Converting Physical Citrix Server to VMware Using VMware Converter

We converted one of our physical Citrix servers yesterday to VMware ESXi also and it went smoothly as well.  No issues so far, so if you’re thinking of doing the same thing I can confirm that it works.

We also use RSA SecurID for authentication and it still works after the conversion with no changes made to the RSA Authentication Manager or RSA ACE Agent (using the same IP address after the conversion of course).

More P2V conversions next week :).

Converting Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Virtual Machines to VMware

We just converted 3 of our virtual machines running on Virtual  Server 2005 R2 to VMware ESXi yesterday and it went pretty smoothly with just a couple of minor issues.

The first issue is the mouse cursor not working in VMware console after installing the VMware tools.  The fix is just a simple registry edit:

1. Open Registry Editor (regedit)
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. Double-click on UpperFilters and delete msvmmouf.
4. Reboot the VM.

Source: http://www.petri.co.il/forums/archive/index.php/t-19387.html

The second minor issue is when you try to set the static IP address to the same IP address before it was converted, you might receive a message similar to this:

The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter Name of adapter. Name of adapter is hidden from the network and Dial-up Connections folder because it is not physically in the computer or is a legacy adapter that is not working. If the same address is assigned to both adapters and they become active, only one of them will use this address. This may result in incorrect system configuration. Do you want to enter a different IP address for this adapter in the list of IP addresses in the advanced dialog box?

This is probably not a big deal, but if it bothers you just do the following:

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
2. Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1, and then press ENTER.
3. Type Start DEVMGMT.MSC, and then press ENTER.
4. Click View, and then click Show Hidden Devices.
5. Expand the Network Adapters tree.
6. Right-click the dimmed network adapter, and then click Uninstall.

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269155

How to query a Microsoft Office Access database from SQL Server

I was doing this yesterday to query our call logs which are stored in an Access database.  I figured it would be really nice to be able to query our databases from one application.  The software that came with our phone system to generate reports from the call logs is also not that flexible.  It’s just much easier for me to run reports using SQL Server Query Analyzer plus we can join the tables from other databases with it easily if we need to.

Just open Query Analyzer and execute this command:

sp_addlinkedserver ‘LinkedServerName’, ‘ProductName’, ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′, ‘path_to_access_database_file’

Example:

sp_addlinkedserver ‘Server1_NBXdb’, ‘MS Access’, ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′, ‘\\server1\nbxcdr.mdb’

To query the database, use this format:

select * from  openquery(linked_server_name,’select * from table_name’)

or

select * from linked_server_name…table_name

For more information, please visit this website where I got this information from:

Configuring a Linked Microsoft Access Server on SQL 2005 Server

How to encrypt HTTP traffic (and bypass most firewalls) using SSH Tunneling with PuTTY in Windows

I’ve been using SSH Tunneling for a while now mainly to encrypt HTTP traffic when using public wireless access points.  I won’t go into detail here, just Google for “SSH Tunneling” if you need more information.  I’m also gonna assume you already have an SSH Server set up.

• Download PuTTY and save it to C:/.
• Open notepad, type in the command below and save it as securetunnel.bat (Note: remove username@ and -pw password if you prefer to get prompted for them for security reasons):
  • c:\putty -D 8080 -P 22 -ssh username@ssh_server_ip -pw password
• Double-click securetunnel.bat to connect to your SSH server.
• Open your internet browser and change its proxy settings to use 127.0.0.1:8080 as the SOCKS host.  To do this in Internet Explorer 7, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections Tab -> LAN Settings -> Check “Use a proxy server for your LAN…” -> Click the “Advanced” button and set the settings just like the picture below:”

• Go to http://www.whatismyip.com and if your public IP shows up the same as your SSH server’s public IP then you’re all set!

VMware ESXi First Impressions

I finally got a chance to try this out yesterday on a Dell PowerEdge 6600 server that we use for testing at work.  I’ve been testing it pretty much most of yesterday and today and I have to say that I’m very impressed with it so far.

Installation was very easy: download and burn the ISO image, boot from it, follow the installation instructions on the screen (which is pretty much next, next next), set the root password, and set a static IP address if you want.

To manage it, open your web browser, point it to the IP address of the ESXi server, download the free VMware Infrastructure Client from there and install it on your computer.  You pretty much do everything here: creating and managing virtual machines, data stores, upload/download files, resource allocation, etc.

VMware also has a very cool free tool called VMware Converter for converting physical machines, backup images, and other virtual machine formats (such as Microsoft Virtual Server 2005) to VMware virtual machines.  You can run this while the machine you’re converting is running and you can even convert the machines directly to the VMware ESXi server! Very cool!

So far I’ve converted a virtual machine created by VMware Server and our physical desktop deployment server (BDD 2007) and they both converted successfully with no problems.

I’ll be doing more testing this week and we’re most likely going to be moving our production servers running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and other physical servers to VMware ESXi.  It’s pretty much a no-brainer, especially since ESXi is now free.