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Duplicate IP on Hidden network card after copying VM guest files to new ESX 4i host

Posted on 12 July 2009 | No responses

I’ve run into an error a couple times now after moving vm guest files between different esxi hosts.  These have been disk to disk moves from a version 3.5 esxi to a esx 4i host.  After configuring the vm guest on the new host and upgrading the drivers / hardware I’d notice the machine had a dynamic IP instead of the expected static addresss. 

When I tried to set the corret static IP on the Guest I got the following error, “The IP address you have entered for the network adapter is already assigned to another adapter” (see full error below) even though there is no other visible network adapter.   Turns out the old AMD PCNet adapter is still installed on the VM but is hidden from view.  The new machine is using the e1000 driver for the virtual network.  You need to remove the non-present card before you can set the desired static IP.  The guests were running Windows 2003 Server RC2.

Solution:

1. Open command line
2. Set Device Manager to show non-present hardware Set.  Type at cmd line: SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
   
   
3. Start Device Manager.  Type at cmd line: START DEVMGMT.MSC
4. Device Manager > View > Show Hidden Devices
5. Device Manager > Network Adapters > Uninstall greyed out adapter.  In my case it was the VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter.
   

After uninstalling the driver I was able to assign the desired IP and everything was good.

Exchange 2003 – Restrict sender from sending internet email

Posted on 10 July 2009 | No responses

For whatever reason you may want to restrict a user from sending email to external users or even certain distribution lists within your Exchange environment.  There are numerous ways to do this, and there are plenty of resources on the web.  Some don’t mention the critical step of adding a registry key that tells Exchange to look for these restrictions.  Without this key it won’t work.  I am using a distribution list to identify the users I don’t want sending email email outside my organization.

1. In Active Directory create a distribution list for example: no external email
2. Add whatever users you want to this group.
3. In Exchange System Manager navigate to your Internet Mail SMTP connector (mine was in Administrative Groups > First Administrative Group > Routing Groups > Connectors>)
4. Go to properties on the Internet Mail SMTP connector > Delivery Restrictions tab > Reject Messages from: section.
5. Add the no external email group you created in step 1
6. On the Exchange Server create the following registry key:  HKEY_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RESvc\Parameters   Add or Edit REG_DWORD Key called CheckConnectorRestrictions and set to 1
7. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine service and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Service in service manager.
8. You can also restrict these users from sending to various internal distribution lists by adding them to the distribution list properties > exchange general tab – accept messages from everyone except and add the distribution list in step 1.  It’s also a good idea to check the “authenticated users” check box so your internal lists don’t get pegged from the outside.

URL for Microsoft KB on setting the registry key

A Word on Vmware Snapshots

Posted on 8 June 2009 | 1 response

So I just got schooled in Vmware snapshots.  I got all fired up to change one of my VM’s that runs Centos and houses my Samba shares to use thin provisioning on esxi 4.  So I cloned the .vmdk file, pointed the guest VM to it and fired it up.  Whoops, where’s my data? I had a nice, small .vmdk that worked great but my shares and data were missing.

Now I remembered that I had created a few snapshots this VM in the past.  One immediately after doing the base OS install.  Doing a bit of research pointed me to the fact that Vmware snapshots are a bit different then my SAN snapshots.  When a snapshot is created on Vmware, it stops writing data to the original .vmdk and instead creates a new delta file that contains any changes to the VM.  In short when you store a new file or make a change on the Vm, it gets written to the delta file, not the original. If you create another snapshot the same procedure occurs until you have a linked step ladder of .vmdk delta files linked to the previous delta all the way up to the original.

Great, so all of my data is stored in the delta files.  Normally you can take care of this by deleting the snapshots in order (newest to oldest) through the Infrastructure client (Right click on the VM -> snapshots -> snapshot mgr and delete). Doing this commits the changes in the delta to the original vmdk. But I had screwed up and removed some of the older .vmsn files which hold the metadata for the snapshots.  I had the delta .vmdk without its corresponding .vmsn. This wasn’t working. What I had was an interdependent mess of linked files making up my VM guest. Now there are ways to commit the snapshots back to the VM from the command line, but since I was going to clone it anyway, I thought I’d try pointing the clone command to the latest snapshot file and see what happened. It appears that this worked fine and pointing to the snapshot during the clone caused it to work its way up the ladder during the process.

Solution: I cloned the Vm by pointing to the latest snapshot file, which in turned worked it’s way up the ladder and spit out a finished, thin-provisioned VM.  Glad I learned these lessons on a test box!

Most recent VM snapshot file: testvm-000005.vmdk
Command used to clone using last snapshot:
vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore4/testbox/testbox-000005.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore4/testbox/testbox-thin.vmdk -d ‘thin’ -a lsilogic

I took a 200GB .vmdk and using thin-provisioning knocked it down to 3.2 GB. Nice.   Note: I’d test this really carefully before trying it on a production system.

Upgrading Vmware Esxi 3.5 to Esxi 4.0

Posted on 7 June 2009 | No responses

I just went to the 2009 Virtualization Forum and I’m pretty stoked about Vmware Esx(i) 4.  I’m just getting started with Vmware at work, but I’ve been running it at home for awhile.  I couldn’t wait to upgrade my home Esxi server to 4.  I’ve got a Dell Powervault 830 with 8GB Ram, 3×80 GB Sata and 1×250 GB Sata drives running Esxi 3.5. 

I wasn’t looking forward to migrating or copying my existing vm’s off to do a reinstall. This is a pain because my NAS doesn’t support NFS v3 TCP mounting so I cannot simply use my NAS to back up the vmdk files.  Esxi doesn’t support upgrades without virtual center so you basically have to do a fresh install.  Or so I though.  I found a nice tidbit on vm-help.com which shows how to upgrade esxi to 4 without virtual center .  Thank You, Thank You, Thank You kind folks.  Below is a quick recap.  Follow the vm-help link for the full article.

1. Download Upgrade zip file
2. Extract upgrade zip using 7-zip or similar
3. Extract the VM Client (VMware-viclient.vib\data.tar.gz\data.tar\4.0.0\client\VMware-viclient.exe)
4. Install Client and be sure to select “Install vSphere Host Update Utility”
5. Once the client and update ulility are installed, launch the upgrade utility
6. Add you host server to the list and then select it
7. Click the Upgrade Host button
8. Point the Upgrade Utility to the upgrade zip file and follow the instructions
9. Power on your VM’s and upgrade the client tools. Then power them off and upgrade the hardware on each vm
10. Enjoy the crunchy goodness of vSphere 4i

On my system the Upgrade utility reported that if Failed, however the system reported it was at version 4.0. It appears that the migration of my Datastores failed, but I was able to manually add them back in.  I’m running Esxi on SATA drives which isn’t really supported so maybe that is the problem. 

BartPE and Qlogic HBA

Posted on 23 April 2009 | No responses

I’ve been playing around with using BartPE and ghost to do a P2V migration of some productions servers to VMware.  I got the BartPE disk setup with Ghost and all my HP server drivers so I thought I was ready to go – Nope.  This particular server boots from SAN using a Qlogic 4050c iscsi HBA.  So when I went to clone the disk I got an error from Ghost saying invalid disk selected.  Duh – need to install the qlogic driver so the PE environment can see the disks.

The normal procedure for adding NIC or SCSI drivers in BartPE is to put the driver files in the C:\pebuilderxxx\drivers\Net or SCSIadapter folder.  I added the correct qlogic windows drivers to the scsi directory and gave it another shot.  When I booted to the BartPE disk on the server I ended up at a black screen with the error “file ql40xx.sy could not be found”.  I tried pressing F6 and supplying the driver from a floppy but ended up at the same error.  No joy.

The solution was to use the Windows 2003 server source files instead of Windows XP source files when creating the bartPE disk.  This plus adding the qlogic files worked.  I can now clone a physical server booting from SAN to a VM.

More info on BartPE can be found here.

Adding Scsi or Nic drivers to BartPE

Vista prompting each time when installing printers with VBS

Posted on 16 April 2009 | No responses

So anyone who has had the fun task of support Microsoft Vista in a domain environment has seen plenty of fun things.  For us the biggest headache was when installing printers.  We use a vbs script to install printers at login.  Everytime this occurs on Vista we are prompted to download and install the driver.  Doesn’t matter if UAC is enabled or disabled. I found some items on Microsoft and other locations that show you how to use Group Policy to stop this, however they all require Windows Server 2008 to push this as a domain group policy.  That information is here.  However those settings don’t exist on a Windows 2003 domain.

I was able to stop the prompting by modifying our existing the local Group Policy on the Vista machine.

• Open gpedit.msc on Vista machine
• User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Printers
• Double click on Point and Print Restrictions
• Select Enable and then scroll down under the Security Prompt Area
• Change the following settings to “Do not show warning or elevation prompt” for both “When installing drivers for a new connection” and “When updating drivers for existing”.  (see picture)

So far this solution has worked for everyone that has logged into the machine, both admins and non-admins.  I guess we will see if it holds.

invisibleSHIELD™ for iPhone

Posted on 13 April 2009 | No responses

One of my hobbies is destroying mobile phones.  The zeal with which I approach this hobby somethimes frightens me.  So because of that I needed to protect my iPhone housing and screen post haste.  I bought a  ifrogz case which really rocks, but the screen protector that it came with did not.  I then purchased some other screen protectors that also didn’t rock.  I stumbled on a review of the invisibleSHIELD™ for the iphone.  This product is make by ZAGG.  My invisibleshield arrived on Friday and I installed it on my phone.

Installation was pretty straight forward and I was up and running in no time (they have a short video on their site that shows the installation process).  The thing that is really unique about this product is that you use a spray to wet the protector before you install.  So far I love this thing.  It is nearly invisible and the touch feeling is pretty good.  It stays put and cleans up well.  I would highly recommend one of these for you iPhone.  They also make shields for cameras, iPods, watches and other cell phones.

iPhone Recovery Mode

Posted on 11 April 2009 | No responses

So I recently had to give in and get an iPhone for work. Since the 3G version does a decent job of supporting Exchange email and calendaring we started supporting the devices at work. I’ve had it for about 2 weeks now and this morning I turned it on to find the ominous message on the screen “Unable to connect to iTunes” and “No Service”. It further suggested that I need to restore my phone. Great. Clicking on the information screen on the phone shows “IMEI: Unknown” and “ICCID: Unknown”.

I connected the phone to the USB cable and iTunes displayed this lovely message:

Now what? I can’t restore because iTunes won’t even recognize it.  I tried removing and reinserting the SIM and several other vodoo tricks but nothing worked.  Thankfully I stumbled on a post that pointed me to an Apple tech doc about putting your phone into Recovery Mode.  Here is the link:

Here are the steps if you’d rather not follow the link:

1. Disconnect the USB cable from the iPhone , but leave the other end of the cable connected to your computer.
2. Power off the device (Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears, then slide the slider. Wait for the the iPhone to turn off.
3. Press and hold the Home button while reconnecting the USB cable to iPhone. When you reconnect the USB to iPhone, the device should then power on
4. Continue holding the Home button while iPhone starts up.
5. When you see “Connect to iTunes” on the iPhone screen, release the Home button and on your computer iTunes will display the recovery mode message: “iTunes has detected an iPhone in Recovery mode.  You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes”
6. Click OK and iTunes will download and reinstall the firmware and reset the phone.  I had to reboot before things worked – but this did work!

I hope this is a 1 time occurance.  Note: to recover applications you’ve purchased from the App Store, just login and re-download the app.  It will detect that you already own it and ask you if you want to download and install it again.  That is pretty cool – of course you have to remember what you all purchased.

Outlook 2007 – Internet email option greyed out

Posted on 29 March 2009 | No responses

I’m using Outlook 2007 for work email.  We used a customized configuration file when we rolled out 2007 across our company.  One of configured settings was to disallow the creation of internet email accounts.  This of course stops people from creating IMAP and POP3 accounts on our corporate machines.  For more information on creating an administrative install for office 2007 see here.

Of course tonight I was trying to trouble shoot an imap issue for a client and *duh* I couldn’t set up an IMAP account.  The Internet Email (IMAP, POP3) option in Outlook 2007 account settings was greyed out. To re-enable this feature edit the following registry key. Note: if this is getting set by Group Policy from your network it will still work to make the change, however next time your domain policy is applied the setting will change back.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12\Outlook\Options
Change the DisableIMAP Reg_Dword key to 0 to enable.  Do the same for any others you want
to enable.

VMware ESXi – Boot from SATA drive

Posted on 1 December 2008 | No responses

Most of the documentation you see indicates you cannot boot VMware ESXi from a sata or ide drive.  But you can.  I was installing ESXi v3.5 on a Dell Poweredge 830 with 4 SATA drives and the onboard SATA controller (non-raid).    During the install I got the error “Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 image to” .  Getting it to work was actually pretty quick and painless, after I found help on vm-help.com.

1. At the error screen during the install hit Alt-F1

2. This will drop you at the command prompt.  Login with user root and no password.

3. Naviagate to /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core and edit TargetFilter.py   (path case sensitive)

4. vi TargetFilter.py and look for the def IDEFilter(lun) section.

5. Modify line:

return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_IDE
to
return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_ISCSI

6. Save the file (esc :write :quit or esc :wq)

7. Back at the console type install. Install will start, but may still have an error. At the error type Alt-F1 the login, run install, and Alt-f2 to accept.

Source:
Vm-help.com

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