Posts made by ntoxicator

@scottalanmiller

Hi Scott -thanks for the follow-up. I've moved on from that company; hence my absence. Moved back to Upstate NY area.

@stacksofplates

Thank you for clarification.

Once snap is stored / saved to location - can a full VM be recreated from that snap taken?

What if the original VM disk (.qcow2) was destroyed or lost (say failure). Could the VM be recreated from that said snap taken? (Restored from snap save location)

Essentially, Trying to find a way to completely backup KVM's within a production environment. As most snapshots will take larger space on the originating VM storage location. Have snaps offloaded to a NFS Share -- less expensive storage than the originating VM location

Snaps be stored for life on the NFS - and can restore from snapshot or roll-back. As would like to use these Snapshots for production within or for Xen Desktop....

As trying to find a production replacement for XenServer - due to storage virtual disk limitations. can only have 2TB vdisk assigned to any VM at any time. The storage repository or iSCSI LUN can be of any size, but am capp'd at 2TB for a VM disk...

its love at first sight for Xen Orchestra integration for XS (Snapshots, rolling/delta, etc) But the storage limitation kills me..

Sorry for gettint off topic! Just trying to show my proof of concept and need for said snapshot script.

@stacksofplates

Very nice!

Question:

I'm looking to setup a oVIRT engine + node setup. I think this script will help, as Ideally, i do not want to store my snapshots on the primary VM storage (iSCSI). Would rather have them be saved to a secondary storage location (NFS) location.

how would I modify your script to specify another storage location? I do not see the argument where to modify the snap location

I need to spin up our WSUS server (VM) again and re-point the GPO policies..

I had issue with the workstations not taking the GPO setting, was not picking our internal WSUS server. Tried via IP address and hostname within the GPO policy setting (For both boxes). http://IP http://hostname

even tried without http:// for the setting.....

But this was probably due to going back to original issue of non unique machine GUID/SID's.

But anyways, definitely have WSUS as a separate VM instance

Gotcha

Its just the fact the new clone image, when pulled down to a new workstation; it'll boot-up to the OOBE setup. Rather than take to Desktop / logon screen as currently does on our current image. And due to it being the OOBE; this is when the SID will be created.

I tell you, the thing I really want, is the ability to give the computer a computer name during the mini setup so I don't have to waste a reboot doing that inside Windows. hell, if I could join the domain during that same mini setup, that would be awesome too. There were ways to allow this in the past, but they definitely weren't simple.

I completely agree with you here...

@Dashrender
Thank you so much!

We're on the same page :). That is what my mindset was and will be testing.

We use Roaming profile/Folder redirection -- so all user files and data will be just fine.

Starting from today, I'm going to work create a new deployment image for new computers we deploy. I'll pull down an existing image, run the sysprep and then create a new image of this

Question:

Even after I make the clone image after running the sysprep. This will absolutely guarantee a unique GUID for each and every freshly cloned computer after fact?

Greatly appreciate you pointing this command out to me. As before I tried to create sysprep using the unattend.xml configuration.

@Dashrender

Understood! We have a documented set username/password for the local machine logon.

I'll be testing this on a fresh workstation I have here and create a new clone image for deployment.

@Dashrender

As for sysprep, JB and I both don't use the unattend.xml, we simply run sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown - this allows the machines to detect new hardware and generate a new SSID. Adding this to our deployment setup is pretty painless.

Thank you for this key detail here. I will work to add this to our deployment as well.

can I pull down one of the images to a new workstation. run the sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown command, and then re-clone the machine?

Or this command need to be ran on all newly cloned workstations? Then ofcourse, afterwards update hostname and set domain.

@PSX_Defector

Very much understood and learned about SysPrep and such. However, the domain and environment has worked beautiful.

This patch/update just broke part of the GPO policy -- otherwise, the user profile was fine. It broke their Aero desktop, loaded classic theme.

It also broke BGinfo from being applied (Have .VBS commands that runs at logon). Pulling update restored their normal aero desktop, and BGinfo applied again.

meh, just feel like a beat dog today. dealing with some stupid issues from people all week. one of the sayings "cant fix stupid"

one of those "R YOU SERIOUS?!" have had that all week, lol.

But nonetheless. Uninstalling the update KB3159398 resolved the issue. Once removed and workstation restarted, GPO policies apply normally.

as I did gpresult option and reviewed the html file output. Was clearly showing the GPO policies were not applied when KB3159398 was installed. After the removal, the GPO policies were being shown as applied on gpresult.

Microsoft had just pushed out some very questionable patches/updates the past 2+ months. More so, dealing with them on consumer side. This one took the cake this morning in a SMB environment.

Luckily, Only effected a very small set of workstations.

NOTE*

Have used CloneZilla in this manner for nearly 2 years.. have 120 workstations in production via this method. Unbox a new computer, clonezilla download image to disk. and then hostname & domain, and then deploy to desk.

Regardless of my clone or not. This update still fu* GPO policy. see to other issues. I just want to complain, bad day..

No -- i dont use sysPrep, call me lazy. But i've had issues with it and never got it to work. Having to copy the files and configure the settings/flat file?

I've slip streamed windows XP and Windows 7 easier than trying to get Windows built-in sysprep creator to work. I guess im a fucking noob.. i dont know. Its just annoying piece of functionality.

I just take a machine that has all company software, settings, updates loaded and named. (not on domain yet). Then created a ghost image using CloneZilla.

Then use CloneZilla to pull down image to new workstations, and then update hostname & join to domain. This has worked beautifully..... only thing I've not gotten to work is the WSUS server i've setup. I believe this all goes back to me not using sysprep...

acapela-box.com

check it out..

Here is link to others complaining:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/e2ebead9-b30d-4789-a151-5c7783dbbe34/patch-tuesday-kb3159398?forum=winserverGP

This update KB3159398

can go F*** its self... breaks GPO policy's on machines.

Windows 2008 R2 domain controller
Windows 7 Pro Sp1 machines

Come into today, and a few workstations lost their Aero theme desktop (went to basic), and also GPO policy settings.... found this update is root cause.

Only applied to workstations that SOMEHOW windows updates still got applied. Even though have GPO policy forcing windows update features off on the workstations

WSUS server in my network does not work and never worked properly, even after multiple setup attempts. I think its because I GHOST the machines rather than use SysPrep

call me old school.. But sysprep is waste of time -- much faster to get baseline machine and create images...

/rant

its just the auto-detect fields. Using Adobe Pro I presume?

Will need to manually add text box area's.

copy and paste is your friend, Be sure to rename the titles

@DustinB3403 said in O365 exchange - interface:

Yeah they are constantly changing the interface, it irks me too.

I don't need my management system constantly changing at the whim of some web developer.

Agree'd. Aggravates me on a weekly/daily basis. I really enjoyed the prior Office 365 Exchange/Admin portal. Was easier to access Exchange admin features. however, they've finally came around and 'cleaned up' a bit

What about from an SD card? Similar process I presume?

Did Microsoft update Office 365 web interface AGAIN? What the F**. Going back retro windows 2000 style?

They updated the fonts on Left side for folder navigation.. Ugly. Too big, I liked the older.

And now, the contact icon, and now today the messaging / email window formation.

Noticed the Folder font size & font type change on monday.

We're just SPANNING away. Full speed ahead!
bahaha...