CERTIFICATION: VMware Sales Professional (VSP)

I got new VMware Sales Professional (VSP) certification, required for VMware Partners.

To become a VSP you must complete all of the required courses and one of the specialty courses listed below. I passed al VSP Requirements and VSP Specialties:

VSP Requirements:

• Virtualization Overview
• VMware Corporate Overview
• VMware Products Overview
• VMware Solutions Overview
• Delivering the VMware Message
• Effectively Working With VMware

VSP Specialties:

• Selling to Testing and Development Environments
• Selling Server Consolidation and Containment Solutions
• Selling Business Continuity Solutions
• Selling Desktop Manageability & Security Solutions

Exam Statistics:

10 Citrix Exams

04 Citrix Certifications

23 Microsoft Exams

13 Microsoft Certifications

01 VMware Certifications

More Info: http://www.musumeci.com.ar/Web_English/certificaciones_eng.htm

MS: Recover a Exchange 2000 Database

Yesterday, I enjoyed a very, very long day recovering successfully an Exchange 2000 corrupted database.

Some links:

What to Do When an Exchange Store Won't Mount
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/wontmount.mspx

Error c1041724 Occurs When You Try to Mount a Database on an Exchange 2003 Server
http://support.microsoft.com:80/kb/822449/en-us

Funny post about Exchange 2000 recovery:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/12009443/m/204009322631

VMware: How to Install Windows Home Server Beta 2

How to Install Windows Home Server Beta 2 in VMware Workstation or VMware Server:

Create a VM with 512 MB of RAM.
Remove the SCSI Hard Drive.
Create a new IDE Hard Drive with a least 40 GB.
Install the Windows Home Server Beta 2

VMware ESX Must Read Papers

Command Line Interface Tips and Tricks for VMware ESX Server 2 and 3
http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9685.pdf

Troubleshooting VMware ESX Server 3 and VMware VirtualCenter 2
http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/mdc9694.pdf

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: Effective DRS and HA in production
http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9413.pdf

VirtualCenter 2 - Templates Usage and Best Practices
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vc_2_templates_usage_best_practices_wp.pdf

VMware: Error in HA

VMware Infrastructure v3.0 (ESX Server)

Error: Insufficient resources to satisfy HA failover level on cluster in data center.
Error: Internal AAM error. Agent did not start.

Solution:

- Check the HOSTNAME entry in /etc/sysconfig/network to the short name.
- Check if your FQDN is greater than 30 characters, in which case HA will not configure properly. This is a known bug in VC20 (see KB article 2259).
- Check IP, routing, and DNS for each host.
- Make sure that storage and network are available across the cluster - Ensure that the hosts are not managed directly: perform all host management through VC.
- May want to add nodes to /etc/hosts on ESX Server AND hosts file on VC Server. A better plan would be to use primary and secondary DNS servers.
- Check if Service Console has default gateway defined.
- Verify logs: /opt/LGTOaam512/* and /opt/LGTOaam512/vmsupport/*.
- Check /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf.
- In ESX 3.x the memory reservation is zero, and the limit is "unlimited." To see this, edit the settings of a virtual machine, click on the Resources tab, and select Memory on the left. To conform to the ESX 3.x defaults, change the settings to a reservation of 0, and check the Unlimited box under limit. After doing this for all virtual machines, edit the settings for the cluster. Disable HA, and then edit the cluser settings again to reenable HA. The current failover capacity should now match the configured capacity.

CERTIFICATION: Microsoft Test 70-284 passed!

Today I passed the Microsoft Test 70-284: Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and I got the Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA: Messaging) in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA: Messaging) in Microsoft Windows 2000 certifications.It was a very easy exam for me (I have +10 years working with Exchange) and +3 years with Exchange 2003. The Exchange 2003 Training Kit and Exchange 2003 Resource Kit is a required reading.You will find a very useful list of Exchange 2003 papers and documents in http://exchange.musumeci.com.ar

Exam Statistics:

10 Citrix Exams
04 Citrix Certifications
23 Microsoft Exams
13 Microsoft Certifications

More Info: http://www.musumeci.com.ar/Web_English/certificaciones_eng.htm

VMware: Deploying Microsoft Exchange in VMware Infrastructure

Deploying Microsoft Exchange in VMware Infrastructure offers many advantages, including higher availability,simplified recovery, and more efficient use of resources. This paper discusses best practices for running Exchange 2003 in a VMware Infrastructure environment, in the areas of servers, virtual machines, storage, and implementation. In addition, a case study shows an example architecture, and the Appendix provides some sample metrics for Exchange performance.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/exchange_best_practices.pdf

MS: Deploying Exchange Server 2007

Deploying a Simple Exchange Server 2007 Organization
This document provides descriptions and overviews of features, guidelines for planning, and steps for deploying a simple Exchange 2007 organization.

Deploying a Large Exchange Server 2007 Organization
This document provides descriptions and overviews of features, guidelines for planning, and steps for deploying a large Exchange 2007 organization.

Deploying a Standard Exchange Server 2007 Organization
This document provides descriptions and overviews of features, guidelines for planning, and steps for deploying a standard Exchange 2007 organization.

Deploying a Complex Exchange Server 2007 Organization
This document provides descriptions and overviews of features, guidelines for planning, and steps for deploying a complex Exchange Server 2007 organization.

MS: Robocopy

My favorite tool in the entire world is robocopy. This is an amazing and fast tool to copy files. I'm using robocopy every day, in my day by day work, in my servers and my laptops.

I good example for a simple copy:

robocopy c:\data e:\software\data /e /r:1 /w:1

This example copy all files and directories (/e) from c:\data to e:\software\data, retries 1 time (/r:1) and wait 1 second between retry (/w:1).

robocopy file:////Server1/Data E:\software\data /E /copyall /np /r:3 /w:1 /log+:c:\log_robocopy.txt /TEE

This example is useful to migrate all files and directories (/e) from the share \\server1\data to e:\software\data, retries 3 times (/r:3) and wait 1 second between retries (/w:1), copy all NTFS attributes and permissions (/copyall), turns off copy progress indicator (/np), redirects output to the specified file, appending it to the file if it already exists (/log+:c:\log_robocopy.txt) and displays output in the console window, in addition to directing it to the log file specified by /LOG or /LOG+ (/TEE).

You can download robocopy (included in Windows 2003 Resource Kit) here

Install Nero 7.5 Lite in Unattended Mode

Download Nero 7 Lite v7.7.5.1 Lite from http://www.updatepack.nl

Create a script

Nero-7.5.1.1_eng_lite.exe /VERYSILENT /LANG="English" /TASKS="desktopicon"
/COMPONENTS="nero_core,nero_toolkit\nero_cdspeed" /USER="Your Name" /COMPANY="Your Company" /SERIAL="Your Serial"

More info: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST&f=80&t=69886

VM: Performance Tuning Best Practices for ESX Server 3

The paper provides a list of performance tips that cover the most performance-critical areas of Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3).
The intended audience is system administrators who have already deployed VI3 and are looking to maximize their performance.

Download:http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_performance_tuning.pdf

MS: Debugging Windows Dumps

WinDbg - Tool for dump analysis or debugging

WinDbg provides source-level debugging through a graphical user interface and a text-based interface.

Usage: Use WinDbg to open crash dumps obtained from Dr. Watson or Windows crashes (blue screens). Once the crash dump has finished loading, many commands can be used to provide helpful information about the error.
The command !analyze –v performs basic exception analysis, reporting the error that occurred and the module in which it occurred. The command lmv can be used to show all of the modules loaded, including their full path and version information.

More info: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263