"host currently has no management network redundancy" warning in Virtual Center 2.5:

this warning happened after I created a HA cluster with 2 ESX hosts. they are
basically white boxes I run development VMs on. after the cluster creation, one
of the hosts had this in the summary display. This turned out to be a
configuration issue with the network adapters. VC 2.5 expects the Service
Console attached to at least 2 nics to avaid isolation response.

to add a user on ESX to have access to console (shell, ssh):

1) login to console with root
2) adduser -g users -d /home/ -s /bin/bash

How to clone a Windows Virtual Machine in VMware Server 2.0 (or 1.0):

many believe that the free VMware Server 2.0 does not have cloning capability. but it does! though it's quite easy as far as the concept goes, it is troublesome in certain ways. here is what you can do to clone a VM in Server 2.0:

1. shutdown the VM you want to clone
2. copy the VM to a new folder in the datastore (usually in "C:\Virtual Machines") using your favorite copy utility - mine is ROBOCOPY
3. after you copy the VM, rename all the files in the new VM folder to the new VM name, for example: rename oldvm.vmx to newvm.vmx
4. edit the vmx, vmdk (only the virtual disk configuration text files) and vmxf files, and replace the old VM name with the new VM name
5. in the VI Web Access client (aka VMware Server Home Page link), click on "Virtual Machines", then "Add Virtual Machine to Inventory"; browse to the new VM folder, click on the new VM vmx file and click OK to register the new VM
6. power on the new VM and choose "copied_it" option if prompted
7. log on and rename the guest OS (reboot needed) then run NEWSID utility (downloadable) to regenerate the SID (reboot needed)
8. at this point, you nave a fully functional cloned VM in the VMware Server 2.0 environment

notes: many of the steps can be automated - using VB Script, I have automated 3, 4 just because they are really manually intensive. ideally, the whole process short of shutting down the inital VM should be scripted.

- Kenny

Journey to Active Directory - Exchange reinstall:

today's topic is about upgrading AD and Exchange to Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 from 2003 SP2. since my test exchange server crashed due to "running out of HDD space", i am taking two approach to deal with this in parallel - 1) resizing the c:\ crashed exchange server (2003 sp2, we shall call it exchange1), and 2) building a new exchange server with sufficient c:\ (LOL).

while doing 2), i chose to deploy Server 2003 R2, and this presented a problem: the installation program doesn't work and gave a funny error about DNS incompatibility. after some troubleshooting, it was evident that the DC (schema master) needed to be upgraded to R2 first. with this requirement comes the requirement to upgrade all DCs to R2.

the following steps must be completed before these Domain Controllers can be upgraded to R2:

1. D:\CMPNENTS\R2\ADPREP\ADPREP.EXE /forestprep
2. SETUP2.EXE /quiet /accepteula /productkey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX /suppressreboot

after bringing the whole domain to R2 and fixing the DNS architecture (removing dead DNS servers and records), exchange 2003 could finally be reinstalled.

- Kenny

Active Directory - Accessing AD:

while VBscript supports LDAP querying and objects right out of the box, Powershell needs to ADSI Type Adapter (type cast, basically). the following are examples of how to connect to LDAP using both methods.

• VB - SET objContainer = GetObject(ldap://cn=username,ou=abc,dc=xyz,dc=com/)
• PS - $objContainer = [ADSI]ldap://cn=username,ou=abc,dc=xyz,dc=com/

the rest is usual.

VMware VIX:

to list VMs on local computer (VMware server 2.0), use the following vmrun command syntax:

• vmrun -T server -h https://:8333/sdk -u -p List
• vmrun -T server -h https://:8333/sdk -u -p ListRegisteredVM

to start a VM, use:

• vmrun -T server -h https://:8333/sdk -u -p start "[] \\"

for remote host, you must use FQDN (not the hostname) or IP address, otherwise it doesn't work.

VMware VI Client: add an existing vm to inventory:

1. (VI 2.5, ESX 3.5) open VI Client
2. click on the esx server in the inventory panel
3. click on the "configuration" tab
4. click on "storage" in the hardware section
5. right-click on the datastore in the "storage" area
6. choose "browse datastore"
7. browse to vmx file and right-click
8. choose "Add to Inventory" menu command

VMware Remote CLI - register vm:

• vmware-cmd --server --username --password -s register --resourcepool
• note: there was not a lot of documentation on --resourcepool parameter, strange...