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HowTo – create a volume greater than 2 terabytes in win2k3 (min sp1)

Tom — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:59:12 +0000

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.

Open Windows Disk management.
Click Action -> Rescan disks to make your new disk appear, if greater than 2tb it will appear as 2 partitions on 1 disk
Right click on the disk and initialize the disk
Open a windows command prompt
type “diskpart”
type “list disk”
select the new disk that’s over 2tb
convert gpt
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.

HowTo – Remove the U3 system from your thumb drive

Tom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:02:47 +0000

I love lifehacker.com. I always find usefull posts like this one below.

http://lifehacker.com/5057484/remove-u3-to-speed-up-your-flash-drive

This is very useful for us Linux users. It’s so annoying to plug a u3 drive into a linux o/s. Anyhow download the utility and clean up your U3 enabled usb thumb drive here: http://www.u3.com/uninstall/default.aspx

HowTo – publish flash animation with IIS6

Tom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:19:46 +0000

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!

HowTo – remove a windows service from cli?

Tom — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:24:17 +0000

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.

HowTo – Windows shutdown GUI and remote shutdown capabilities

Tom — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:38:56 +0000

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.

HowTo – VMWare VI3 Windows Guest and USB over IP

Tom — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:20:41 +0000

In the last year we had a physical server’s O/S have a severe blue screen error which required the server to be rebuilt. This server was a critical server for our operation and the downtime was not easy. In order to prevent that from happening in the future we decided that server would be a better fit in the virtual infrastructure because of the High Availability offered by Vmotion. The only problem is this server requires a USB license dongle. Everyone knows that you don’t have a USB port to plug into when running VI3, so what do you do?

Keyspan USB server (USB over IP)

This specific USB server allows you to choose which USB port(s) you want to dedicate to each server. Some USB servers do not allow you to dedicate each port to a different server.

What a breeze to setup as well. After you mount the device, give it power and ethernet…Just install the Keyspan software. The software client will find the USB server automatically. Than you need to edit the config to dedicate the USB device to that VM and you’re ready for action.

Now you can reboot and vmotion to your heart’s desire and not lose connectivity to your USB license dongle. Great little trick if you’re as dedicated to virtualization as we are!

HowTo – update windows 2000 group policy from cli

Tom — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:51:00 +0000

secedit /refreshpolicy machine_policy