The short answer: Install the VMware vCenter Update Manager Plug-In. You’ll find the Plug-In section of vCenter under “Plug-Ins > Plug-In Manager” Be sure and do what the installation files says. No reboot is required. I attached a screenshot below:

Don’t forget to clear out all of those nasty queued items when you’re done. Here’s the PowerCLI Command for those of you afraid of your mouse:

get-task -status queued | stop-task

Let me know if this helps. Cheers!

The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 29506

In order to run the software, you’ll need to run it as an admin from a command prompt, seeing as how you can’t right click and run the software as an administrator.

1. Open up an elevated command prompt by right clicking on CMD.exe and choosing to Run As Administrator
2. Browse to the location of your .msi file and type it’s name in. My location was at C:\Users\Dan Lee\Desktop\sql.msi (I renamed the file to sql.msi for the sake of ease).
3. That should it. The software will run and install without the error now.

Let me know what else you find on this, but this is pretty straight forward.

Cheers!

http://packages.vmware.com/tools

VMware calls them Operating System Specific Packages - http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html

This should make finding what you’re looking for a bit easier. Be sure and use the folder with “…latest” appended to the end of the name, if you’re looking to download the latest, depending on the version. Also, pay attention to x86 and x84_64 versions as well.

Cheers!

A list of prefix sizes, network masks, and available hosts\IPs:

A Quick Example:

Let’s say you have an office space with 200 users and 10 servers and you’re trying to determine which subnet to use. The gut instinct would be to choose the /24 as it offers more IP’s than needed with room for growth. But realistically, there are many more devices and tools that need IP addresses than one may originally think. Your DHCP Pool alone will need to be more than 200 and wireless devices or visitors to the office must be considered. At that point, you’ll probably want to go with a netmask that gives you more IP Addresses.

Best Practices:

The golden rule when working with IP Addresses, be it load balancing a DHCP Server or determining capacity, is 80\20. Find a netmask that’s going to offer IPs that are 80% of what you’ll have available, leaving 20% for growth or unexpected needs. Resubnetting after everything is in place can be a nightmare, so plan carefully.

Cheers!

I recently purchased a new monitor and noticed when I open photos using the Microsoft Photo Viewer I got a nasty yellow tint on the photos. There’s a fix for this out there. Here’s the fastest steps to fix the issue:

1. Hit your Windows Key (Or open Control Panel) and type Color Management to open the Color Management Window
2. In the drop down, choose the display you’d like to fix the yellow tint issue with and check the box that says Use my settings for this device
3. If there are no ICC profiles in the window, choose Add and pick the profile named SRGB IEC61966-2.1 (I just went down the list until one worked)
4. Select the profile after it is added and choose to make it default
5. Close out of everything and the Photo Viewer again. You should see the color is gone.

Cause

Most of the time this has to do with the color profile of your monitor not playing well with Windows. In the solution, we’re tell the computer to use a color profile that Windows understands.

There’s a fix for this at Microsoft’s Answers site that goes into a little more detail. My details worked for me.

• http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_programs/photo-viewer-puts-a-yellow-cast-over-all-pictures/7e87f98a-0bcf-462c-8167-93bac4bbed1d

I’d like to hear how this turns out for you, maybe there are faster ways to get this done.

Cheers!

1. Log into a computer as an admin. By default, the command will use your credentials on the remote side.
2. Open up an elevated (Run As Administrator) command prompt.
3. Run the following command. Note that you can use the computer name or the IP Address if you know it: shutdown /m \\computer-name /r /f
4. Done!

The /m switch means you’re trying to connect to a server that’s somewhere else. The /r switch is for reboot (leave this switch out if you just want to shut the machine down). Finally, the /f is to force shutdown any programs that may be prompting you for something that you can’t see.

Cheers!

To change the current .ico file

Log into your Citrix Web Server and head here:

\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\[site name]\media\

Find the file called IcaComboAll.ico. Rename this file to something else (don’t delete it in case you’d like to use it later) and change the name of the .ico you want to use to “IcaComboAll.ico” – case sensitive.

There may be other .ico files; you can change these as well.

Let me know how it goes.

Cheers!

I came across this issue not too long ago and wanted to share my findings. First, this issue is not just an OpenVPN issue. If a service is dependent on certain sockets and ports being open but they are in use or closed, the service is going to fail. The good news is that the issue is fairly easy to fix on a running server with a little detective work and a few easy commands.

The Error

Your error will look something like this:

TCP/UDP: Socket bind failed on local address [undef]: Address already in use

OpenVPN gets a little more detailed. You’ll find this error, which is relative to the error above:

process started and then immediately exited: ['DATE TCP/UDP: Socket bind failed on local address [IP Address:PORT] Address already in use']
service failed to start or returned error status

Take a look at the port in the message and keep it in mind. Here was my error exactly:

You can find what’s in use by running the following command:

netstat -plnt

In a nutshell, netstat can display your connections and routing tables, etc. You’ll want to look for the port that was specified in the error and see what’s using it. In my case, httpd was using 443, which needed to be fixed. See below:

Running a kill command will get rid of the connection you’d like to remove. Keep in mind, this isn’t a fix, this just gets rid of the connection that’s established for now. If the connection is relative to your server and you reboot, it will come right back when the service tries to establish a connection again or maybe even when you reboot. You’ll need to figure out what is using the port and find out how to stop it yourself.

Further Case Study

For my issue, to prove this was really the case, I ran “kill 1191″, where 1191 is the ID of the connection. I went right back to my OpenVPN Server and it started up just fine. In my case, httpd was using port 443. I ran the following command to stop httpd:

service httpd stop

I rebooted and OpenVPN came up just fine.

Extra Notes

After doing some searching online, it looks as though a few people are having the most trouble when default ports are changed in client config files. While this is an extra measure of security, make sure a popular port isn’t picked or you’ll run into this again and again.

Cheers!

Although probably harmless, considering they were scheduled events and I could easily run other tasks while they were queued, hanging tasks are a sight for sore eyes and should be cleared. The good news is that they can be cancelled by right clicking and choosing “cancel” but we want to make sure they never come back.

The Solution

Update: This may not completely solve the issue for all of you, as it really isn’t a fix because we don’t make changes to ensure it won’t happen again. Instead, you may need to install the Update Manager Plug-In to get things to work correctly.

The tasks didn’t stop stacking up until I restarted the VMware vCenter Update Manager Service on the vCenter Server. Once the old tasks were cancelled and this server was restarted, no new tasks where scheduled. Restarting this service in vCenter does not interrupt communication or VM performance.

If this pops up again I’ll look more into it. I understand restarting a service isn’t a true fix, nor should it be the end of the troubleshooting method, but this will set your vCenter right for the time being.