Parallels comes with a nifty command line tool called prlctl installed at /usr/local/bin/prlctl when the package is installed. Use the prlctl with the backup verb in order to run a backup of a virtual machine, followed by an option of a name or ID of a registered virtual machine. For example, if the name of the VM was Krypted Server then you could run the following: prlctl backup ‘Krypted Server' Or if the unique ID of the VM was 12345678-1234-1234-112233456789 prlctl backup {12345678-1234-1234-112233456789} To list existing backups of a given VM, the backup-list verb along with the name or unique ID would be used, as follows: code>prlctl backup-list {12345678-1234-1234-112233456789} And…
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Updated My Apple Admin Conferences Page
I’ve been keeping a list of Apple Admin conferences for a few years now. I probably should have versioned it and kept each iteration, but… no need to pollute the interwebs with more outdated stuffs than I already have. So here’s the link for the latest version, updated with all the event dates announced thus far: https://krypted.com//community/macadmin-conferences/ Hope to see you at some!
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Enable AutoAdminLogon For Windows Deployments
There are 3 registry keys that admins in the Windows world use to enable automatic logins, often required for deployments that require a logged in user to setup user environments, such as configuring app deployments as part of a mass deployment. The required keys in the registry are:
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Consolidate VMware Snapshots
Each snapshot of a virtual machine in VMware creates files. You can consolidate these files when they’re no longer needed. This can let you save space and improve the performance of virtual machines (not to mention operations like moving virtual machines through the vMotion or manually). Consolidating snapshots is also a typical troubleshooting step for a number of problems you can encounter in ESX. The Consolidation command searches for delta data to combine and reorganizes so as not to corrupt any necessary dependencies. When a virtual machine needs to be consolidated, you can see this in the vSphere client under the Summary tab; however, in my experience it doesn’t always…
- Active Directory, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Network Infrastructure, Ubuntu, Unix, VMware, Windows Server
Stashbox: Turning a Mac Mini Into A Logstash and Kibana Server
You have a lot of boxes. You would like to be able to parse through the logs of all those boxes at the same time, searching for a given timestamp across a set of machines for a specific string (like a filename or a port number). elasticsearch, logstash and kibana are one way to answer that kind of need. This will involve downloading three separate packages (which for this article, we’ll do in /usr/local) and creating a config file. First, install the latest Java JDK. This is available at jdk8-downloads-2133151.html. The following is going to download the latest version of logstash and untar the package into /usr/local/logstash (I like nesting…
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Create A Server 2012 VM In VMware Fusion
Our friends at VMware continue to outdo themselves. The latest release of Fusion works so well with Windows Server 2013 that even I can’t screw it up. To create a virtual machine, simply open VMware Fusion and click New from the File menu. Click “Choose a disc or disc image.” Select your iso for Server 2012 and click on Open (if you have actual optical media it should have skipped this step and automatically sensed your installation media). Click Continue back at the New Virtual Machine Assistant screen. Click Continue when the Assistant properly shows the operating system and version. Enter a username, password and serial number for Windows Server…
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Hyper-V: Convert .vhd Files to .vhdx
The vhdx format provides support for 2 terabyte drives, can difference dynamic disks faster and provides more options for sector sizes. When upgrading into Server 2012, you can migrate your vhd files to vhdx files using Hyper-V Manager. To do so: Open Hyper-V Manager Click on the Action pane from the Action menu Click Edit Disk… At the Edit Virtual Disk Wizard click Next Provide the name of the location for the vhf file Click Next at the Location pane Click Convert at the Choose Action pane Click Next Click the vhdx format at the Choose Disk Format Click Next until the wizard is complete You can also use the…
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Resolve Error 1006.0005 For Qlogic Switches
Error 1006.0005 can appear on a Qlogic fibre channel switch when using ACL zones. If you don’t need ACL zones, then the easiest thing to do here is to swap the offending zone back to a soft zone. To do so, open the Qlogic Switch and use the Edit menu to select “Edit Zoning …” From the zone editor, right-click on the zone to change and click on Set Zone Type. From the Set Zone Type pop-up, click on the option for Soft. Save the zoning and provided that you can actually use soft zones you are done. Now, what if you can’t use soft zoning? In that case, I…
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vSphere: The Datastore Browser
When you’re moving virtual machines around, you’ll frequently use a tool such as vMotion. But what happens when you’re trying to load new virtual machines into VMware from the .vmdks on a client system or trying to archive a virtual machine that isn’t actually destined for another host? You can use nfs or ssh to access an ESX host, but there’s an even simpler way: the Datastore Browser. To use the Datastore Browser, first login to the vSphere Client. If you’ll be archiving a virtual machine, from there, I would stop the virtual machine. Then click on the virtual machine in the sidebar and click on Summary to see the…
- iPhone, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mac Security, Mass Deployment, Microsoft Exchange Server, Network Infrastructure, Ubuntu, Unix, VMware
Quick nmap Hacks
The nmap application is a pretty easy-to-use tool that can be used to port scan objects in a network environment. To obtain mmap in an easy-to-use package installer, for OS X check out the download page at http://nmap.org/download.html#macosx (use the same page to grab it for Windows or *nix as well). Once downloaded run the package/rpm/whatever. Before I scan a system, I like to pull the routing table and eth info to determine how scans are being run, which can be run by using the mmap command anong with the —iflist option: nmap —iflist Basic Scanning To then scan a computer, just use the mmap command followed by the host…