Whilst it turned out to be edir corruption of our user container its reoccurred, my moneys on corruption again!

You can however, investigate in detail by enabling nal debugging and tracing what happens. With debugging enabled to the level you need logs will be generated which should hopefully give you a clue what’s wrong. You have two options

•  manually hack in the relevant reg settings

• OR use the naldiag.exe tool,  it will create the registry keys for logging for you, You should fine it located under

c:\Program Files\Novell\ZENworks\NalDiag.exe

USEFUL LINKS

a.k.a where I got the information from

The importance of launcher configuration

Enable debug logging in ZDM

Slow Nal start-up or refresh

USAGE

Mklink – vista/windows 7/ windows 2008 / windows 8

There are 3 options for mklink

• Symbolic links – selected via the /D flag - these are like short cuts - a symbolic link to a directory is created, the default is a file symbolic link . For those of us from Linux think softlink
• Hard link – selected via the /H flag – only for files – if you delete the hard link you delete the actual file as opposed to symbolic links where you just delete the link to the file
• Junction – selected via the /J flag – created a directory junction i.e. hard link to a directory

Linkd - only on older machines such as XP, mklink is far better

LINKD Link [/D] Target

REMOTE ACCESS TO LINKS

I suggest using a junction, they work remotely by default, however if you need to access a symbolic link remotely you can by editing the symbolic link evaluation. MS explain this on technet here - the relevant part being:

Evaluations. A user can enable or disable any of the four evaluations that are available in symbolic links. The available evaluations are:

• Local-to-local describes a computer accessing a local symbolic link that points to a local file or folder.
• Local-to-remote is a computer accessing a local symbolic link that points to a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path using the server message block (SMB) protocol.
• Remote-to-local is a computer accessing a remote symbolic link that points to a local file or folder using SMB.
• Remote-to-remote describes a computer accessing a remote symbolic link that points to a remote UNC path using SMB.

Cloning images containing the McAfee Agent can cause problems for ePO. Duplicate GUIDs and MAC addresses cause the problems.

Once the image is deployed, VirusScan Enterprise protects agains changes, so the batch file below needs to have these protections disabled prior to attempting changing the GUIDs and MAC addresses.

Do this before closing the image so that when the newly deployed image is first started new values will populate automatically with virtually no likely of duplicates. (Well, the MAC address needs to be considered in your environment.)

In order to make either registry change, you will have to temporarily change the default settings within VSE to allow the changes to occur.

From the VirusScan Console

• Access Protection > Properties
• Uncheck (unblock) ‘Prevent McAfee services from being stopped’
• Common Standard Protection
• Uncheck ‘Prevent modification of McAfee files and settings’
• Uncheck ‘Prevent modification of McAfee Common Management Agent’

Then run the batch file below, or manually make the changes.

DeleteAgentGUID-MacAddress.Bat:

@echo off
title McAfee AgentGUID and MacAddress Removal Tool – by Ron Metzger
echo.
echo The McAfee Agent communicates with ePO, Protection Pilot, or McAfee’s
echo update services, using registry values of AgentGUID and MacAddress, to
echo uniquely identify each system. Imaging or duplicating a system breaks
echo these unique identifiers. Clearing these values, followed by a reboot or
echo services restart, repopulates these values with new and unique entries.
echo.
echo Prior to duplication, clear these registry entries and create the image
echo before restarting services or rebooting.
echo.
echo Otherwise,
echo.
echo After duplication, clear these values, then reboot or restart the services.
echo.
echo VSE v8.7i (or above) by default, self-protects against certain changes.
echo In order to make either registry change, temporarily disable the
echo self-protection settings within VSE v8.7i (or above).
echo.
echo From the VirusScan Console:
echo Access Protection > Properties
echo Uncheck ‘Prevent McAfee services from being stopped’
echo Common Standard Protection
echo Uncheck (un)Block ‘Prevent modification of McAfee files and settings’
echo Uncheck (un)Block ‘Prevent modification of McAfee Common Management Agent’
echo.
Choice.exe /C:YN /N ” Press Y to continue, N to skip . . . ?”
if ErrorLevel 2 goto Exit

echo Stopping services . . .
net stop McAfeeFramework /yes
net stop McShield /yes
net stop McTaskManager /yes
echo Stopping services, done.

echo Deleting registry entries . . .
REG delete “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Network Associates\ePolicy Orchestrator\Agent” /v AgentGUID /F
REG delete “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Network Associates\ePolicy Orchestrator\Agent” /v MacAddress /F
REG delete “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Network Associates\ePolicy Orchestrator\Agent” /v AgentGUID /f
REG delete “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Network Associates\ePolicy Orchestrator\Agent” /v MacAddress /f
echo Deleting registry entries, done.

echo.
echo Please re-enable the self-protection settings within
echo VSE v8.7i (or above) to there original values.
echo.
echo From the VirusScan Console:
echo Access Protection > Properties
echo Check ‘Prevent McAfee services from being stopped’
echo Common Standard Protection
echo Check Block ‘Prevent modification of McAfee files and settings’
echo Check Block ‘Prevent modification of McAfee Common Management Agent’
echo.
Choice.exe /C:YN /N ” Press YN to continue . . . ?”
echo.
echo About to restart McAfee services.
echo This will repopulate AgentGUID and MacAddress values.
echo.
echo Please do Not start these services if Imaging this system Now. (Choose Skip.)
echo.
Choice.exe /c:YN /T:N,15 /N ” Restart Services? Y to continue, N [or wait 15 seconds] to skip . . .
if ErrorLevel 2 goto Exit

echo Starting services . . .
net start McAfeeFramework /yes
net start McShield /yes
net start McTaskManager /yes
echo Starting services, done.

Choice /c:YN /T:Y,15 /N ” Press YN [or wait 15 seconds] to continue . . .
:Exit

This batch file can be used to prep and image or to simply change the values after the image has been issued.Hope this helps. Post back with more questions.

Thanks,

Ron Metzger

originally posted here

Deploying Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 templates with vmxnet3 renames the NIC as #2

Symptoms
When deploying virtual machines from a Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7 template configured with the vmxnet3 Ethernet device, the resulting virtual machine’s guest operating system shows the Ethernet adapter as:

VMXNET Device #2 in Device Manager
Local Area connection #2 in Network Properties

Resolution
This issue occurs when virtual adapter VMXNET3 is used.
To workaround this issue, try one of these options:

• Use E1000 virtual network cards in Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 templates.
• Apply the Microsoft hotfix for this issue. For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2344941.

This hotfix may resolve issues with duplicate MACs when deploying Windows 2008 R2 from template using an E1000 driver.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of January 12, 2011. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

From :
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1020078

When you try to activate Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:
Windows could not be activated. Key management services (KMS) host could not be located in domain name system (DNS), please have your system administrator verify that a KMS is published correctly in DNS. Error: 0×80092328 Description: DNS name does not exist.
Alternatively, you may receive error code 0x800705b4:
This operation returned because the timeout period expired.
This hotfix changes the behavior in which a Domain Name System (DNS) client queries DNS for Key Management Service (KMS). This hotfix applies to DNS clients that are running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Important The most common causes for this error are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
929826 Error message when you try to activate Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Business, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008: “Code 0x8007232b”
We recommend that you try the methods that are documented in this article before you install this hotfix.

To query DNS, a DNS client that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 first queries without appending DNS suffixes. If the first query fails, the DNS client then queries again by appending DNS suffixes.

However, this behavior may cause the KMS auto-detection feature not to work. The KMS auto-detection feature relies on the Service Location (SRV) resource record, that is returned by a DNS query, to specify the location of a KMS host. Because of customer’s DNS configuration, the SRV record may be a multi-label name. In this case, the DNS client cannot locate a multi-label SRV record in the first DNS query. If the first query times out, the DNS client will not run another query by appending suffixes. Instead of a followed suffix query, a failed initial multi-label query is submitted to the upstream DNS host servers that are outside the domain. Therefore, the KMS auto-detection feature does not work and a KMS host cannot be located.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981197

Now, in a previous posting, I mentioned that I would talk more about SSSU, especially in talking about how to export the information and then put it into a human readable format. SSSU can output xml format, but that requires some type of xml parsing tool. I did mention that Microsoft’s Log Parser tool could be used, but really I’m lazy, and it’s a bit cumbersome. And truth be told, I never got it to work just right.
So last night I sat down and did some old fashioned thinking about how I can get the information I need, but easier and with less effort. I started toying with powershell as it’s a good friend in the VMware space. I have to confess though that I have a Mac. Yes, I enjoy monotasking. Nothing wrong with that I then realized (as I sometimes forget) that I had a whole delicious CLI on my mac. This includes great tools like grep and diff! Well and a lot more, but I’ll stick to those for now. (Note that you can get grep and diff for Windows, via either the Windows versions of those tools, or using Cygwin). Fear not win32 folks, you are covered!
Let me take a step back and cover the premise for wanting to gather information from SSSU. As we know, Command View is a web-based interface for communicating with the EVAs. While it does provide lots of information, it is troublesome to navigate around and get that information easily. One off kinds of things, certainly. But pulling in lots of info easily, I think not. One big flaw, in my mind, is that CV talks to the EVAs via the SAN, and not via IP. Why is this a flaw? Well, for instance, SSSU can’t talk directly to the EVAs themselves. Rather, it has to talk to the CV server (which is why it prompts you when you fire it up for a “manager”). This also means you can’t use SSSU to do anything if your CV server has bit the dust. But I digress.
From the arrays, I want to gather information on my vdisks, my controllers, snapshots, disks, and my disk groups. I want to gather some information once, some monthly, and some on a more regular basis.
For the vdisks, I run (via SSSU) this command: LS VDISK FULL > vdisk.txt (This will output the information into a text file in the directory where the sssu.exe is located) Then, I fire up my command line, and grep that sucker for some info:
grep “familyname\|allocatedcapacity\|redundancy\|diskgroupname” textfile > date_vdisk.txt
This output will give me a file with the date that has the information I am specifically looking for

As stated before, I am quite lazy and so I could use (or you could use) awk (another great command line text processor) to generate the output in a better format. But instead, I keep it like this. Note that allocatedcapacity is the vdisk size in GB. Now, since I’m generating these files monthly, I can use the diff command to compare two months and see what has changed (disk grows, adds, deletes, etc).
diff -y date_vdisk1.txt date_vdisk2.txt | grep “familyname\|allocatedcapacity”

Note the | in there. The older date is on the left, and the newer date is on the right. So it’s easy to see which has changed and by how much. Arguably you could make this even easier, but again, lazy. And this works for me, so your mileage may vary.
Since these are simple text files, it’s easy and pain free to keep them around. Overall, I use this information for vdisks to track growth, easy at a glance for what vdisk is what size/raid level, and you can also pull out info to find out what controller has what disks.
This leads me into talking about what information I grab from my controllers. Now, one thing to note: The EVA4400 series only has one listed Controller (in this case Controller 1). This is because of how it is designed: both controllers are in the same housing, sharing a back plane. We have three 8100 series, each having two physically separate controllers, listed as Controller 1 and Controller 2.
First, to find out ALL the info on your controllers, do LS CONTROLLER FULL in SSSU. The output will be big and full of interesting details. One other thing to note: SSSU denotes them as Controllers 1 and 2. Command View denotes them as Controllers A and B. Lame! For what I need, I don’t need to keep controller info like I do vdisk info. I will do an initial grab after an XCS code update to keep handy.
One pretty handy way to find out what snapshots you have on any given EVA for a point in time is to use LS SNAPSHOT. You can also do an LS SNAPSHOT FULL if you want the full info per snapshot (like the vdisk info). The key difference between a snapshot and a normal vdisk is the line item sharingrelationship. A normal vdisk will have none, but a snapshot will say snapshot

When it comes to gathering information on disks, I use this primarily to check firmware levels. If you are an EVA owner, you know that as part of the care and feeding of an EVA comes making sure all drives are at the most current level of firmware. Updates are also usually done and bundled with XCS updates. One thing to be aware is that with drive failures, replacements may not always come with the latest firmware. They should, but I have not always seen that. Thankfully firmware updates are non-invasive (for the most part). I will cover an XCS code upgrade in a future blog post (our EVA4400 is due).
So, if you do LS DISK FULL from SSSU, you will get all the info from each disk. You can then just grep for fun and profit!
grep “diskname\|firmware” disks.txt

So you are saying hey that’s great, but I have multiple kinds of disks in my EVA. So, you need to know what model of drive so you can keep things sorted as to what firmware is for what drive. Easy way is to just sort by disk group. Since you built your EVA correctly, you know only to put drives of the same type and speed into the same group right?
grep “diskname\|diskgroupname\|firmware” disks.txt

You can also grab the model number for the drives by tossing in modelnumber to the grep.
And finally, since you all are probably bored to tears now, I grab the size of the disk group to know what kind of overall growth or change occurs on each group. I can also use this information to plan out new server storage requests, and manage to 90% capacity. Easier to give management a shiny graph saying “Look, almost out of disk. Checkbook time!”
Okay, so that about wraps up what I use SSSU for. If I think about anything else neat that I do, I’ll be sure to blog about it. The next blog topic will be about WEBES, its use, the install, and the fact that it actually works pretty good.

From h t t p://www.virtualizetips.com/2010/09/ (virtualizetips is currently hosting malawareso i can’t link direct to them as google/antivirus filters will block my site- 14 oct 2011)

Symptoms
Configuring VMware High Availability (HA) fails
The vSphere Client may show one service console, however running the esxcfg-vswif -l command while logged into the ESX service console, reveals additional service consoles
You see the messages:
Cannot complete the configuration of the HA agent on the host. See the task details for additional information.
Misconfiguration in the host network setup
Resolution
This issue occurs if all the hosts in the cluster do not share the same service console or management network configurations. Some hosts may have service consoles using a different name or may have more service consoles than other hosts.

Address the network configuration differences between the hosts if you are going to use the Shut Down or Power Off isolation responses because these options trigger a VMware HA isolation in the event of Service Console or Management Network failures.

If you are using the Leave VM Powered on isolation response, the option to ignore these messages is available in VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3.

To configure VirtualCenter to ignore these messages, set the advanced option das.bypassNetCompatCheck to true:

Note: When using the das.bypassNetCompatCheck option, the heartbeat mechanism during configuration used in VirtualCenter 2.5 only pairs symmetric IP addresses within subnets across nodes. For example, in a two node cluster, if host A has vSwif0 “Service Console” 10.10.1.x 255.255.255.0 and vSwif1 “Service Console 2” 10.10.5.x and host B has vSwif0 “Service Console” 10.10.2.x 255.255.255.0 and vSwif1 “Service Console 2” 10.10.5.x, the heartbeats only happen on vSwif1. Starting in vCenter Server 4.0, they can be paired across subnets if pings are allowed across the subnets. However, VMware recommends having them within subnets.
Right-click the cluster, then click Edit Settings.
Deselect Turn on VMware HA.
Wait for all the hosts in the cluster to unconfigure HA.
Right-click the cluster, and choose Edit Settings.
Select Turn on Vmware HA, then select VMware HA from the left pane.
Select Advanced options.
Add the option das.bypassNetCompatCheck with the value True.
Click OK on the Advanced Options screen, then click OK again to accept the cluster setting changes.
Wait for all the ESX hosts in the cluster to reconfigure for HA.

From http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1019200

All virtual machine disk files (VMDKs) are presented to VMs as SAN disks and Windows 2008 changed how SAN disks were handled, in effect they are offline until you set them online. You will see the “Disk is Offline because policy was set by an administrator” message.

First you need to change how Windows 2008 sees the SAN devices, then you need to clear a readonly flag, then you are good to go. Using ‘diskpart’ enter the following commands

DISKPART> SAN POLICY=OnlineAll
DISKPART> RESCAN
DISKPART> SELECT DISK 1
DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
DISKPART> ONLINE DISK
DISKPART> CONVERT MBR

Now you can use your normal mechanisms to add, format, etc. the disk into the system.

http://www.astroarch.com/blog/?tag=policy-set-by-administrator

ILO Setup

ILO – Integrated Lights Out

This is a very cool feature that allows one to manage the server box remotely. Idea is physically you don’t have to be in the data center to manage servers. ILO interface provides exact same interface as you will see when you have connected monitor, keyboard and mouse to each individual server.

Each server comes with default DNS name for ILO web interface (it’s DHCP enabled! so if your network has DHCP IP addresses available, then it will pick up the one for it’s factory default DNS name.)

Default DNS names usually in the pattern ILO
For example serial id for server is HPPRO1234567, then DNS name to access server using ILO would be ILOHPPRO1234567 and it would be available at http://ILOHPPRO1234567

It comes with default administrator user id / password. This user id/password should be changed immediately in order to make your server secure.

Once you login using with given credentials, four tabs that are available for use are: System Status, Remote Console, Virtual Devices, Administration

Change ILO Administrator password
Go to “Administration” -> “User Administration” -> “Select a User” -> “View / Modify” Also if needed you can create more users and give them selective permissions to manage the server using ILO.

How to recover the ILO password
In a worst case scenario where you forgot the user id/ password for ILO login, then only way to reset the password is by connecting physically to the box. Make sure monitor and keyboard is connected to box and boot the machine.

Press F8 to enter into ILO Configuration. Then go to Users -> Modify user and change the ILO admin password which can help to get back to use ILO again.

Change the ILO DNS name

* Before you get started, need to get the static ip address and dns name entry configured for this ILO interface.
* Now login to ILO web interface using default dns name (http://DefaultDNSNAME) using default user id/password if that’s not yet changed. let’s say http://ILOHPPRO1234567)
* Click on Administration tab -> settings -> network. Then first disable the DHCP.
* Enter correct values for IP Address, subnet mask and Gateway IP Address that you allocated for new ILO DNS Name in Eman.
* Enter new iLO 2 Subsystem Name

And click on “Apply” to make changes effective. Following message will be displayed :

Please wait – iLO 2 is being reset with new changes. You will automatically be redirected to the login page in 59 seconds. If an SSL error message is displayed, please restart your browser and re-login.

It will logout you in one or two minutes. Or you can open the new browser session and now try to login using new ilo DNS name. For example http://newdnsname and it should redirect to login screen.

Troubleshooting ILO DNS Name

But for some reasons if you haven’t configured ILO dns correctly, then you may not be able to access the ILO web interface. In this case to debug the configuration, you need to connect that machine physically.

Following are steps:

* Connect Monitor to this machine (connect to front port, it’s easy!) and have keyboard connection at the back.
* Power on the machine. Once system start booting… You will see white screen display “HP Proliant Servers ….” After this keep on pressing F8 key to get you into ILO configuration Screen.
* Now go to Network -> DHCP menu
* Make sure DHCP is set to OFF (use spacebar to change the settings)
* Verify ILO name has correct value.
* Now go to Menu Network -> TCP/IP Go to IP Address selection You can’t change these settings if DHCP is ON Update IP Address to new ILP DNS entry. Also Enter correct values for subnet and default getway.

Save the settings (F10) and exit. Now you should be able to login to ILO interface using new dns name like http://newdnsname

Note NIC Mac address

We have connected the server on LAN port 1. Hence note the value of Port 1 NIC MAC address, we will need this value to do the Linux installation using the PXE boot.

Go to tab “System Status” -> “System Information” -> NIC -> Port 1 NIC MAC address

from :
http://adyamarathon.wordpress.com/ilo-setup/