September, 2009

Unstoppable Copier 4.2

One of my favorite data copy and recovery software applications has recently been updated. One of the best things about it is that you can copy all files from any location to any specified location, if it his a corrupt or unreadable file, it just skips it, logs it, and goes on until it has no more files to copy. This is a very easy to use program so please don’t pass it by.

Here is an insert from his page, “Recovers files from disks with physical damage. Allows you to copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together. Using this method most types of files can be made usable even if some parts of the file were not recoverable in the end. The program can be used as a daily backup system using its batch mode functions. A list of transfers can be saved to a file and then run from the command line to perform the same batch of transfers on a regular basis without having to use the GUI interface. The program supports command line parameters which allow the application to be run from schedulers or scripts so it can be fully integrated into daily server tasks.“

You can download installable files, or standalone which can be used from a USB key.

Downloads Unstoppable Copier here.

-NS

Internet Privacy, You are not Alone.

There is a really interesting story over at TechNewsWorld. I have included an insert below…

“When you’re surfing online, privacy is really a matter of degree. If you’re browsing unprotected, site owners can manage to figure out quite a lot about you based on where you go. Many browsers now offer so-called privacy modes, but those don’t come close to masking everything about you. Even advanced proxy systems aren’t always a complete privacy panacea.”

Check out the full story.

NS

DRS, Vmotion, and Snapshots

I think setting DRS(Distributed Resource Scheduling) to manual mode when removing snapshots, should be best practice, especially when you are only running two ESX servers and they are slightly taxed. Why? Mainly because when you remove a snapshot, especially a two tiered one, it can cause the hard disk to “thrash” and thus signaling DRS to Vmotion a Virtual Machine from one ESX Server to the other ESX Server automatically. This will of course cause more stress on the hardware and eventually the client may notice the decrease in performance. Hey I’m just speaking from personal experience. When the snapshot is removed, re-enable DRS. Comments?

-NS

Updating BlackBerry Devices via BlackBerry Desktop Manager

Here’s a warning for all you BlackBerry junkies out there. The scenario goes like this. My father bought a BlackBerry 8320 SmartPhone, i being the wonderful son I am, wanted to update his OS software. So I plugged the phone into my computer, BlackBerry Desktop Manager 5 saw the phone and said there was updated software available, so i trusted BlackBerry Desktop Manager to update the phone. What ended up happening is far from what I expected or wanted, the phone got backed up, thankfully, and wiped, when it went to upload the new OS, it said that there was non available. Rebooting the phone it ended up giving me the 507 error. I figured it was a total loss and I would have to make up some wacky story to get the phone RMA’d. What I ended up doing was scouring the Internet for answers and I found it, here. This website tells you how to restore a nuked or wiped blackberry and it definitely saved my butt. Another little bit of knowledge, it took the BlackBerry 8320 15 minutes on its first boot, so dont go thinking its the “Hour-glass of death” like some people like to call it. If after 20-25 minutes it still won’t boot you should reload it again, if all else fails, then there is no hope other than bringing it back to the manufacturer.

So the moral of the story, use the BlackBerry Desktop Manager that came with your phone, do not use any other one, if you do you might end up spending the night reloading a BlackBerry like I did.

-NS

Openfiler, Free and Opensource

I am back in the books after being un-prepared for VCP-310 and was needing some iSCSI practice, well i dont have an MSA or HP All-In-One laying around so i improvised. My buddy Raj ( he has a blog on here also) pointed me to a program called Openfiler. I was able to create a VM on VMware Workstation, install Openfiler, and then create an iSCSI target for my ESX Box. Worked like a charm. Since I had never used this product before, I used this Petri Article, “Use OpenFiler as your Free VMware ESX SAN Server”. Read through it all, its a 2 part post.

Just wanted to share my awesome experience of configuring an iSCSI target out of a laptop and virtualization components!

NS

Palm Desktop Calendar Sync to Outlook Calendar

Well I found out the hard way that there is an easy way to do this. Mind you the easiest is to change your syncing from Palm Device to Palm Desktop to sync between Palm Device and Outlook, the rest takes care of itself.

Although, lets say you do not have access to your old palm device, what then? Well Yahoo allows you to sync from Palm Desktop exported files(dba) but trying to do so via the website didn’t work for me.

Intellisync for Yahoo did the trick, I’m not going to get into details, other than, you install the app, select, sync from Palm Desktop to Yahoo (you must have a valid yahoo account), then change the settings again to sync from Yahoo to Oultook.

When syncing to Yahoo, make sure you set the time zone on your yahoo calendar to the right zone, or all your appointments will be off.

Read up on Intellisync for Yahoo here.

VMware 3.5 and Virtual Infrastruture Client 2.5 Ports

Check this link out, it has a neat port guide in PDF format with all the ports mapped and labelled. Its a visual representation of the ports below.

22. SSH access to service console.
80. HTTP access to web servers.
443. HTTPS SSL access to web servers for VI Web Access.
902. VI Client access to ESX Server or VirtualCenter, and communication between VirtualCenter and ESX Server hosts or between hosts.
903. VM Console access via VI Client or VI Web Access.
2049. Connection to NFS storage devices.
2050-5000, and 8042-8045. Traffic between ESX Server hosts for VMware HA (also utilizes EMC Automated Availability Manager).
3260. Connection to iSCSI storage devices.
8000. Incoming requests from VMotion.
8083. VirtualCenter diagnostics port.
8086. Apache Tomcat web server admin on VirtualCenter Server
27000. License transactions from ESX Server to the License Server.
27010. License transactions from the License Server.

Changing the RDP port on Windows Server 2008

I have always been able to change the port number with Windows Server 2003/XP/Vista by editing the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber

With Server 2008 however this does not seem to work. Does anyone know what else you need to do to make this work? See below!

On Server 2008, in addition to changing the registry key above, you also need to create a new Inbound TCP rule in your windows firewall to allow connections on your new port.  You can then disable the existing remote desktop inbound rule (which is hardcoded to port 3389)

For home systems, i usually disable the firewall anyways, but this may apply for Windows 7 installations as well.

-NS

Samsung N510 Netbook.

Finally a Netbook that will be able to play Hi-Definition video! With its 11.6″ screen and a resolution of 1366×768, this Netbook will surely become popular.

Samsung N510 specs include.

Intel Atom N280 1.67Ghz Processor with 1GB DDR2 Memory.

Nvidia’s Ion Chipset

160GB HDD

WiFi b/g/n

Bluetooth

wired ethernet

integrated webcam and microphone,

multi-format memory card reader

6-cell Li-Ion battery

Windows XP Home(Europe Release; its rumoured that it will ship with Windows 7 in North America.

Early reports state that the netbook will be worth about 420 pounds, or 864$ US. That’s quite a hefty pricetag, let’s hope the price drops quite a bit around the release date.

NS

Viewsonic releases its own Netbook.

Well we all know how much I like Netbooks for the portability and usability, and the computer industry always welcomes competition, well here you have it.

Viewsonic will be releasing two Netbooks in the US before the end of the year.

-  VNB100 is based on Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N270 chip with 1GB memory, a 160GB hard drive and an ExpressCard slot. It weighs about three pounds and has an estimated battery life of three hours.

- VNB101 is lighter, around 2.4 pounds, comes with the 1.66GHz N280 Atom processor, 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard drive and a slightly smaller battery with about five hours of use time. Both models have a 10-inch displays.