Cool Tool: Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

For anyone doing regular checks of Microsoft AD this tool is a must have:
With the Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool, you can read your Active Directory structure through Microsoft ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO). The Active Directory Topology Diagrammer tool automates Microft Office Visio to draw a diagram of the Active Directory Domain topology, your Active [...]

Checking for snapshots, html email report!

When reading the VMTN forum I stumbled upon a topic about checking the VMFS for snapshots. Besides snaphunter by Xtravirt, which is an excellent script, there isn’t much out there. You can check the VirtualCenter database for snapshots but this way you would not notice the orphaned snapshots. (Orphaned snapshot occur when the vmsd file [...]

Undocumented VCB config.js feature

One of my customers wanted to use the default VCB framework but did not want to quiesce the VM for several reasons. (Databases, Active Directory etc.) I could not find an option in the config.js file but noticed the following in the file glue.js:
// A fallback to be able to switch to [...]

P2V’ing a Suse Linux server

I just P2V’ed a Suse Linux Server with the cold boot iso. When booting I was confronted with a kernel panic. This is caused by the fact that the modules for the LSI Logic or Bus Logic SCSI card aren’t available, which causes the root volume to be unmountable. I tried to boot from the [...]

Swap files in 3.5 and the EMC Celerra PDF

The PDF I blogged about yesterday included info about 3.0.x and 3.5 features. One of the things that was missing was the option to have the swapfiles created locally. In 3.0.x this done by setting the option “sched.swap.dir” in the .vmx file. The only problem is that this prohibits you from using VMotion for these [...]

Installing the Converter plugin crashes the VirtualCenter client - PART II

For those who did not have any luck with the deleting of the dll(ssleay32.dll) described in this blog, there’s another possibility to enable the VMware Converter plugin without crashing your VirtualCenter client:
Go to the following registry key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware\VMware Infrastructure Client\Preferences\UI]
And set the following key to “Enabled”
“C:\\Program Files\\VMware\\Infrastructure\\Virtual Infrastructure Client\\Plugins\\Converter Enterprise\\plugin.dll”

Nice iSCSI EMC/VMware PDF online

VMware just uploaded a cool PDF about configuring an iSCSI SAN. This particular PDF is created by EMC and deals about an EMC Celerra iSCSI SAN but there’s more than enough useful info in there for those who don’t own an EMC iSCSI SAN.
The cool thing about the Celerra is the possibility to use “network [...]

Installing the Converter plugin crashes the VirtualCenter client - Part I

Today I encountered a weird phenomenon which I did not encounter yet. I installed the VMware Converter Plugin for VirtualCenter client, so far so good. Only thing left to do was to tick the checkbox to enable the plugin. But as soon as I ticked it the VirtualCenter client crashed without any warning. I rebooted [...]