Removing RDM’s through mirroring to VMDK

While we are trying to reduce the use of RDM’s we also started to active migrate them to VMDK’s where possible. This helps us to keep the environment dynamic.

This is a short tutorial how we use the Windows Mirror feature to mirror the disk and then remove it.

First start with gathering the disk size about the disk you want to remove. Create a new VMDK  disk with the same size as the RDM disk. Go to Windows Disk management, initialize and create a dynamic disk.
*Note both disks should be dynamic

 

<<MMM somehow my text got removed will add it again>>

Slow mouse performance Windows Server 2012 VM

Slow mouse ? Windows Server 2012 RDP ?

Recently we deployed some Windows 2012 server VM’s. Somehow I noticed that in the console but also RDP the mouse lags and is slow. Apparently I’m some one who notices this pretty quick, after a quick check I saw VMware tools where installed properly, correct drivers are loaded so this shouldn’t cause the problem.

After a little google search I found a blog with a simple solution we probably forgot while deploying the 2012 machines. It was just the little mouse pointer shadow :S

How do I turn this off ?

Go to the “control panel” and open “System”

Open “Advanced system settings and then click the “Settings” button at the performance field. In the tab “Visual effects” you see an option “Show shadows under mouse pointer”. After disabling this, the performance of the mouse was back to normal again.

I also decided to set the settings to “Adjust for best performance” because this will decrease any other almost not noticable lag 🙂

Kiwi Syslog Errors

My Kiwi Syslog server kept crashing a lot of times during a weekly period, after applying the changes below, the problem looks resolved.

Issue:

When attempting to start the Kiwi Syslog Server (KSS) service, one of the following error messages displays:

  • Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
  • Error 7000: The Kiwi Syslog Server failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
  • Error 7009: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the Kiwi Syslog Server service to connect.
  • Component ‘ipdaems81.ocx’ or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid

http://knowledgebase.solarwinds.com/kb/questions/4386/Kiwi+Syslog+Server+Service+Startup+Failure+in+Versions+9.3.3+and+9.3.4

 

Windows Boot Configuration Data

Administrative privileges are required to use BCDEdit to modify BCD.

Boot Configuration Data (BCD) files provide a store that is used to describe boot applications and boot application settings. The objects and elements in the store effectively replace Boot.ini.
/timeout Specifies the time to wait, in seconds, before the boot manager selects the default entry.

Example
Set the timeout to 5 seconds.

bcdedit /timeout 5

Performace Analysis of Logs (PAL)

With my previous post about PolyMonRT I also would like to share PAL with you.

PAL is a  performance analyzer which analyzes your perfmon tracing with the Best Practice Treshholds from Microsoft for most of their products.

With the help of a easy GUI you can simply select your performance log and start the analyzing.
When the analyzing finished it’s reported in a nice colored HTML view which shows your warning and critical points you could review to let your machine perform better 🙂

Required Products (free and public):
– PowerShell v2.0 or greater.
– Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
– Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Source: http://pal.codeplex.com/

PolymonRT

I have been working on some perfmon counter knowledge and came across something I would like to share. If you know what kind of things to measure you can visualize this with PolyMonRT or PolyMon. Yes there are some other products available which look better, but this one is free.

It’s highly customizable so you can get out whatever you want.

Source: http://polymonrt.codeplex.com/
Screenshots: http://polymonrt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Screenshots&referringTitle=Home

Manage Remote Desktop Sessions from CMD

I used to receive the maximum number of connections error message when I try to log on to the Windows 2003 Server in my office via Windows Remote Desktop.

This is pretty annoying if you have some urgent work to do in the server. Most of the already logged in users won’t even be using the session at the time, but I can’t login! So how to solve this? After a bit of googling, as usual, I found a simple way to disconnect other remotely logged in sessions. :D

First of all you must be logged in to your client computer as a domain Admin user. Now open the command prompt and type in the following command.

qwinsta /server:SERVERIP

The Ip address or domain name of the Remote server should be entered in place of SERVERIP
Example:

qwinsta /server:10.10.1.10

You will get a list of the Remote Sessions in the command window.

In the above sceenshot we can clearly see an Active RDP session with the ID 2 which belongs to the user Administrator. In order to disconnect that user we are going to use the session ID. Use the following command line to disconnect the remote session.

rwinsta /server:SERVERIP SESSIONID

For example in order to terminate the session of the Administrator user the following command should be given.

rwinsta /server:10.10.1.10 2

Now let’s confirm if the user is really disconnected. Just type in the qwinsta command in proper format.

As you can see our session with ID 2 is no longer there. Now for the user we just disconnected will see the following message.

The remote session was disconnected because you session was logged off at the remote computer. Your administrator or another user might have ended your connection.

Source : TechTalkz

Remote Desktop Connection Manager

I was browsing the web and found Remote Desktop Connection Manager. It should be a nice replacement and organizing tool for Remote Connections.
You can create groups, set your UID and password before connecting, see multiple screens live at a time.

You can download it at Microsoft’s website
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4603c621-6de7-4ccb-9f51-d53dc7e48047&displaylang=en

After you installed it, you can move the folder to another PC/Server and use it standalone.

Servers are organized into named groups. You can connect or disconnect to all servers in a group with a single command. You can view all the servers in a group as a set of thumbnails, showing live action in each session. Servers can inherit their logon settings from the group. Thus, when you change your lab account password, you only need to change the password stored by RDCMan in one place. By default passwords are stored securely by encrypting with CryptProtectData using the (locally) logged on user’s authority. Servers can be moved between groups using drag-and-drop or via their properties page.

Non-Win7/Vista users will need to get version 6 of the Terminal Services Client. You can obtain this from the Microsoft Download Center: XP; Win2003

Registry comparing

Due to a problem with some of our servers I was trying to compare 3 registry’s because 2 did function correct and one had an unidentified problem which caused the problem.

I found a nice and easy tool called regdiff. It once was nested inside the Windows Resource Kit.
You can download it at  http://www.p-nand-q.com/download/tools/regdiff.zip

Easiest is too export the two directories you want to  compare. You also can use the whole registry but think about all the variables which are different per server. You will get a lot of failed compares then.

If you just have a little clue where too search for your problem, try to compare some directories there instead of the whole regsitry.

You can find more information on:
http://www.p-nand-q.com/download/regdiff.html

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