It’s very easy to boot a Windows 10 machine into the Recovery Mode. Yust power on the Windows 10 machine and wait for the login screen. Hold down the Left Shift and choose the restart option (hit the Power icon at the bottom right)
So choose the restart option and after a couple of seconds you notice that you’re booted into the Recovery Mode :
Now you are ready to restore a system image (see previous post) or go to safe mode or command prompt.
For testing purposes I quickly wanted to create a master image using a VHD file. The Master VM was running on VMware so I decided to use the Windows 10 built-in functionality. Just run the sdclt.exe command with administrator privileges. (This was introduced some time ago with Windows Vista).
Confirm your backup settings:
Sleect the Create System Image function and specify a location where you wish to store the VHD file. In this example I use a network location. Follow the default options and wait a couple of minutes. At the network location I just specified there is now the VHD file present.
Note : You can use this file also when you boot in the Windows Recovery Environment.
(Choose System Image Recovery and point to your created VHD image)
The product key for new computers that come preinstalled with Windows 10 has the product key stored within the motherboard firmware. Users can retrieve it by issuing a command from the command prompt.
This will reveal the product key.
Follow these steps to create a bootable USB installer.
Download Rufus here. You might also want to download the ESXi installer here. Now connect the USB drive to your computer and open rufus :
Select your VMware ESXi ISO image :
Leave all the default settings to default and click Start! Now you’re all done!
For testing purposes I’m using PFsense to allow my clients to PXE boot using the FOG TFTP server.
This are the settings which are working :
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Next server | IP Address of FOG Server |
| Default BIOS file name | undionly.kpxe |
| UEFI 32 bit file name | ipxe32.efi |
| UEFI 64 bit file name | ipxe.efi |
You can find these settings in the PFsense DHCP service menu.
The K1000 Virtual Appliance is configured, by default, to utilize 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of memory (this is also the minimum system requirement for the K1000). However, this minimum specification is only designed for the average customer up to 1000 managed devices. For larger implementations, more resources are required.
This chart below lists the recommended vCPU, RAM and NIC specifications based on managed device count (i.e. client systems with a K1000 agent installed). This is only a general guideline, as the results can vary widely based on how the K1000 is configured. It’s possible to have less then 1000 managed devices, for example, and require more than 4 GB of memory. Details about the K1000’s performance are available in Settings > Logs, then click System Performance in the drop-down menu.
| Managed Device Count | Recommended VM Resources | Network interface |
|---|---|---|
| 0 - 1000 | 2 vCPU & 4 GB RAM | 1 Gigabit |
| 1000 - 2000 | 4 vCPU & 8 GB RAM | 1 Gigabit |
| 2000 - 4000 | 8 vCPU & 16 GB RAM | 1 Gigabit |
| 4000 - 8000 | 16 vCPU & 32 GB RAM | 1 Gigabit |
| 8000 - 16000 | 24 vCPU & 64 GB RAM | 10 Gigabit |
If you have found yourself in a scenario where you would like to use Hyper-V as a test environment for your virtual machines, but you are using VMware ESXi Server,Citrix XenServer or VirtualBox then this tutorial is for you.
An OVA file is simply a tar archive file containing the OVF directory. First you rename the .ova file to a .tar extension. Now you can use WinRAR and extract the .vmdk files within to get the virtual machines disks. VMDK is an open format used by VMware and other vendors.
Next we will need to convert our VMware Image in order for Hyper-V to run it. This can be done using Powershell:
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# First import the Microsoft Converter Powershell Module Import-Module "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter\MvmcCmdlet.psd1" # Step 2, let's convert the VMware .vmdk to a Hyper-V .vhdx ConvertTo-MvmcVirtualHardDisk -SourceLiteralPath "C:\<folder>CentOs.vmdk" -DestinationLiteralPath "C:\<folder>CentOs8.vhdx" -VhdType DynamicHardDisk -VhdFormat Vhdx |
Copy you .VHDX to the folder containing you Hyper-V virtual machine. When creating your new virtual machine, you must ensure you select “Generation 1” when choosing the generation of the virtual machine :
In this post I’m going to describe the simple steps to install the latest release of the Plesk software on CentOS.
First make sure you are root:
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sudo -s |
Make sure you start with a clean starting point, remove existing instances of Apache, MySql, Cyrus and PHP:
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yum remove http* yum remove php* yum remove cyrus* yum remove mysql* |
Make sure your CentOS distribution is fully patched:
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yum update all |
Let’s disable the Security Enhanced Linux feature:
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setenforce 0 |
Go to the installation folder:
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cd /usr/local/src |
Download and execute the installer script:
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wget -O -http://autoinstall.plesk.com/one-click-installer | sh |
Finally configure the Plesk configuration using an internet browser : https://ip address of server:8443
Some of you problably noticed… vWorld.nl was down for 2 days.. 🙁
The reason is that the datacenter with my servers had a power failure.. After some time the servers were online again.. but not my private IP range. 🙁
After some troublestooting (and even buying a extra IP block) still no connection. Thank god for proper back-up’s! Now back online with another provider. The steps I took shall be part of a next post in the next couple of days..
After installing the latest Windows 10 Fall Creators Update I noticed that my Dell XPS 13 2 in 1 immediatly restarted after a shutdown. After some troubleshooting I noticed many other people with the same problem (also with other Dell models). The steps I found on the internet (BIOS upgrade, removing USB devices etc) didn’t work for me. But I found the solution :
Go to Energiebeheer (Power management, sorry for the Dutch language :-))
Go to “gedrag van de aan/uit knoppen bepalen” (behaviour of on/off button).
Select the first option (with the UAC logo next to in) en disable Fast boot. (Snel opstarten)
Voila! Problem solved.