Wednesday 7 September 2011

Configuring iSCSI for vSphere 5

Configuring a software iSCSI initiator for ESXi 5.0 is a relatively simple operation. This quick guide assumes that you have already configured an iSCSI target and published it on the network.

For inspiration, have a look at this VMware KB

Create a new vSwitch (Configuration -> Networking -> Add Networking) and add a VMkernel. Configure it with an IP address. 


Go to Storage adapters and click "Add" to add a software iSCSI adapter if it does not exist already.



Once added, right click the software initiator and choose "properties". 


Go to Network Configuration tab and click "Add".


Choose the vSwitch/VMkernel that you created above.


Go ot Dynamic Discovery tab and click "Add" to add an iSCSI target


You will be prompted to input IP address of the iSCSI target, just leave port 3260 as default unless you have configured it differently on your target.


Go to Configuration -> Storage and click "Add storage". Click DISK/LUN and next. If everything has been done correctly, you be able to see your published iSCSI target and can then add and format it with the new VMFS5 file system, uh lala!

Upgrading vCenter v4.1 to v5.0

I just upgraded my home lab vCenter server the other day from v4.1 to v5 and took some screen dumps of the installation process. The steps look fairly familiar compared to earlier versions. At one point in the installation I had an error stating that:

"The Fully Qualified Domain Name cannot be resolved. If you continue the installation, some features might not work correctly"

The reason for this error is that I had not created a reverse lookup on the DNS server.
Here are the screen dumps:












It was at this step that the DNS error ocurred. Below image shows how a reverse lookup zone was created on the DNS server.







Friday 2 September 2011

Manual virus removal from 'System Volume information'

In Windows,  System Volume Information is a system folder, to keep track of the changes took placed on a partition in a fix time period. This folder exists in every partition on your HDD. By default this folder is hidden, but you can see it by showing the hidden and system files and folders.The information stored in these folders helps Windows to revert to an earlier state, when you use the System Restore tool.


But sometimes, some malware files get in the System Volume Information folder. This can happens by any of following reasons:

  1.  the malware wants to get there so that user doesn't have access to delete it and from where it can restore itself, 
  2. or some malware file gets deleted and Windows decides that the file was important and it automatically stores it there, in case you ever want it back.
Well, you can easily clean malware infection from this folder by using the following simple steps:





  • Right click on My Computer, then go to Properties
  • Now in Windows XP:  Go to System Restore tabenable the option Disable System Restore on all drives and click Apply. This should erase all System Restore Points, including the infected file(s).
  • In Windows 7: Go to System Protection > then under protection settings choose hard drive that have malware and click Configure > Turn off system Protection > ok
  • After this, again enable the system Restore option and press Apply again, so that you'll re-enable System Restore.
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