Another fine example of a Microsoft productivity tool. This video is absolutely hilarious. Thanks but I would rather use punch cards 🙂
Thanks you to my good buddy at http://vi411.org for sharing this with me.
This is too damn funny!
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Hacked!
This morning I visited my site to find that a Turkish hacker decided to post some Turkish/Armenian propaganda. Interesting? Anyway, luckily the popup was embedded in a post and was fairly easy to find and remove.
Preliminary results: rsych to replicate virtual machines
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 🙂
Mounting .vmdk files in Windows
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)
Collecting system information with SYDI
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’m here…
It has been a few weeks since my last post. I have been really busy kicking off a new initiative and working on a number of other projects. I am knee deep in a VMware replication whitepaper which is slow going just because of all the documentation and my home lab just is not really equipped enough to handle all the things I want to try and document. In my next few posts I will provide some of details that will eventually be found in the complete whitepaper. Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know I am still alive.
Eccentric (aka – The Panther) ////
Could possible be one of the funniest things I have ever seen on network TV! Is this guy for real or does he have a severe mental handicap?
You can download the video here
The video is an .flv you will need a flash player. If you need an multimedia player that supports .flv I suggest VLC meida player (VideoLAN Client) alternatively you can download a standalone FLV Player from here.
I’m Linux
This was sent to me a by a friend. I thought is was worthy of a blog posting.
Robocopy GUI
Those of us who have a need to migrate or copy data in a Windows environment have become quite familiar with Microsoft’s robust file copy utility (aka – Robocopy). I stumbled across this GUI for Robocopy a week or so ago and I thought I would share it with you.
You can grab a copy of the Robocopy GUI from here.
Is the CAS game changing?
I have been quite for a while, but I have been working behind the scenes on some pretty cool stuff which should him my blog in the coming weeks. Some good videos and a white paper or two. In the meantime, I thought I would offer up some conjecture on the HDS’s acquisition of Archivas.
On February 6th, 2007 HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) announced plans to acquire Archivas, a move which could potentially change CAS (Content Addressable Storage) game. To date EMC with the Centera platform has run away from the archiving pack with an API and platform based CAS (Content Addressable Storage) approach that they acquired from Belgium based Filepool for $50 million in April 2001. Long-term archiving is more mainstream than every before and the open Archivas ArC solution may be well suited for integration into the HDS TagmaStor (read more about TagmaStor) as a feature rather than an independent platform. EMC announced a while ago tiered storage in the same frame by leveraging Fibre Channel and LC-FC (Low Cost Fibre Channel) drives in the DMX platform. The acquisition of Archivas may provide the ability for HDS to integrate CAS into thier mainstream Thunder and Lightning storage platforms.