The course covers VMware desktop and application virtualization using VMware View and ThinApp, the Cisco Nexus 1000-V 3rd party vNetwork Distributed Switch, and VMware's PowerCLI command line toolset for vSphere.

My part of the course is VMware View and ThinApp. ThinApp is VMware's Application Virtualization product. Application Virtualization is so new that most system admins are still relatively unfamiliar with how it can help them.

In the video below, "Virtualizing your App with ThinApp in under 5 minutes", I cover the the five easy steps to virtualizing your app. In the video, I demonstrate this using Firefox but the concept works with just about any application. Of course, in my full course I spend about an hour covering this same process butin great detail. Checkout the following demo video from the Tran Signal vSphere Pro Vol 1 trainng course, How to virtualize your App with ThinApp in under 5 minutes.

While ThinApp can be purchased by itself, it is also part of VMware View - VMware's deskop virtulization solution.

Both ThinApp and View can be downloaded and evaluated for free over 60 days at their respective websites.

Learn about the Train Signal computer training and their new vSphere Pro Vol 1 video training course at this link.

Do not disk duplicate installed versions of Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/162001

Simply Better Data Protection: Backup 2.0

Backup 2.0 solutions provide simply better data protection for all environments. They use images to deliver better backup, transmission, and recovery for physical and virtual systems.

See what Backup 2.0 can mean to your business »

Curious about what sort of problems you may run into if you don't follow these guides? See my article about email stuck in Drafts folder on Exchange Server 2007/2010, for one example of what can happen...

BTW, you can use PsGetSid (by Microsoft Sysinternals) to find out if you're using computers with duplicate SIDs:

Have you performed a rollout, only to discover that your network might suffer from the SID duplication problem? In order to know which systems have to be assigned a new SID (using a SID updater like our own NewSID), you have to know what a computer's machine SID is. Up until now, there's been no way to tell the machine SID without knowing Regedit tricks and exactly where to look in the Registry. PsGetSid makes reading a computer's SID easy, and works across the network so that you can query SIDs remotely. PsGetSid also lets you see the SIDs of user accounts and translate a SID into the name that represents it.

Assumptions

This guide assumes that you’ve got some sort of virtualization infrastructure in place – this could be a VMware product, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN and so on. It also assumes that you’ve got some sort of virtualization management tool, and a library where you store all the virtual machine templates and master images. This guide is not product specific.

In addition, it's important that you have a basic knowledge about how to set up and run your virtualization product, that you are knowledgeable about setting up virtual machines, and about the proper procedure to install and configure a Windows-based operating system on these virtual machines.

Lastly, this guide assumes that you’re knowledgeable about the proper procedures needed to be taken prior to creating a virtual machine clone, how to use SYSPREP (the system preparation tool from Microsoft), and how to create proper answer files for the preparation procedure.

Note: SYSPREP is a tool that prepares an installation of Windows for duplication, auditing, and customer delivery.

To download SYSPREP for Windows Server 2003/R2 and Windows XP, please use one of these links:

Download details: System Preparation tool for Windows Server 2003 SP2 Deployment

Download details: System Preparation tool for Windows Server 2003 SP2 Deployment (x64)

Download details: Windows XP Service Pack 3 Deployment Tools

Note that in Windows Server 2008/R2, Windows Vista/7 – the SYSPREP tool is already included in the operating system, therefore there’s no need to download it.

To create the proper answer file under Windows Server 2003/R2 and Windows XP, you need to either manually edit an existing SYSPREP.INF file, or create one for your needs. To create a SYSPREP.INF answer file for Windows Server 2003/R2 and Windows XP you can use the SETUPMGR.EXE tool found inside the Deployment Tools. Use the above links to get the proper version for your needs.

To create the proper answer file under Windows Server 2008/R2, Windows Vista/7, you need to either manually edit an existing answer file, or create one for your needs.  . To create an answer file for Windows Server 2008/R2, Windows Vista/7, you must use the tools available in the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK).

Download details: Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK)

Preparing the System for Cloning

Prior to cloning the virtual machine there are several steps that you must accomplish. For example, some of the preparation tasks should include:

Note that unlike cloning physical machines, since we will be cloning virtual machines, there is not hardware abstraction layer that we need to worry about, no mass storage devices, and no other devices that need to be detected and installed.

• Log on to the computer as an administrator.
• Install and customize applications, such as Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer favorite items, and so on.
• Customize the Default User profile.
• Update Windows and other software components.
• Clean temporary files.
• Defragment the disk, and compact the VHD file.

After performing the initial setup steps on a single system, you need to run the SYSPREP utility to prepare the sample computer for cloning.

As stated above, there is a major difference between cloning systems running Windows Server 2003/XP and those running Windows Server 2008/Vista/7.

Here are some links that will help you get started:

How to Prepare Images for Disk Duplication with SYSPREP

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457067.aspx

How to use the SYSPREP tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577

Comparing Windows XP and Windows Vista Deployment Technologies

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc765993(WS.10).aspx

Create the SYSPREP.inf Answer File for Windows Server 2003/XP

The SYSPREP.inf answer file is a text file that scripts the answers for a series of graphical user interface dialog boxes.Instead of having t0 manually enter the computer's product ID, accept the license agreement, choose regional settings, enter a password, owner and computer name and so on, you can script everything inside one small text file that will provide the mini-setup wizard that runs after the computer is cloned and rebooted, with the correct answers.

To create a SYSPREP.inf answer file that is used by the SYSPREP tool, you can use a text editor or you can use the Setup Manager tool that is included on the Windows XP CD and is also included with the Microsoft Windows XP Resource Kit. The answer file must be renamed to SYSPREP.inf, and must reside in the SYSPREP folder in the root of the drive where Windows XP is installed, or these files can reside on a floppy disk. If the SYSPREP folder is named differently, the Setup program ignores it. There is no need to specify any parameter for the Mini-Setup Wizard answer file.

After preparing the answer file, run the SYSPREP tool from the C:\SYSPREP folder:

Select the “Use Mini Setup” and then click on “Reseal”:

The computer will shut down. At that  moment, if it’s a physical computer – take out the hard drive and use any cloning mechanism that you may have (i.e. Ghost etc.). If it’s a virtual machine, either use existing virtualization tools such as System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), or simply copy the VHD file. When using virtual machines, you will need to create the settings for an X number of cloned virtual machines, and then simply connect them to the copied VHD files.

After starting up each cloned machine, if the answer file has been properly created, you will need to enter the computer name and the entire process will automatically run.

Now, you can verify your computer's SID with PsGetSID.

How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577

Create the UNATTEND.xml Answer File for Windows Server 2008/Vista/7

Unlike previous versions, the unattended Windows Setup answer file in Windows Server 2008/Vista/7, is an XML file typically called Unattend.xml. This is the answer file for Windows Setup that is created by using Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM). The answer file enables the configuration of default Windows settings, as well as the addition of drivers, software updates, and other applications. The answer file enables OEMs and corporations to customize Windows Setup tasks, for example, specifying disk configuration, changing the default values for Internet Explorer, and installing additional drivers.

Unlike previous versions, the unattended Windows Setup answer file in Windows Server 2008/Vista/7 needs to be specified during the running of SYSPREP. To do so, run the SYSPREP tool with the /unattend:filename option.

If you wish to manually configure the Windows settings after SYSPREP, run SYSPREP from the C:\Windows\System32\sysprep folder:

Make sure you do NOT FORGET to select the “Generalize” option if you need to change the computer's SID. Unlike previous versions, it seems that this version will NOT change the SID unless you pick that option!!! When done, click on “OK”:

Select the “Shutdown” and then click on “OK”:

The computer will shut down. Like in the previous section, if this is a physical computer – take out the hard drive and use any cloning mechanism that you may have. If it’s a virtual machine, either use existing virtualization tools such as System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), or simply copy the VHD file. When using virtual machines, you will need to create the settings for an X number of cloned virtual machines, and then simply connect them to the copied VHD files.

After starting up each cloned machine, if no answer file has been created, you will be prompted to configure the computer name and some other settings. Of course, creating an answer file will greatly ease this process, and the entire process will automatically run.

Now, you can verify your computer's SID with PsGetSID and you're done!

Download: PsGetSid

Download: Windows AIK User's Guide and Unattended Setup Reference (Doc Update 1)

Download: Windows AIK for Windows 7 documentation (October 2009 update)

How can I SYSPREP Windows Vista?

http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/195-how-can-i-sysprep-windows-vista/

In preparation for an upcoming Exchange Server 2010 course that I'm scheduled to teach next week, I sat at home with my Dell XPS laptop (running with 8 GB RAM and a 258 GB SSD), installed VMware Workstation, and prepared a few base images of Windows Server 2003 SP2 (to be installed with Exchange Server 2003 in preparation for the migration labs), and Windows Server 2008 R2 (to be installed with Exchange Server 2010).

Unified Messaging in Exchange Server 2010

Unified messaging provides users with flexible and powerful new ways of accessing information and increasing productivity. This video tutorial explains how unified messaging works and also describes its architecture. In addition, it describes the voice mail integration feature of Exchange Server 2010.

Get up to speed on the lates Exchange Server functionality in this free video tutorial.

To prepare the images I installed 2 virtual machines, one with each operating system. I then updated each VM, installed some of the stuff I use in order to customize and prepare the machines for my personal preferences, and got ready to clone them.

As you probably know by now, and if you don't, it's about time, Microsoft-based operating systems use SIDs (Security IDs) that are generated as part of the initial setup of Windows. If you have more than one computer with the same SID, this could cause problems, and cloning a computer (either physical or virtual) without re-generating this SID can cause SID duplication. You can read my "Creating and Cloning Virtual Machine Images" article for more information.

Anyway, knowing this issue I was careful to run SYSPREP on both VMs before shutting them down and cloning the virtual hard disk files. However, as you'll soon find out, it seems that I have neglected one little aspect of using SYSPREP on Windows Server 2008 R2.

However, at this moment I was not aware of any issues. I was under the impression that SYSPREP did what it was supposed to do - remove the machine's SID and other settings, preparing it for cloning.

So, I cloned the VMs, and created this configuration:

• WIN2008-SRV1 - to be a Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller, DNS server, and an Exchange Server 2010 running the CAS and HUB Transport Roles.
• WIN2008-SRV2 - to be a Windows Server 2008 R2 member server, and an Exchange Server 2010 running the Mailbox Role.
• WIN2008-SRV3 - to be a Windows Server 2008 R2 member server, and an Exchange Server 2010 running the Mailbox Role for my DAG demo.
• WIN2003-SRV4 - to be a Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 Domain Controller for a second separate domain in a separate forest, DNS server, and an Exchange Server 2003 SP2.
• WIN2008-SRV5 - to be a Windows Server 2008 R2 member server in the second  separate domain in the separate forest, and that would eventually be promoted to become a Domain Controller to that domain, and that should eventually be installed with Exchange Server 2010 running the Mailbox, CAS and HUB Transport Roles for my migration demo.

All was set to go. I installed the right Exchange Server 2010 roles on WIN2008-SRV1 and WIN2008-SRV2, and started to customize the Accepted Domains, E-mail Policies, Send and Receive Connectors and so on.

I opened Outlook Web Access (OWA) or what they call now as "Outlook Web App". All seemed to be working like a charm.

And then it hit me.

I created a simple e-mail message to myself.

The e-mail message got stuck in the Drafts folder.

I did it again, and now I had more messages  stuck in the Drafts folder.

I rebooted the Mailbox role server. I rebooted the CAS/HUB/DC server.

I looked and searched for more information on the Internet. I remembered that in Exchange Server 2007, if you had less than 4GB free space in the partition that held the Exchange database and queue, this could happen. If that is true, one needs to make the disk larger, if possible, or move the Mailbox databases, Queue Database and Queue Log to another empty drive. But in my case, the virtual disks were considerably larger (80GB) and had plenty of free disk space.

I even found this:

An e-mail message is not sent as expected when you send the e-mail message from Outlook Web Access and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 client for Outlook is open
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946653

Not related to my case.

I continued to search on, and finally I got it.

Error: Not able send mail from OWA 2010. When I send mail, the emails go to Drafts Folder.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/exchange2010/thread/e7d72510-3d86-41ea-ba1a-b742aeb4ccc8

However, I knew that this was not my case, because I know for 100% that I used SYSPREP before cloning MY systems.

And then, like a hammer in the head, I remembered that I forgot to select the “GENERALIZE” option in SYSPREP. Unlike previous versions, it seems that this version will NOT change the SID unless you pick that option.

I immediately used PsGetSID to see if I was correct or not.

PsGetSid
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897417.aspx

When I ran it on WIN2008-SRV2 I got this SID:

S-1-5-21-1253556042-3608898735-3328301812

And when I ran it on WIN2008-SRV1 (the DC), I got the same SID:

S-1-5-21-1253556042-3608898735-3328301812

There goes my lab!

Luckily, I still had my base images cloned, so I could scrap everything and re-build, this time, properly running SYSPREP with the GENERALIZE option!

Lesson learned.

You’ll learn how to install, configure, manage and secure your Small Business Server 2008 environment, while at the same time learning everything you need to know to pass the 70-653: Configuring Small Business Server 2008 Exam.  Plus, you’ll receive training on real-world, hands-on SBS 2008 scenarios that you won’t find anywhere else.

Be sure to check out the video above to learn more about Train Signal’s Small Business Server 2008 Training.

One of the new features in vSphere is VMware's Data Recovery, included in the “Essentials Plus” solution bundle or the vSphere Advanced edition. It is provisioned as a virtual machine within your vSphere environment and integrates with the vCenter server to give you fully centralized management of your backups.

Simply Better Data Protection: Backup 2.0

Backup 2.0 solutions provide simply better data protection for all environments. They use images to deliver better backup, transmission, and recovery for physical and virtual systems.

See what Backup 2.0 can mean to your business »

Data Recovery greatly improves on the original “VMware Consolidated Backup” by offering a full GUI management interface with various wizards to aid the setup and management of all your backup/restore jobs.

Key Features

• Full and incremental backups of Virtual Machine images, and file level backup/restore for Windows VMs.
• VSS support for Windows VMs for more reliable backups
• Data de-duplication to reduce storage requirements for backups
• vCenter based management console for centralized GUI management and intuitive wizards to simplify operations
• Disk based storage using the standard range of connection protocols – iSCSI, FC, NAS or local host storage
• Fully vSphere integrated and aware so will continue to backup VMs when they are moved to a different host

You can try out VMware Data Recovery for free by evaluating VMware vSphere at this link.

Will it replace my existing Disaster Recovery solution?

The simple answer is no, vSphere Data Recovery is not intended  as a single solution for your backup requirements, although it can greatly enhance your disaster recovery. There are two main reasons for this, the first being that it only supports disk based backups, so you still have to provide some form of off-site storage. The second issue is that although there is a file level restore feature this only support Windows based VMs, and there are no plug-ins for specific applications such as Exchange or SQL. vSphere DR is ideal for situations where you need to recover an entire VM as fast as possible, but when you just need to recover an important email for the CEO you will still need your usual backup application.

vSphere Data Recovery Deployment

There are two parts to installing Data Recovery, installing the management plug-in, and importing the virtual appliance. Both parts are supplied on the same ISO CD image so the first thing you will need to do is either burn it to a CD, or more simply just mount it on your vCenter server using a virtual CD application such as Daemon Tools. Once you have done that it should autorun, otherwise just double-click the CD to start the launcher, which will look like this:

As you will see the CD image also includes the installation files for vShield zones, however this is a completely separate feature so ignore it for now and select the "Data Recovery" option. Click "Next" through the installer, there aren't really any options you can change, agree to the license and then be surprised by how quickly it installs.

Once it has completed you won't find any new entries on your Programs list, as all it has installed is an additional plug-in for the vSphere client. Therefore if you usually run your vSphere client on a different system to your vCenter server you will need to run the above installation procedure on your client in order to add the plug-in to it. Once you have completed the install if you open the vSphere client and choose "Manage Plug-ins" from the "Plug-ins" menu you should see the Data Recovery module listed:

Deploying the Data Recovery Virtual Appliance

The appliance is supplied as an OVF template file so in order to deploy it on your virtual environment you should open the "File" menu in the vSphere Client and select "Deploy OVF Template" to start the wizard. On the first page select the "Deploy from file" option and then browse the DataRecovery CD to locate the .ovf template file :

Click "Next" and the wizard will now show the details of the virtual appliance, you can't change anything here so just "Next" again to choose the name and location the appliance will be installed to. You shouldn't need to change the name unless you really want to and the location will be the default unless you have multiple datacenters in your vSphere client. On the next page select which datastore to deploy the VM to, it only requires 5GB of space and doesn't have to be on a shared store, so the location depends on your topology. Click "Next" and your last decision is the network mapping - the appliance's network connection is mainly for access to network storage should you want to use that for backups so you would usually choose a VMnetwork connected to the rest of your LAN.

The final page lists all the options you have selected giving you one last chance to check everything is correct, assuming it is click "Finish" and it will start the deployment. A window will appear showing the deployment progress and you will also see it appear in your "Recent Tasks" pane, how long it takes will depend on several factors but its not a big image so shouldn't take long:

Once the deployment has completed you will see the new VM in your vSphere inventory, select it to view its configuration but don't start it yet as you have to decide what to do about backup storage first.

Choosing a Storage Location for Backup Data

There are two basic types of storage supported by the Data Recovery appliance, VM local storage using a virtual disk on a vSphere datastore, and networked storage such as a Windows shared folder. VM local storage will usually be much faster than networked storage, however networked storage can be more flexible, particularly when it comes to making secondary backups of your DR data. The two are not mutually exclusive however, so to start with to make testing easier I would suggest provisioning local storage, then when you are planning your live backup configuration you can change to network storage if required.

Provisioning local storage for the Data Recovery appliance requires adding a second hard disk to the VM, which will then be available to it as a backup store location. To do this select the VM in your vSphere client, then from under the "Summary" tab click the "Edit Settings" option. Click the "Add" button to start the "Add Hardware" wizard, then select "Hard Disk" as the device type. On the next page select "Create a new disk" and click "Next", then you need to specify the size of the disk to create - when deciding this you will need to take into account the size of the VMs you intend to backup and the number of backup sets you wish to retain.

Incremental backups and data de-duplication will help to reduce the overall size of your backup data but to start with you will probably need at least double the total amount of VM data you are looking to backup. Don't worry too much about getting this figure right first time round though as you can easily reduce or increase the storage size before you go live by deleting and recreating the virtual disk. Ignore the thin provisioning and fault tolerance options in this case as neither will be relevant, and then select a different datastore if necessary. Click "Next", then the next page lists advanced options you can safely ignore so click "Next" again for the final confirmation page, check you are happy with the settings listed and click "Finish" to add the disk. Now you will see the second disk listed as "Adding" on the settings page, click "OK" to close the window and you will see the task run to add the disk to the VM.

Conclusion

In this article we established how you add the Data Recovery plug-in to your vSphere client and how to deploy the DR appliance in your virtual infrastructure so you are now ready to begin using it for protecting your virtual machines. The Data Recovery plug-in allows you to manage the DR appliance from the vSphere client, so it needs to be installed on any system you wish to manage DR from, but you only need the one appliance. Once you've run some test backup and restore jobs you may decide to change some of the configuration options of the appliance but in the meantime you should be ready to get started.

• Check out Train Signal's VMware ESX Server Training with nearly 17 hours of hands-on instruction.

Now that you are set up and ready to protect your Virtual Machines, how to do this is covered in the next article on using vSphere Data Recovery.

In my previous article on vSphere Data Recovery, you learned how to deploy the DR plug-in for the vSphere4 client and how to add the appliance to your virtual infrastructure. You also learned that one of its key features is an intuitive, wizard driven management interface that is integrated with the vSphere client to allow for simple configuration of your backup jobs. Assuming you followed the steps described in that article you should now be ready to learn how to use that management interface; in this article we will cover creating a backup schedule for a virtual machine, running a backup job and then how to restore that VM from the backup.

Simply Better Data Protection: Backup 2.0

Backup 2.0 solutions provide simply better data protection for all environments. They use images to deliver better backup, transmission, and recovery for physical and virtual systems.

See what Backup 2.0 can mean to your business »

Data Recovery Basic Principles

The vSphere Client Data Recovery plug-in is used to configure the Data Recovery virtual machine, which then takes care of backup and restore jobs. In theory the DR VM can backup up to eight VMs concurrently, although its CPU utilization must be under 90% for it to start a backup job, otherwise it will wait until it drops. It works by using ESX's snapshot feature to freeze a point-in-time copy of the target VM's disks, which then give it a locked image to backup whilst the VM can continue to ope

rate as any disk changes are instead written to an interim snapshot file. Once the backup has completed the DR VM then releases the snapshot so that the intervening disk changes are replayed from the interim snapshot file into the frozen disk image, bringing it back to a live state.

Data Recovery supports writing backups to a variety of locations, either a local ESX datastore or network targets utilizing  CIFS based file sharing such as SAMBA or Windows folder shares. However due to memory constraints only two separate storage locations can be written to concurrently, more than two locations can be specified but the jobs have to be scheduled to run separately. There is a limit of 100 virtual machines that can be backed up by a DR VM, although it will let you create backup jobs for more than that number of VMs it will simply omit to backup the excess. Additional DR VMs can be installed in order to work around this limitation but additional care needs to be taken when configuring the backup jobs as the appliances are not aware of each other.

It is important to note that to ensure a fully restorable backup of a Virtual Machine state Data Recovery attempts to make a "quiesced" snapshot. This requires the OS and any applications running on it to write any essential memory resident data to the disk so it is included in the snapshot for backup, otherwise applications may lose important data. To do this VMware Tools has to be installed on the guest operating system, Data Recovery then instructs it to quiesce the system for snapshot creation and then to de-quiesce when the process is completed. With Windows guest OS's that support Volume Shadowcopy Services this is actioned by the VMware VSP service, otherwise VMware uses whatever quiescing support is available in the OS. Therefore you should always ensure you have installed the most up to date version of VMware Tools available on all your Virtual Machines wherever possible. Not having VMware Tools installed will not stop you from backing up a VM though, but your backups will only be "crash consistent" and may need a forced reboot after a restore.

vSphere 4.0 ESX hosts include optimisations for virtual machines created on them that enable advanced change tracking for the virtual disk states, these optimisations are not present on VMs created on older versions of ESX (3.5 and earlier). You can easily check what versions your VMs are from the Summary tab in the vSphere client:

Virtual machines created on vSphere4 should be version 7, which supports the advanced data change tracking features, but if you have VMs created on ESX 3.5 or earlier then they will be version 4 or less. Fortunately you can easily upgrade the VM version, and it is well worth doing, just shutdown the VM and then right-click it in the left hand pane and select "Upgrade Virtual Machine version".

However before you do this make sure you have the latest version of VMware Tools installed on your VM, as the version upgrade also changes some of the virtual hardware, e.g. the NICs, which require new drivers included in VMware Tools.

This change-tracking function allows the Data Recovery VM to analyse the changes since the previous backup and thus will accelerate the backup process. Data Recovery also applies data de-duplication to each storage location so where information is repeated across VM backups it will only store that information once. This can lead to significant space savings, particularly when several VMs running the same OS are backed up to the same storage location, so should be taken into account when designing your backup strategy.

Setting Up Data Recovery

In the previous article you deployed the VMware Data Recovery appliance onto your vSphere infrastructure, now we need to finish configuring it and create a backup schedule. Open your vSphere Client and if it is not there already navigate to the "Home" page, you should now see a new icon under the "Solutions and Applications" section for "VMware Data Recovery" - click this to start managing your appliance. Should you not see the icon there then refer to the previous article for how to install the management plugin - it has to be installed on each vSphere Client system you intend to use, rather than the vCenter Server. Since the release of version 1.1 VMware have simplified the interface and initial setup process, now you can just select your VMware Data Recovery appliance from the list on the left and click "Connect". The "Getting Started" wizard should then begin, if it doesn't you can start it manually by clicking the "Configuration" tab and then the "Getting Started" link.

On the first page you will be prompted for credentials for the VM-DR appliance to connect to your vCenter Server with, depending on your security requirements you may want to create a separate user account for it to use. The VM-DR appliance initiates various tasks in order to perform its backups, such as creating VM snapshots, so by giving it its own login you can easily see which are its tasks when checking the vCenter logs.

The second step of the wizard configures the backup destination storage, for this guide we are assuming that you are using a VMFS store for your backup store, either on a SAN or local storage, which you attached to your VM-DR VM in the previous article. However if you want to use network based storage the process is the same, except you will first have to click the "Add Network Share" link here and provide the location of your storage.

Note that the VM-DR appliance is a Linux based system and as such only supports CIFS/SAMBA shares, technically this should include Windows shares but there are a number of potential issues you may encounter. The first thing to check is that you are using the IP of your network target rather than a name, after that if you are still having trouble connecting then I suggest a quick web search which turn up several things to check. If you are using a VMFS store you wont have to worry about this and you should see the disk you added to your appliance listed in the wizard already:

If under "Type" it says "unmounted" then you will need to click "Mount" first, then you need to "Format" the disk, once this has completed you can click "Next" and then complete the wizard. On the final page check that you are happy with the settings you have chosen, check the "Setup new backup job" option and then click "Close".

The new backup job wizard should now start, if it doesn't you may start it manually by clicking the "Backup" tab and then clicking "New". The first page of the wizard will list all the virtual machines on your vSphere infrastructure, with check boxes so you can select them for backup:

Tick the boxes of the VMs you want backed up, if you wish you can expand a specific VM and select to only backup certain disks, or you can just select the cluster/datacenter to backup all the VMs it contains. Click "Next" and then on the next page select the backup store which you wish the backups to go to, there should only be one to choose from at this stage. VMware Data Recovery supports multiple stores, although it can only backup to two different stores simultaneously, however you should bear in mind that you will not maximise the benefits of the data de-duplication if you split your backups across several stores.

On the next page you need to define the "backup window" for the job, i.e. when it is allowed to run on each day of the week. The virtual machine backups themselves do not have a great impact on performance but the initial "quiesce" operation when the VM is snapshotted at the start of the backup can cause it to freeze for a while, especially if it has a high data throughput. As a result you should schedule your backup window so the backups start when your users aren't online and when the processing demands on the VMs are at their lowest. In practice once the initial full backup of a VM has been completed the subsequent incrementals are much smaller and so are completed in a fraction of the time, so you may want to specify as large a window as possible to start with and then reduce it later on.

Its here that one of the limitations of VMware Data Recovery compared to other commercial backup solutions becomes apparent, you have fairly limited control over your backup scheduling. You cannot run more than one backup a day and the precise timing of that backup starting is hard to control, although usually they will start at the first window of opportunity each day. You can however restrict the backup frequency to less than daily by defining your backup windows appropriately.

On the last page you have to define your retention policy, i.e. how many historic backups you want to keep and for how long. What you choose here will be a compromise between the amount of storage space you need for your backups and how far you will be able to go back if you need to recover systems or files from the past. At this stage it is virtually impossible to judge how much space each backup will consume, since it is a combination of the daily changed data against the savings achieved by de-duplication. Therefore I would advise selecting a fairly conservative policy (e.g. "more" or "many") for now, and then if necessary adjust it in a few weeks time when you are able to judge more accurately your storage consumption. Here you will discover another shortcoming of VM-DR, the reporting in general is rather concise and it can be fiddly to work out how much storage your backups are consuming. This is partly a side effect of the de-duplication, the logs will indicate figures for each backup but these are the "theoretical" total and as a result the best option is to monitor how the free space on your backup store declines with usage.

The final page of the wizard will confirm the settings you have chosen, so check these are ok and then click "Finish" to save the backup job. Depending on whether you are currently within your backup window it may start running the backup job immediately, in which case you will see the snapshot tasks appear in the task pane at the bottom. The backup jobs themselves do not appear here but you can monitor their progress by clicking the "Reports" tab and selecting "Running Tasks". After a few days of operation if all has gone well you should see a list of successful backup tasks on this page, and if you click "Virtual Machines" you should be able to see the daily backup points for each VM.

Carrying Out a Restore Rehearsal

Its never a good idea to only find out that there is a problem with your backup solution when you need to restore something in a disaster situation, hence regular testing is recommended. VMware Data Recovery addresses this rather well with its "Restore Rehearsal" option which allows you to restore a virtual machine from backup without it affecting the live version of itself. It is simple to run, just right click on the virtual machine in the left hand pane and select "Restore Rehearsal", then follow the wizard's instructions to restore another copy of the VM to your vSphere datacenter. Once the restore is complete you can change to the Inventory view in your vSphere client and you will see the new VM listed, double-check the NIC is not connected and you can power it on to check that everything is working correctly. When you are happy that it has been a successful restore you can then shutdown the VM again and delete it from the datastore to release the storage space.

Conclusion

Assuming you have followed the steps laid out in this article you should now have your Data Recovery appliance up and running regular backups for you, and you can test it is working correctly with restore rehearsals. Unfortunately it does not have any reporting or alerting features so the only way you can check your backups are completing successfully is to regularly check it yourself, and remember to keep an eye on the free space in the backup store.

While VMware Data Recovery lacks many of the features you would expect from commercial backup applications but considering that it is included with most of the vSphere bundles it can be a useful addition to your disaster recovery provisions. In its present state I would not recommend it as your only backup solution but it can provide you with an additional level of protection and an alternative recovery option. Assuming you don't already have a system image backup application it gives you the capability to rapidly restore complete virtual machine images when required and the incremental backups combined with the data de-duplication mean it's storage requirements are not excessive.

You can try out VMware Data Recovery for free by evaluating VMware vSphere at this link.

However, I am starting to see a growing adoption of “mirror-image” solution: Service providers that need to connect to multiple customer locations (using different protocols, according to customer requirements) want to provide a single access point through which all outgoing traffic is routed.

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Just as with an incoming gateway solution for enterprises, these service providers have achieved two important benefits with their outgoing gateway architecture:

• Ease of administration and lower costs for managing multiple access methods
• Full audit visibility of all actions performed on your clients’ servers during any remote support session

In order to fulfill this requirement, the service providers are using a different approach that includes a VDI gateway solution to initiate the remote connections, and ObserveIT software in order to provide the full audit of the user session activities. In this scenario, service providers use a combination of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) client machines that are stored on one of more virtualization hosts. These computers are stored in a saved or even shut down state, and are woken up when one or more users connect to them. This VDI implementation is combined with a central remote access mechanism that the users connect to. That mechanism serves as a session broker, a central component that “knows” where the VDI clients are stored, their state (running, saved, shut down and so on), and the status of existing and disconnected sessions. When users connect to that broker, they are then redirected to a VDI machine, where they log on and get their working environment.

On the VDI machine, the ObserveIT Agent is installed and records all the user actions that are performed during that session. In addition, ObserveIT captures a lot of extra information about what is happening on the screen at any given moment. The recordings and provided metadata are stored in a central SQL server database, where they are fully indexed and available for replay. Because of the extensive textual metadata that is provided by the ObserveIT Agent, the system allows for very detailed reports of all the user sessions, the applications they’ve used, files that were accessed and so on.

Read more and download a free copy of ObserveIT

Users can connect to the VDI broker either internally (located on the same LAN), or remotely. In that case, users will be required to establish a secure connection by using either a regular-type VPN connection, SSL VPN, or by using other types of secure connections.

The question of what machines do the users connect to can be answered in 2 ways. One option is to create a “pool” of virtual machines, similar to a “rack” of identical PCs that you install and clone. Their configuration is identical except that they each have a unique computer name and IP address. The process of creating such an image is identical to the one you’d use for cloning a physical computer, including the installation of custom applications and programs, running sysprep to prepare the system for cloning, and automating it all with unattended answer files. One deployed, these machines are available on-demand, which means that the users will get the first available Virtual Desktop from the pool (and if no available machine is turned on, a new machine can be turned on demand or resumed from a saved state). One of the nice features of such a configuration is the ability to roll back to their default image state once the user disconnects and closes the session. This means is that if a user infects a VM with a virus, installs software, deletes files on the local drive, etc., as soon as they logoff the VM's hard drive will revert back to what it was before they logged on.

The other option is to assign a user a single Personal Virtual Desktop, which means if they choose to connect to My Desktop they will connect to a specific VM that you designate.  This is similar to having a PC sitting on a rack that you would like a user to use remotely.  When the user logs on to the Remote Desktop Web Access site and chooses to connect to My Desktop they will be connected to this specific PC (VM) that is running on the virtualization host(s). Like in the previous option, machines need to be cloned and assigned a unique name and IP address. However, when calculating the overall resource usage for such a solution, it is clear that by using personal desktops you are required to deploy many more machines, because each user must have its own Virtual Desktop. This is unlike using a pool of Virtual Desktops, where you are only required to have as many VMs as you will have concurrent users.

As you can see from the above examples you still need to configure each unique virtual machine, because in effect they are separate computers.  For example, you still need to load the operating system on each, install applications, join them to the domain, etc--just like you would do with real PCs.  You can use the same techniques for automating this process as you would if you needed to deploy multiple physical machines with the same hardware/software.  Windows 7 includes new image deployment techniques that make this type of scenario easier than before.

Remote Desktop Gateway VDI vs. old school Terminal Services

It’s worth noting that there are some substantial differences between Remote Desktop Gateway VDI and “old school” Terminal Services. Some include:

Drawbacks

• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI is far more complex to set up and manage. In order to set up such a solution you will need to extend your existing Terminal Services infrastructure to a product that supports VDI, and to invest in virtualization hosts that can carry the load of all the concurrent Virtual Desktops.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI requires more hardware resources. This means that unlike regular Terminal Services where one or more physical server are used to host all the user sessions, you need to finely tune your hardware to host many concurrent Virtual Desktop machines, which, in most cases, require a lot more resources.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI is often more expensive as you are required to add licenses and hardware for the extra components.
• Remote desktop performance might be limited in comparison with regular Terminal Services. This is because when using the remote control tools built into virtualization products to connect to the VDI desktops, the remote connection protocol used y these tools is far less tuned for user experience. Sound (in and out), file copying operations and even printer redirection is limited or non-present, while RDP and ICA connections used with regular Terminal Services allow this and are better tuned for slow connection speeds.

Benefits

• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI allows customization of working environment, which includes the users’ profiles, desktop, installed applications and environment settings. This means that each user receives an entire personal operating system, and not just a “slice” of the Terminal Server’s operating system, allowing customization of many more settings that are available with the regular Terminal Server restrictions. In addition, users can choose to shut down or reboot their own VDI machines, something that cannot be done with regular Terminal Server.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI allows isolation of the user environment, and the user session can be configured not to be a part of the providers network. In such a solution, the VDI desktop can be configured not to connect to the same network as the users is located on, and to be totally dedicated and/or isolated to the client’s network. To connect to the VDI machine, the service provider users use a virtualization remote control mechanism such as the remote control built into virtualization products.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI allows you to install various VPN clients without conflicts. This is most useful when service providers connect to various clients, each with their own set of VPN and remote connection requirements. When installed on one machine, some VPN clients and settings might interfere with each other, causing conflicts and configuration errors.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI allows the creation and configuration of different access methods, based on the customers’ requirements. As stated above, this is useful when users need to connect to many clients, each with different settings and configurations.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI grants the ability to install custom applications that may cause conflicts if installed on a regular Terminal Server. This allows service providers to give their users the exact tools they need to perform their job when connecting to the client networks.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI can be fully configured based upon clients’ NAP/NAQ enforcement policies, and without conflicting with other clients’ requirements. One client can thus require that the vendor use a specific Anti-Virus product, while another client can request a different product and system configuration settings. Each VDI desktop can be customized to the clients’ needs, and these settings can also be pushed to the VDI desktop on demand, based upon the connection type.
• Remote Desktop Gateway VDI allows can be “reset” to a default image after usage, which means that no state is saved, and the computer is always “fresh”. If the user infects the computer with a virus, messes with the system settings, or even causes serious errors to the machine, the moment it is shut down and rebooted, it is reverted and rested to a pre-defined state.

Summary

Because of the complexity of this solution, it is most suited for service providers that have customers that demand high security with connection isolation. Using this approach, service providers achieve ease of administration and lower costs for managing multiple access methods, plus full audit visibility of all actions performed on your clients’ servers during any remote support session.

However, there are times where you need to make one small tweak, one small change, and you simply cannot find the correct Control Panel applet to make the change you need.

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Here is where this tweak comes in action. By using it, you will be able to enter what is called "God Mode", and you will get all the possible Windows tweaks conveniently located at your finger tips, all in one place. Suddenly you will get every setting and option right in front of you, ready to be used without having to browse among different settings before getting what you are looking for.

Note: While initially discovered for Windows 7, it seems that this tweak works for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

To enable "God Mode" follow these steps:

1. Right click on any blank space on your desktop.

2. Click new from the menu and create a New Folder.

3. Rename the folder as follow: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

4. Once the folder has been renamed, the folder icon will change too. Now, simply double-click on the GodMode folder...

Bingo... over 200 separate configuration options, settings and tweaks available to you, all handily located in one folder!

In fact, when you collapse the different sections of the GodMode folder, it seems that it's identical to what you can find in the Control Panel. However, unlike the Control Panel's different applets, in GodMode you handily see all the hundreds of settings listed in front of you, and you need not have to dig down layers of tabs and different applet views just to find what you're looking for.

In fact, when you perform a search both in this "God Mode" and in the Control Panel, you get similar results, just listed in a different manner.

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In a recent article about Windows Image Format I reviewed some of the benefits in leveraging the Windows Imaging format and in an effort to get the most out of your imaging efforts you'll need to get an understanding of the tools you can use; one of which is ImageX.

In this article I will go over what ImageX is and how you can leverage it for your imaging and deployment needs.

What is ImageX?

ImageX is a command-line tool that can be used to capture, modify, and apply file-based disk images for deployment of systems in an enterprise by leveraging the Windows Imaging format (.wim files). This can be done by leveraging the image files on a network share for a more "manual" / one off deployment of the images scenario or through the use of Windows Deployment Services (Windows DS) in an effort to add a little methodology, process and standardization to your deployments.

On an even larger scale than Windows Deployment Services, you could leverage the Systems Management Server (SMS) Operating System Deployment Feature Pack as part of your deployment strategy to roll out the systems on a larger, more automated scale.

One of the additional tools that you might leverage as part of your deployment strategy is the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). WinPE is a 32 bit installation environment in which the installation routine runs for the operating system install and it is effectively a stripped down version of the operating system, loaded from the boot.wim file off the installation DVD.

Gone are the XP and prior days of file based installations run from a disk boot program that leverages files from the installation CD or DVD; when you are running a Windows Vista or Windows 7 installation you are using one image file boot.wim to install from another from the DVD - install.wim.

ImageX allows you much more control over how deployments are handled as it can decrease the amount of time it takes to deploy additional core system installations.

It also allows for better management by leveraging "single instancing" of the saved image files.

ImageX also allows deployments that can be performed by non-destructive methods. Data can be on the existing volume and the image can be deployed without erasing the existing contents of the volume.

Limits of ImageX

While ImageX and the Windows Imaging format offer great strides beyond what was available for use with prior sector based imaging it does have some limitations:

• ImageX can only be used to deploy full versions of operating systems and software applications; there is no supported way to leverage the tool for standard, in place upgrades to the operating system or existing applications.
• ImageX is supported leveraging Windows image (.wim) files only. Other types of images created with third-party imaging tools cannot be leveraged.
• ImageX can mount only the following operating systems (when the correct NTFS permissions are set); Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista with SP1 and Windows 7

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – It is safe to assume that as additional Service Pack levels are announced they would be included for this supported use by ImageX. At the time I put this article together these were the only listed, supported operating systems.

There are some additional limitations as well:

In order to mount WIM files successfully you need to have read/write permissions. Additionally, these files need to be housed on a volume formatted with the NTFS file system as you cannot mount an image from a volume formatted with the FAT32 file system.

If you have the read-only permission set via NTFS or if you are leveraging the ISO or the UDF file systems, you are able to mount the image but you would not be able to save any changes that you made.

Dependencies of the ImageX Tool

Just as there are some outright limits to all system tools, Microsoft or otherwise, there are a few dependencies to keep in mind when you're putting you plans together on how to deploy and manage your images.

• ImageX is dependent on other tools like Diskpart and Format to prepare the volumes on a system to receive images.
• Once a reference system is prepared it must be configured for the capture ahead of the duplication process. This means you'll need to leverage the Sysprep tool to remove all of the user-specific and computer-specific identifiers. This action will also set the stage for the creation of a new security identifier (SID) for the deployed system once it is imaged and restarted for the first time.

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – Syspreping the system will also reset product activation. How this affects your deployments is largely based on the type of volume licensing that you use and the original installation media to a smaller extent.

In this tutorial we reviewed the highlights and information of the ImageX tool and some of its limitations. We also took a brief look at a few of the tool's dependencies.

Thanks for investing your time in my Windows 7 and the ImageX tool article.

I am always looking forward to any feedback you have on this or any of the articles I have written so feel free to offer your feedback.

Additionally, I would welcome any suggestions topics of interest that you would like to see and based on demand and column space I’ll do what I can to deliver them to you.

VHDs are the Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format used in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs).

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Disk2vhd Overview

There are other physical-to-virtual tools that are available to create images out of installed operating systems running on physical hardware; the main advantage of the Disk2vhd tool is that you can run it on a system that is up and loaded as it uses the Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability to create a point-in-time snapshot of the volumes you want to include in a conversion.

The Disk2vhd tool also allows for the ability to create the VHDs on other local volumes including the active one being converted.

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] – While the tool does allow you to create the file in this manner there is a performance hit; it is always better to create the VHD is on a different physical disk.

Running Disk2vhd

Once you download the tool from the Microsoft Website (which still shows as a Sysinternals download point at http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/Disk2vhd.zip) you would open the ZIP file to expand the files to a location to run them.

Once that is done you would run disk2vhd.exe and accept the Sysinternals Software License Terms which would then bring you to the application's main view.

The default view of my physical system is shown below. You'll notice that the tool automatically selects all of the available drives and sets a default location and name where to drop the VHD file if you were to accept the defaults and select CREATE.

Since a couple of these partitions are just data and others are alternate operating systems rather than my base image that I am currently running (Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64) I am going to clear all the defaults with the exception of the C:\ which is where my Windows 7 install resides.

I would like to avoid the performance hit so I will change the default file location to my DATA drive.

Once I have made the changes and hit the CREATE button you'll notice the progress bar will begin and it will create an empty file holder at the destination directory as it builds as shown in the second image below just above the active application window.

Once the image is created you'll see that its actual size is shown and it is ready to be mounted within the Virtual PC environment.

I am running the Virtual PC environment of Windows 7. When I attempt to walk through the steps to mount the virtual machine under Virtual PC in the sequence of steps show below you'll notice I have a critical failure and cannot continue.

This is because Virtual PC doesn't support the Multiprocessor Specification and it will not be able to boot VHDs captured from multiprocessor systems.

In order to boot this successfully I would need boot my Server 2008 system running Hyper-V in order to mount the VHD (after configuring everything necessary in the Hyper-V Manager as shown below).

Disk2vhd Best Practices and other Support Notes

Briefly, it is important to note what is supported under the tool and what are the recommended operational boundaries.

• Disk2vhd can run on the following operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista and Windows 7, including x64 systems.
• On the server platform side it supports Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Server 2008, including x64 systems.
• With respect to Virtual PC, it can support a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If a VHD is created from a larger disk, it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.
• Virtual PC doesn't support the Multiprocessor Specification and it will not be able to boot VHD's captured from multiprocessor systems.
• You cannot run VHDs on the same system from which they were created in an effort to boot from them. By default, Windows assigns the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD's original source disk. Because of the way that the operating system references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, this forced change causes the VM to fail because after the change it cannot locate the boot disk.
• You can use Disk Management or Diskpart utilities under Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 to mount the VHDs directly and view their contents through Windows Explorer or via the command line as if they were any other available volume.
• Disk2vhd includes command-line options that enable you to script the creation of VHDs (as outlined below, provided from the tool's help notes).

Usage: disk2vhd <[drive: [drive:]...]|[*]> <vhdfile>

Example: disk2vhd * c:\vhd\snapshot.vhd

In this tutorial we took an overview look of the Disk2vhd tool and also reviewed some of the best practices.

Additionally we walked through running the tool and collecting an image from a hardware build as well as reviewed the failure we received when we tried to launch a multiprocessor image capture on Virtual PC due to the limitations of that desktop product.

I am always looking forward to any feedback you have on this or any of the articles I have written so feel free to offer your feedback.

Additionally, I would welcome any suggestions topics of interest that you would like to see and based on demand and column space I’ll do what I can to deliver them to you.