Windows and Virtualization Tips and Tricks

Many of us face challenges while we activate the terminal servers licenses from the remote system. Recently I faced the same issue and I followed the below steps and the problem was resolved. The Terminal Services Licensing Server must be configured properly and it must be up and running fine on the same network environment. For example, we will consider this server Frank2k3 (192.168.150.100) as a Terminal services licensing server and this server is reachable to the End user system. If the Terminal Services Licensing Server is present in a different network then we have to enable the required communication ports between two environments. For example if we have the Licensing server present in the network 192.168.150.X and the End user system present in the network 10.50.10.X then we need to enable the following ports from...

              Optimal design of a VMware View environment must take several factors into consideration. One of the most important factor is the Storage design. When proper storage design planning is not done, it invariably leads to performance issues in the environment. The most prominent example would be having linked clones in an environment in multiple SATA drives with very little cache space. There is a solution for avoiding such performance issues and that is to have fully deployed (thick disk) desktop. Having fully deployed desktops means spreading the I/O over many spindles instead of crowding all requests to one spindle. This can be done in two methods: Cloning the Desktop VM Storage VMotion the Desktop VM Cloning the Desktop VM Steps:   1. From VCenter, right click on desktop VM. Select ‘Clone’   2. Keeping...

The need for a highly secure Strong Password is felt more these days due to increased hacking and phishing. With Microsoft integrating windows logon to many online transactions, the need is further more important. The password policy setting is one of the most important steps in server hardening procedure. This is usually done in 99% of the environments. But if in any environment it was overlooked, there are methods how one can enforce the strong password policy there. The steps to enable password security policy in Windows 2003 Domain server is presented in this post: Step#1: Start—> Program –> Administrative Tools –> Domain Security Policy Step#2: From the Domain Security Policy Window, enable the “Password must meet complexity requirements” under Password policy in Account Policies Once these steps are done,...

Many a times we have the difficulty of having to restore some corrupted OS files. But this is always scary as there is a high chance of the other existing configuration files getting corrupted as well. Well, in one of my tight situations I found that Microsoft was a life saver yet again! Microsoft provides a command line tool System File Checker “SFC” which can be used to recover the corrupted windows operating system files. Since the discovery of this tool, I have used SFC in many production windows server environment successfully and the problem got fixed every time! When you are not really sure that all the OS files are good and you doubt that system files have been somehow corrupted, do use SFC. This tool will validate the digital signatures of all the Windows system files and if there are any incorrect files, they are restored. During the recovery process if possible it will use the on-disk cache files. But...

Recently I faced issues when I setup the IBM HS20 blade server. I had installed 8 GB physical memory on the blade and I installed the window 2003 32 bit Enterprise operating system. After the OS installation I verified the physical memory availability by using the “systeminfo” command and found that the operating system showed only 4GB RAM present on the server. I was wondering what had happened to the other 4 GB!! This is because of the hardware limitation. In any 32-bit Operating System, one only has access to 4GB of address space by default. The 32-bit Operating System can actually handle 4GB of memory. Using the /PAE switch allows the OS to handle memory above its maximum range as long as the application can handle it. Any OS can only handle whatever resources are shown to it by the hardware BIOS.  If the hardware does...

Changing the IP for the Service Console must be done from the physical console or through a remote console session (ILO or DRAC). If you make changes through a network connection such as SSH, network connectivity to the Service Console disconnects because the Service Console's network interface changes. Run the following command to set the IP address: root@frank root# esxcfg-vswif -i 192.xxx-xx-xx -n 255.255.255.0 vswif0 (Note: In this example, v swif0 is the Service Console adapter that is the interface to which you are applying the IP address change.) Open the /etc/hosts file with a text editor and modify it so that it reflects the correct IP address and hostname. To change the default gateway address and the hostname, edit the /etc/sysconfig/network file and change the GATEWAY and HOSTNAME parameters to the proper values. For the changes to take place, reboot the host or restart the network...

Highlight the ESX host and click the Configuration tab. Click DNS and Routing. Click Properties. To change the hostname, domain, and DNS servers, click the DNS Configuration tab and enter the appropriate values. (Note: Disable VMware High Availability if you do not want virtual machines to failover during the hostname IP change.) To change the default gateway, click the Routing tab and enter the appropriate value. Update the etc/opt/vmware/vpxa/vpxa.cfg file to reflect the new settings. Reboot the ESX host for the changes to take place. ...

A forest level trust relationship will allows two entire forests to share resources and allows selected users to access select resources. Open Active Directory Domains And Trusts from Administrative Tools. In the console tree pane, select and right-click the domain node for the forest root for which you want to create a trust. Select Properties. Select the Trusts tab in the Properties dialog box. Click New Trust and click Next (skip the Welcome screen). On the Trust Name page, enter the DNS name of the target domain for your trust (for our example, it is frankstar.com) and click Next. Select Forest Trust on the Trust Type page and click Next.    (If the Forest Trust option is missing, you may have omitted one of the prerequisites. In that case, double-check the DNS Forwarders tab and the forest functional level of all the domains...

VM Snapshots are not backups. They are just a change log of the original virtual disk. These cannot be considered as backup. There are a number of different reasons that one might use a snapshot for. One of the most used reasons would be for a software upgrade as using a snapshot allows an easy rollback to the machine state prior to the upgrade. If you have some other reasons leave a comment. The maximum supported amount in a chain is 32. However, VMware recommends only using 2-3 snapshots in a chain. No single snapshot can be used for more than 24-72 hours. This prevents snapshots from growing so large. This is because large snapshots cause issues when deleting/committing them to the original virtual machine disks. So the best method is to take the snapshot, make the necessary changes to the virtual machine, and delete/commit the snapshot as soon as proper working state of the...

In this post I am going to illustrate how to extend hard disk on test VM (referred to as Increase_Space_VM) with a 10gig C: drive to a 25gig C: drive. Increase_Space_VM == VM on which we want to increase disk space Spare_VM == VM which is not in production usage and can be powered-on/powered-off at will Make complete backup, then shutdown Increase_Space_VM. Open ssh session to ESX host containing the Increase_Space_VM.  Change directory to /vmfs/volumes/<specific-LUN-holding-VMdisk-files>/<Increase_Space_VM>/ Run command:  vmkfstools –X 25G Increase_Space_VM.vmdk -X specifies to extend the disk.  25G is the new *complete* size.  In my example, I started with a 10gig C: drive and I wanted to make it 25gig (25G).   Power off Spare_VM. ...

Welcome to my blog on Windows and Virtualization. I am working in a Data Center with real time experience on Windows and Virtualization domain. I have MCSE, MCTS, MCITP and VMWare VCP certifications. I face several challenges in my everyday job and find many tips and tricks that come in hand to resolve those challenges. In this blog, I am going to share those tips and tricks that have come handy to me during tight situations. Hoping that these tips would be helpful to all the Virtualization domain techs out there!! So, keep watching for tips he...