Process Explorer v14.1

Windows Sysinternals released Process Explorer v14.1 a couple days ago.

A necessary tool for anyone running Windows clients and servers. Process Explorer gives you a deep view into processes running on a Windows system. It allows you to view a process’s associated dlls, file handles, open files, open directories, etc. A great tool for tracking down potential issues with a running application.

Download Process Explorer v14.1 here.

Windows Upgrade

Now this is pretty cool. This guy, Andy, upgraded through every major version of Windows from 1.0 to Windows 7.

More information can be found at his website here.

My Week in Geek – February 4, 2011

A weekly post (hopefully!?) of blogs, articles, sites, gadgets, issues, and other stuff I have found that is of interest to me (and I remembered to bookmark).

1. A new book VMware vSphere Design by Forbes Guthrie, Scott Lowe and Maish Saidel-Keesing is set for release on February 28, 2011 March 2011. You can pre-order a copy from Amazon here – I did. The books website is here – wonder if there are any plans to make the web site a resource for the book.???
    
2. A Multivendor Post on Using iSCSI with VMware vSphere. Excellent post on configuring iSCSI and storage multipathing. Speaking of iSCSI attached storage, here is a great post/script that shows How to Manage iSCSI targets with CLI part 1, part 2 can be found here. Staying with storage theme here – this is another nice powershell script to collect and process vscsistats – I looked over the docs but haven’t tried it out yet.
    
3. After updating to vCenter Server 4.1 on Monday morning (which went without a hitch btw) I noticed my vNetwork Distributed Switches had an upgrade note on them. I did not notice this until I was outside of the maintenance window so I did some searching around for information on upgrading this. I found this post in the VMware communities on it and this video on features of the 4.1 vDS and here is a step-by-step post for the vDS upgrade. All of your ESXi host have to be version 4.1 before you can upgrade the vDS to 4.1, the upgrade wizard will not allow you to upgrade if any of your host connected to the switch are not compatible. My hosts are still on 4.0 and I plan to upgrade them next week.
    
4. PowerCLI script for finding orphaned files. The script will enumerate all orphaned vmdk files on all datastores configured in your environment.
    
5. SSL Certificates and ESXi – I am currently taking the VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Security [V4.x] course offered at TCC. We covered this in class and I thought this post was a great reference.
    
6. Late last week I posted about DropBox, a cool service that allows you to store, share, and sync files. I downloaded the FREE DropBox iPhone app earlier this week and it is AWESOME! I am able to access those same files anywhere from my phone.
    
7. With VMware releasing the VCAP-DCA and VCAP-DCD exams there has been a lot of information out there. Here is an interesting post entitled How long does it take to become a VCDX with some very valuable information on the path to and the process of VMware certifications. The author of the post has also put together an EXCELLENT set of study notes for the VCAP-DCA exam AND a bunch of mock labs AND here is another great list of resources at VMwareVideos.com. I think the VCAP-DCA is going to be my next goal so I am sure I will be visiting these resources often. If you are interested the latest blueprint for the VCAP-DCA exam is here.
    
8. We are migrating our AD from Windows 2003 to 2008 (I know it’s only 2011). Here is a technet blog post – Tool for migrating IAS configuration settings to NPS is now available! that we found helpful.
    
9. Have run into this a couple of time now – WinScan Malware/Spyware. Win Scan is a rogue malicious pain in the ass false system tool that pretends to be a part of Windows operating system and reports erroneous errors with the hard disk and RAM. We have found this on several personal PCs that folks have dropped off for us to look at (if you work in the IT department of a small company you know how this works). Several malware removal tools will take care of this but here is a decent set of instructions to manually remove the malicious WinScan application. People that create these kind of things should be shot!
    
10. Next week I will be upgrading my ESXi 4.0 hosts to ESXi 4.1. Good times!
     

Have a great weekend!

Unix tail (like) utility for Windows

Bare Metal Software’s Bare Tail

Bare Tail is a handy little free utility that allows you to monitor log files on Windows real-time. Basically a GUI of the Unix command tail -f.

Allows you to tail monitor multiple files. Pretty neat check it out here http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/index.php

The Windows 2003 Resource kit contains a command line tail utility that is also pretty handy.

Windows Disk Defrag Tool

Free, easy, and quick.

UltraDefrag – Windows Disk Defragmentation Utility

UltraDefrag is powerful disk defragmentation tool for Windows NT/Vista/XP/Server2003. Extremely fast and useful. Some of the unique features of UD are ability to defragment system files at boot time and defragmenting single file or directory.

How to backup an Active Directory Domain Controller with AVAMAR

Just some notes on backing up an Active Directory domain controller or the system state of any Windows client using EMC’s AVAMAR.
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Install the AVAMAR client on the DC(s) to be backed up.

In the AVAMAR Administrator create a Dataset for the DCs (WindowsDC).

Use the Windows file system plugin and do not set any exclusions.

On the Options Tab check the Backup Windows System State check box and define a Backup label.

The AVAMAR client uses the NTBackup Utility to create a backup of the system state, it stores this backup in var in the avamar client install directory (C:\Program Files\avs\var\).  If the space on that drive is limited you can set an attribute systemstatefile with a value of the full path to store the back up – D:\avs\SystemState.bkf (after you set the attribute/value make sure to hit + to add it)

Now create a Policy Group for the Dataset and set the schedule, retention, and add the clients (the AD Domain Controllers). Once you enable the group it will be run on the schedule or it can be run on demand.

When the backup runs the AVAMAR client first uses the Windows NTBackup Utility to backup the  critical system state information such as the registry and the Sysvol directory.

Reference the AVAMAR System Administration Manual for more details on System State backup and restore.