How to Remove old hardware after performing P2V in Windows environment

When performing P2V action on a Windows machines, the virtual machine still holds a lot of hardware components of physical machine. These components might be hidden, but still they are there and drivers are loaded for them. They might comsume resources or create issues on your virtual machine.

Which is generally not a good thing. So, how to detect those unused hardware components and drivers. All you need to do is to open the command prompt:

Enter set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Then, open the device manager by entering the command of:

devmgmt.msc

Finally, Select View ----> Show hidden devices

You should delete all the grayed-out hardware which is not in use anymore.

vSphere Compatibility Matrixes

vSphere Compatibility Matrixes

VMware vSphere Online Library ESX 4.0 and vCenter Server 4.0

I found VMware online library very handy when you need to find out any information related to VMware, you can view VMware product documentation, search across all books in a product documentation set, and print or bookmark topics.

VMware vSphere Online Library

Migrating to vSphere 4

Very handy information, if you are planing to migrate from VI3 to vSphere 4. You can check out the step-by-step vSphere migration videos. For more details on the migration from VI 3 to vSphere 4. click on vSphere Update Center

Vmware Resolution Path

I found these are very handy when I'm trying to troubleshoot VM, vCenter, or any ESX issues. All you just need to do is to identify the path for the issue and read the vmware KBs to resolve the issue.

Many common tech support issues in VMware products can be solved using Resolution Paths. Resolution Paths are collections of modular steps that can be used to solve tech support issues.Resolution Paths Published

How to enable Web Access on vSphere ESX 4

During our migration to vSpher 4, I noticed that for some reason the Web Access on the new hosts were not working. and I'm not sure why the Web Access to ESX 4 is disabled by default.


To enable this, all you need to do is, you need to ssh to the service console and log in as root.

[root@testone]# chkconfig --level 345 vmware-webAccess on

Once the above command is initiated. then you need to verify if it has been enabled for run level 3, 4, and 5 by executing the below command:

[root@testone]# chkconfig --list vmware-webAccess

vmware-webAccess 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

finally, you need to start the service:

[root@testone]# service vmware-webAccess start

Starting VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access:

VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access [ OK ]

For more details, refer to: vSphere Web Access Administrator's Guide

ESX Server is Disconnected or Not Responding in VirtualCenter

This morning when I try to log in to my vCenter Server using vSphere Client to verify my virtual farm. The vSphere Client show one of the ESX host had been disconnected from the virtual center by itself. The ESX host itself should be running in critical mode as production and had HA and DRS enable on the cluster.


The first thing I did is to verify that the entire VM’s and ESX host itself is still in production without any issues. Which was the case, all the VM were up and running as normal while the status is disconnected.

After that I had to resolve the issue by reconfigure my ESX host and rejoin it back to the HA and DRS cluster in my production farm.

These are the steps I had to go through to resolve the issus:

1) Disable the HA and DRS features from the cluster

2) SSH to the host in question and then path your way to the /etc/init.d and look for the services "mgmt-vmware status" command.

Then you need to issue the command "services mgmt-vmware restart". This process usually takes a minute or so to get the service fully restarted.

Once the services restarted, you can easily add host to the virtual center and reconfigure the HA and DRS cluster mode again. The ESX host is back to normal and status of all the VM's running on that host should change back to normal and should work perfectly as usual.

In some instances by just restarting the mgmt-vmware might not resolve the issues, and you might need to restart the vmware-vpxa services as well. To restart the vmware-vpxa, all you nedd to do is to initiate the "services vmware-vpxa restart" at the CLI.

For more details, refer to VMware KB

Configuring networking from the ESX service console command line

This VMware KB article provides steps to configure networking for an ESX host when you only have access to the service console.

How to modify the ESX Login Message

Logon directly to ESX Host and edit the motd file


1.Enter in the prompt nano /etc/motd
2.Create a message or some welcome banner
3.Press Ctrl o
4.Press Enter
5.Press Ctlr x

Dell Console Redirection fails with Login Failed - Error "Channel in use"

First of all simply clear the cache on your browser. In most cases this should resolve the issue.But if this fails then perform the following steps:

1. Close all your IE sessions (In some case you might need to reboot your machine if the session veiw is locked by anther sessions).
2. Go to c:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files
3. Right click on 'session viewer' and click remove
4. Right click on 'rac5vm control' and click remove
5. Finally, Clear out your browsing cache again.

This should resolve your "channed in use" error with Dell Console Redirection issue.

How to run Remote Desktop Console using CLi

You can use mstsc to create connections to terminal servers or other remote computers.
For example, to connect to the console session of a server, type:

mstsc /v:servername /console

For addition help, run mstsc /? on cli, whic will provide you all the addtional switches and syntax:

/v:ServerName[:Port] - Specifies the remote computer to which you want to connect and optionally, the port number to which you want to connect.

/console - Connects to the console session of the specified Windows Serve.

/f - Starts Remote Desktop connection in full-screen mode.

/w: - Specifies the width of the Remote Desktop window.

/h: - Specifies the height of the Remote Desktop window.

/public - Runs Remote Desktop in public mode.

How to create an "Offer Remote Assistance" shortcut

Being part of IT infrastructure team, occasionally I need to provide support to end users when the desktop support guys are not available. This is when I found the remote assistance feature very handy, providing support to end users without moving from your workstation.

I found the quickest and the easiest way to launch the “Offer Remote Assistance" is to create a shortcut on your desktop:

To do this, simply create a shortcut that points to following url:

%windir%\explorer.exe "hcp://CN=Microsoft%20Corporation,L=Redmond,S=Washington,C=US/Remote%20Assistance/Escalation/Unsolicited/Unsolicitedrcui.htm"

How to Configure ssh for root user in VMWare ESX

Logon directly to ESX Host and edit the configuration file for ssh

1. Enter in the prompt nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
2. Find the line PermitRootLogin and change the value of PermitRootLogin no to yes
3. Press Ctrl o
4. Press Enter
5. Press Ctlr x

Finally, you need to restart the ssh service by entering the following command:

1. service sshd restart
2. Press Enter

Once you completed the above steps, simple use putty to test that changes you made is working fine by allowing you to logon via service console with the root privileges.

     
 

Permissions to Manage Mailbox Servers

So here is the command that you use to add mailbox permissions:


Add-MailboxPermission -Identity "Some User" -User fawad -Accessright Fullaccess -InheritanceType all

Here are some more parameters for -Accessright, which is actually the most important part of the command that can be used to control the permission:

FullAccess
DeleteItem
ReadPermission
ChangePermission
ChangeOwner
ExternalAccount
SendAs

MS Reference article: Answer Available Here


 

How to Unblock Attachments in Microsoft Outlook

In order to unblock attachments in MS outlook, you need to follow few simple registry modification. But it is recommended to backup your registry before you start editing it.


Go command prompt (cmd) then regedit (press enter) and then go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security

1. Backup your registry by right clicking and select Export.

2. Add a new String Value called: Level1Remove

Once you added the string value then you need to edit it and save the value data to the extension you wish to allow but makesure you add a semi colon delimiter after each extensions.

For Example: .mdb or .mdb;.exe;.scr;.bat and so on

3. Finally, you need to restart outlook without rebooting you pc.

Please refer to MS KB for further details