Monthly Archives: January 2014

Shrink disks in Windows

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First delete all VSS snapshots (e.g. disk F):

vssadmin delete shadows /for=f: /all

 

Optimize the disk with powershell:

Optimize-Volume -driveletter F -defrag -verbose

Resize the disk with powershell (e.d. to 450 GB):

Resize-Partition -Driveletter F –Size 450GB

Shrink the disk with diskpart (e.d. 1784 MB):

shrink minimum 1784

To check the Maximum size and the Minimum size to where a disk can shrink, use the following command:

Get-PartitionSupportedSize -DiskNumber 1 -PartitionNumber 1 | select @{Name=”Minimum Size (GB)”; Expression={$_.SizeMin/1GB}}, @{Name=”Maximum Size (GB)”;Expression={$_.SizeMax/1GB}}

With Diskpart

shrink querymax

How to Configure IPv6 Using Group Policy

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By default, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista enable and use IPv6 as the default protocol. These versions of Windows will normally use IPv6 for all network communication and will step down to IPv4 as necessary.
You may decide to disable Windows IPv6 for several reasons. Perhaps your IPv4 network doesn’t support it, and you want to disable unnecessary protocols. You may have also read that IPv6 breaks Outlook Anywhere on Exchange 2007 Client Access servers.

Most people think that you disable IPv6 by simply unchecking the Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) checkbox, as shown above. This method disables IPv6 on the particular LAN interface and connection. For other network adapters or connections, users have to repeat the steps to disable IPv6. However, disabling IPv6 this way does not disable IPv6 on tunnel interfaces or the IPv6 loopback interface. It also must be done manually and cannot be instrumented or enforced using Group Policy.

In order to truly disable IPv6, you must disable it in the registry in the following key:
Normally, the DisabledComponents value does not exist. If the value does not exist or the value data is 0, IPv6 is enabled on all interfaces.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters\DisabledComponents

Microsoft wrote KB article 929852 to document how to disable certain Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) components in Windows Vista (and later) manually using the registry. At the end of the article, Microsoft helpfully wrote, “Note: Administrators must create an ADMX file in order to expose the settings in step 5 in a Group Policy setting.” Nice. So, I decided to do just that.

I wrote the attached ADMX and ADML files to enable the configuration of IPv6 using Group Policy. Copy each file to the computer you will use to configure the policy.
IPv6Configuration.zip [wpdm_file id=82]- This ZIP file contains both the ADMX and ADML files:

  • IPv6Configuration.admx – Copy this file to %SYSTEMROOT%\PolicyDefinitions
  • IPv6Configuration.adml – Copy this file to %SYSTEMROOT&\PolicyDefinitions\en-US (Replace en-US with your country’s language, as necessary)

Now log into the computer and use the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) to configure the IPv6 settings. The new policy will be located under Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Network > IPv6 Configuration, as shown below:

Here, you can configure the following IPv6 settings:

  • Enable all IPv6 components (Windows default)
  • Disable all IPv6 components (the setting you probably want)
  • Disable 6to4
  • Disable ISATAP
  • Disable Teredo
  • Disable Teredo and 6to4
  • Disable all tunnel interfaces
  • Disable all LAN and PPP interfaces
  • Disable all LAN, PPP and tunnel interfaces
  • Prefer IPv4 over IPv6

Note that you must restart the computer for the configuration to go into effect.

 

source: http://www.expta.com/2009/02/how-to-configure-ipv6-using-group.html

How to disable IP version 6 or its specific components in Windows

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To disable certain IPv6 components yourself, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start
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    Start button

    , type regedit in the Start Search box, and then click regedit.exe in the Programs list.

  2. In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
  3. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters \
  4. Double-click DisabledComponents to change the DisabledComponents entry.
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    2683283

    Note If the DisabledComponents entry is unavailable, you must create it. To do this, follow these steps:

    1. In the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
    2. Type DisabledComponents, and then press ENTER.
    3. Double-click DisabledComponents.
  5. Type any one of the following values in the Value data field to configure the IPv6 protocol to the desired state, and then click OK:
    1. Type 0 to enable all IPv6 components. (Windows default setting)
    2. Type 0xffffffff to disable all IPv6 components except the IPv6 loopback interface. This value also configures Windows to prefer using IPv4 over IPv6 by changing entries in the prefix policy table. For more information, see Source and Destination Address Selection
      (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb877985.aspx)

      .

    3. Type 0x20 to prefer IPv4 over IPv6 by changing entries in the prefix policy table.
    4. Type 0x10 to disable IPv6 on all nontunnel interfaces (both LAN and Point-to-Point Protocol [PPP] interfaces).
    5. Type 0x01 to disable IPv6 on all tunnel interfaces. These include Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP), 6to4, and Teredo.
    6. Type 0x11 to disable all IPv6 interfaces except for the IPv6 loopback interface.

source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852/en-us

 

 

Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 4.x and 5.x (1033696)

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source: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=1033696

 

VMware recommends that ESXi has a persistent scratch location available for storing temporary data including logs, diagnostic information, and system swap. (This is not a requirement, however.) Persistent scratch space may be provisioned on a FAT 16, VMFS, or NFS partition accessible by the ESXi host.

Note: Scratch space is configured automatically during installation or first boot of an ESXi host, and does not usually need to be manually configured. ESXi Installable creates a 4 GB Fat16 partition on the target device during installation if there is sufficient space, and if the device is considered Local.

If persistent scratch space is not available, ESXi stores this temporary data on a ramdisk, which is constrained in space. This might be problematic in low-memory situations, but is not critical to the operation of ESXi. Information stored on a ramdisk does not persist across reboots, so troubleshooting information such as logs and core files could be lost. If a persistent scratch location on the host is not configured properly, you may experience intermittent issues due to lack of space for temporary files and the log files will not be updated.

 

Configuring a persistent scratch location using PowerCLI

To configure persistent scratch space for ESXi using the vSphere PowerCLI interface:

Notes:

  • Before proceeding, ensure that /tmp/scratch exists. If it does not exist, use the command mkdir /tmp/scratch to create it.
  • For more information on vSphere PowerCLI usage, see the vSphere PowerCLI documentation.
  1. Open a command prompt where the PowerCLI is installed.
  2. Connect to the ESXi host using the command:connect-viserver esx_hostname_or_IP
  3. Obtain a list of datastores reachable from this ESXi host using the command:Get-Datastore
  4. Mount a datastore read/write as a PSDrive using the command:New-PSDrive -Name "mounteddatastore" -Root \ -PSProvider VimDatastore -Datastore (Get-Datastore "DatastoreName")
  5. Access the new PSDrive using the command:Set-Location mounteddatastore:
  6. Create a uniquely-named directory for this ESXi host using the command:New-Item "DirectoryName" -ItemType directory

    For example:

    New-Item ".locker-ESXHostname" -ItemType directory

  7. Check the current value of the ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation configuration option using the command:Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation"

    Note: VMHostAdvancedConfiguration has been deprecated in PowerCLI 5.1 and replaced with AdvancedSetting. For more information, see the vSphere PowerCLI documentation.

  8. Change the ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation configuration option, specifying the full path to the directory created in step 6, using the command:Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation" -Value "/vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/DirectoryName"

    For example:

    Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation" -Value "/vmfs/volumes/Datastore1/.locker-ESXHostname"

  9. Put the ESXi host into maintenance mode and reboot for the configuration change to take effect.