While banging my head against the table from behind the most anal retentive and productivity reducing firewall known to man I came across this cool little site http://www.canyouseeme.org/.  Oddly enough this site was not blocked… Go figure.

Those of us who used CP/M and DOS in the early days became accustomed to drive letters which BTW was a good design when most systems has two maybe three devices. The same computer enthusiasts who used CP/M and DOS most likely through education or professional experience were introduced to UNIX at some point. If you are like me this was probably during your college years, we began to realize how much more elegant the UNIX operating system was with novel ideas such as “mount points”, well Microsoft sorta figured this out a few years ago and integrated mount points into Windows. To me there is absolutely no reason that anyone in the server space should be using drive letters (Excluding A:,B:,C: and D: of course) unless legacy applications are hard coded to use drive letters and the move to mount points is just too painful (unfortunately in the past drive letters were the only way to address storage devices, if you are still doing this for new applications shame, shame!). One issue with mount points is an inability to easily determine total, used, and free space for a physical device from Windows Explorer. While I use mount points almost exclusively, many of my customers complain of the need to drop to the CLI (only a complaint you would hear in the Windows world…. although I agree it is nice to have a single view of all physical devices, like that provided by Windows Explorer). They could open Disk Management but that too is kind of cumbersome to just view available space. Here is a small VB script that I wrote that will provide total, used and free space for physical devices by enumerating the devices that match a specific drive label:

——— SCRIPT STARTS HERE ———

WScript.Echo “B2D Capactiy Reporter - ” & Date
Wscript.Echo “RJB - 1/2/2008″
Wscript.Echo “———————————–”
Wscript.Echo “———————————–”

Dim totalB2D, totalUSED, totalFREE
totalB2D = 0
totalUSED = 0
totalFREE = 0

strComputer = “.”
Set objWMIService = GetObject(”winmgmts:” _
& “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” & strComputer & “\root\cimv2″)

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(”Select * from Win32_Volume where label like ‘b2d%‘”)

For Each objItem In colItems
WScript.Echo “Label: ” & objItem.Label
WScript.Echo “Mount Point: ” & objItem.Name
WScript.Echo “Block Size: ” & (objItem.BlockSize / 1024) & “K”
WScript.Echo “File System: ” & objItem.FileSystem
WScript.Echo “Capacity: ” & round(objItem.Capacity / 1048576 / 1024,2) & ” GB”
WScript.Echo “Used Space: ” & round((objItem.Capacity - objItem.FreeSpace) / 1048576 / 1024,2) & ” GB”
WScript.Echo “Free Space: ” & round(objItem.FreeSpace / 1048576 / 1024,2) & ” GB”
WScript.Echo “Percent Free: ” & round(objItem.FreeSpace / objItem.Capacity,2) * 100 & ” %”
totalB2D = totalB2D + (objItem.Capacity / 1048576 / 1024)
totalFREE = totalFREE + (objItem.FreeSpace / 1048576 / 1024)
totalUSED = totalUSED + ((objItem.Capacity - objItem.FreeSpace)/ 1048576 / 1024)
Wscript.Echo “———————————–”
Next

WScript.Echo “———————————–”
WScript.Echo “Total B2D Capacity: ” & round(totalB2D / 1024,2) & ” TB”
WScript.Echo “Total Used Capacity: ” & round(totalUSED / 1024,2) & ” TB”
WScript.Echo “Total Free Capacity: ” & round(totalFREE / 1024,2) & ” TB”
WScript.Echo “Total Percent Free: ” & round(totalFREE / totalB2D,2) * 100 & ” %”

——— SCRIPT ENDS HERE ———

This script was originally written to report the utilization of devices that were being used as Backup-to-Disk targets, hence the name B2D Capacity Reporter. The scripts keys on the disk label so it is important to label the disks properly so that it will report accurately (this can be done from Disk Management or the Command line). I have bolded above the only change that really needs to be made to make the script function properly. This script could easily be modified to report across multiple systems which could be useful if you are looking to tally all the space across multiple servers.

I have only tested this on Windows 2003 so I am not sure how it will function on other versions of Windows. Enjoy!

Oh, one more thing. When you save the script be sure to run it with cscript not wscript (e.g. - cscript diskspace.vbs).

Ever have the need to share a Windows Remote Desktop session? Of course you have, WebEx, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC and other Web based collaboration suites are quite popular for this purpose. What many don’t know is that Windows Terminal Services actually has some functionality built-in to enable this. Here is how a user can “shadow” a console session being controlled by another user:

• The primary user opens a remote console session [START->RUN->] the following command:
  • mstsc -v:servername /F -console
    • This opens a remote desktop session console session to a specified servername in full screen mode
• The second user opens a remote session [START->RUN->] the following command:
  • mstsc -v:servername /F
    • This opens a remote desktop session to a specified servername in full screen mode
  • Next open a command window
    • START->RUN->cmd.exe
    • type “shadow 0″ (omit the quotes)

This will prompt the primary user stating that you would like to connect to their console session, once they accept the connection you will be sharing the same session. For more information refer to this (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278845) Microsoft knowledge base article.

I recently received a comment on my demontration on W2K3 Rocovery using EMC Legato Networker. The question raised was does Legato support true bare metal recovery (BMR) for both Windows and UNIX - this implies that a system can be restored without actually reinstalling a basic operating system as I demonstrate in the video tutorial. This is a multi-part answer and I will do my best to answer each question, provide some insight and make some recommendations. For Windows 2003 and XP Microsoft and EMC Networker support something called an Automated System Recovery (ASR). Unfortunately this is the supported BMR process for EMC Networker on Windows. IMO this is not a production viable bare metal recovery process due to the need to use a floppy - this is contrary to Microsoft’s opinion… floppies? What are they thinking? For UNIX there is not a supported Networker BMR process. The process of installing a base OS and the Networker client then initiating a full system restore actually works better on UNIX then it does on Windows. Most Unix distributions have rich support for network OS boot and installation (i.e. - PXE boot, Solaris JumpStart, etc…), for this reason I do not see many UNIX environments investing in BMR technologies, with that said if BMR is a concern for a heterogeneous UNIX and Windows I would recommend investigating a products such as EMC Homebase or Unitrends (assuming you are looking for commercial products - there are good OpenSource alternatives which I will touch on later in the post). In an all Windows environment the options dramatically increase. EMC recently acquired a company called Indigo Stone and a product called HomeBase to facilitate true BMR. There are a number of other products in the market, personally I have used Acronis True Image, Unitrends, Ghost and a few others. Depending on your goal all of these products have pluses and minuses. The problems with traditional BMR products are usually HAL related. I have not consistently moved to disparate hardware platforms with BMR. BMR products attempt to alter the HAL to make a W2K3 image taken from a AMD box with 4 GB of RAM which can be restored on an Intel box with 8 GB of RAM. While BMR has improved tremendously over the years, IMO it is far from perfect. Many organizations looking for a quick recovery method in the event of a host failure are looking at virtualization technology. A process called P2V (physical-to-virtual) can be performed to create virtual images of physical servers. These virtual images abstract the physical hardware and are highly portable and easy to maintain. My personal preference for facilitating this process is a product

called PlateSpin PowerConvert with this said I am also investigating how HomeBase would facilitate this process. If you just need an image backup of a system to speed time to recovery without the need for hardware independence I would look at a couple of OpenSource options. The Personal Backup Appliance is a virtual appliance that will get you imaging your systems as quickly as possible. I have also used Partition Image for Linux successfully. If you are looking for other options you can find a comprehensive list here http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml . Hope this post was helpful, I did not want to bury it as a comment.

Why decide when you can just use SearchBoth.com.  Cool split screen display actually makes this a useful site.

Good news… Page loads have been improved from ~27 seconds to ~15 seconds. I still have some tweaking to do and I am hoping to get under 10 seconds.

I am sure those of you who visit frequently have noticed that the site has gotten pretty slow.? The traffic is fairly high these days and I have some serious site optimization to do. The content I have been posting is media rich and that is causing some problems.

I came across a nice little tool that analyzes a web site and makes recommendations (check it out at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/).

Another tool that really helps you understand what is taking so damn long is the OctaGate SiteTimer and invaluable tool in troubleshooting slow page loads.

Here is another good article which offers some more generic WordPress tuning suggestions.

I will be working over the coming weeks to improve the overall performance of the site.

Perform your own Microsoft Exchange Health Check, a well done blog that provides all the insight you need to accomplish what many pay for.

Dougs Blog >> Exchange Server in the field : Run your own Exchange Server Health Check….

I had the pleasure of working with an application (referred to in the blog as APPX) that could use some serious TLC about a month ago. Apperently APPX is in wide use by isurance agencies and brokers. I now know more about the interworkings of APPX than I want to know - and for the life of me can not figure out why the heck anyone would write an enterprise application ontop of the JET database, the answer I was given by the application developer is not everyone has MS SQL Server? OK - but if you are small enough not to have MS SQL Server (BTW - thats pretty freakin small) download MSDE it is free - or better yet why not use MySQL, Postgres, etc… anything but JET - ODBC, JDBC people it’s not 1972 :(. Here is how the saga began. A customer of ours was looking to remove file servers and print servers from 8 branch locataions. The articulated applications were standard CIFS shares and print services - a perfect fit for Cisco WAAS (Wide Area Application Services), a product which uses WAN accerleration technology and caching to remove WAN latency thus providing LAN like performane over the WAN.

The plan was to migrate the data from the 8 branch locations to a core location (the datacenter) and have the users access the data over the WAN. The customer would then be able to remove the server infrastructure and all associated management from the edge locations. Does not get any simpler than this, or so we thought.

A bit of background information. The depoloyment model for the CISCO WAAS gear was to use WCCP NOT inline cards to route the appropriate traffic through the WAE. Pretty early in the process we realized that the end users sitting in the remote location and accessing a SMB/CIFS share in core location were expeiencing huge delays from within the APPX, which was run from a network share and sort of a hyrbid client/server/web application. Fast forward 3 weeks, I finally show up on site to try and resolve a ghostly performance issue. At this point acceleration and caching of FTP, HTTP, CIFS, etc… had been fully vetted and verified as working properly. BUT APPX was still expreiencing significant performance issues. Immediately I began to believe it was an application specific issue - in the end the assuption was correct but lets explore how we identified the issue.

Step 1: Contact the application developer and understand exactly what the application does and the chronology of the steps.

The following are the notes/bullets taken away from the conversation with APPX developer:

• Documents produced and mdb files can in fact be stored on different paths - the applcation uses a .mdb (JET database - HINT #1 PROBABLE LOCKING ISSUE) and .dot word templates to create form letters.
• When APPX creates files it prefixes the documents with “s” or “m” - “S” refers to schedule and M refers to memo
• APPX also suffixes the document with a numeric value - this value is the record locator
• The path to templates and proposals are stored in proposal.mdb
• Document locataions are strored in APPX personalization

As I mentioned above the APPX installation including the .dot and .mdb files were stored on a network share.

Step 2: Plan of attack

• Test the performance with the APPX folder (application) stored on the to local path (c: root) - Run wizard.exe to change the path
  • Write the new template path. Writes the template path to the proposal.mdb
• If this worked the path changes could be changed via the registry. Which meant that we could automate the changes so that the users will not need to run the wizard.exe process. This will simplify a complete rollout of the local APPX installation.

NOTE: Currently (prior to the WAAS deployment) when a new template is created the APPX directory is robocopied to network shares at the 8 remote locations. The new process would be to use a login script to copy the APPX install to the local workstations when an change is made. Pre-positioning could be used in this case to increase the prerformace of the initial load. Not only will this solve the performance issue but it also represents a significant improvement to the currrent process. The automation of updating the templates using login scripts removes the robocopy responsibility from the IT staff and ensures that the users are always operating from the latest database and templates.

NOTE: reg key location for the APPX ditro directory - HKCU/Software/APPX/

Step 3: The actions taken to resolve the issue

Creation of scripts listed below to automate the required changes:

• update_distro.bat - creates APPX distribution as appxload.exe
• logon.bat - user logon script (encompasses commands from upappx.bat and regchg.bat)
• upappx.bat - Standalone script to updates users local c:\appx install
• regchg.bat - Standalone script to modifies APPX db directory location reg key
• appx_redirect_to_C.reg - reg key

All scripts housed in centralized network location ie \\core\share\waas_appx_scripts.

The logon scripts are located at \\core\netlogon

Ultimately to increase the speed of APPX the APPX Word document templates and mdb lookup databases will be moved from \\core\share\appx\database to c:\appx\database on the users localhost.

These changes dramatically increased the performance of the APPX, the belief is that performance problems were due to jet database related locking and lock release issues that were worsened due to WAN latency. During the automation process I did in fact verify that locks are placed on mdb files on a fairly regular basis. Initially I was told by the application developer, that the mdb files are not changed and locks are not placed on these files but this is not the case. Interestingly enough the APPX folks stated that most users are going to a more distributed model vs. a consolidated model. After understanding the application architecture it is not hard to understand why.

The process going forward would be the following is the following:

• Users in core will continue to run from the LAN location - While performance could probably be faster if they followed the same deployment model as listed above because the LAN locking is most likely slowing performance the application response time is adquate so it was decided that it would be left as is.
• There is a single administrator in the core location who modifies the templates - this typically happens weekly but may happen more frequently
• In the past these changes would be robocopied by IT to local shares in each remote office on Sunday nights. The new automated user update process removes the need for IT to manage the distribution of the APPX changes on a weekly basis. Users will now have access to updated APPX on a daily basis vs. weekly. Updates will be performed when the user logs in.
• There is now a scheduled task that has been created on \\core that performs the following tasks:
  • The scheduled task name is appx_load
    • Copies the APPX directory from d:\share\appx to d:\share\waas_appx_scripts\appx
    • This step is required because there are locks on the mdb files in the \\core\share\appx directory and the files were skipped by 7z during compression.
  • Once the copy of APPX is complete the APPX directory is packed into a self-executable 7z files name appxload.exe
  • The scheduled task runs at 2AM S,M,T,W,T,F
  • The appx_load scheduled task runs update_distro.bat which contains the following two commands:
    • xcopy /e /y d:\share\appx d:\share\waas_appx_scripts\appx
    • “c:\program files\7-zip\7z.exe” a -sfx appxload d:\share\waas_appx_scripts\appx
  • This step is required because the compressed file transfer is far faster than using robocopy to update the users local APPX installation.
• The logon.bat script has been modified to copy the appxload.exe to c:\appxload.tmp on the users local machine
• Next appx.exe is run and unpacks the the APPX distribution to c:\appx
  • NOTE: There is no measurable difference in user logon time. The customer is very happy with the process
  • NOTE: The robocopy process was taking between 4 minutes for the initial copy and 30 seconds for updates
• Last the logon script modifies the db directory reg key to point to the new appx location
• The commands that are run in the logon.bat are also separated into two standalone .bat files
  • upappx.bat and regchg.bat

NOTE: 7-Zip has also been installed on the \\core server and is required

NOTE: Once all the users have logged on and their reg keys modified the regedit command can be removed from the logon.bat script.

Script Details:

logon.bat:

rem update local APPX distro
@echo off
mkdir c:\appxload.tmp
copy \\core\share\waas_appx_scripts\appxload.exe c:\appxload.tmp
c:\appxload.tmp\appxload.exe -oc:\ -y
rem update APPX reg key
regedit.exe /s \\core\share\waas_appx_scripts\appx_redirect_to_C.reg

update_distro.bat

xcopy /e /y d:\share\appx d:\share\waas_appx_scripts\appx
“c:\program files\7-zip\7z.exe” a -sfx appx d:\vol15\waas_appx_scripts\appx

appx_redirect_to_C.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\APPX]
“Database Directory”=”c:\\APPX\\DATABASE\\”

upappx.bat

@echo off
mkdir c:\appxload.tmp
copy \\core\share\waas_appx_scripts\appxload.exe c:\appxload.tmp
c:\appxload.tmp\appxload.exe -oc:\ -y

regchg.bat

regedit.exe /s \\core\share\waas_appx_scripts\appx_redirect_to_C.reg

So that more detail than I thought I would write. Obviously the actual application is not listed in the blog, but if you are interested in that app please send me an Email rich@bocchinfuso.net. I would be more than happy yo share more of the detail with you. Also if you find any typos, etc… in the post please leave a comment.

BTW- The customer has now been running for about 30 days and they are happy with the performance.

High-level guidelines for building a Virtual Appliance:

• Start with a new VM
  • Use SCSI VMs for portability and performance
  • Split into 2GB files for size and portability
  • Allocate minimum required mem to the vm (clearly document this)
  • Disable snapshots, do not include snapshot files
  • Remove unused hardware devices
    • i.e - USB, audio, floppy, etc…
    • start devices such as floppy, cd, etc… disconnected
  • Disable “Shared Folders”
  • Avoid the use of serial and parallel ports or other specialty features
  • Chose the proper network type - Bridged is the the default but there may be a situation to use NAT
• Install “JEOS” - Just Enough OS
  • Select the Linux distribution of your choice (pick a supported guest to make life easier on yourself - Note: if you use RHEL or SLED you will need to get permission to distribute)
    • Minimize he footprint
      • only install and run necessary services
      • only open necessary ports
      • more secure and less to patch
    • Install VMware Tools
      • Improved performance, optimized drivers for virtual hardware, etc…
      • Hooks to management tools
      • Fully redistribute able inside Linux guests
    • Include or enable users to add a second virtual disk
      • put config information: user data, logs files, etc… on second disk
      • easier to update and backup the virtual appliance
• Install the applications stack
• Configure the appliance for first boo
  • Console experience
    • Accept EULA
    • “Zero-Configuration”
    • Present management URL
  • Web management interface
    • Configure networking
    • Configure security
  • Monitor and manage performance of the solution
  • Test everything! Test first boot/complete execution on different machines
• Value-Add
  • Expose logging from underlying services
  • Support SNMP
  • Provide audit hooks
  • Allow users to backup configurations and/or restore to factory default settings
• Package the virtual appliance
  • Copy appliance to new directory
  • Remove unecessary files
    • log files, nvram file, etc..
  • Add your “Getting Started Guide” or “ReadMe”
  • Compress the entire directory
    • 7-Zip or RAR work very well
    • Use cross-platform compression technology
  • Create a web page to host your virtual appliance download
  • Certify your virtual appliance
  • Create a listing on http://vam.vmware.com
• Provide a patch mechanism for your virtual appliance
  • leverage the default packaging technology of the OS (i.e. .deb or .rpm) or build your own packaging and update technology
  • Support direct online updates from your servers
  • support offline patching

Available tools, frameworks and services:

• VMware Virtual Appliance Development Kit
  • under development - used as part of Ace 2.0
• rPath Builder
  • Web-based virtual appliance development tool
  • Includes rPath Linux distro
  • Includes its own patching solution
• VirtualAppliances.net
  • Service provider
  • Developing their own framework
• jump box
  • Service provider