My VMware vSphere Windows Server 2008 R2 Template

Creating the Template VM

Create a new VM, set the OS as Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit
CPU - 1
RAM - 1GB
Disk Type - LSI Logic SAS
Disk Size - 40GB - System
Disk Size - 10GB - Apps

Once completed, remove the Floppy Disk before switching on.
Select the tick box to easily access the VM's BIOS settings when next powered on.

Power on the VM



Configure the BIOS

VM > Edit Settings > Options > Advanced > Boot Options > Force BIOS Setup > The next time the virtual machine boots, force entry into the BIOS setup screen.


Main > Legacy Diskette A



Advanced > I/O Device Configuration



Install VMware Tools

Install VMware Tools from VM > Guest > Install/Upgrade VMware Tools

Choose Custom Install > VMware Device Drivers > and select 'This feature will not be available' for the following drivers;

• Thin Print
• Shared Folders
• Audio Drivers

Change Device driver to cure the jerky mouse

Device Manager > Display Adapters > Standard VGA Graphics Adapter

Right Click > Update Driver software > Browse my computer for driver software > Path:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\Video

The display driver should be detected as a VMware SVGA II and Reboot

Right click on Desktop > Screen Resolution > Advanced Settings > Troubleshooting > Properties > set 'Hardware Acceleration' to Full

Disable Hibernation

Open a Command Prompt by typing POWERCFG -H OFF


Change the Power Profile

Control Panel > Power Options > Change Power Plan to 'High Performance'


Enable Remote Desktop

Right click 'My Computer' > Properties > Remote Settings > Remote tab and select 'Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop (less secure)'




Change Performance Options

Right click 'My Computer' > Properties >Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > Performance settings and select 'Adjust for best performance'.


Set Screen saver to Blank

Control Panel > Display > Change Screen saver > Select 'Blank' from the drop down


Set Sounds to None

Control Panel  > Sounds > Sound Tab and select 'No Sounds' from Sound Scheme drop down





Change Notification Area settings

Right click Taskbar > 'Properties' > Taskbar tab and Notification area > Customize



Disable Windows Firewall

  Control Panel > Windows Firewall > Turn Windows Firewall on or off



















Configure SNMP

Go to Server Manager and select 'Features'  > Add Feature > SNMP


Sysprep Preparation

Place a file named 'SetupComplete.cmd' in C:\Windows\Setup and include the line

bcdedit /timeout 8

This will be automatically invoked after sysprep stage and change the OS selection time to 8 seconds upon start-up once the template has been deployed.

Finally place the unattend.xml into the C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep folder before initiating the sysprep process with the following command from a command prompt;

cd c:\windows\system32\sysprep\
sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:unattend.xml

The resulting machine can then be shutdown and converted to a template in vCenter.

Running IBM DSA on ESXi Servers

I'm in the process of troubleshooting what we believe to be flat disk controller batteries in a number of our IBM blade servers, as part of this process IBM support have asked us to supply the logs from BladeCenter and also the individual blade.

There's several ways of doing this, one way is to boot from the DSA .ISO (here), another is to download the DSA portable executable and run it from your workstation and let it interrogate the ESXi server remotely.

1. Enable 'Remote Tech Support Mode' on your ESXi server via the Console. (System Customization > Troubleshooting Options > Enable Remote Tech Support (SSH)
2. Download the portable version for your OS (I used ibm_utl_dsa_dsyt85t-3.40_portable_windows_i386.exe)
3. Run DSA with the following arguments

   ibm_utl_dsa_dsyt85t-3.40_portable_windows_x86-64.exe --vmware-esxi user:password@ip-address

   'user' being the username (normally root), 'password' being the password associated with the account and the 'ip-address' being of that of the ESXi Host.
   

Cannot install the vCenter Agent Service. Cannot prepare host for upgrade.

While upgrading vCenter, I received the message "Cannot install the vCenter Agent Service. Cannot prepare host for upgrade." when attempting to update the vCenter agent on a standalone ESX 3.02 Host.

To resolve, I connected via SSH and performed the following command to restart the ESX Management Agent.

service mgmt-vmware restart

I then reconnected the Host to vCenter and the agent was updated as intended.

Converting Integer8 to Time and Date

I recently discovered a quick way of converting an Integer8 number which is used for the pwdLastSet attribute among others in Active Directory. The Integer8 is often used to represent time in 100-nanosecond intervals since 12:00 AM January 1, 1600 and there appears as a long integer like value such as 129148817107011564

To convert this value to a meaningful date, the w32tm command can be used from a command line with the ntte argument..

w32tm /ntte

Windows cannot open Help and Support because a system Service is not running

I was auditing a server this week and attempted to open MSINFO32 but received the following message "Windows cannot open Help and Support because a system Service is not running".

When investigating services.msc, I couldn't find the Help and Support service listed, so I Googled a little regarding registering services and found a fix in the form of the following commands.

Open a Command Prompt  and run the following commands

%SystemDrive%
CD %windir%\PCHealth\HelpCtr\Binaries
start /w helpsvc /svchost netsvcs /regserver /install

The Help and Support should now be listed and can be started and was enough to get MSINFO32 running.. hooray!

vmware.exe - No Disk

When starting up VMware Workstation I was receiving the following error which I believed to be related to the recent change of the removable USB drive's letters on my laptop.

I researched this and found that there was no obvious registry entries but instead that the details of the VMware Workstation favourites tab were recorded in a %appdata%\vmware\favorites.vmls

By deleting this file, I found that this resolved the error and then found that it's then recreated once VMware Workstaiton is restarted.