If you have a problem customising a Windows 2003 Server template when deploying after upgrading to Virtual Center 2.5 then follow these steps:

To fix this you need to download the new sysprep files

Extract them on your VirtualCenter server and placed in the following folder: %SYSTEMDRIVE%\All Users\Application Data\Vmware\VirtualCenter\sysprep\svr2003

Once extracted the template should now work again.

For more details read the Virtual Center 2 Template usage and Best Practices found here: Usage and Best Practice Guide

Tripwire ConfigCheck is a lightweight version of Tripwire Enterprise For VMware ESX Server a security and compliance-checking application designed to evaluate large server installations. Tripwire ConfigCheck is designed to sift through the hundreds of configuration settings within VMware’s ESX Server and identify those that are not set according to VMware’s recommendations.

The new tool also provides guidelines users can follow to fix the problems, if they choose to do so.

ConfigCheck

Article found on Run-virtual

An interesting article which may help decrease the login time for your TS/Citrix session….

http://www.brianmadden.com/blog/GabeKnuth/BriForum-Video—Decreasing-Windows-Login-Time

Found this article on another blog, its very usefull for deploying citrix on vmware, I have performed most of these in the past so can vouch for this, the tuning list is from personal experience the blog and the experience of several users on the VMware forum.

Needed:

• Virtual Infrastructure 3 (Latest Version)
• Windows 2003 Std (or Enterprise) Edition R2 (x86, do not use x64)
• Citrix Presentation Server 4.0

How To:

• First this: it all depends on the applications used! Context switches is the key here…
• Use Windows 2003, not Windows 2000
• Don’t P2V your servers, but use clean templates
• Make sure the correct HAL (single or multi) is installed in the virtual machine. Otherwise, your vCPU will spike.
• Always assign 1vCPU. If necessary, add a 2^nd vCPU. Do not use 4 vCPUs!
• Use 2 GB to start. Scale up to +-4 GB of vRAM if necessary
• Use 1 .vmdk for your system partition (C:\ or other remapped drive letter) and 1 separate .vmdk for your program files.
• Put the page file on the 2^nd .vmdk
• Important: disconnect any .iso file in your virtual CD-Rom
• Use roaming profiles and cleanup your profiles at logoff
• Disable sound for your published apps
• Install the UPH service (download it here)
• User sessions: for me, 30 users on a VM. Do not expect to get as many users on it as on a physical box!
• Scale out, not up. A major advantage of VM is to clone/NewSID/sysprep existing servers and put them into your existing Citrix farm. Just stop & disable your IMA service, clean up your RMLocalDB (if you use enterprise) and NewSid the thing. Refer to this support article for more info.
• Use dual core or quad core systems. This because ESX will have more CPU to schedule its vCPUs on.
• Don’t ever use a 2 vCPU Citrix virtual machine in a 2 pCPU physical machine!
• Do not install the memory ballooning driver while installing the VMware Tools
• Do not use a complete installation Vmware tools: there is an issue with roaming profiles and the shared folders component. See this previous article for more info.
• Disable COM ports, hyperthreading, visual effects & use speedscreen technology where possible.
• Use snapshots when installing applications or patching your servers (yes! With VMware you can do this!). In case of disaster, you can still revert to the original working server without using backups. Make sure all snapshots are removed ASAP when finished!
• Always check that there are no snapshot leftovers (f.e. the infamous _VCB-BACKUP_ when using VCB)
• Don’t forget you can use DRS rules to run your citrix servers on separate physical hosts.
• Check out this vmworld 2006 presentation
• And last but not least: do not forget to read ESX's (excellent) performance tuning white paper.

Take a look at this blog, it’s a combination of a laptop, e-ink and a Nintendo DS. All I can say is, send me a prototype and I’ll be happy to test it and write a review.

Recently I needed to install multiple ESX servers by CD, the CD’s kept getting lost and scratched, I wondered if there was a way to install from USB, surely this would be faster too.

I looked through the forums and found a couple of people that had managed it, I have amended there instructions slightly to get this working….

Requirements

You will need SYSLINUX, a Linux boot loader for removable media.

This can be downloaded here: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/

These instructions are based on a Windows PC for my simplicity.

If you're a Linux guru (you know who I’m talking about!), then you can obviously do this under Linux. You'd need to know how to mount .ISO images in order to extract files, etc.

Steps Required

Throughout this example my USB hard drive was I: replace this with your letter.

1.  Plug in your USB flash disk and format it in dos using the following command: FORMAT I: /FS:FAT

2.  From Windows Explorer, find the boot.iso file in the /images directory on the ESX 3.x CD-ROM. Copy boot.iso into a temporary directory on your hard drive.

3.  Using your ISO extraction or mount program, extract the contents of the boot.iso file to your USB flash drive.

4.  Delete the isolinux.bin and updatecd.cfg files from the USB disk.

5.  Rename the isolinux.cfg file on the USB flash disk to syslinux.cfg

6.  Using WordPad (not Notepad), open the syslinux.cfg file and add the keyword usb to the end of every line that begins with append. Here's what the file should look like when you're done:

default esx

prompt 1

timeout 600

display boot.msg

F1 boot.msg

F7 snake.msg

label debug

  kernel vmlinuz

  append initrd=initrd.img noapic nomediacheck debug usb

label esx

  kernel vmlinuz

  append initrd=initrd.img usb

label text

  kernel vmlinuz

  append initrd=initrd.img text usb

label expert

  kernel vmlinuz

  append expert initrd=initrd.img usb

label ks

  kernel vmlinuz

  append ks initrd=initrd.img usb

label lowres

  kernel vmlinuz

  append initrd=initrd.img lowres usb

7.   Extract the syslinux.zip file into another temporary directory on your hard drive.

8.  Open up a command prompt and navigate into the win32 directory. For example:

C:\temp\syslinux-3.36\win32

9.   Now, run the syslinux program to apply the boot loader and boot sector to the USB flash drive:

syslinux -s –ma I:

10.   Copy the ESX 3.x ISO image onto the USB drive root
 
11.   Confirm that your USB flash drive contains the following files:

boot.cat

boot.msg

initrd.img

snake.msg

splash.lss

vmlinuz

syslinux.cfg

esx-X.iso

12.   Your ready to go, ensure your bios on the server you want to install too is setup to boot from USB or select USB from the alternate boot menu.

13.   The ESX installer will detect the USB device and whatever SCSI / disk controllers you have. When the installer asks you what the installation source will be, choose Hard Disk.

14.   You will need to choose the right disk device (ie. /dev/sda, /dev/sdb) that corresponds to your USB disk. Chances are it will be /dev/sdb.

15.   Finally, the installer will ask you what directory to find the ESX installation CD image in. Just use / and it will find the .ISO image for you.

That’s everything, my servers managed to install in around 4 minutes which is not bad really!  I have now modified my 4GB USB drive to include other tools like Knoppix and a dos boot disk all amendable from the main menu with not too much work.  I might blog how to do these on another day.

Dell announced yesterday that ESXi will cost only $99. (source: virtualization.info) Citrix Xenserver will cost you $299. Will be good to see what HP, Fujitsu and IBM are going to release next. What will Microsoft do with this very competitive pricing.  Will be good to see UK pricing too !

It has always been hard to find where and what are the latest hotfixes for the Citrix products, no more !

With the new revision of Citrix's Support site (support.citrix.com), now it's easier to find  the latest fixes and patchs for your Citrix products.

Here's the list:

  Presentation Server 4.5 for Windows Server 2003 – x86

  Presentation Server 4.5 for Windows Server 2003 – x64

  Presentation Server 4.0 for Windows Server 2003 – x86

  Presentation Server 4.0 for Windows Server 2000 – x86

  Access Gateway 4.5 Advanced Edition

  Access Gateway 4.5 Standard Edition

  Access Gateway 8.0 Enterprise Edition

  Provisioning Server 4.5

  Citrix NetScaler 8.0

  Citrix NetScaler 7.0

  Citrix WANScaler 4.x


Select the products you have, subcribe to its RSS feed and stay in-sync with all later patches and fixes for it.

Satya from the Operations Manager Product Team: Last week the Operations Manager team attended the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 in Las Vegas and one of the big questions we got from almost all customers was when is the System Center Capacity tool going to be available? I'm glad to announce that the OpsMgr 2007 SCCP RTM model is now officially available today from the link below. The model covers Gateway Servers, Audit Collection and Client Monitoring scenarios as well as the complex enterprise deployment scenarios. A note of caution, please review the model with your technical account manager or your Microsoft consultant before doing a full blown deployment. It is also essential that all customers do a pre-production deployment before doing a final production deployment.

Download: OpsMgr 2007 Capacity Planner Tool (Final Version)

VMware has just published: Upgrading to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 Best Practices. This document provides valuable steps which may be useful when upgrading to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5.  VMwarewolf is re-printing it here because he wants to emphasize a few of the point in bold.