hsnuwan's BLOG space

VMware VSphere Client ERRORs on Windows 7 64bit

2009-11-19T12:55:00.014+05:30

Error Messages:

1. Error parsing the server “hostname”“clients.xml” file.Login will continue, contact your system administrator

2. The type initializer for 'VirtualInfrastructure.Utils.HttpWebRequestProxy' threw an exception

Nothing will happen after you click "OK" on above errors.

Don't take a deep breath and panic. ;) follow these easy steps to resolve these errors withing 10 min.

1. You need to get a copy of following DLL file from computer which has installed .NET 3.5 SP1. The file name is System.dll and it's located in %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\

Please Note: Getting this DLL from 32 bit system is fine but not from Windows 7 or Win 2008 versions.

I have uploaded this file for you : http://www.easy-share.com/1908477347/System.dll

2. Create a folder and copy this DDL file to some where in "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher" for this example I have created "bug" and copied the DLL inside it.

3. And please find the file named VpxClient.exe.config in the same folder which you have created the folder in action 2 (C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher) Open the particular file and include following lines before the end and without "" and save. (if you can't save the file get the ownership for the current user by using file properties >> Security >> Advanced... )

"

"

4. Now you need to make Environment Variable for the DDL file show in the screen shot below

Variable name: DEVPATH

Variable value: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\bug\

That's all and now you are ready to go !

More Demilitarized Zones on VMware

2009-11-11T12:36:00.012+05:30

You may have a requirement to maintain more than one DMZ zones due to high security situations. In this easy example you can get a basic idea of deploying many DMZs.(as much as your hardware supports). Since VMware VSphere came to the picture there will be many scenarios of performing this but here I used Cisco ASA series firewall (you can use even ASA 5505 or with old PIX series), HP ProCurv manageable switch and VMware ESXi host.

Let's start form the Firewall. You need to have minimum of three interfaces to perform this operation, and one interface will be your DMZ interface and for that interface I used following Trunking configuration on "Ethernet0/2" ;

interface Ethernet0/2

no nameif

no security-level

no ip address

interface Ethernet0/2.1

vlan 10

nameif dmz1

security-level 50

ip address 192.168.10.254 255.255.255.0

interface Ethernet0/2.2

vlan 20

nameif dmz2

security-level 50

ip address 192.168.20.254 255.255.255.0

And now you need to acknowledge your switch about this VLAN tagging in order to correct switching the same tagged packets. Configuration will be easy and I did as following;

vlan 20

name "VLAN20"

tagged 13,15

no ip address

exit

vlan 10

name "VLAN10"

tagged 13,15

no ip address

exit

And now you need to create a Vswitch in the VMware host, binding the external interface you planing use for this deployment. Check below example diagram;

Now you are almost done, basically you can control the internal access (security) using a third party firewall as shown like following digram.

I have assigned a easy IP structure for you to understand this setup easily.

How to add Flash plugin to Google Crome

2009-10-16T22:50:00.003+05:30

Recently Google Chrome has became my favorite browsers but nothing happens when when you install Flash plugin. So you will need to manually install it. Very simple procedure.

1. Download http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi

2. No need to fear with the file extension, simply rename flashplayer-win.xpi to flashplayer-win.xpi.zip then your ZIP program will do the job for you

3. Extract the file and copy two file named “flashplayer.xpt” and “NPSWF32.dll”

4. Past above to files in to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\Plugins (in Vista)

and create a folder name Plugin is it's not exists

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\Plugins (in Win XP)

5. Restart the Browser and now you are done.

The basic concept of troubleshooting

2009-05-21T15:29:00.005+05:30

In my younger times my Dad had an electrical workshop in Batticolo (1980 ~ 1985).

One day I hardly remember someone came with an electrical iron and he wanted to fix it because it’s was not working. My Dad had about 10 tech workers in the workshop and a one of a newbie worker has assigned for these kinds of small tasks. (I’m very interested to spend the time in my Dad’s workshop so I was seeing these stories from the beginning)
So, he has removed the front cover of the iron ASAP and replaced the iron element with no delays. But it’s not worked, so he has spend some hours finding where the issue is and finally he decided to get advice from my father and my Dad just asked him to check the fuse in the power plug at the end.

Replacing the fuse has resolved the issue and it worked well with the existed iron element as well. So my Dad has been taught his worker and I have learned the basic concepts of troubleshooting in my age 6.

So I would be honored to respect my farther on the day of completing my 10 years of the IT experience because he has laid the foundation of my success.

At the same time today is my first anniversary with Exilesoft (Pvt) Ltd.

A new trend for IT virtualization by VMware vShpere

2009-05-20T18:11:00.005+05:30

About one year ago, I had an imagination of having an enterprise level packet filtering mechanism inbuilt with VMware Infrastructure. Because it will be time saving and it’ll be more sophisticated when you defining security in between virtual infrastructures you build inside your VMware server. Basically what was in my mind is an improved VMware switch (capable of routing and packet filtering) to handle the high end security requirements. And It’s was just another entry to my wish list.

Recently VMware announced its new concept of future IT virtualization, “Cloud Computing” VMware vShpere. It’s a wide solution with high end Security, High availability (fault tolerate, data recovery), Scalability, etc. I’m anxiously waiting to get in touch with this latest technology. It will be released soon.

A simulcast done by VMware CEO Paul Maritz: http://www-waa-akam.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=fac15ded614cefc0febbae341bec9c7c&portal_id=dd2b37882b0db9169ba0823a6e235f4e

Loose the ethernet when you moving Ubuntu on VMware ESX ???

2009-02-16T16:08:00.005+05:30

Some one can confused because, when you shifting a VM or copy, rename, Vmware asks to update the UUID but when you trying to up the network device you will be seeing something like below,

"SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device"

Cause: VMware basses the MAC address of interface on it's internal UUID.

Solution:
Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and delete the additional entries if exists and enter the correct MAC address.

Do a restart and the network should be fine.

Cisco Firewall disabling TLS initiation by default

2009-02-13T11:09:00.005+05:30

I have found my Cisco ASA 5510 is masking out STARTTLS initiation because of the SMTP packet inspection. This is enabled by default.

How to enable the firewall to start TLS on ESMTP sessions;

Option one;

policy-map type inspect esmtp esmtp_map
parameters
allow-tls [action log]

Option two;

no fixup protocol smtp 25

(fixup command is an obsolete command used in Cisco IOS version 6 and earlier, I'm having IOS 8.0(4) but fixup is working for me too)

SBS 2008 provides Out Look Anywhere

2008-11-27T12:38:00.022+05:30

Out Look is connecting via SSL tunnel, Microsoft Exchange 2007 feature called Autodiscover service. For this you need to have Out Look 2003 or 2007 “Outlook Anywhere” (formerly known as RPC over HTTP clients)

This will provide you a fully functional Outlook client without initiating any other connections to the SBS server. And this will automatically enabled by default with a fresh Small Business Server 2008 deployment.

The Autodiscover service process for internal access

The Autodiscover service process for external access

IAnd it would be highly recommended to use a valid SSL certificate for the server.

Link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794265.aspx

Cisco VPN Client is not supported for Vista 64bit

2008-11-22T12:13:00.007+05:30

Recently I have installed Vista Ultimate 64bit on my note book because I wanted to get the peak performance utilizing the existing hardware resources. Also my target is to run VMware ESX infrastructure on my note book for the R&D purposes. What I have is a HP DV series Core 2 Duo T9300 @ 2.5GHz, 6MB L2 Cash, Bus Speed 800Mhz and 4GB RAM.

(You can get a very basic idea about 64bit http://www.windows-vista-update.com/Windows_Vista_64_bit.html )

I found everything work perfectly with Vista 64bit but Cisco VPN client installation has failed . And then I found Cisco has clearly stated that they don’t have a plan to support VPN client for Vista 64bit.

“There are no current plans to provide 64-bit support for the Cisco VPN Client but 64-bit support is available for the Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client” link: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/secursw/ps2308/products_qanda_item09186a00801c2dbe.shtml

And in the other end Microsoft provides VPN clients compatibility summary http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929490

Luckily Cisco AnyConnect VPN client came to picture and I have configured SSL VPN in Cisco ASA 5510 and now my Anyconnect VPN client works perfectly. It’s a SSL tunneling based connectivity and performance improves with DTLS tunneling and also it has many options of performance tuning. Still I didn’t evaluate the performance Vs Cisco VPN client.

Cisco any connect configuration can be found in http://www.ciscosystems.com/en/US/docs/security/vpn_client/anyconnect/anyconnect22/administration/guide/22admin4.html
And Cisco ASDM latest versions provides SSL VPN Wizard and it will make your life easier.

VMware Convertor: Convert Microsoft SBS 2008 in to a ESX virtual host in minimum down time

2008-11-17T16:28:00.019+05:30

I had a terrible headache to convert my SBS 2008 physical server in to an ESX virtual host. I was performing some experiments on this and also planning to minimize the down time as much as possible. Thank God, VMware has released new version of Convertor and it’s fully supports for the Windows 2008 versions as well.
Link: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

My SBS 2008 was running on IBM Systems X 3650 and it’s has 10GB RAM and runs over RAID 10.

In my case I have installed VMware Convertor in to the VMware VC (virtual center) installed Windows XP 32bit BOX which is not very powerful one. Ok we’ll start the work.

Open Vmware Convertor 4.0.2 or above and click on the “Import a Machine” Wizard.

1. Click “Next” to start the wizard

2. Again click “Next” (Source)

3. There you can select the Source from the drop down list

4. And enter the authentication user name passwords to the target machine (SBS 2008)

5. After that below menu will show you the current hard disk and there you can change the capacity as needed and click “Next” after you done

6. Click on “Next” (Destination)
7. In this menu you can select the Destination and in this case I used “VMware Infrastructure Virtual Machine”

8. Now you have to provide the ESX root credentials to authenticate the VMware SEX host you wish to create the virtual host and then click “Next”
9. And provide a name for the Virtual Host
10. In this menu you need to provide the Resource Pool you need to place the imported VM and click on it and again click “Next”
11. Select the storage from the given Data stores
12. In the Networks menu you need to set the interface information and click “Next”
13. And in the Customization menu you can customize the VM host before you process and also you can scheduled to install the VMware tools as well

14. Click “Finish" to beging the process

I had about 64GB footprint in the SBS 2008 physical server and the VMware Convertor spent only about 40 minutes to finish the tasks. (please note this network has connected via HP procurve 1Gbps switch)

I have started the SBS virtual machine which is just migrated and installed VMware Tools and restarted again. I happened reset the IP settings for the both network interfaces and after that switched the users to the SBS 2008 Virtual host. I have swithced the traffic withing 3 seconds down time but there was a 1 to 2 minutes down time in the network. (just password prompts)

No headaches at all ! Good Luck for your migration !

BUT BE CAREFULL WHEN YOU PERFORMING THIS WITH A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT ! YOU NEED TO PLAN WELL !

HowTo SVN (Sub Version) on JeOS

2008-10-28T10:43:00.007+05:30

Can you imagine a development environment without a source codes repository ? I can remember a site listing the top ten reasons not to use VSS, but I was unable to locate it by search. I have personally worked with VSS and I agree with it most of the time. I have been told that even Microsoft does not use VSS internally. I do not know if that statement is true, but no Microsoft engineer with whom I'm acquainted uses it. How ever I wish to see a sophisticated source repository from Microsoft soon !

By the way I decided to deploy a SVN instant onn JeOS and I feel it's working birrlient with optimized kernal.

Let's start !!! Install JeOS on make it uptodate !

$ sudo apt-get update

Best thing is to install curl and it's help us to troubleshoot if something gose worng.

$ sudo apt-get install curl

I assume your system already have vim editing tool or type and install it using below command

$ sudo apt-get install vim

Install Apache

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

Now use curl and check whether it's up and running

$ curl http://localhost/

And you shoud see some like below, then you good to go with next step

"It's works!" with some html tags

Install SVN

$ sudo apt-get install subversion

Install required lib for theApache

$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-svn

Now you can create SVN folders as you wish

$ sudo mkdir /svn
$ sudo mkdir /svn/projects

And setup the folders usin below commands

$ sudo svnadmin create /svn/projects
$ sudo chown -R www-data /svn/projects

Create a password file and enter the first user in to your password file
$ sudo htpasswd -cm /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd user01

Add you will be asked the password and confirm password

And please note if you need to add more users in later;

$ sudo htpasswd /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd user02

No we configure Apache by editing the following file with Vim that we installed at the beginning

$ sudo vim /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dav_svn.conf

All you really need to do is remove the comments "#" in the apropriate areas, finally dav_svn.conf should looks alike below;

DAV svn
SVNPath /svn/projects
AuthType BasicAuthName "Subversion Repository"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/dav_svn.passwd
Require valid-user

Restart Apache
$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Thats it, you're done. You can get to your repository via your hosts browser by going to http://{your VM IP}/svn. You should get a username/password dialog which to enter the details you created in.

You can always use a third party software to make your life easier !!! http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

HowTo BugZilla on JeOS ! (on VMware Infrastructure)

2008-10-23T13:23:00.002+05:30

I have spent several hours with my one and only reliable friend (google) to find on resources on installing Bugzilla installation on JeOS/Ubuntu. And spent several hours on following some HOWTOs.

But finally I got my own way of doing this simply !

Follow the steps defined below for the easy steps of deploying Bugzilla on JeOS.

Download JeOS install: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/ My environment was VMware ESX 3 and you can try this on VMware Workstation too.
The complete guide of installing and initial configuration can be found: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOS and I strictly advice you to follow this guide including “Installing VMware Tools” subheading, before you begin any configurations on it.
After you done with initial confirmation please don’t forget to do a snapshot of you current virtual machine.

Installing Apache: sudo apt-get install apache2
After you finished please check typing the hostname/IP on the browser whether you getting the Apache default page “It’s works!” Then you good to start next step.

Installing PhpMyAdmin: sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
But after this installation I got a error when I accessing http://hostname/phpmyadmin and creating symbolic link from [/etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf] to [/etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf]

sudo ln -s /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart (do a restart to effect the change)

Now you should be able to access the login page at http://hostname/phpmyadmin and now you can do another snapshot in your virtual machine.

Now install MySQL: sudo apt-get install mysql-server
Please follow the instructions during the installation and provide a root password for the MySQL DB.

After this finished restart Apache: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Restart MySQL: sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Now you should be able to log in to the http://hostname/phpmyadmin using root password you have given during the MySQL installation. Well done ! and do another snapshot for your own safety ! :) And now we’ll start Bugzilla installation ! it’s simple as you seen so far !

Installing Bugzilla: sudo apt-get install bugzilla

Set the email to anything you like you can always change it later.
Set the administrator's real name. YES (use dbcommon) for db creation, it is not recommended to use the manual way unless you know what is happening
Admin password : provide the password you have entered during the MySQL installation
Application password: provide a password Install the package maintainer's version ( this may happen during the install)

After this finished you can log in to the phpmyadmin and check whether it has created the DB and the tables. Do a restart for services if necessary.
http://hostname/bugzilla
Now should be able to login to your new instant of Bugzilla. Enjoy !

WOT is JeOS (Just Enough Operating System)???

2008-10-22T11:14:00.007+05:30

Good old days I was playing with Rad Hat distros all the time, Web sphere, Oracle were my best buddies. But recently (from 2, 3 years back) I was bit away from LINUX and forced to stay with Windows. (who did that ?, poor me !)

From couple of week’s back I had a imagination to recompile a LINUX kernel in to a very light build and to be used on VMware ESX. Yes, there are some light LINUX kernels in the industry. But really wanted to make it very light and tune for VMware virtual infrastructure.

Thanks to google, I found JeOS which meets all the expectations I have been looking for. This is compiled by Ubuntu team. And I don't forget to thank to Ubuntu team as well :)

“Ubuntu Server Edition JeOS (pronounced "Juice") is an efficient variant of our server operating system, configured specifically for virtual appliances. Currently available as a CD-Rom ISO for download, JeOS is a specialised installation of Ubuntu Server Edition with a tuned kernel that only contains the base elements needed to run within a virtualized environment.”

Users deploying virtual appliances built on top of JeOS will benefit from:

better performances on the same hardware compared to a full non-optimized OS
smaller footprint of the virtual appliance on their valuable disk space
fewer updates and therefore less maintenance than a full server installation

Tech Specs - v 8.04:

Less than 100Mo ISO image
Less than 300Mo installed footprint
Specialised -virtual Kernel 2.6.24
Optimised for VMWare ESX, VMWare Server and KVM
Intel or AMD x86 architecture
Minimum memory 128M
No graphical environment preloaded as it is aimed at server virtual appliance
Working knowledge of linux administration and debian packages recommended to start building your own appliance

Download
Start testing it right now, download the image today from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/
Tutorial
Learn how to use JeOS to create your own appliance at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOS
Canonical ISV programme
Interested in joining Canonical's ISV programme? Please go to: http://www.canonical.com/partners/isv

I'm so surprised with it !