I like to perform unattended installations of my operating systems, like Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 using autounattend.xml so that requires that the image have the required drivers to recognize critical devices like mass storage hardware. One of the performance optimizations that I always include in our Windows...
Historically VMware has not used the strongest hashing algorithms to store root passwords on ESXi or ESX hosts. And to make matters worse, ESX/i 4.1 had a major security hole that was open for over four months, which you can read about here. The short story is that ROOT passwords...
Yesterday I stumbled upon a blog post about a free Microsoft security tool. No matter how secure you think your system is, it can always be more secure. So I eagerly read Ed Bott's article about Microsoft's EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit). I quickly installed it, configured it for maximum...
Virtualization has taken off like wild fire, and now organizations are in the process of virtualizing tier-1 applications like Exchange 2010. However, sizing and designing Exchange 2010 for a virtualized environment requires some additional care and thought versus a traditional physical server deployment. Critical sizing requirements like memory, vCPUs, and...
Update 2/11/2011: VMware has re-published the article and limited the applicability to 4.1 U1 (released 2/10/2011), since it directs you to use the new VMware Update Manager Utility. The new procedure is easier to follow and uses a new tool that makes it debut in 4.1 U1. However, IMHO, it's...
Last week Citrix XenDesktop 5.0 was released, which I was eagerly anticipating since XD 4.0 had a number of warts which made it unusable for the environment I support. XD5 was supposed to fix all of the show stoppers, so the day it was released I downloaded the HUGE 18GB...
Veeam is offering free, permanent, licenses for Backup and Replication v5 and Veeam Monitor Plus with Business View. These are NFR (not for resale) licenses, and limited to two sockets. But it's great for a home lab, demo, training, etc. I don't know how long the deal is good for,...
Back in 2009 I wrote a blog about the possibility of Microsoft supporting two-factor or multi-factor authentication for some Exchange services. For organizations which require high security, such as the DoD, allowing external access to email requires additional protection. With Exchange 2007 and prior versions there was no easy way...
In my previous blog I discussed how the VMware 4.1 VAAI 'write same' implementation in a 3PAR T400 showed a dramatic 20x increase in performance, creating an eager zeroed thick VMDK at 10GB/sec (yes, GigaBYTES a second). The other major SCSI primitive that VAAI 4.1 leverages is XCOPY (SCSI opcode 0x83). What this...
So in my previous blog entry I wrote about how I upgraded a 3PAR T400 to support the new VMware vSphere 4.1 VAAI extensions. I did some quick tests just to confirm the array was responding to the three new SCSI primitives, and all was a go. But to better...
For those of you using vSphere 4.1, one of the cool new features is VAAI support. What is VAAI? VAAI is a deep level of integration between select storage arrays and the ESX kernel. The three VAAI functions released in 4.1 are:•Atomic Test & Set (ATS), which is used during...
Update: I came up with a new parts list based on Sandy Bridge parts. You can check it out here.Currently I dual-boot my home computer with ESXi 4.1, but that's getting old. Yes, you can run ESXi 4.1 inside of VMware Workstation 7.1 (and I do), but you can't run...