Network Administration & Consulting Services

If you need to change Time Zone for a lot XP computers, you can do this by simple :) command:

to change Time Zone to Jerusalem (GMT+02:00) run the following command:

Virtualization: An Introduction to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
The introduction of Hyper-V makes virtualization an even more compelling solution for IT environments. Get an overview of today’s virtualization market and see how Hyper-V improves the manageability, reliability, and security of virtualization.

Virtualization: Manage Your Virtual Environments with VMM 2008
System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a consolidated interface for managing your virtual infrastructure. The latest version adds support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, as well as for VMware virtual machines. Explore the new features and get an overview of using VMM to centralize your management tasks.

Virtualization: Getting Started with Microsoft Application Virtualization
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) allows you to deliver virtualized desktops to client systems throughout your organization. This simplifies system management and liberates employees from their desktops. Take a close look at how App-V works and discover how you can deploy it in your organization.

Virtualization: Achieving High Availability for Hyper-V
Consolidating servers onto fewer physical machines has many advantages, but it is extremely important that you plan for your systems to be highly available. Here’s a guide to using Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering to bring high availability to your Hyper-V virtual machines.

Virtualization: Backup and Disaster Recovery for Server Virtualization
Virtualization brings significant changes to disaster recovery. Here’s an introduction to how the Microsoft virtualization platform factors into your disaster recovery plan, as well as a deeper look into backup and restore options and considerations for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

Virtualization: Essential Tools for Planning Your Virtual Infrastructure
Is your infrastructure ready for virtualization? The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, a network-wide infrastructure assessment tool, can help you better understand your IT infrastructure and determine whether your systems are ready for upgrade or migration to a variety of technologies, including virtualization.

Continue at: blogs.technet.com

The Gold Standard for Desktop Virtualization Just Got Better

VMware® Workstation 6.5 provides the deepest OS support, best-in-class virtual machine architecture, the richest desktop user experience and an unmatched set of features to enhance productivity.

InfoWorld says that VMware Workstation 6.5 is “the gold standard for desktop virtualization…truly a world-class product and a pace-setter for the entire industry.”

VMware Workstation 6.5 is packed with new features, including:

• “Unity” view provides a seamless desktop experience.
• DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 2 graphics enable Windows 3D applications and games.
• Easy Install simplifies the creation of Windows and Linux virtual machines.
• Powerful Record and Replay for groundbreaking debugging capabilities.

Get details about all of the new features.

If you want to work / test / learn many of the VMware ESX Server advanced features, like VMotion, VMware High Availability (VMHA), and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), you should have SAN (Storage Area Network).

For my Home Lab I’m using OpenFiler. You can find a very good Step-By-Step tutorial about OpenFiler at well know Petri.co.il web site. Article by David Davis - “Use OpenFiler as your Free VMware ESX SAN Server“

I just want to add one small part to this tutorial. I think it’s not the best idea to use IP address from DHCP on Server, a specially on SAN :). So, I’ve configured my SAN to use static IP. Here is how to do that:

Full story at source: http://app-v.ca/

As result of battle between Microsoft and VMWare (for place on Virtualization market), VMWare announced that a new VMWARE ESXi server became FREE.
This news generated a lot of interest and many people started to try install VMWARE ESXi on VMWARE Workstation, just to see it and learn.

By little Googling you will find a lot of sites, where explained how to run ESX 3.0 server on VMWARE Workstation 6.x, but you will see that this tricks is not working for ESX 3.5. Equally they are working, but you unable to start virtual machine inside ESX.

To make ESX 3.5 fully working on VMWare Workstation we need to do the following steps….

Full story at source: http://app-v.ca/

If you try to sequence Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 (I’ve tried to do this in SoftGrid 4.5 RC) you will get a error and inside error report you will find “Code: 0×0000000000000000” and a lot of other, not very usefull information about this error.

Full Story At Source, App-V.ca

Last week I launched a brand new website dedicated to Virtualization Technologies and related technologies like System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Windows Server 2008 Core Installation, VMWare and Microsoft Application Virtualization, formerly known as SoftGrid Application. The website's main-page contains news and blogposts that I collect from all over the Internet. I'm planing to implement there Download and Video sections where you will find related downloads and Videos.

This website called: App-V.ca

So if you are planning, piloting or deploying any Virtualization Technologies please join now!

Please join App-V.ca and ask to become news-poster. Contact me admin at admininfo.ca

And, PLEASE :) promote my new endeavor, App-V.ca  by spreading the word!

I just finished with a script video_res.bat :). This scripts helps change the screen resolution in Windows Server 2008 Server Core. You can do this manually, but simple use Regedit, but you should know exactly what video driver is working right now in your system, my script does it for you, you just need to select the resolution and that it! Here is a content of video_res.bat:

Remember to Log Off and Log On again ;).

1. Enable CPU virtualisation assistance and DEP in the BIOS.
2. Install Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 (Core Installation).
3. Determine the NIC ID: netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces.
4. Set the IP address for NIC, let say for NIC #2: netsh interface ipv4 set address name=”2″ source=static address=192.168.1.3 mask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.1.1.
5. Set the DNS: netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name=”2″ address=192.168.1.2 index=1.
6. Rename server: netdom renamecomputer %computername% /NewName:HyperSvr1.
7. Reboot for that to take effect: shutdown /r /t 0.
8. Join it to domain: netdom join %computername% /domain:admininfo.local /userd:administrator /passwordd:*.
9. Reboot for that to take effect: shutdown /r /t 0.
10. Copy CoreConfigurator onto the Core server and configured any users, groups, enabled RDP, firewall settings, etc…
11. Download and copy the Hyper-V update onto the server.
12. Install the Hyper-V update: wusa.exe Windows6.0-KB950050-x64.msu.
13. Install the Hyper-V role: start /w ocsetup.exe Microsoft-Hyper-V.
14. Reboot.
15. Download and install Remote Management for Windows Vista.