mainesysadmin.com

For a task that is REALLY easy it took a more googling than I had anticipated to come up with the solution.  Once your volume has been delivered to the server it is important to initialize the disk but not to create any partitions.

1. Open Windows Disk management.
2. Click Action -> Rescan disks to make your new disk appear, if greater than 2tb it will appear as 2 partitions on 1 disk
3. Right click on the disk and initialize the disk
4. Open a windows command prompt
5. type “diskpart”
6. type “list disk”
7. select the new disk that’s over 2tb
8. convert gpt
9. Now from windows Disk Management you should see a single disk greater than 2tb

Information on the diskpart utility:   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/300415

The most important prereqs include Windows 2k3 is up to at least sp1 and that no partitions exist on the disk.

Before recently I had not required to publish any flash animations with a windows server running IIS6.  Come to find out that it is really easy to do.  I ran across the following blog below with the correct information.  I’ll include the steps below the url for posterity.

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/rymoore/adding-flv-mime-type-in-iis-4198

Adding .flv MIME type in IIS

1) Select the site to configure in IIS, right click and select “Properties”
2) Under HTTP Headers Tab, select “File Types” under the MIME Map section and select “New Type”
3) Type “.flv” as the associated extension and “video/x-flv” as the content type.
4) Select “OK” and you’re ready to fly!

I’ve been doing a little testing with NetApp Deduplication lately but only in a limited test environment.  I know one thing for certain, deduplication and compression do not mix at all!  When you start to look at this technology make sure you’re dealing with uncompressed data.  This posting is more or less a bookmark for:

“Scott’s Quick Guide to Setting up Netapp Deduplication”

NetApp does provide a useful windows exe called “find_space” which you can run in report mode against any windows data volume.

If you’d like to delete a service from your view from within windows server 2003 you can use the following commands.

First top the service:

net stop “service name”

the next command will delete it…

sc delete “service name”
***The “service name” isn’t always the name listed under names when you bring up the services console gui.  Select the service you’d like to delete and review the properties.  The actual windows registry service name will be listed at the top of the properties sheet for that service.

From a windows command prompt you can get a shutdown gui.  This is cool because you can use it to execute remote shutdowns with ease and not have to remember all the flags.

start->run->  cmd

c:\shutdown.exe -i

The gui should be launched.  I find it handy when a server is supposed to reboot and gets “stuck”.  Some windows servers just don’t shutdown cleanly and hang on the process.  If you execute another remote shutdown command you can force the server out of the endless shutdown, and save yourself from a drive into the server room.

I almost put my fist through my fancy dell lcd at work today. Microsoft Visio is the bane of my existence when it comes to the line tool to connect devices and shapes. The end result is pretty nice and makes the entire infrastructure much easier to grasp when the data just isn’t sitting idle in an excel table…

http://mainesysadmin.com/visio/mphc_vmware_architecture.htm

There’s more work to be done. I want to add another sheet showing the pnics and pswitches related to the vswitches. This will also show the etherchannel bundles and the active and standby nics. Coming soon…

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=1560391

Using 2GB Fibre Channel Drivers on ESX Server 3.0.1
Products

VMware ESX Server
VMware VirtualCenter
Details

ESX Server 3.0.1 is installed with 4GB Fibre Channel drivers by default. However, the following conditions require you to roll back to 2GB Fibre Channel drivers, which are available on the VMware Infrastructure CD.

*
MSCS clustering on an ESX Server system requires 2GB Fibre Channel drivers.

*
Some arrays are qualified only with 2GB HBA and Fibre Channel drivers in ESX Server 3.0. These arrays are footnoted in the ESX Server 3.x Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_san_guide.pdf).

Solution

To determine which Fibre Channel drivers are installed

1.
Use the command vmkload_mod -l to determine which drivers are installed.

2.
Review the command output. 4GB drivers are indicated by lpfcdd_732, qla2200_707, or qla2300_707. If one of these is present, modify your drivers.

To modify installed Fibre Channel drivers

1.
Uninstall any 4GB drivers using the command rpm -e <4GB_driver_name>.

Example:

rpm -e VMware-esx-drivers-scsi-qla2200-v7.07-7.7.4.1vmw-29822

The actual driver name varies, depending on the Fibre Channel manufacturer and ESX Server build number.

2.
Install the 2GB drivers using the command rpm -Uvh <2GB_driver_name>.

Example:

rpm -Uvh VMware-esx-drivers-scsi-qla2300-v7xx-7.4.0.1vmw-29822.i386.rpm

The actual driver name varies, depending on the Fibre Channel manufacturer and ESX Server build number.

3.

In the file /etc/vmware/esx.conf, change:
*
lpfcdd_732 to lpfcdd_7xx

*
qla2200_707 to qla2200_7xx

*
qla2300_707 to qla2300_7xx

4.
Issue the command:

esxcfg-boot -b

Also known as update-boot, this option implies -g (regenerate-grub) plus a new initrd creation. The command looks in esx.conf to see what is there and builds an appropriate initial RAM disk (initrd) and puts the appropriate data on the grub.conf kernel command line.

5.
Reboot the system.

6.
(Optional) Follow the instructions again in To determine which Fibre Channel drivers are installed (above). Ensure that all instances of 4GB Fibre Channel drivers were replaced with 2GB Fiber Channel drivers.

Product Versions

VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x