack has sneaked in under the radar,
Supposedly the true "supported" version od BES for Exchange 2007 SP1 (although the release notes don't make any reference of it!)

File name: besx_upgrader_4.1.5.exe
File size: 308 MB
Date posted: 18-April-2008

https://www.blackberry.com/Downloads/browseSoftware.do;jsessionid=De48E0+7nNwE85dZUF1qjA**



Info can be found here
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/server/new_v4-1_sp5.jsp

highlights in the release notes are :

• Research In Motion (RIM) plans to discontinue support for the “You were BCC’d” portion of messages as of BlackBerryEnterprise Server Version 5.0 (SDR 79671).
  
• BlackBerry Enterprise Server Version 4.1 SP5 is not certified for use in Japanese environments.
  
• RIM certifies that the BlackBerry Enterprise Server operates on VMware® ESX Server Version 3.0.1. As with anydeployment of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, consider taking baseline measurements of performance after youinstall the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and then add users in stages to the server. In a VMware environment, othervirtual machines might be running on that server, which might impact how many users the BlackBerry EnterpriseServer can support. See the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Version 4.1 Performance Benchmarking Guide for moreinformation about performance measurements.
  
• RIM has deemphasized support for BlackBerry® Instant Messaging for Microsoft® Office Live Communications Server2005 for Windows® Messenger users. RIM does not plan to release new versions of the BlackBerry Instant MessagingConnector and enterprise instant messaging application for Windows Messenger. BlackBerry Enterprise Server Version4.1 SP5 and later maintenance releases will continue to include the connector that is compatible with the last release ofthe device client only (version 1.1.0.28). The connector will not be included in BlackBerry Enterprise Server Version 5.0or later.

The Feature and Technical Overview says:

• The BlackBerry Enterprise Server now supports the Microsoft SQL Server 2005(64-bit) database management system.

Netvibes, Cant live without it. at 16:25

Just wanted to do a quick blog on Netvibes I was put onto it by a friend of mine (SuperDave) and have not stopped using it as my homepage since, its the first thing I do when I use a new PC or rebuild my own, set my homepage !

Once you've signed up, which only requires an email address and a password, Netvibes provides content tailored for the country you live in - although you can change this if you wish. There's certainly no shortage of items for you to play around with, most of which have been created by the Netvibes community. There are currently over 600 modules to choose from, including clocks, calendars, puzzles, games, photos and so on. The quality is variable, but there are loads of great widgets to add to your pages.

It's very easy to customise each Component. All you have to do is move your cursor over a window and the option to edit it will appear. You can change the title bar colour and various other details depending on the module itself.

In addition to modules, Netvibes does a good job of handling news feeds. There are over 8,500 RSS/Atom feeds submitted by users that you can add to your page. If you prefer you can select the most popular choices from the Feed Directory or enter the web address of a particular feed location. These are also customisable. You can set how many headlines to view at once, choose whether to have a compact or more spacious display and also decide if links should open on the source page or directly in Netvibes. Hovering your cursor over any headline instantly generates a preview of it in a littte floating window.

As well as modules and feeds, there are over 680 podcasts, 148 events and 2,602 tabs to add. The search facility which lets you find or filter content on your page is another excellent inclusion.


I have mine setup with tabs for each technology I am interested in and add the rss feeds to the pages as I find them, this enables you to quickly view new articles and keep yourself up to date.

Amazing VMware links at 21:40

Think of a question about VMware and there will be a link here from Scaling your Virtual Infrastructure to Pricing, Packaging & Licensing...

Truly amazing link page

Photographer or Terrorist? at 13:29

Not in the slightest bit techie, but in the UK we've been on reasonably high alert for the last few years against the threat of terrorism.

Recently the Metropolitan Police in London have released a series of posters; one of them alerts us to the dangers of "odd" people taking photos - http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/magazine_enl_1208430127/img/1.jpg

It's an idea with some merit, although it has had an unfortunate side effect – keen amateur photographers are being relieved of their cameras by well meaning police, park wardens and security guards who spot them taking photos. Whilst taking photos of government buildings is possibly not to be recommended at the present time, taking pictures of people in a park is a different matter entirely! Thankfully neither are actually illegal at the moment, but who knows what our wonderful government might do in the future....

More here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7351252.stm

Windows Server 2008 Step By Step at 11:38

Microsoft have released a number of Step By Step guides on how to configure many of the new features within Windows Server 2008 – from server core to clustering, there's a wealth of information. Shame you can't download them all at once, but hey, you can't have everything.

Available here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=518d870c-fa3e-4f6a-97f5-acaf31de6dce&displaylang=en#filelist

Portable Server Environments at 15:32

A friend of mine once had the idea that he could create a portable server environment, almost like domino's pizza where he would turn up at your office with the thin (HP) or thick (Dell) base and add the toppings of your choice, a little bit of MS, a little bit of VMware and a sprinkle of Linux.

This would all be enclosed in a container and be a self sufficient server room that you plug in and go, the following cabinets reminded me of him.....

Portable Server Environments

In all seriousness I think these are great for the small companies.

New Eee PC, I want one. at 12:15

Discover a New Perspective with 8.9 Inch Eee PC 900: This new generation of the ever popular PC packs in a whole range of hardware that includes a 8.9 inch widescreen, a 1.3M pixels webcam, the new innovative FingerGlide and 12GB and 20GB storage capacities for Windows and Linux platforms respectively.

Mobility is one of the major factors attributed to the Eee PC’s success; and this is in part due to the use of the built-in Solid State Disk (SSD) technology – which offers a quiet, energy saving and shock proof design for stable computing on-the-go.

Through extensive R&D, the inclusion of the 8.9″ display screen does not affect the overall weight of the Eee PC 900, which remains below 1kg and maintains the ultra portable theme that has become synonymous with the Eee PC. With this large screen size of 8.9″, a resolution of 1024 x 600 is achieved – allowing users to view a single A4 page without the need to scroll left or right and making it much easier and more effective when reading or working on documents.

Freeware: Storage view program for ESX at 21:33

MCS Storageview 1.0.3

A great tool from Mightycare to display the logical partitions of all virtual machines on VMware ESX 3.x or Virtual Center 2.x . The tool can display how many Gigabytes the Customer can save when they decrease the logical partition to a size the VM's really need.

Download it here

Vmware Video's at 10:27

VMware has a couple of free video training sites that have been brought to my attention...

• VMware Official YouTube E-Learning channel
• VMware Official Blip.TV E-Learning Site

These videos have some good tips in them. There are about 13 videos at the YouTube site and at least that many over on Blip.tv. ... Well done to VMware for posting these free videos and I hope to see more soon!

Identify Capacity Bottlenecks in VMware at 10:27

One of the main issues in Virtualisation is finding out where the capacity bottleneck's are, or just to be happy that there aren't any.

I have found the following Virtual Appliance (fully configured virtual machine) which says it will do that for you, I have not had a chance to test it yet but from the on-line demo it looks pretty good.

Check out the flash demo and download the beta from here...

http://www.vkernel.com/downloads/all/

Cool Laptops at 09:42

Just to break the Virtualisation theme that we seam to have gained take a look at these, not sure you would be able to get them for work purposes but they look fun !

PS3 Laptop

Wii Laptop

Xbox 360 Laptop

ESX(i) 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1 at 09:33

Check out the release notes, there are a lot of fixes in this update! There’s also an update to the Update Manager and the Converter plug-in.

Download link
Releasenotes link

Microsoft Hyper-V HA? at 21:46

Towards the end of last year, I went to a technet event which was billed as a must see Virtualisation event. We'll be showing how you can get virtual servers to failover with just Microsoft technologies they said.

And they did, with Virtual Server and Windows 2003 Clustering. It was a very big let down and it wasn't even automatic. Most people had left before then end of the day, especially as we all thought they were going to show us Hyper-V. In fact, the Vista after hours event afterwards was by far the best part of the day.

Anyway, a few months later and Windows 2008 is out, Hyper-V is at RC and, well, Microsoft are still flogging the horse over clustering as being the solution:-

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/04/09/hyper-v-quick-migration-vmware-live-migration-part-1.aspx

Yes, Windows 2008 clustering is much easier to configure, but I think the key point is towards the end - "all of the virtual machines will automatically restart to another node without user intervention". Restart? I want them to carry on running, with, perhaps a small pause. It's not live migration if the server's not live!

Rumors of IBM or Cisco buying Citrix? at 20:31

The markets are buzzing today on the rumor (here and here, for example), that either IBM or Cisco might try to buy Citrix. Of course the world is full of rumors, but there's at least anecdotal evidence that people are listening to this one as Citrix's stock moved up about 7% today, which is the biggest single-day move they've had in a while. (Although half-way through the day the stock has dropped about half that new value.)

Read more....

Virtualisation Congress at 20:25

Virtualization.info, the leading virtualisation news and analysis site since 2003 has announced the launch of Virtualization Congress (http://www.virtualizationcongress.com), the world’s first vendor independent virtualisation event, bringing together the industry’s biggest selection of virtualisation players, from the recognized leaders to the newest start-ups.

The conference, to be held at London’s ExCel, 14th-16th October, 2008, presents an ideal opportunity for current and prospective users of virtualisation technologies to hear directly from the companies at the cutting edge of their development; at the same time, in the same place for the first time ever.

Bulk-manage VI Server connections at 10:26

Bulk-manage VI Server connections, virtual machines, hosts, datacenters, resource pools, and much more with this handy tool....

Click Here

Vmware and Netware at 12:47

Just came across this handy link for anyone virtualising Netware…

 

http://www.robbastiaansen.nl/vmware/vmwareintro.html

 

 

Nice Features: VMware Workstation 6.5 BETA at 10:55

VMware Workstation 6.5 BETA: http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/ws/releasenotes_ws65_beta.htm

• Unity mode
• Accelerated 3-D graphics on Windows XP guests
• Enhanced VMware ACE authoring
  
• More powerful record/replay of VM execution behavior
• Link state propagation for mobile users
• Support for smart cards in virtual machines
• Integration with VMware Converter 3.0.3
• Easy Install option for Windows guest operating systems
• Virtual Network Editor for Linux hosts
• New virtual hardware version
• New features for VMware Player
• Updated VIX 1.5 API
• (Experimental) VAssert API for inserting replay-only code to debug applications
• VProbes tool for investigating guest behavior

Thanks MB

MSCS (Microsoft Cluster Server) now supported in VMware 3.5 Update 1 at 14:42

Microsoft Cluster Server is supported with VMware ESX 3.5 Update 1. Support is similar to ESX 3.0.1 with the following additions:

• Both 64 bit and 32 bit Windows 2003 guests are supported with MSCS.
• Boot from SAN for VMs using MSCS is now supported.
• Majority Node Set clusters with application-level replication (for example, Microsoft Exchange 2007 Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR)) is now supported.

For details regarding MSCS support, including a number of important restrictions, please see the document “Setup for Microsoft Cluster Service.” For information concerning supported storage arrays, refer to the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i.

Whats a virtual server worth ?! at 09:38

How to Implement Chargeback in a Virtualized Datacenter Using the Resource Consumption Model

(Source: VKernel) Most IT Professionals recognize the need for Chargeback, but are not sure how to implement a fair model. VKernel's approach to doing Chargeback enables you to simply charge your customers for the resources (CPU, Memory, Storage and Network) they actually use. In this white paper, Vkernel will show you how to calculate exactly how much you should charge for 1Ghz of CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 1 GB of storage in your VMware ESX environment.

Thanks to MB

Citrix steps up virtualisation war against VMware at 16:05

On its quest to become a US$5bn tech giant, software player Citrix believes its acquisition of virtualisation player XenSource paved the way for a new deal with the world’s biggest tech firm, HP. Citrix believes a similar deal the company has recently made with Dell also provided the perfect cement for the arrangement with HP.......

Read more here....

Powershell-Tastic! at 10:57

On the back of some of the work i've done implementing Exchange 2007 recently, here are some vaguely useful powershell scripts!..

Change All mailbox Database settings
Having to apply new limits to databases etc can be a bit painful through the GUI. use this script to apply mailbox limits etc
80mb warning limit
100mb send prevention
35 day deleted item retendion
35day deleted mailbox retention

Get-MailboxDatabase -Server set-mailboxdatabase -IssueWarningQuota 80MB -ProhibitSendQuota 100MB -Prohibit SendReceiveQuota unlimited -DeletedItemRetention 35.00:00:00 -MailboxRetention 35.00:00:00 -RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup:$true

Testing a server

These built in commands test the functionality of Exchange 2007, SCOM uses these for part of the manegement pack i think!

test-systemhealth
is a wrapper for ExBPA through the command shell, a good first point for call for testing

test-mapiconnectivity
tests MAPI access to all mailbox databases on the server

test-owaconnectivity
tests OWA access to a Client Acces Server, either run on a CAS server or specify in the syntax, you may also need to run new-testcasconnectivityuser.ps1 script to create the test account i.e
get-mailboxserver new-testcasconnectivityuser.ps1

test-mailflow
tests mailflow to and from a system mailbox on the server specified

test-servicehealth
A fast way to check the status of Exchange related services

Public Folder replication
There are a number of "builtin" scripts with Exchange 2007 that live in the \scripts folder in the exchange root
some useful ones

AddReplicaToPFRecursive.ps1
adds a server to a list of public folders and to its subfolders, I had some problems with this one, initially getting to to add a whole IPM_SUBTREE seemed a bit impossible. The script requires a top level folder parameter, but wouldn't accept the root. which is a pain in organisations where they create all folders under the root. You can add folders explicitly, but this is painful if there are a lot!
if you specify "\" as the top level folder it appears to work...
Its a way of saving some effort, but I did find folders where replicas hadn't been added and no errors reported so I added them manually...

get-publicfolderstatistics
get the list of public folders replicated to the server and theirs stats, useful to see if the list is approximately what it should be!

Public Folders in Exchange 14... at 08:40

Looks like Ms has done a slight u-turn over public folders,
ever since I've known they have been planning to "remove" or "de-emphasise" public folders in the next version of Exchange, they attempted this in Exchange 2007, but demand (and development timescales) meant they reintroduced a lot of the management tools via SP1.
Now via a statement made in passing it looks like they are still planning support!

Public Folders and E14 - The Next Version of Exchange
Just like a certain segment of the blogosphere is concerned about Windows versions and gets excited every time a notice about "Windows 7" (the succeeding product to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008) comes out of Redmond, I follow, instead the segment that gets excited about E14 - the next release of Exchange Server.
At this point, I would say that we probably know less about E14 than we do about Windows 7!
One of the MAJOR issues that came out of E12 (Exchange Server 2007) was that Microsoft chose to de-emphasize Public Folders. What this means is that they said they would support public folders for E12, but would not guarantee that they would be supported in releases after E12, nor would additional feature content be added to Public Folders.
Microsoft's stated direction for public folders is the SharePoint product suite. Which, while it does a GREAT job at some things (document libraries come to mind) does poorly at other things (threaded conversations) and does not do some things at all (replication of content to many sites).
Well, in a conversation today it came out that Microsoft will support public folders in E14. Many of us were shocked, surprised, and very happy! The Microsofties in the conversation were surprised that we were surprised - they said that they had told us this 'way back in 2006! They pointed to this blog post by Scott Schnoll from June of 2006.
Well, now we know! I'm sure we'll hear more about this Real Soon Now (tm). :-)

Risk free Linux at 21:00

Thanks to Mark Blake for bringing this to my attention:

The latest beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 has a new version of Wubi an application that allows you to install Ubuntu under Windows as a disk image to which you can boot, no partitioning needed.

How Safe is VMware's Hypervisor? at 20:50

VMware researcher Oded Horovitz got an earful when he told a group of security buffs his company's virtualization software was theoretically impenetrable. Speaking at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, his hour-long presentation, titled Virtually Secure, included a slide titled "VM Escape" that carried the following bullet point:

"Though impossible by design, the hypervisor can still have implementation vulnerabilities."

It was more than some attendees could bear.

To learn more and to read the entire article please refer to the rest of the article at its source: How safe is VMware's hypervisor?