Not a good idea. Someone I know implemented Cisco WAAS and is experiencing performance problems. Specifically the CPU on the WAE device is spiked to 100% utilized. They are attempting to per-position 80GB of data including large 1-2GB PSTs to the WAE (Wide Area Application Engine). In my opinion this is a recipe for disaster. First off Microsoft does not support PST access via network shares, and once you read why you will understand why caching PSTs is an even worse idea.

http://logs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/01/21/network-stored-pst-files-don-t-do-it.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019

I ran my own little test by moving a PST to a share, starting wireshark (ethereal) and watching the activity. Accessing the PST over the network makes CIFS alone look very efficient.

Admittedly I still sparingly use Internet Explorer but I found a cool little plug-in that allows me to now run windows updates from a non-IE browser, further limiting my need for IE. Check out it out at http://windowsupdate.62nds.com.

The second utility removes the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) from your computer, another fine piece of Microshaft nuisanceware. The original location of the “removewga” was here http://www.firewallleaktester.com/removewga.htm but it appears Microsoft forced the developer to disable the links. You can still grab the utility here http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Uninstallers/RemoveWGA.shtml .

I came across a cool little Outlook calendar add-in called Datalens, the software was developed at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. The add-in greatly enhances the usability of the Outlook calendar.

So a couple of months ago or so I had the idea to test and document the use of rsych to replicate VMware virtual machines. Unfortunately my machine is running ESX 2.5.x and I had yet to upgrade to 3.0 so this information is a bit depreciated but I feel that it will be indicative of what I will see on ESX 3.0 (aka - VI3). On ESX 3.0 the process actually becomes much easier because all of the files (.vmx, .vmdk, .nvram) are contained in the same directory structure. So here is a simplistic representation of the commands required to replicate a VM on ESX 2.5, I am also in the process of building an automation script for ESX 3.0:

************ CREATE .REDO LOG ************
ware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx addredo scsi0:0

************ STARTING REPLICATION ************
rsync –verbose –progress –stats –compress /vmfs/VMs/rh62_1.vmdk esx2::rsyncVMs

************ REPLICATE VM CONFIG FILES ************
rsync –verbose –progress –stats –compress /home/bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/* esx2::vmconfig/rh62_1

************ ADDING REDO.REDO LOG ************
vmware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx addredo scsi0:0

************ COMMITING REDO LOGS *************
vmware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx commit scsi0:0 1 0 1
vmware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx commit scsi0:0 0 0 0

************ DONE ************

The process worked well. I captured the output of the initial rsync and the second rsych cycle below:

Initial rsync cycle

Number of files: 1
Number of files transferred: 1
Total file size: 419430912 bytes
Total transferred file size: 419430912 bytes
Literal data: 419430912 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 30
File list generation time: 0.152 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 85826493
Total bytes received: 38

sent 85826493 bytes received 38 bytes 432375.47 bytes/sec
total size is 419430912 speedup is 4.89

Second rsync cycle

Number of files: 1
Number of files transferred: 1
Total file size: 419430912 bytes
Total transferred file size: 419430912 bytes
Literal data: 1864192 bytes
Matched data: 417566720 bytes
File list size: 30
File list generation time: 0.135 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 344586
Total bytes received: 143405

sent 344586 bytes received 143405 bytes 4337.70 bytes/sec
total size is 419430912 speedup is 859.51

Looking forward to getting sometime to play with this on ESX 3.0, I am lobbying hard for the 48hr day

Ever feel the need to mount a Windows or Linux .vmdk on windows, I have. Here are a couple of utilities that make it possible to open Linux and Windows .vmdks on Windows in read-only mode or read/write mode.

Virtual Disk Driver for Windows (http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html)
Ext2IFS - Ext2/3 file system driver for windows. Required to mount Linux Virtual disks on windows (http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html)

I have been using SYDI for quite a while now. The 2.0 release of sydi-server has added some nice features, the ability to generate Word output from .xml files is huge. The only think that I found to be annoying is that the sydi-transform.vbs script does allow the input of an entire directory.

cscript.exe sydi-transform.vbs -xServer.xml -sServerhtml.xsl -oServer.html

This can make the transformation process from .xml to .html fairly labor intensive for a large environment. This little script solves that problem.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# syntax: perl transform.pl dir_where_xml_files_live
# e.g. - perl transform.pl ./xmlfiles
# Will walk the file system and output filename.xml.html for each .xml file
#
# Edit these variables to match the location on your system
$pathtotransform=”g:/sydi/tools/sydi-transform.vbs”;
$pathtoxsl=”g:/sydi/xml/serverhtml.xsl”;

#DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE
$dirtoget=”$ARGV[0]“;

opendir(IMD, $dirtoget) || die(”Cannot open directory”);
@thefiles= readdir(IMD);
closedir(IMD);

foreach $f (@thefiles)
{
unless ( ($f eq “.”) || ($f eq “..”) )
{
system “cscript $pathtotransform -x$f -s$pathtoxsl -o$dirtoget\/$f.html”;
}
}

I had the need to load a MSSQL 2000 instance on a Windows 2003 box when I encountered the following error “Unable to validate product key”. This was the MSDN SQL 2000 CD that I had used on numerous W2K and WXP boxes so I had no idea what was going on. After some researching I found the fix.

A simple registry change. The hack can be found here.

I hope this helps someone else out.

-RJB

I thought I would share some directions on detaching and reatching a database from the osql (SQL 7, 2000, MSDE) command line or the SQL 2005 the sqlcmd command line.

osql into the server: (i.e. - osql -u sa -p password)

sp_databases (displays all databases on the server)
go

Note:
If you do not know the location of the MDF and LDF files use the following to determine:
use <database_name>
go
sp_helpfile
go

use master
go
sp_detach_db ‘existing_db_name‘
go
sp_attach_db ‘new_db_name‘, ‘<path to the database MDF file>’, ‘<path to the database LDF file>’
go

-RJB

As a follow-up to my previous post on modifying the prefetch registry key, I found a nice little FREE tool to cleanup windows temp files and the prefetch directory for those of you who don’t want to mess with the registry settings and do the manual cleanup.? The tool is CCleaner and can be found here.

-RJB

Step 1.

Clear the prefetch cache located at C:\Windows\Prefetch

Step 2.

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Modify/Create the Value Data Type(s) and Value Name(s) as detailed below.
Data Type: DWORD Value // Value Name: EnablePrefetcher
Setting for Value Data: [0 = Disabled / 1 = Application Launch Prefetch / 2 = Boot Prefetch / 3 = Prefetch All]
Exit Registry and Reboot

My prefetch registry entry was set to 3.? I cleaned the c:\windows\prefetch directory out and set the registry entry to 0 to disable and I am much happier with my system performance.

Another tool that I find very useful is Mike Lin’s Startup Control Panel, which allows simple management of autostart applications.?

Happy optimizing!

-RJB