Written by Sam McGeown on 8/3/2010
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I’m pleased to announce that I’ve passed the 70-649, which gives me the following MCTS certifications: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, Configuration Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration Next I’ll be looking at the 70-647 to get the full MCITP: Enterprise Administrator (I already took the 70-620 exam for my MCSE).
Written by Sam McGeown on 26/2/2010
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No matter how good your network diagrams are, sometimes you need to verify the port your server/desktop is in. Cisco Discovery Protocol is a great tool for network admins when you need to quickly map routers and switches, and if you’ve got an ESX server connected you’ll see that it picks up CDP info too – but the vast majority of my managed systems are Windows. Here’s how to use TCPDUMP by Micro Olap to extend that functionality to your Windows boxes.
Written by Sam McGeown on 16/2/2010
Published under VMware and vSphere
So you’ve upgraded your ESX 3.x servers to 4.0 and you’ve upgraded your vCenter server, now you want to access the shiny new hot-add feature to upgrade some running server’s memory. Except you can’t, the feature is no-where to be seen. Something to bear in mind though, your OS needs to support hot-add, so you’ll need a Windows Enterprise or Datacenter edition. Here’s how to enable it: Upgrade the VM’s tools, if you haven’t already.
Written by Sam McGeown on 11/2/2010
Published under Microsoft
If you read the Microsoft blurb for R2, the first thing you notice is that Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only(!). It seems Microsoft are forcibly removing 32-bit server hardware from the data centre. I’ve not seen a decent upgrade guide online so far, so here’s my process. I’m going to be upgrading a Server 2008 R2 x64 SP2 Standard Edition virtual server to R2. To see what editions can and can’t be upgraded, check out this Technet Article, but it’s safe to say that you can’t upgrade across architectures (32-bit to 64-bit) and you can’t downgrade SKUs (Enterprise to Standard).
Written by Sam McGeown on 8/2/2010
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After some pretty heavy investment in terms of time and money, I’ve passed my ICND2 exam and am now qualified as a Cisco Certified Network Associate (anyone else find it odd that you’re not even considered a professional by Cisco at this level?!) I do consider the Cisco qualifications as significantly more valuable than the others that I hold, simply because of the difficulty of the exams. I do find them “honest” in that they’re not trick questions, and you don’t need a technique to pass – just in depth knowledge.
Written by Sam McGeown on 4/2/2010
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I’ve just upgraded to BE.Net 1.6, and I thought I’d migrate to GoDaddy’s IIS 7 servers at the same time. The theory is that this would be a an easy migration and I’d have the weekend to iron out any bugs. Not so. After testing on my local IIS 7 and working perfectly, I uploaded the updates to my live blog and hit the “Migrate to IIS 7” button, which promises it will be completed in 24h.
Written by Sam McGeown on 27/1/2010
Published under Microsoft and VMware
Configuring the Virtual Environment and Virtual Machines Note – this configuration will work for ESXi 4 upwards due to the server 2008 MSCS requirement for persistent SCSI-3 reservations. The first step is to create a new vSwitch for the host-only cluster heartbeat network, don’t assign any network adaptors to the switch as it’s going to be local only. Create a new virtual machine with a single hard disk. For the purposes of this test, I’ve assigned 2 vProcessors, 1GB RAM, 30GB drive for the OS, 1 vNIC in the default vSwitch0.
Written by Sam McGeown on 10/12/2009
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In the past, I would often say to my wife, “if it’s not in Outlook, it isn’t going to happen”. Increasingly it’s “if it’s not on my iPhone, it’s not going to happen”. The fact is that I can’t actually remember all the things that I need to do each day, I need reminding! I spend perhaps 8 hours a day at my work PC, maybe 2 hours a day on my home laptop and my iPhone is with me pretty much 24/7 – all of which are both data sources, and data endpoints.
Written by Sam McGeown on 7/12/2009
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As is normally the case when I’m studying, I haven’t had time to post much on here lately. I’ve been studying to pass the ICND1 exam (snappily titled “Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices Part 1”) I’m really pleased to say that neglecting this site paid off, or rather the study did – I passed with a score of 930! It was a LOT harder than I had expected, I thought I’d walk out after 20m!
Written by Sam McGeown on 11/11/2009
Published under VMware and vSphere
I’m currently in the process of migrating a 2-host High Availability cluster of ESX 3.5u4 servers to vSphere 4. This is going to come in 3 distinct stages: Stage 1 is to upgrade VirtualCenter Server 2.5 to vCenter 4, which I am going to cover today. Stage 2 is to upgrade each host, and will be covered as I do it. Stage 3 is the upgrade of the Virtual Machines to the latest VMware Tools and then the new VM hardware.