Archive for the ‘Tech Lessons’ Category
Align Vmware Partitions on Live Windows Virtual Machines Using Ubuntu Without Deletion.
Windows 2003/XP P2V conversions and hastily created virtual machines have an issue with hard drive performance within VMware and some SANs. The issue is that 2003/XP, by default, organizes drive clusters around a 32k size but offsets them at the start of a drive. Vmware’s VMFS and SANs usually use large disk sectors, although, the smaller VMDK [...]
Upgrade from VMware ESXi to Vsphere on the cheap
Current Setup: 3 existing ESXi servers running 4-6 VMs each. Two old Windows servers (backup and exchange). Recent Purchase: 1 new (blank) server and 1 copy of Vsphere Essentials ($449) Goal: To move everything to 3 ESXi/Vsphere servers with one VCenter server and decommission the windows servers. Step 1. Install ESXi on the new server. ESXi and Vsphere [...]
How to delete windows.old folder and regain space
After installing a new version of Windows or upgrading from Vista/XP, Windows leaves a folder on your root drive called WINDOWS.OLD. This folder can be tough to simply delete because of it retains all of the security restritions from the previous windows install. But, really, do you need to keep it around? Probably not. To [...]
Update on Email ‘Faces’
New to the work machine is the Facebook plug-in for the Outlook Social Connector. The Social Connector in Outlook 2001 works very similarly to xnobi – It meshes social media info with that old email and contacts. At first, I liked having it for keeping up-to-date with work-friends. You could see their Facebook updates from last night before [...]
Putting a Face to the Email
I”ve been using Outlook 2010 beta now for a couple weeks. I use this with Exchange at the office as my main repository for contacts and sync it everywhere I go. Outlook does this great job of organizing messages/chats/meetings/conversations by contacts but wastes a good portion of the screen on showing a contact photo next [...]
Convert Linux VM from VMware Server to ESX with LVM volumes
The servers here are all moving to ESX. Well all but one.This server was poorly created using VMware server version 1.1 a long time ago. Everytime we tried to move to ESX lots of problems like missing VMDK files and Kernel Panics. Two things wrong: 1) ESX doesn”t support IDE drives and 2) most P2V [...]
Facebook Connect Update
Nick Denton changed not only the design of the Gawker portfolio, but added Facebook connect. Nail #1 for openID. Gawker commenters meet Facebook users
Life without cubicles? Where am I going to put my ugly wall art?
Mercury news reports: Cisco is experimenting with open office spaces. Employees would come to work with a laptop, find a place to plop down, and work wirelessly for the day. Phones would follow laptops, rooms would provided temporary privacy and everyone is happy…. right? The noise as people try to find someone by screaming over [...]
IT Managers Stressed By Employees
Employees bringing you down? It seems like the rest of the SMB community is frustrated as well. According to Webpronews.com, users ranks highest on a list of issues IT managers face in the workplace today. Calling them ”users” can sometimes help deal with coworkers are clicking where they shouldn”t, installing what they can”t and refusing [...]
Collaboration Tools – Mediawiki hosted in-house vs. Hosted Options
As our teams spread over office hours, time zones, remote workstations, and even continents, finding ways for everyone to collaborate effectively has become my part time job. Currently we are testing out Wikipedia”s Mediawiki software internally as a way to foster collaboration. I am finding, however, many users are perplexed by wiki code. Mediawiki requires [...]