Peter's questions

I have a fedora 18 VM that stops updating the arp table on eth1 after running for a number of hours to days. There are other VMs on the same hypervisor that can access all of the same networks without issue. A tcpdump of the offending NIC shows only ARP broadcasts but no responses. None of the other VMs on the vDS see the ARP broadcasts from the offending NIC.

The only way I can currently solve the problem is to reboot the VM and then everything works for a while. I've tried changing the port on the vDS and even flipping the network configurations after I lose eth1's ARP table, but the ARP problem follows eth1 but I can access the machines that were originally on eth1.

If I statically add the arp entries for machines on the same subnet I have no problems with connectivity. The Hypervisor is an HP BL49X series with flex-10 network modules. Has anyone seen anything like this before?

Is there anything wrong with using one vmkernel in a multipathed iSCSI setup for vMotion traffic as well as iSCSI?

I have iSCSI storage setup using 2 vmkernels for MPIO. I'd like to use one of those kernels for vMotion traffic because the iSCSI traffic is already isolated from the rest of the network. Is this a horrible idea?

I've been wondering for a while, why does running "echo 'helloworld' | openssl passwd -1 -stdin" yield different results every time?If I put any of the hashes in my /etc/shadow I can use them as my password and login to my system, how does it work?

computer:/ user$ echo 'helloworld' | openssl passwd -1 -stdin
$1$xlm86SKN$vzF1zs3vfjC9zRVI15zFl1
computer:/ user$ echo 'helloworld' | openssl passwd -1 -stdin
$1$/0.20NIp$pd4X9xTZ6sF8ExEGqAXb9/
computer:/ user$ echo 'helloworld' | openssl passwd -1 -stdin
$1$sZ65uxPA$pENwlL.5a.RNVZITN/zNJ1
computer:/ user$ echo 'helloworld' | openssl passwd -1 -stdin
$1$zBFQ0d3Z$SibkYmuJvbmm8O8cNeGMx1
computer:/ user$ echo 'helloworld' | openssl passwd -1 -stdin
$1$PfDyDWER$tWaoTYym8zy38P2ElwoBe/

I would think that because I use this hash to describe to the system what my password should be, I should get the same results every time. Why don't I?

Is there a setting on a ESXi 5 vSwitch that will make it so DHCP broadcasts aren't forwarded to the rest of the network? I have a small micro server I'm testing some things out and I'd like a DHCP server to run for my VMs but don't want to change any other settings for the rest of the subnet not on the ESXi host.

If I have two machines both 3rd Generation AMD Opteron, one Shanghai & one Istanbul and I can vMotion between them. Does it buy me anything to enable EVC at the 3rd Generation AMD level? Will I lose any CPU features?

My thoughts are, I can enable EVC 3rd Generation with running VMs and I can't enable 2nd Generation EVC with running VMs. I figure there won't be a lose in any features because if there was a reduction in feature set then I couldn't enable EVC with running VMs.

Are there any current industry standards IEEE, ISO, ANSI.... available that state how a buildings physical infrastructure should be labeled at the rack and jack and how the documentation should be laid out? I know there is IEEE Std 200, but that is out of date, and I found a ASME standard for electrical stuff but I can't actually read it.

Every once in a while I need to put a rack mount switch on a table for a few days for LAN access. Does any company make a locking enclosure for a single 1U switch? The smaller the better. Just something that will keep people from bumping fiber connections and messing with RJ45 connections.

I'm trying to add another vm host to our SAN and I don't have good notes on how I got this working last time. (dumb mistake) I've pieced my steps together from a script I had for our production environment.

esxcfg-vswitch.pl -a vSwitch2

esxcfg-vswitch.pl -m 9000 vSwitch2

esxcfg-vswitch.pl -A iSCSI1 vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch.pl -A iSCSI2 vSwitch2

esxcfg-vmknic.pl -a -i xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -n 255.255.255.0 -m 9000 iSCSI1
esxcfg-vmknic.pl -a -i xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -n 255.255.255.0 -m 9000 iSCSI2

vicfg-iscsi.pl --swiscsi --enable

(go in and edit NIC Teaming - Move adaptors "extra" adapter to Unused for each vmk)

esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk1 -d vmhba38
esxcli swiscsi nic add -n vmk2 -d vmhba38

Once I do this I can add an address for dynamic discovery and it will find static discovery locations, but I can't add any datastores. any ideas?

I have a SAN with redundant cisco 2960s when I set it up a while ago I set all of the interfaces to use an MTU of 9000. I was looking at the config today and I noticed this line system mtu routing 1500 will that cause any problems? or because this is a switch everything should be fine because there isn't any routing.

We are testing moving users to from XP to windows 7. One of the first complaints we got is that the default behavior for Communicator 2007 doesn't show the "pop-up" notifications when you first receive a message. This can be fixed by running Communicator.exe in windows vista compatibility mode, or in the notification customization area, you select show icon and notifications.

My question is, can I set communicator to show icon and notifications by default? We are deploying using MDT 2010 and copying profiles from xp with USMT 4.0

Is there a way to define CustomSettings for each task? I have a task that is only to capture the User State of a machine, I want specify in the task/customsettings credentials to use and a location to save the state to. I want these credentials/settings to be task specific. I think there is an easy way to do this I just can't find it.

[Settings]
Priority=Default
Properties=MyCustomProperty

[Default]
OSInstall=Y
SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES
SkipCapture=YES
SkipAdminPassword=YES
SkipProductKey=YES

[106]
UserID=xxxxx
UserDomain=xxxxx
UserPassword=xxxxx

I'd like my customsettings.ini to look something like this where task sequence 106 would get the settings under [106] or can I put a customsettings.ini in the task folder and get the correct behavior?

I can't seem to get some Windows 7 machines to prevent active but idle Remote Desktop connections from timing out.

I've changed all of the local group policy settings on my test machine under

Computer Configuration
 Admin Templates
  Windows Components
   Remote Desktop Session Host
    Session Time Limits

To disabled and I still get time outs of active but idle sessions.

Is there any where else I need to make changes?

We are starting to look at migrating our systems to Windows 7 from XP. I've been playing with MDT 2010 doing automated installs and using USMT. I haven't started looking at how migrating xp laptops with Guardian Edge encryption would work. Would the WinPE overwrite the MBR and hose the system? Is there a way to do an in-place migration to Windows 7 with an encrypted HDD, or should I backup the user state to a file share and treat the laptop as a "fresh" system?

I'd like to have a local user in the admins group for when the computer isn't connected to the domain. Currently I use a start up script to create the user and add it to the admins group. Is there a way to use group policy to add a local user to the admins group?

Using Windows 7 x64 Enterprise. When I view C:\windows\System32 through explorer I can see telnet.exe, if I open cmd from the start menu I can use telnet. If I open C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe via Launchy (as admin or not) I can't use telnet or even see telnet after running

Running from start menu

C:\Windows\System32>dir telnet*
07/13/2009  05:39 PM            79,872 telnet.exe
           1 File(s)         79,872 bytes

Running from Launchy

C:\Windows\System32>dir telnet*
           File Not Found

Anyone know why the contents of the folder change depending on how it is viewed?

I'm a recent full-time system admin, I have B.S. in computer science but I've never taken a course dealing with physical implementations of networks. In a given week I: fix computers, do vulnerability remediation, write custom in-house software, and I've started to do a lot of networking. We have a few dozen Cisco switches, lots of SM and MM fiber, 5 subnets for about 400 computers. I know how to configure new switches, setup VLANs, trunks. Would it be worth it to take an intro to cisco night class? Would I find out information that could help at work? Or, are there other free resources that will teach me everything I need to know online?

Thanks,

I can't figure out how to enable Flow Control on a VMware vSwitch. I've been talking with Equallogic and VMware, and they said we need it on for better performance. I can't find out how to enable it on the vSwitch, or is it on by default?

I'm getting ready to migrate a physical file server to our VM environment using VMware standalone converter. This file server has over 300 shares on it, so deleting all the shares and recreating them is not an option. I'd like to be able to disable access to each share during the migration. I can't simply turn off file sharing because VMware converter uses the service to do the P2V. Is there a way I can write a batch file to make the number of connections on each share 0?

I'm trying to P2V a Windows Server 2008R2 to vmware vsphere 4.1 using Vmware vCenter Converter standalone 4.3. Source Box

Windows Server 2008R2
24GB ram
Dual Quad-Cores
1 Raid 5 drive 680 GB
  3 GB "Recovery" partition
  40 GB OS partition
  637 GB Data partion

When we try and convert using the stand alone converter and the built in vCenter converter there are no source volumes listed. Has anyone dealt with this before?

I'm planning to move two separate vmware ESXi 4.0 hosts into a cluster to use the vMotion and HA capabilities of ESXi (essentials plus). Right now we have a dev vm host and a production vm host and want to be able to use the dev vm host as an HA host if the production vm fails. We use almost exclusively dell Servers in our shop.

I'm considering an Equal logic PS4000x SAN with 9.6 TB 10K drives or a PowerValut MD3000i or MD3200i series. I have a few questions. Which is a better solution for vmware hosts and adding storage? I'm getting mixed feedback from dell that we would need something more than a switch in between the SAN and the ESXi hosts to allow us to use the vMotion and HA capabilities. Is that true?

Which SAN options would allow us to grow the datastores and SAN storage the easiest in the future? We currently have a File server serving 2 TB and growing of data we would like to P2V. Are the Dell solutions a bad choice?

Should we go with NetApp hardware? Our budget is fairly flexible, not crazy, but the ability to easily and cost effectively add storage in the future is important.