While reading the blog of Andy Meers, I came accross a good site with lots of information about Active Directory group policy. Check out http://www.gpoguy.com for more info.

I just installed esXpress 3.0 rc3 in our ESX 3.0 test lab. Among bugfixes and smaller extra features, restore options have now been added to the text based console menu. This is just one of the many restore options that will be available. Restores using the GUI and in a VBA is coming soon. Restores in a VBA will shift the load from the ESX console to a helper virtual machine.

In this release (rc3) you can restore through the ESX console. This is done by launching the phd program from the ESX console.

What you see above is the available backups for a virtual machine called xmoss. We take a backup of this machine every night (differentials). That allows me to restore the most recent virtual machine state but also those of previous days.

During an upgrade to service pack 2 of an Exchange 2003 active/passive cluster, we had the following error:

The solution was simple but difficult to find. You need to make sure that the cluster's public network interface is listed first in the network binding order. This is done from Control Panel / Network Connections / Advanced menu / Advanced Settings.

So before you start such an upgrade, check those settings and correct them. It is actually a best practice when a cluster is installed.

Windows PowerShell is a great new object-oriented shell with lots of new features. Many Microsoft products will leverage the functions of the new shell, like Exchange Server 2007 and Virtual Machine Manager. They do that by creating cmdlets that do the configuration and then build a UI that calls these cmdlets under the hood. The great thing is that the UI shows the cmdlet and the parameters of the cmdlets so you can reuse them in your own scripts.

Because learning a new shell like PowerShell can be daunting, some help is needed in the form of books and tools. Sapien Technologies have released a book, Microsoft PowerShell: TFM, to help climb the steep learning curve. They also have support for PowerShell in PrimalScript 4.1, a visual development environment for various scripting languages.

Take a look at www.primalscript.com for more info.

Today was the first day of the general sessions at IT Forum, Microsoft's annual convention for IT Pros. Me and my colleagues went to several sessions, mainly about Windows Vista.

I also attended a session called "Transitioning to Windows Server Virtualization" by Mark Kieffer, Group Program Manager. The session was interesting because it provided a general overview of the features of Windows Server Virtualization.

I am not going into the details of these features because they have already been described at many other places. However, some statements were made that might be of interest to you.

The first one is that, according to the presenter, Virtual Server 2005 R2 currently cannot provide the expected performance levels. This is a well accepted fact but it is good to hear it from the vendor itself.

For Windows Server Virtualization in Longhorn, the presenter stated that the product has the ability to virtualize workloads with few or no limitations as to what workloads can/may be virtualized. Indeed, with support for up to 8 cpus, >32 GB of RAM and pass-through access to storage, that might well be the case.

One of the key points that Microsoft tends to emphasize is the fact that Windows Server Virtualization is just a part of the operating system. In this case, that operating system is Longhorn Server Core, a cut-down version with a smaller footprint, less components, smaller attack surface and so on. Another key point, is that, because the parent partition (that runs the child partitions or guests) is Windows, you have all the Microsoft tools at your disposal to manage the virtual environment. These tools include MOM, System Center, Group Policy management with Active Directory and so on.

Those two points, virtualization built into the OS and the use of familiar tools to manage it, might be big selling points for those having to choose a virtualization technology.

What is also clear is that Microsoft has looked hard at VMware, to match or surpass the feature set provided by VI 3. The presenter, naturally, focused on these features. They include live migration, load balancing using System Center and failover using Longhorn MSCS clusters.

Actually, when I say they looked hard at VMware, I might need to adjust that statement a bit. When an attendee asked why he would choose Windows Server Virtualization and not VMware's VI 3, the presenter stated that the main reason was the live migration feature. The reason was (watch out now) that VMware's VMotion required "much more" hardware similarity where the Longhorn solution only requires CPUs to match.

Besides that "slight" mishap, what I took away from the session was that Microsoft is working hard to get to a product that can compete hard with VMware's VI 3. They are also working hard to spread the story about Windows Server Virtualization and a beta will be available soon. What VMware should do is to present a very clear roadmap of where they are headed. This roadmap needs to include new features (such as hot-add memory, CPUs, etc...) and a clear timeline of approximately when these new features will be available. Just my two cents...

I am going to IT Forum this week to catch up on Microsoft's new and announced products such as Exchange 2007, Office 2007, WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007, Longhorn and last but not least, Windows Virtualization.

If time permits, I will blog about interesting stuff that is going on there.

Just a quick tip here that shows the power of virtualization and the tools built around it. If you have data in a virtual machine disk file (vmdk) and you want to use a dedicated SAN lun instead, use vmkfstools -i to import the contents of the vmdk to the lun.

For example, suppose you have a disk called SQLDB.vmdk and you would like to put its data on a dedicated SAN lun, here is what you would type on the command line (from the folder where SQLDB.vmdk resides and on one line):

vmkfstools -i SQLDB.vmdk SQLDB-rdm.vmdk -d rdm:/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:0:2:0

Before you run the above command, shut down the virtual machine that uses SQLDB.vmdk and create and zone a SAN lun appropriately. In this example, the SAN lun is identified by ESX as vmhba1:0:2:0. It should be the same size or larger than the original vmdk. The result of this command will be the creation of SQLDB-rdm.vmdk. That is actually just a mapping file. When a virtual machines uses such a mapping file (rdm) it will actually work with the SAN lun that is behind it, in this case vmhba1:0:2:0.

If the SAN lun is larger than the originial vmdk file, you can just boot the virtual machine and if it is Windows, use dispart.exe to extend the volume to the full size of the lun. Alternatively, you can use the GParted live cd I blogged about earlier to achieve the same result.

From Techworld.com:

VMworld 2006 this week, the biggest yet with over 7,000 attendees, was virtualisation market leader VMware's third annual convention. Although product news from VMware was not as thick on the ground as previous years, we managed to scoop up some snippets, including the feature set from the next version of Workstation, aimed at test and development environments, and ACE 2.0.

I am especially looking forward to VMware Workstation 6 with full support for Vista, USB 2.0 support, and the new record/replay feature.

Read more at source...

At this stage of the development (rc2), restoring virtual machines with esXpress v3.0 is a manual process. That will change soon with restore options built into the GUI.

When you make a backup of a virtual machine with esXpress, you have a full backup of each disk of the virtual machine plus index backups with only the changes. These index backups are actually executable. So the only thing you need to do is to execute such an index backup and start the restore. The restore script will either find the full backup automatically or you can point to the full backup using the menu options.

So to start a restore (using rc 2), copy an index file to the ESX server using sftp (e.g. Bitvise Tunnelier). In this example, I copied a file called 00-vmgeba_test.vmdk.delta-2006.11.09-0028-061109-0028.phd from the FTP server to the ESX box (delta in the filename means it contains only the changes). I copied to a VMFS volume that had enough space.

From an ssh shell, I could then run the 00-vmgeba_test.vmdk.delta-2006.11.09-0028-061109-0028.phd executable because it is a script. Just issue the command:

sh 00-vmgeba_test.vmdk.delta-2006.11.09-0028-061109-0028.phd

The script will launch and present a menu.

Because I only copied the index file and not the full backup, the text FULL BACKUP NOT FOUND is displayed. You can pull the backup from an FTP server but in this case, I  copied the full backup file to the ESX server as well. When you then execute the delta, you will get:

As you can see, the full backup is automatically found because it is in the same location as the index file. Now it is just a matter of using the R option to restore the file. You will get a few questions about the location for the new vmdk file and at the end you will get:

When this process finishes, you have a vmdk file that you can use with a virtual machine. In this case, the vmdk file that was backed up was called vmgeba-test.vmdk. That’s of course just a stub. The actual data is in vmgeba-test-flat.vmdk.

A bit tricky here is that the stub file (vmgeba-test.vmdk) is for a buslogic disk. Because the default for Windows Server 2003 is lsilogic, you should change the stub. This can be done from the menu with the C option (Create GSX/Server Stub File). When you choose that option, you will get the chance to specify that you want lsilogic. You can also skip this step and change it from VI Client.

You can now create a new virtual machine and point to the stub when you add the disk. The nice thing about this whole process is that it allows you to restore a virtual machine without needing esXpress itself. You just need a full backup and index backups to start the restore process. Useful!!!

A colleague of mine, Geert Verbist, is attending VMworld 2006 in Los Angeles. Over at www.vmuc.be, a site sponsored by Xylos, he is blogging about his experiences. He promised to blog on this site as well but it is easier that I just link to www.vmuc.be instead.

Here are the posts he did until now: VMworld photo shoot, VCB, First two days. He will blog some more when he finds the time.

What he learns about VCB will be interesting because another colleague of mine, Vincent Vlieghe (virtrix.blogspot.com) and myself are doing a rather large project at a customer that involves all this stuff.

A while ago, I had a post about esXpress 3.0. The development is progressing nicely (rc 2) as a GUI helper has been added to the feature set for those that do not want to use the console.

The GUI helper can be started from the console but you can also instruct esXpress to start the helper from VI Client. What you get is a new virtual machine and to get to the GUI, you just have to open the virtual machine console from VI Client.

Some examples of what you get in the screenshots below.

The main menu:

The configuration screen:

The live log file:

The GUI is not yet complete. Later releases will add virtual machine restore options and scheduling options as well. We are using the tool in our test environment at Xylos and it is working reliably.

Just a quick tip here. During some tests for an ESX 3.0 project, we imported some GSX 3.2 virtual machines in ESX 3.0.1 with VMware's Virtual Machine Importer 2.0. That process went fine and Virtual Machine Importer works really well.

The imported virtual machine was configured with 256 MB of RAM. When we changed the virtual machine's memory (on ESX) to more than 512 MB of RAM, the virtual machine became very slow. So slow that it was not usable. Inside the virtual machine, the CPU was maxed out (system process). From the outside however (esxtop), the machine did not seem busy at all.

The problem was that, during the import, the sched.mem.max setting was set to 256 MB of RAM, thus limiting the virtual machine's memory. Changing that setting to unlimited (or to a more realistic value) fixed the slowness.

Bottom line: after importing with Virtual Machine Importer, adjust the sched.mem.max setting if you plan on increasing the virtual machine's memory. This can be done with the GUI in the virtual machine's settings in the Resources tab.

It is not uncommon that you have to enlarge a partition of a system whether it is physical or virtual. In a Windows environment, the diskpart command can be used but does not work for boot and system partitions. A lot of times however, I have the need to expand the system partition. Here are the steps I follow in an ESX environment but they can also be used in GSX or Workstation (with some other tools) or even old school physical systems.

Step 1: enlarge disk with vmkfstools
Power down the virtual machine and use the service console command vmkfstools with the -X parameter. For example:

vmkfstools -X 12G <path-to-vmdk-file>

Step 2: boot the guest normally
You need to boot the guest normally to let Windows detect the new disk size. If you omit this step, GParted will throw errors after expansion of the partition.

Step 2: use GParted to enlarge the partition on the disk
GParted (Gnome Partition Editor) can be downloaded as a Live CD from here. Just put the iso on your ESX system and connect it to the virtual cd-rom drive of the guest. Then boot the guest and boot from the cd.

When you continue, you get a menu. Select the Xvesa option and then select Done to continue. You will then get a few prompts for language, keyboard layout, screen resolution and so on. The system will continue booting and start GParted. Your disks will be scanned and presented.

Above, you see a disk that has been extended from 5GB to 8GB. Now it is just a matter of expanding the partition. Just right click the partition and select Resize/Move.

Now you can easily resize the partition by typing new values or with the mouse. Click the Resize/Move button when finished. Then click the Apply button and confirm. The partition will be extended and a result dialog is shown.

You can now reset the virtual machine and use the enlarged partition.

There are other tools on the market for this but GParted (for my needs) works well. Best of all, it is free!