Using Startup Repair to fix boot problems in Windows 7

When trying to start your Windows 7 based computer, if you get an error like : 'BOOTMGR is missing' then you can use the Startup Repair to fix the problems. Startup Repair is one of the options in the Windows 7 Recovery Environment. There are two ways you can boot into the Windows 7 Recovery Environment. Here is how :

1. Change the BIOS settings in your computer so that your DVD drive is the first boot device and your hard disk is the second boot device. Place your Windows 7 DVD in the DVD drive and turn on your computer. When you see a message Press any key to boot from CD or DVD...., hit any key on your keyboard.
   
2. After few seconds of 'loading Windows' message, you would see a window titled Install Windows, just click Next to continue.
   
3. Click on Repair your computer link shown on the bottom-left of the window.
   
4. Choose your Windows 7 partition you want to repair and click Next. If you see more than one partitions listed, choose the one which says Windows 7 under the Operating System category.
   
5. You would see a window titled System Recovery Options. Click on the top-most link labeled Startup Repair to start the repair of startup related problems.
   
6. The Startup Repair would start fixing your computer for startup related problems. After the process is over and fixes are applied, the computer would be re-started.
   

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Vsphere features

Here are 10 features we feel are worth highlighting:

vCenter server linked mode

This mode allows you to connect multiple vCenter servers in a “linked” fashion.

Doing this allows them to share licenses and roles and provides them with an

“overview” of the entire virtual environment.

Host profiles

Host profiles are provided in Enterprise Plus to make it easy to push a template of

an already existing ESX host to a new server. This feature is a huge benefit, as it

means you no longer need to manually configure networks, storage, and so on in

your new ESX Servers.

Performance, graphs, and events

CPU, memory, storage, and networking graphs are now displayed on one central

page. In additional to improved graphs, customers will benefit from improved

event messages, alarm settings, and error reporting.

Storage VMotion within vCenter

You can initiate a storage VMotion within the vCenter client. This takes away the

need for the command-line management or third-party plug-ins that were popular

with the ESX 3.x versions.

Enhanced VMotion

Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) allows customers to initiate VMotion

between Intel FlexMigration and AMD-V Extended Migration technologies. In essence,

this means you can now move a running server between hosts using different

CPU technologies.

Virtual machine hot add support

You can add CPU and memory resources to an existing virtual machine without

having to reboot.

Virtual machine hardware improvements

Virtual machines can now scale up to eight virtual SMP processors and up to 255GB

of RAM. vSphere supports IDE devices, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and VMXNET

Generation 3 network support.

Physical node improvements

Physical hosts can now have up to 1TB of memory, 64 logical CPUs, and 320 virtual

machines. The 64-bit architecture of ESX4 allows greater memory capacity, better

performance, and seamless hardware support compared to previous releases.

Storage improvements

ESX 4.0 brings a huge set of improvements to the realm of storage within ESX.

Thin provisioning for virtual disks enables virtual machines to utilize storage on

an as-needed basis, eliminating a major source of wasted space on a storage area

network (SAN). The VMFS Volume Grow feature allows you to dynamically grow

a Virtual Machine File System without interrupting the running virtual machines.

There is also enhanced support for NFS and iSCSI software initiators, which now

supply support for jumbo frames on 1GB or 10GB local networks.

Distributed switch

A distributed switch is provided on Enterprise Plus to let customers create a virtual

switch for all their ESX hosts to connect to and utilize. This helps reduce network

maintenance and allows virtual machines to be moved to any host using VMotion

without having to worry about network connections

VMware Command List

esxcfg There are a new set of command line tools in ESX 3.x which all start with "esxcfg-".

esxcfg-advcfg The esxcfg-advcfg command is interesting as there is not a huge amount of help about this command. However, we can figure out that it is meant to do advanced configuration and we can figure out some settings that can be made. The -g switch is used to "get" settings; the -s switch is used to "set" settings

Ex:
[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg -g /VMFS3/ZeroedThickVirtualDisks
Value of ZeroedThickVirtualDisks is 1

Usage: esxcfg-advcfg <options> [<adv cfg Path>]
-g--get Get the value of the Config option
-s--set <value> Set the value of the Config option
-d--default Reset Config option to default
-q--quiet Suppress output
-k--set-kernel Set a VMkernel load time option value.
-j--get-kernel Get a VMkernel load time option value.
-h--help Show this message.
-r--restore Restore all advanced options from the configuration file.(FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY).

esxcfg-firewall The service console in ESX 3.x has a firewall enabled by default.

The firewall rules are stored in /etc/vmware/esx.conf, but we don't go editing this file, we use this command to ensure it is locked while we make our edits. If you are very interested in the iptables commands used behind the scenes, then you can inspect the log file /var/log/vmware/esxcfg-firewall.log

Following switch you can use this command.

-e uses this switch for enable to particular services

Ex: [root@esxhost1 root]# esxcfg-firewall -e sshClient

-d

uses this switch for disable to particular services

Ex :root@esxhost1 root]# esxcfg-firewall -d smbClient

-o
use this switch for open the UDP or TCP port

Ex: [root@esxhost1 root]# esxcfg-firewall -o port,protocol,direction,name

esxcfg-module This command is used to view and set options for start-up on the VMkernel modules (drivers). When this command is used with the list option, it produces an output similar to vmkload_mod –list

EX: root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-module –l

[root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-module -s ql2xmaxdepth64 qla2300_707_vmw

esxcfg-rescan This command is used to perform a rescan of a host bus adapter (HBA). Specifically it scans a named vmkernel hba device, i.e. a vmhba. This command does a similar job to vmkfstools -rescan.

EX: [root@esx1host]# esxcfg-rescan vmhba32

esxcfg-upgrade esxcfg-upgrade -h --help
-g --convert-grub
-f --convert-fstab
-r --upgrade-pre-vmkernel
-o --upgrade-post-vmkernel

The -g option may only be used with the -r option.

esxcfg-vswitch This command is one of the most useful commands in the service console. This command allows you to list, add, modify or delete virtual Ethernet switches on an ESX host. The simplest option with this command is the -l option to list the virtual switches and portgroups defined on the host

EX: [root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-vswitch –l

[root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch1

esxcfg-vswitch --add vSwitch2

[root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-vswitch --add-pg="Production" vSwitch1

esxcfg-auth Configures the service console user authentication options including NIS, LDAP, Kerberos and Active Directory. In the following command, we are configuring authentication for the Active Directory domain called taupoconsulting.com

Ex: [root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-auth --enablead --addomain=taupoconsulting.com --adddc=dc1.taupoconsulting.com

You can also use this tool to set a password policy for service console user accounts.

[root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-auth --maxpassdays=90 --minpassdays=30 --passwarnage=75

esxcfg-info .

esxcfg-mpath Manages storage multi-pathing just as the vmkmultipath utility did in previous versions of ESX Server. In the example below we are using the -l switch to list the storage and paths.

[root@esx1host tools-isoimages]# esxcfg-mpath –l

esxcfg-resgrp This command can add, remove or modify existing resource groups.

esxcfg-hbadevs The esxcfg-vmhbadevs command is used to list the equivalent Linux device names for the visible disk devices that the VMkernel references using vmhba notation.

EX: [root@esx1host root]# esxcfg-vmhbadevs
vmhba0:0:0 /dev/sda
vmhba0:0:1 /dev/sdb
vmhba0:0:2 /dev/sdc
vmhba0:0:3 /dev/sdd
vmhba2:0:0 /dev/sde
vmhba2:1:0 /dev/sdf

If we use this command with the –m switch, then we only list the LUNs which contain VMFS partitions. Alongside the Linux device name, a long unique hexadecimal value is listed

esxcfg-boot

esxcfg-nas The esxcfg-nas command is used to list, mount and dismount NFS exports for the VMkernel. In the first example we list the NFS datastores which the VMkernel has mounted.

Swtich list esxcfg-nas <options> [<label>]
-a--add Add a new NAS filesystem to /vmfs volumes. Requires --host and --share options.
-o--host <host> Set the host name or ip address for a NAS mount.
-s--share <share> Set the name of the NAS share on the remote system.
-d--delete Unmount and delete a filesystem.
-l--list List the currently mounted NAS file systems.
-r--restore Restore all NAS mounts from the configuration file. (FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY).
-h--help Show this message.

esxcfg-route If we add an IP address to the VMkernel by adding a VMkernel port, then we can fully configure that IP stack by also assigning a default gateway. We can view (no parameters) and set (1st parameter) the VMkernel IP default gateway with the esxcfg-route
command as shown here. In the following example, we view the current VMkernel gateway (.254) and then change it to a new one (.1)

EX: [root@esx1host etc]# esxcfg-route
VMkernel default gateway is 100.100.100.254

[root@esx1host etc]# esxcfg-route 100.100.100.1
VMkernel default gateway set to 100.100.100.1

P2V Steps

P2V steps:
* RDP to the target server
* Make a note of: number of drives and the space used on each drive
* Take a note of ip address and all information of target server
*Now login to the PowerConvert PlateSpin server and load PowerConvert
*Start discovery on the host [ESX host] and target (physical/virtual server) you are virtualizing
*1st discover the Windows and then host (ESX)
*Once both host and target are discovered, you should able to see them
*Drag the target server over the host and let go; that will let PowerConvert know that you are trying to add the target to the host as VM
*During this process, you need two virtual ip addresses for source server & target VM for data transfer process
*Always set 100MB full duplex to source server and for target VM make sure to choose the right virtual network [In V2V, you won’t get the duplex setting]
*Always choose source server [Physical] power off after p2v is complete
*In license, choose PowerConvert Project edition for V2Vs & PowerConvert for Server Consolidation for P2Vs
*Check for memory and CPU allocation settings
*Make sure you choose right datastore for the server. It’s the same location as the LUN destination
*Make sure you define right vlan & define new ip address that will be used after the new VM is powered on
*System partition gets at least 12GB. If it already has more than 12GB USED space, then add 20% more space to it.
*Data partition gets 20% added to whatever USED space it has now.