Passed VCP 510 (VMWare Certified Professional)

I recently passed the VCP 510 exam renewing my VCP again before the deadline of February 28th 2012. If I wouldnt have taken the exam before this date I would have had to enroll in the week long training class prior to taking the exam.

The exam was very much like what I have been used to as far as the previous VMWare VCP exams have been, it did seem like there were more select multiple answer type questions than usual.

Here is a great study site that currently has 927 test questions posted, I can say that these questions are right inline with what you can expect to see on the test. If you can get comfortable with these test questions you will surely pass the test with no issues.

Check out the test questions here

Microsoft Sysprep - Which Servers/Roles/Applications include support

This might not be big news to anyone reading this article but I just found out that Microsoft does not support using Sysprep on several of its own products.

I learned this while digging through the Lync 2010 documentation for a project that I'm currently working on. This got me thinking about other things that might not be supported when using Sysprep, until now I thought that as long as you used Sysprep you would not be compromising Microsoft support.

In this article I will try and list the details of what is and isn't supported by Microsoft when it comes to Sysprep. 

Microsoft does not support using Sysprep with Lync 2010, SQL Server 2008 Express and several other products, what does this mean? It means that you can use Sysprep to clone the Windows Operating system as long as you verify that no non-supported roles are enabled prior to cloning (see table below). It means do not have any of the non-supported application's components installed/configured prior to making the clone.

For Server 2008R2 only certain roles of the operating system support using Sysprep, in other words if you are going to clone a 2008 R2 machine, make sure none of the roles listed below that say no are enabled.

Server Role	Sysprep Support
Active Directory Certificate Server (AD CS)	No
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)	No
Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)	No
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)	No
Active Directory Rights Management Server (AD RMS)	No
Application Server	Yes
DHCP Server	Yes
DNS Server	No
Fax Server	No
File Services	No
Network Policy and Access Services	No
Network Policy Routing and Remote Access Services	Yes
Print Services	No
Terminal Services	Yes Not supported in scenarios where the master Windows image is joined to a domain.
UDDI Services	No
Web Server (Internet Information Services)	Yes Does not support Sysprep with encrypted credentials in applicationhost.config.
Windows Deployment Services	No

Sharepoint 2010 - A Sysprep'd machine can be created with Sharepoint 2010 installed but must be prior to the configuration wizard being run.


SQL Server 2008R2 - There is an MSDN article explaining how to install SQL on a Sysprep'd image - Here

Microsoft Exchange Server - You cannot Sysprep an Exchange machine because of its integration with Active Directory. Recommended method would be to Sysprep the operating system and automate the installation.

Domain Controllers - You cannot deploy preconfigured domain controllers by using image-based installation with Sysprep. However, you can configure a domain controller by first deploying a member server and then automatically running a script that runs Dcpromo.exe, the Active Directory Installation Wizard.

Limited server configuration - According to Microsoft some server components must be installed and configured after an image-based installation with Sysprep is complete. These components include Certificate Services, Cluster service, and any software that is dependent on the Active Directory directory service. They also include any application or service that stores the computer name or the computer SID and cannot recover if the computer name or SID changes.


Security Settings - You cannot use image-based installation with Sysprep to deploy computers that contain any files that are encrypted by using Encrypting File System (EFS). In addition, you cannot use image-based installation to deploy systems that have already been configured with NTFS security settings, such as file and folder permissions, unless the disk-imaging program supports the NTFS file system. However, you can use a script to configure these settings after the image-based installation is complete.

I usually opt to build fresh virtual machines and not Sysprep because of these kind of incompatibilities and to rule out strange behavior potentially caused by cloning machines.

I'll continue to update this post if I find any other incompatibilities, please feel free to respond if you know of any other incompatible software.

VMWare vCloud Director - Installation and Configuration Part 2

Part 1

Part 3

In this part we will install vShield Manager, create SSL certificates for vCloud Director and install the CENTOS Linux operating system which will host the vCloud Director software. vCloud Director requires a Linux operating system and cannot be installed on Microsoft Windows operating systems.

1. vShield Manager - Download, deploy and configure
2. SSL Certificates - Download Java Development Kit, generate certificates
3. CENTOS - Download, install and configure 
4. vCloud Director - Download install and configure

vShield Manager - Download and deploy the vShield Manager virtual appliance from vmware.com vShield Download

Note: for each vCenter server that you add to the vCloud Director environment you will first need a vShield Manager server configured and available.

Deploy the vShield Manager appliance, from vCenter select File | Deploy OVF Template, browse to the VMware-vShield-Manager-5.0.0-473791.ova file downloaded from vmware.com

After the vShield Manager is deployed, power on the virtual appliance. You will be prompted to login, the username is: admin and the password is: default.

Type en or enable followed by the password default to enter privileged mode. Type setup and complete all of the networking information. Save the configuration and type exit to logout. You can log back into the console and type show interface to view the configuration.

This completes the vShield Manager installation/configuration

SSL Certificates - The SSL certificates can be installed using multiple methods, first the Java Developement Kit contains the keytool required to create the certificates. The JDK can be downloaded and installed on a separate machine and the certificates can be created prior to performing the vCloud Director installation. The second method is to use the vCloud Director machine to generate the certificates, this can be accomplished mid way through the software installation and will require a couple of extra steps.

Method 1

Download and install the Java Software Development Kit  - Download Java Development Kit

Create the certificates using the command line tool, note the directories listed below will vary depending on the version of the JDK that you download.

"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_01\bin\keytool.exe” -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias http

“C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_01\bin\keytool.exe” -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias consoleproxy

“C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_01\bin\keytool.exe” -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -keystore certificates.ks -list

Note: The certificates will be created and stored in a file named certificates.ks located in the C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_01\bin directory (or alternate version directory). The certificates created in this example all have the password: password. Make sure to copy these files to a shared location, they will need to be copied to the CENTOS machine before the vCloud Director installation can be completed

CENTOS Installation / Configuration - I chose to download the latest CENTOS v 6.0 x64 version.

Create a new virtual machine

Provide a name for the virtual machine

Select an operating system for the new machine

Add one additional Network Interface Card for a total of 2 to the new virtual machine.

After the virtual machine has been created, attach the CD drive of the virtual machine to the ISO file (CentOS-6.0-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso) downloaded from vmware.com

Make sure that during the installation of CENTOS you configure the two network adapters with 2 unique ip addresses on the same subnet.

Note: make sure that the network cards are configured to connect automatically and available to all users.

I chose web server from the available package group options during the installation, I also chose customize now and selected several of the available options. Unfortunately I don't know the CENTOS very well and I can't list which options to select to install the tools necessary to successfully build a host for vCloud Director so choose most of the available options. I did not include the ones that made no sense such as the main frame, san, databases, graphics, etc.

The important thing to include is the security package, without the firewall being installed and disabled, I was not able to remotely access the vCloud Director configuration page. 

If after you complete the installation and you power on the virtual machine you see no firewall, you can manually add this be entering the following command at the command line.

yum install system-config-securitylevel

After the installation is complete and rebooted, log in to the machine as root. Open the firewall configuration by selecting System | Administration | Firewall and choose disable.

Map a network drive to the shared location where your certificates.ks file is located.

Open Computer and select File | Connect to Server

Copy the certificates.ks file to the CENTOS desktop, repeat these procedures for the vCloud Director software - vmware-vcloud-director-1.5.0-464915.bin file. Copy the vCloud Director sofware into the root's Home folder on the desktop.

Note: you must change the permissions on the vmware-vcloud-director-1.5.0-464915.bin file by right clicking on the file and selecting the permissions tab and check the Allow executing file as a program checkbox.

vCloud Director

Select Applications | System Tools | Terminal and enter ls -al at the command prompt, this will list all of the available files. type ./vmware-vcloud-director-1.5.0-464915.bin and press enter. This will begin the vCloud Director installation process.

The following prompts will be displayed

Run the installer - type “y”

If you chose Method 1 for creating the SSL certificates earlier in the tutorial, make sure you copy the certificates.ks file into the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director directory now and then you can come back to this prompt and answer "y" to the Run the configuration script and skip the certificates creation step, otherwise type “n”

Method 2 for creating SSL Certificates

Create self signed certificates, from the terminal window type the following commands:  

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias http -dname “cn=vcloud, ou=vmware, o=vmware, c=US” -keypass password

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/jre/bin/keytool -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias consoleproxy -dname “cn=vcloud, ou=vmware, o=vmware, c=US” -keypass password

A file named “certificates.ks” will be created in the root's Home folder, copy this file to the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director directory. If the file is located in this directory the installer will not need a path specified.

Continue the installation process by typing /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/configure

• Select your first IP address, this will be the IP address which is used for vCD web page or press enter to accept the default 
• Select your second IP address, this will be the IP address which is used for the VM Remote Console or press enter to accept the default 
• Because we copied the certificates.ks file into the vcloud-directory already just type certificates.ks 
• Enter the password: password Press enter to skip the “syslog server”
• Select Oracle or SQL Server 
• Enter the machine name or IP address for the database server 
• Press enter to use default database port (1521) Oracle or (1433) SQL 
• Type the database name, press enter for default (vcloud) 
• Type the database username 
• Type the database password 
• Now the database will be initialized and the vCD install will be completed 
• Type “y” to start the vCD service

You can monitor the progress of the vCD service start up as follows 

type: tail -f /opt/vmware/cloud-director/log/cell.log

This is an important step to verify your installation has completed successfully.

It will show you the percentage of the initialization of the application that has completed. If everything installs correctly you will see a message “Application Initialization: Complete.

Note: I had a few failed attempts where the application initialization would hang, ussually around 18%. I found that if for whatever reason you have to run the installation again, you must delete the old database from your database server before you re-run the install.

I also had to had to start over rebuilding the CENTOS and re-running the installation a couple of times before I figured out some of these gotchas. After the installation is complete, you should be able to launch a browser and enter the vCloud Director IP Address (the first one assigned) to access the vCloud Director configuration page.

This completes Part 2

Part 1

Part 3

VMWare vCloud Director - Installation and Configuration Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

This is part 1 in a multi-part blog post, in this first post I'll describe the process of laying the groundwork for what will eventually be a working vCloud Director / vShield Manager deployment in my VMWare VSphere lab.


Part 2 will be forthcoming

1. Database Server - Guide for installing Oracle 11g or choose Microsoft SQL Server
2. vShield Manager, SSL Certs, CENTOS and vCloud Director - Deploy and configure the vShield Manager virtual appliance. Generate SSL certificates necessary when installing vCloud Director. Create a Linux operating system to host vCloud Director. Install and configure vCloud Director.  

I decided to learn the process of installing and configuring VMWare's vCloud Director. I plan on installing this within my own lab infrastructure for testing and development/prototyping purposes.

The first thing I wanted to know before I decided to install vCD was

What will vCD do to my existing infrastructure? You will go through a process where you surrender some of the resources of the infrastructure to the vCD at which point it will take over those resources and manage them but it will not touch any of the resources that you have left aside.


Required components for this installation.


Database Server - I decided to document the process of installing Oracle, if you want to use Microsoft SQL Server you can skip to part 2. I chose to use Oracle 11g, created an account on the Oracle website and downloaded the database sofware. I'll be installing the database software on an existing Windows 2003 Server R2 x64 bit virtual machine that I currently use to run my VCenter Server on. Oracle Download


vCloud Director - VMware vCloud Director enables customers to build secure, multitenant hybrid clouds by pooling infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters. and enabling those resources to be consumed by users on-demand. vCloud Director pools datacenter resources, including compute, storage and network, along with their relevant policies into virtual data centers. Fully encapsulated multitier virtual machine services are delivered as vApps, using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). End users and their associated policies are captured in organizations. With programmatic and policy-based pooling of infrastructure, users and services, VMware vCloud Director enforces policy intelligently and creates unprecedented flexibility and portability. vCloud Download


vShield Manager - Included with all vShield products, vShield Manager provides a central point of control for managing, deploying, reporting, logging and integrating vShield as well as third-party security services. Working in conjunction with vCenter Server, vShield Manager enables role based access control and separation of duties as part of a unified framework for managing virtualization security. vShield Download


CENTOS - Linux operating system to install vCloud Director on - CENTOS Download

If you are planning on using Microsoft SQL Server skip to part 2.

Oracle installation - After downloading the two files that make up the Oracle 11g installation for Windows x64, extract the zip files and run the installation.

Follow the installation wizard and configure the install according to your requirements, the screenshots below show the configuration that I chose for my lab.

Note: The global database name used in the field below will be used to connect to the Oracle database after the installation is complete

After the Oracle Installation is complete, launch a command prompt and type: 

sqlplus system/oracle@localhost/[Global Database Name]

example:  sqlplus system/oracle@localhost/orcl.csharpsnippets.local

From the SQL> prompt type: create user cloud identified by oracle;

A message should appear: User created.

Now type the following command: grant "RESOURCE", "DBA", "CONNECT" to orcl;

You should see the message: Grant succeeded.

Verify the Oracle install and listener

This completes part 1 and the Oracle Installation. 

Part 2

Part 3

Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Storage Server 2008R2, Windows Small Business Server 2011 - Which one is for me?

I was a huge advocate of the original Windows Home Server operating system that Microsoft released, I had it running in my VMWare VSphere environment as a virtual machine. The software worked very well and allowed me to share my audio/video libraries both internal on my network and external using remote access.

One thing I really thought made WHS stand out was its ability to pool all of your storage devices into one storage pool (Drive Extender), and the ability for you to ensure that data was backed up across physical devices. These features combined with de-duplication made WHS hard to beat. Unfortunately Microsoft decided to pull the drive pooling feature from all of the products because of bugs that couldn't be easily resolved.

There are several addins that are showing up claiming to take the place of Drive Extender, DriveBender and StableBit are two of the biggest. Performance and lack of a sleek UI were the only things holding WHS back for being what I thought the best media management/sharing software available.

Before the next generation of WHS was set to roll out Microsoft decided to make some huge changes to the product. First the new version was built on Windows Server 2008R2, it makes sense that Microsoft would release the server platform on the latest and greatest operating system. Next, they decided to expand the product line into 3 distinct options, WHS, WSS and WSBS.

First I installed Windows Home Server 2011, I was familiar with it and it seemed to make sense to use it, after using it for a while I started to wish that you could create more than just 10 user accounts for remote access. This is a huge limitation if you want to share media with friends and family, I also wanted to join my WHS machine to my domain which you cannot do with WHS.

The new 2011 interface is great, everything looks a lot cleaner than in the previous WHS versions and the UI is easy to navigate.

Next I decided I would install Windows Small Business Server 2011 because it offered so much functionality in a very compact package. WSBS includes most of the WHS functionality (minus the media streaming) and Microsoft Exchange Server, Sharepoint Foundation, SQL Server Express and a Domain Controller.

Joining to a domain was a huge plus and I really liked the fact that I could now create 25 user accounts. One thing I noticed right away with WSBS was it needed a lot of resources, I ran WSBS in a virtual machine with 6GB of RAM and 2 processors. The machine seemed to take forever to shut down and restart when I needed to because there were so many services running on this one machine.

Performance for external users was not great either, I was getting complaints that it would take over an hour for a 700MB file to download and the bottleneck was not my internet connection. There is no media streaming in WSBS, this doesn't make any sense to me as all three products share the same code base and WSBS should be a superset of functionality being the most expensive and functional product of the three.

In the end I opted to stop using WSBS and give the third and final product a try (WSS).

Windows Storage Server is in the middle for functionality as it allows you to join to a domain (not be a domain controller like WSBS) and you can still have 25 user accounts. Microsoft hasn't done a great job marketing this product, apparently they sell it as an appliance hardware/software and it can't be purchased separately. I downloaded it from MSDN so if you have an account this is what I would recommend.

The first thing I noticed about WSS was the media streaming option is enabled just like WHS. From what I can tell the addins for WHS, WSS and WSBS are interchangeable and work with all three servers. WSS is perfect for me, it is a lot more lightweight than WSBS and offers the media streaming and the 25 user accounts.

One thing I don't like about all three of the products is that you can't share a mapped (network) drive, this would be such a great feature for me. Now I have to create a virtual hard drive (vmdk) and present that drive to the virtual machine, copy files to this drive and then share the drive in the WSS interface. It would be nice if I didn't have to move my media files inside the vmdk drives in order to create shares in WSS.

Comparison between WSBS and WSS

	Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials	Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials
Number of users supported	25	25
Server Solution	Integtrated & Pre-configured	Network Attached Storage Appliance
Cloud integration support	One-click setup	None
Remote Access	Integrated Remote Web Access	Integrated Remote Web Access
Identity Management	Pre-Configured Active Directory	Active Directory Join Only
Setup/Deployment	Automated Wizard Driven	Plug and Play
Application Support	Yes, any	Only Storage Application Support
Multi-Workload	Supports Many	Storage Only
Memory Support	32Gb	8Gb
CPU Support	2 Sockets	1 Socket
Avaliability	All purchasing channels	OEM only

I will continue to evaluate the products as they evolve but for right now Windows Storage Server 2008R2 works best for me.