albertwt

wow, that is something that I didn't think about SYNACK :-) good idea in making all of my current Servers NIC to have the new IP address as the additional IP. hopefully nothing should go wrong with the DC+GC, Primary DNS Server and the DHCP itself as they're on one single server.

Hi SYNACK, thanks for the fast reply, I'm wondering about the other non standard entries such as: and all of the child entries underneath each respective node, do I have to create it manually or it will be created automatically ?

more information on point #2: I understand that i need to change the IP address manually from the DHCP address list once the client is assigned a certain IP address from the DHCP server, but I'm still not sure if it is OK to manually change the IP address of the following servers: 1. Primary DNS Server itself (which records should I change it first). 2. Domain Controllers 3. Exchange Server I can be sure that changing the worstations IP address is going to be fine but still bit worried about changing those servers IP address listed above. can anyone shed light in this matter please ?

Hi, This will be my first step to change all of the office machine IP address (from Public routable into private class A) 1. Get all workstation IP registered using DHCP (Using VBScript). 2. Set the server IP manually into new IP addressing scheme (don't know what to do with the DNS Servers, Exchange and DC :-| ). 3. Change the IP addressing scope from DHCP and let it replicate. am I missing something here ? Any help and suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks Michael, Glad to know that the AD will automatically populated by the entry from the DHCP server. Anyway I'm documenting the setting by screenshot on every single properties tab on my current DNS Server. Cheers.

Hi Guys, In this case can I summarize the steps into the following points ? 1. Take snapshot the current Server / back it up to become a VM using BESRO 8.5 (for the fall back plan) 2. Transfer the FSMO role to other DC 3. demote DC 4. reformat the Server 5. Promote the DC back again using DCpromo 6. about the Primary DNS role I'm still confused what to do to make it as the Primary DNS again. any idea to finish up the last step please ?

Hi All, I'm about to perform total IP Addressing reformation from my current class B (1.2.3.0-255) into class A (10.x.x.x), I've got two DNS Server: Server A - 1st DNS + DHCP Server B - 2nd DNS the current situation is: a client workstation is named uniquely then given A record for each IP address assigned to them. a server is given A record for each IP address and also CNAME record if necessary. Example: * Workstation name: MyLaptop * A record: MyLaptop.domain.com * IP: 1.2.3.100 now I'd like to be creative for easy maintenance and identifying a network device for the future by doing the following changes: a client workstation is named uniquely in the A record for each IP address assigned to them. a server is given A record for each IP address and also CNAME record if necessary. Example: * Workstation name: MyLaptop * A record: 100-office1.domain.com * CNAME: MyLaptop.domain.com * IP: 1.2.3.100 is there any way to make the company wide changes without affecting the Active Directory information ? I was thinking of going through one by one on the DNS entry in the console to make the changes but this is will be cumbersome. The reason is of course that I'm using publicly routable address currently in my two office location. I wonder if this is a good way in managing the Windows AD domain by assigning a PC descriptive A record (LSB_of_the_IP_address.officelocation.domain.com) and then creating CNAME which is the same as the current machine name. What I'm also worrying about is that i have to rename all of the machine company wide to become LSB_of_the_IP_address.officelocation.domain.com and then manually assigning CNAME on to it. any idea would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi All, I'm confused about the VMDK manual clone concept, I've got 2 x ESXi Servers namely ESXi1 and ESXi2 and also one SAN VMFS datastore which is shared LUN for both ESXi1-2 servers. I have a Windows Server 2003 x64 Std VM with the name Win2003x64_vmws00 as the template, what I usually do is from Veeam FastSCP 1. Copy the whole directory of Win2003x64_vmws00 (from Local SATA Template Directory) into SAN-VMFS datastore 2. Rename the directory into Win2003x64_vmws01 2. Go Inside Win2003x64_vmws01 directory and rename Win2003x64_vmws00*.vmdk into Win2003x64_vmws01*.vmdk 3. Delete any other file except the *.vmdk files 4. Create new VM using Custom Wizard and point the Hard Disk to the renamed file (Win2003x64_vmws01.vmdk) 5. Start the VM and select "I copied" in the dialog box. that is the way I'm doing it now, the problem now is that there are soo many directory around in the SAN-VMFS like: Win2003x64_vmws01_1 --> contains smaller Win2003x64_vmws01_1.log, Win2003x64_vmws01_1.nvram, .vmsd, .vmx and .vmxf files Win2003x64_vmws01_2 --> same as the above directory but different filename the cloned VM is working fine all of them even though the directory naming seems to be confusing for me to manually backup each VM, My understanding is that each VM is contained within one single directory of itself but then when i manually copy the directory and starting it up after renaming process the confusion begin, the same thing goes when I start the VM from the Secondary ESXi Server (for the ESXi failover test), please shed some light on this matter ?

oh well, i think that i just live with it. See the following attachment and it's respective result. This is running on ESXi 3.5 u 4 before i did the migration to ESXi 4.0, I'll perform additional test and see how it goes with LSI Logic SAS new feature in ESXi4.

wow.... it is rather hard to believe again for me, why direct connection which is straight forward and supposed to be fast is limited in terms of speed :-( eventhough each cable has its own IP address subnet but still in my opinion that the connection used for data transmission is one only. anyway, back to the real problem the ESXi implementation that i use here is a freeware solution with no software licensing at all.

well it was the built in drive that comes with the old Power Edge 2950-III servers though, I thought that I'd just use it for template store. Any other idea is welcome too :-)

Hi All, you can try the following deployment plan like mine, it is quite good for DB and Application server since the iSCSI SAN is running on 15k rpm SAS disk insidethe MD 3000i. hope that helps.

Hi All, I've got 2x Dell PowerEdge 2950-III directly attached with Dell MD3000i iSCSI-SAN and today I had a hard times in upgrading my production ESXi 3.5 u 4 into ESXi 4.0, First is that the upgrade is failed miserably after following this thread: VMware Communities: error on host upgrade: this host is not compatible with this upgrade. with the following Error message: ERROR: Unsupported boot disk The boot device layout on the host does not support upgrade. therefore I did a clean reinstall of ESXi 4 on top of ESXi 3.5 u 4 and lost every single settings on my ESXi host. I'm now stuck in mapping the iSCSI SAN partition after following the guide from: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/eslvmwre/AdditionalDocs/cnfigrtnguide/storage_guide.pdf see the following attachment. I wonder how does people do their upgrade into ESXi 4.0 in production system that is running ESXi 3.5 u 4 filled with hundreds of VM ? The reason why I'm using 2x ESXi server connected into single SAN server is that I can just start the VM on the SAN from the other ESXi --> which is fine and tested, but then when i rebuild the failed server, I must delete the whole data inside the shared partition which contains my VMs. So in conclusion after one of the ESXi Server failed, the iSCSI mapping would eventually destroy every single data in the partition ? CMIIW any idea and suggestion would be gladly appreciated