Bookmarks for March 25th through April 18th

Category : Daily Links, Misc

These are my links for March 25th through April 18th:

Bookmarks for February 5th through February 10th

Category : Daily Links, Misc

These are my links for February 5th through February 10th:

  • Jie Li’s GeekWorld : Installation Notice for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta – Since SharePoint 2010 has been made available for MSDN/TechNet subscriber public now, here’re some steps you would like to follow to get a successful installation. But keep in mind: This beta is not supported and you CANNOT upgrade the installation to RTM when it’s released. This Beta should only be used for evaluation purpose.
  • SharePoint 2010 Category – Technet sharepoint 2010 forums
  • Global Catalog vs. Infrastructure Master – Directory Services/Active Directory – Q: Is the Infrastructure Master allowed to run on a Domain Controller which also holds the Global Catalog Server?
  • How to migrate the vCenter database to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – NTPRO.NL – Eric Sloof – If you want to relocate your vCenter database from a local express SQL server to a central Microsoft SQL Server 2008, you can use the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard to copy and transform data between supported data sources and destinations.

    The purpose of the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard is to copy data from a source to a destination. The wizard can also create a destination database and destination tables for you. However, if you have to copy multiple databases or tables, or other kinds of database objects, you should use the Copy Database Wizard instead.

  • Virtual Infrastructure best practices | VMGuru.nl – I choose (a virtual) life! – Lately I keep receiving questions from colleagues regarding virtual infrastructure design using VMware products. So I decided to sum up the best practices I use when designing a new virtual infrastructure. Some of the best practices are based on numbers and calculations but others are pretty obvious. Nevertheless you would be surprised how many environments I’ve encounter were the most basic best practices have NOT been met.

Bookmarks for February 3rd through February 4th

Category : Daily Links, Misc

These are my links for February 3rd through February 4th:

  • Shariq Sheikh | Port 389 – - activity of Active Directory and the rest – A really good site about Active Directory
  • Online Password Generator – Password security shouldn't be taken lightly. Security professional will tell you that secure passwords should be difficult to guess and difficult to break using brute force methods. The strongest password is a series of random characters. But this is difficult for humans to remember. What good is a secure password when you can't remember it yourself? We offer a password generator that uses real words mixed with enough random numbers and symbols to be secure.
  • How to succeed with XenDesktop without really trying » ocb – Citrix Community – Working closely with our team of worldwide consultants we have put together a Modularized Reference Architecture for XenDesktop that can be used as a blueprint for architecting successful XenDesktop implementations. This is the real thing. All of the design considerations and methodologies in this document have been proven in the field and verified in the Citrix Solutions Center lab.
  • SharePoint 2010 Better Together with SQL 2008 R2 Database Enhancements Top 10 – SharePoint Joel’s SharePoint Land – I’ve been thinking a lot about the SQL 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 better together story and wanted to capture some of what’s been floating around in my head. I haven’t seen enough content and blogs on this stuff and hope that this will help spur more conversations on the topic. Mike Watson has put out a couple of well put together posts on SQL 2008 and SharePoint 2010 in his storage considerations post and on SharePoint 2010 high availability improvements. I also put some thoughts on why SQL 2008 for SharePoint from a while back. With the product team’s announcement of requirements of 64 bit SQL and SQL 2005 and SQL 2008, many are asking questions. Having spent time with SQL 2008, I do see it as a no brainer to skip 2005 or to simply go with the gold and do the right thing from the beginning. A lot of the high availability (mirroring) and security features (transparent data encryption) are in the enterprise version, so be careful to do the right thing. Ironically I did run into
  • You Had Me At EHLO… : Triaging Exchange Performance issues related to Active Directory (AD) Performance (including Networking and DNS performance) – In many organizations the skill sets that administer Exchange, Active Directory (AD), Domain Naming System (DNS), and the network infrastructure are often segregated. Since Exchange is heavily dependent on communication with AD and that communication must traverse the network, the ability for the Exchange Administrator to have a basic understanding of how each of these components can be troubleshot is useful. Furthermore, often times the DNS, network, and AD administrators are not familiar with how Exchange is dependent on their services and thus are not fully prepared to help an Exchange administrator isolate production issues. As such, by the end of this it is hoped that there will be enough information to allow the Exchange, DNS, network, and AD administrators to each collect the data necessary to identify the majority of the issues.

Virtual Center 2.5 Its Time

4

Category : Post from around the Net, technology, vmware

I’m ready to start planning my upgrade to virtual center 2.5. I’m looking through old post on this site and searching other vmware blogs to make sure I have all my bases covered. I’m going to start collecting all the links and post I find right here. So if you have any to add that I missed. Please leave a comment.

Thanks,jb

RTFM Education – Upgrade Guide to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5

Upgrade to ESX 3.5 without leaving your desk

ESX 3.0.1 VMs reboot when adding host to VC 2.5

Customization fails after VC 2.5 Upgrade

Potential Problem with ESX 3.0.x and VirtualCenter 2.5

VMware ESX 3.5 upgrade path: Where to start

VirtualCenter 2.5 upgrade issue with SQL 2000

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Best Practice Tips for Windows Server 2003 Cluster Service (MSCS)

2

Category : Post from around the Net, technology

We have a few windows 2003 clusters. Just found out this weekend that one of the nodes isn’t working. its complaining of bad disk signatures so right now the cluster can only run on the one node. I’d also like to know the best practice for add another drive (LUN) to the cluster. I need a larger disk for our exchange db, I could add another LUN or move the LUN to a larger one and use diskpart to extend it in windows. I just don’t know how well that works in a cluster :-)

1.         Under no circumstance should any other resource be created in the Cluster Group other than the default ones which are Quorum, Cluster IP Address and Cluster Network Name. (ref: KB168948)  If MS DTC is installed in the Cluster Group using the cluster’s resources and it’s not going to be used heavily by SQL, then this is the only exception that is supported as long as the MS DTC resource has the “Affect the group” box on the Advanced tab unchecked.

Ask the Core Team : TOP 10 Best Practice Tips for Windows Server 2003 Cluster Service (MSCS)

Should Virtual Center run as a Virtual Machine? (VM /ETC)

Category : Misc

We run our VCenter within our ESX Farm. We also run the SQL server that VCenter runs off in the same ESX farm. We’ve had no issues with VCenter in this configuration. But we do have to be careful with the SQL Server.

Sure, you can run Virtual Center Management Server as a Virtual Machine. VMware supports it and has published a technical note about doing it – http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vc_in_vm.pdf. A lot of companies have built their VC2 server this way, but is it really wise to have “the manager” of the environment running in the environment it is [...]

Should Virtual Center run as a Virtual Machine? (VM /ETC)
Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:31:32 GMT

VirtualCenter 2.5 upgrade issue with SQL 2000

1

Category : Misc

I allows find it good to wait at least a few weeks before I do any major upgrades. I’ll let other people shake out the bugs. Its a good thing because we are running our vcenter on SQL 2000. Follow the link for the fix before you try the upgrade or if you already tried and failed. Big note from the KB, if you don’t follow the steps in the KB, it will over write your database, you do backup your database before you do any upgrade, right?

I’ve not yet got my hands really dirty on ESX 3.0.x to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.0.x to 2.5 upgrades. Although crudely “play” with the process under the Release Candate. Initially, I had a permissions problem with the VirtualCenter upgrade and my SQL 2000 server. There’s been a length forum thread on this which I have been involved with. It’s become clear that if you have a SQL 2000 server additional permissions are required for an upgrade, which were not previously required in previous upgrades from VC 1>2 or the intra-upgrades from say 2.0.0>2.0.1>2.0.2

A KB article from VMware outlines this issue. As far as I know its not an issue for SQL 2005…

Link: ID: 1003346

VirtualCenter 2.5 upgrade issue with SQL 2000
mikelaverick
Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:09:15 GMT

Twitter Updates for 2007-07-15

Category : twitter

  • another long night on our mantanance weekend :-) #
  • Trying to move SQL from Vmware 2 to VI3, can’t use vcenter because its database is on that sql server. #
  • sitting on a boat in spring lake #

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Site dinked up again!

Category : News, Rants

Looks like my postnuke site is causing mysql issues even on my new host and it no one seems to know why.

Maybe its time to convert it to a wordpress site….We’ll see what my host says. If they have any ideas about the postnuke site.

jb

VMware: Running VirtualCenter in a VM

Category : Post from around the Net, technology

 We currently run our VC in a VM, so I’ll have to take a look at this.

VMware has released a technical note on running VC in a VM. I personally don’t like running VC in a VM, for the reasons covered in the technote. I do like the concept to P2V your existing physical VC (connected to an external SQL/Oracle DB) and use it in a DR scenario.

Some things to note when deploying VC in a VM:

  • You need to obtain a host-based license & an initial standalone ESX host, as you cannot boot your VC without a (host- or server-based) license :)
  • Shutting down/maintenance on your Virtual VirtualCenter can be tricky: you need to locate VC & connect to an ESX host to power on VC or change your hardware config for your VC.

Download it here

Source: VMware: Running VirtualCenter in a VM
Originally published on Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:57:00 GMT by Vincent Vlieghe

 

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