Use Diskpart to make drives online

Issue: In disk management, disk is shown as missing or Offline in Windows

Resolution:

The disks can be made online by using diskpart utility

- Open a command prompt->type diskpart

-Inorder to list the disks in the system type: list disk

-Note down the number of the disk that you want to make online

-Select that disk to operate upon, For eg:, if the disk number is 1, type: Select disk 1

-Now that particular disk will be selected as teh active disk. If you type "list disk" command once more, you can see a * symbol on the left side of the selected disk

-Inorder to make the selected disk online type : online disk

- If the disk is made online, you will get a message that the operation is completed successfully

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vSphere 5 components

vSphere 5 components and features;

Vmware ESXi : Well, this is the physical part of vSphere. The virtualization OS installed in  in physical servers and bastracts the physical resources of the server and distributes them across VMs.

VMware vCenter : It is the vsphere centralised management software. It is essential for configuring and managing the full potential of vSphere say HA, DRS etc

vSphere client: A client software that lets users connect remotely to Vmware ESXi and vCenter

vSphere web client: A web interface that allows users to connect remotely to vCenter client or ESXi

vSphere SDKs: Provides standard interfaces for VMware and third party solution to access VMware vSphere

VMFS : A high performance cluster file systems for ESXi virtual machnes

vSphere virtual SMP: Enables single virtual machine to use multiple physical processors simultaneously

vMotion: Enables migration of virtual machines from one datastore to another without service interruption*

vSphere HA: If the host ESXi fails, the affected virtual machines are restarted on other available servers with spare compacity

vSphere DRS: Distributed resource scheduler balances the computing capacity across vSphere clusters. DPM (Dynamic power 

Storage DRS: Allocates and balances storage capacity and I/O dynamically across colections of datastore. This includes management capabilities that minimise the risk of running out of space and risk of I/O bottlenecks that slow down the performance of virtual machines

vSphere FT: Provides continuous availability by protecting a virtual machine with a copy. When this feature is enabled for a virtual machine, a secondary copy of the original, or primary, virtual machine is created. All actions completed on the primary virtual machine are also applied to the secondary virtual machine. If the primary virtual machine becomes unavailable, the secondary machine becomes immediately active


vSphere Distributed switch: A virtual switch that can span multiple ESXi hosts, enabling significant reduction of on-going network maintenance activities and increasing network capacity. This increased efficiency enables virtual machines to maintain consistent network configuration as they migrate across multiple hosts.

Host profile: A feature that simplifies host configuration management through user-defined configuration policies. The host profile policies capture the blueprint of a known, validated host configuration and use this configuration to configure networking, storage, security, and other settings across multiple hosts. The host profile policies also monitor compliance to standard host configuration settings across the datacenter. Host profiles reduce the manual steps that are involved in configuring a host and can help maintain consistency and correctness across the datacenter.

Host profiles are also a component of vSphere Auto Deploy. The concept of an autodeployed host means that vCenter Server owns the entire host configuration and it is captured within a host profile.

 Certain policies require user input to provide host-specific values. To support Auto Deploy for host profiles, an answer file is created that contains the definitions for those policies.

*vMotion is not supported across datacenters

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Unable to connect to sql instance "mssqlserver"

Scenario:

Sql server 2008 R2 standard installed with default instance. The default instance name is "mssqlserver".

Issue:

While trying to connect to instance name using servername\mssqlserver from server management studio, an error is thrown and user is unable to connect .

Reason:

Reason, it turns out to be that you cannot connect to the default instance by its name mssqlserver.For some strange reason, it is not allowed!!!!

Solution:

You can connect using the server name alone. Or if you are trying from the machine where sql is installed,you can connect to the local instance.Or else if your application demands a  "servername\instance format,you could run the sql installer once more and create a named instance

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Learning of the day : DRS and resource pool

Issue: One of our newly created test datacenter was having trouble in creating resource pool..The option was simply greyed out!!!.
Solution: DRS was  disabled in the cluster.once that was enabled, resource pool creation option was no longer grayed out...

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Different types of cloud computing

“Cloud computing” is basically the latest incarnation of grid computing, utility computing, virtualization and clustering. It differs in that it provides the ability to connect to software and data living on the Internet (the cloud) instead of on a hard drive or local network.

1. SaaS 

This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no up-front investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting

2. Utility computing 

Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and others offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical

3. Web services in the cloud 

Closely related to SaaS, Web service providers offer APIs that enable developers to exploit functionality over the Internet,rather than delivering full-blown applications.

4. Platform as a service 

Another SaaS variation, this form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service. You build your own applications that run on the provider’s infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider’s servers.

5. MSP (managed service providers) 

One of the oldest forms of cloud computing, a managed service is basically an application exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such as a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring service

6. Service commerce platforms 

A hybrid of SaaS and MSP, this cloud computing service offers a service hub that users interact with.

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How to change DNS server in a remote machine

Download regfind.exe from here .Extract the zip file .Browse to the extracted location from command prompt and run the utility using the following syntax

regfind  -m \\computer1 -p HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\parameters "Old DNS IP" -r "New DNS IP"

Where Cumputer1 can be the name or Ip of the remote machine whos DNs is to be changed

Once the command completes successfully, the old dns IP in the server will be replaced by the new one

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