Before:

After:

Step 1 – You can check your disks with a FREE tool to see if which ones need alignment: http://read.virtualizeplanet.com/?p=366

Step 2 –  Prep the virtual machine.  Defrag the drive(s).  Upload a copy of Ubuntu or Gparted ISO and set the host to boot off of it.  NOTE: Even though this method doesn’t delete data, its a good idea to make a snapshot or backup for protection.

Step 3 – Prep a second drive to make changes to.  Add a 2nd VMDK disk to the machine and make it slightly larger.

Step 4 – Boot into Ubuntu on the virtual machine.

1. Run Gparted and Select the new disk  and create a partition table.
2. Exit Gparted and start the terminal.  In the command window type
   
   sudo parted /dev/sda(substitute your actual device) to start the command line parted editor
3. Create a new partition at the start of the new disk to fill in the gap to to align your partition.  For example, if you want your system partition to start at sector 128, create a very small partition that takes up space from sectors 63-127. The command would be something like this:
   
   mkpart primary 63s 127s

4. Quit out of parted and back into Gparted
5. Highlight the partition from the old disk and choose COPY.
6. PASTE the partition into the empty space on the second drive and Apply.  This will take a while depending on the size of the drive
7. Delete the tiny offset partition at the front of the drive and make sure the disk is set to boot.

Step 5 – Remove original drive in VMware and boot up the machine.  It may run a chkdisk at boot, but you’ll see the change in drive size and double check work with step 1.

Step 6 - Remove and delete old drives only after you are sure you need them.

Thanks to: Aligning Windows Partitions Without Losing Data – From the Recliner…. for providing the initial starting point for this post.

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 are pretty much the same thing.  They differ in only what software license key is  installed.  Therefore, the free ESXi or the pre-installed one from the vendor is a fine place to start.  Usual VMware setup applies.  My network is pretty small so i have two nics set for the Management/Virtual Machine VLAN on one physical network and my SAN network is plugged into the remaining two nics.  A few clicks to set addresses and namespaces and the server is up.

Step 2. Migrate Virtual Machines on oldest ESXi server to the new host.  For each host, I have to manually shutdown and reopen on the new server.  (Build in some down time for these reboots)  All of your VMs should be up and running from now on.  The next steps wont affect the individual VMs and can (mostly) be done during production hours.

Step 3. Install Vsphere Center server on a windows machine.  Download and run the ISO, or just mount the file.  Be sure to install the Client, Backup, and Update modules as well.  Since this is a small install, I also used the MSSQL Express built-in database.  I was kind of surprised that Vsphere Center Server runs on Windows, (64bit, 4Gig Ram minimum) but it allows me to run some Windows-based backup and sync software on a physical host.   At this time, it will ask for you Vsphere license.

Step 4. Connect the ESXi hosts to the Vsphere Center server.  Easiest step so far – just add a data center, then add a host.   One of my hosts had multiple networks (1VM, 1 ISCSI, 1VM-ISCSI) and wouldn’t add on the first try.  I had to make sure that the licencing options on the networks matched up with the VMware Express licensing options I purchased.

Now you are running VMware professional.  You can use the power of centralized controls, update, backups, VMotion and HA (if licensed) on your own little data center.  I set up the express version so Vmotion is a bit more manual, but still saves in clicks and complexity.

Step 5. Update all the ESXi hosts, VMtools and VMs during down-time.

http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/a-list-of-free-vmware-vsphere-tools.html

To delete the Windows.old folder follow these steps:

1. Click Start, type disk cleanup in the Start Search text box, and hit enter.
2. Choose your drive, likely the C:\
3. In the Disk Cleanup Options dialog box, click “Clean up system files” [see below].
4. Click to select the Previous Windows installation(s) check box, and then click OK.

This can also be run from the command prompt, but takes a bit longer.

1. Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
2. In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
3. At the command prompt, enter:

takeown /F c:\windows.old\* /R /A

4. Note When you run this command, you are granted ownership of the administrator group for the folder, of all the subdirectories in the folder, and of all the files in the folder.
5. At the command prompt, enter:

cacls c:\windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:F

6. Note When you run this command, administrators are granted full rights to all files and to all folders.
7. At the command prompt, type:

rmdir /S /Q c:\windows.old\

8. Note When you run this command, all subfolders and all files in the specified folder are deleted. Additionally, the specified folder itself is deleted.

After a little more use, however, its starting to get creepy.  You see, many of my vendor contacts, client contacts, and random email addresses floating around in my address book are constantly being compared to Facebook.  So now, especially with people who over-share, I see way too much.  A guy that I know of by email address alone now shows up with a picture of him kissing his kitchen refrigerator (his public FB profile picture).  The office manager of a network/electrical wiring company now greets my inbox with a spooky picture of her newborn son in Halloween gear.

I have updated my Facebook privacy settings twice this week because of this and that

Thankfully, Lifehacker came to the rescue and reccomended OutSync. as a way to sync peoples photos between Facebook and Outlook.  The download was simple, and it worked like a charm with Outlook 2010 beta on windows 7 64bit.

Now Outlook has become a whole lot more personal.  I find that I do give more attention to friends now because of their picture at the bottom of messages, but I”m fine keeping annoying vendor messages face-less, literally.

1. Make sure to install the latest VMware tools on the Linux host.  Ubuntu will require kernel source and removal of the sudo command.  Fedora can use the RPM.  Redhat and Suse can use the Upgrade tools menu from ESX console.
2. Have source server running and ensure root access logins.
3. Using Vmware converter version 4+ (free download), connect to the source server, the target destination ESX server and supply root login information.
4. The VMware converter will create a new, empty, linux VMware on the target ESX server.  This blank tank needs access to DHCP for it to boot and once it turns on, it creates mirror partitions.  (screenshots)
   • My source server was an 8GB IDE drive partitioned with a 256MB /boot EXT3 and a 7000MB /root LVM.
   • The Target Host server created a 256MB EXT3 /boot and a 7000MB /root EXT3 partition on ESX using SCSI Bus Logic drives.
5. It will then copy individual files from the host to the target (why Root access is so crucial) and serve up a shut-down, but ready to go ESX compatable server.
6. Check target ESX server for any extra setting changes and get going.

The noise as people try to find someone by screaming over heads would be deafening.  The technical implications of all the wireless connections would cause premature balding.  Fights for the window bean cushion would be bloody.

Still, I would love it over the cruddy cube culture of today.

In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote an influential book called The Long Tail.In it, he argued that the future of business is to sell less of more.The main premise is that collectively, things that are inrather low demand can amount to quite large volumes. This is becausethere is a large number of people who belong to the long tail and theyencompass a wide rage of tastes……. It is often forgotten that money is to be made by leveraging thecollective long tail, however, making money while being part of thelong tail is very difficult. Specifically, in the blogosphere, the vastmajority of blogs have very few readers. It is not realistic to expectthese blogs to make money.As the enthusiasm and the incentive in the long tail begin to wear off,what would be the impact on the businessesthat depend on them? Likely, the impact is going to be large.