VMware: This system is not a supported platform

I encountered this error while installing HP branded Windows 2008 OEM on VMware ESXi 5.1.

This error occurs due to the check Windows performs to verify it is being installed on a HP branded machine.

Anyway this can be easily solved as stated in Installation of Microsoft Software Products Sold by HP (as OEM) on Virtual Machines Is Now Supported

Poweroff your VM, right click on it, choose Edit Settings -> Options and click Configuration Parameters

Now click Add Row and insert:

Name -> SMBIOS.reflectHost 

Value -> TRUE

as depicted in image below:

Click OK and poweron VM. This time you will be able to install Windows 2008 OEM correctly.

If you prefer you can manually edit the .vmx file of your virtual machine, using a text editor, adding a new line:

SMBIOS.reflectHost = TRUE

That's all!!

Oracle UCM: DisableNtfs8dot3

If you have ever installed an instance of Oracle WebCenter Content on a Windows server you probably stepped into this error:


The weblayout directory is on a filesystem with 8dot3 semantics. Legacy 16-bit 8dot3 filenames conflict with revision labels and will cause file loss. Disable 8dot3 semantics by running "Installer DisableNtfs8dot3" and then restarting Windows.

This can be solved in two ways:

1)Using Oracle suggested procedure

This is done running Installer.exe with DisableNtfs8dot3 parameter.

To do this open command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd) and go to:


<DomainHome>\ucm\cs\bin\Installer.exe DisableNtfs8dot3


In my server it was:


E:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\ecm_domain\ucm\cs\bin\Installer.exe DisableNtfs8dot3


2)Editing a registry key

Open regedit (Start -> Run -> regedit) and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/FileSystem

Edit NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation key and change its value to 1 (default value is 2).


After this restart UCM instance (if you edit registry also a server reboot would be necessary) and alert message will disappear.

That's all!!

VMware: Merge multiple vmdks into a single vmdk

When importing VMs from Player/Workstation to ESXi sometimes occurr that original vmdk files are separated into multiple vmdks.

This is because vmdks of a fixed small size are sometimes choosen by user creating guest VM in VMware Player/Workstation due to their better transportability respect to a single vmdk of a bigger size.

To merge multiple vmdks into a single vmdk file we need to use Virtual Disk Manager wich comes with VMware Workstation or can be downloaded separately.

If you have VMware Workstation you can find Virtual Disk Manager under:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation

or you can download it as part of vSphere 5.0 Virtual Disk Development Kit.

So, let's merge our vmdks using command promtp and calling for vmware-vdiskmanager.exe.

This is the synthax:

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r first.vmdk -t 0 merged.vmdk

where:

-r <sourcediskname>

-t <0|1|2|3>

0 — to create a growable virtual disk contained in a single virtual disk file

1 — to create a growable virtual disk split into 2GB files

2 — to create a preallocated virtual disk contained in a single virtual disk file

3 — to create a preallocated virtual disk split into 2GB files

Here you find more informations about Virtual Disk Manager options while the full manual can be found here.

That's all, happy merging!!

VMware: EMC VNX VSA in your lab

Do you have a vLab? Do you need to practice with EMC's Unisphere for managing VNX storage systems? This post is for you!!

In the following article I will explain how to deploy a virtual VNX storage to provide shared NFS storage in your lab. Please note this configuration is just for testing purpouses and not supported for production purpouses.

Let's first have some basics considerations:

VNX Virtual Storage appliance is a virtual machine that runs on a ESXi hypervisor that abstract underlying physical storage, usually local disks, to provide a shared NFS storage platform for all VMs.

Shared storage in a lab is tipically used for testing HA, DRS, Storage DRS, vMotions and Fault Tolerance.

This is a graphical representation of how this VNX VSA will be deployed in your lab:

As you can see physical storage is abstracted by VNX VSA and resulting shared storage is presented as datastore to ESXi hypersor(s) or VMs.

To deploy VNX VSA download it:

Download VNX VSA OVA

Open vSphere Web Client (or vSphere Client if you connect directly to an host or not have deployed vCenter in your lab yet) and deploy your OVA Template.

Power on your VNX VSA and go to console view since we will be prompted to configure networking for a proper startup.

Management IP
Subnet Mask
Default Gateway

Then:

Hostname

Domain name

DNS Server

NTP Server

 

Create a filesystem and export it as an NFS share on which datastores can be created.

Open your browser and go to Management IP address you setup during initial configuration to access Unisphere management.
Sadly I had to use Internet Explorer to access all functionalities of Unisphere. Neither Firefox, neither Chrome worked in my case.

Login to Unisphere:

Username: nasadmin
Password: nasadmin

Create a new network interface through which NFS share will be accessed so go to Settings -> Network -> Interface Wizard

During interface wizard you will be prompted to select an IP address for this new interface and MTU size (9000bytes if you use Jumbo Frame). Please note that both MTU size and network segment will be accordingly set up in our vSwitches VMKernel ports. But we will go into this later in the article.

Now let's create a filesystem to be shared. Go to Storage -> FileSystem Wizard, and setup filesystem according to your preferences.

And finally create our NFS Export. Go to Storage -> Shared Folders -> NFS -> Create. Choose the filesystem to be shared. the name to which it will be exported and enable hosts to access this share. In my case I inserted the IP of my vLab ESXi host.

Move to our ESXi host(s) networking configuration panel to add a new VMkernel for NFS traffic. As I stated before VMkernel must be in the same network segment of your VNX VSA network interface you previously created.

As you can see in the image above my VMkernel IP is 192.168.116.209 which is in the same 192.168.116.x network segment of VNX VSA network interface 192.168.116.208. When creating VMkernel remember to set MTU according to the previously set one. In my case I set MTU for this VMkernel to 9000bytes.

Final step is to create a new datastore on our NFS export.

This new datastore can be assigned to more than one ESXi hosts.

Here's a slide deck from Simon Seagrave containing some technical informations about EMC VNX and VNX VSA.

That's all!!

Oracle UCM: Manually transfer files between servers

Some months ago I wrote a post about migrating content between UCM instances using the "Transfer" functionality of the Archiver applet.

This is a great functionality despite it requires that both UCM instances have set up an outgoing connection to establish communication. To set up an outgoing provider is really simple but to be recognized after it has been setup it requires a restart of UCM instance.

In this post I will explain how to manually transfer files between two UCM servers without requiring outgoing connections.

First step we need to create an archive on source instance that we will transfer over to target intance. Go to Administration -> Admin Applets -> Archiver -> Edit -> Add





Once created export you content by clicking Action -> Export (you can additionally create export maps if needed)

By not creating an outgoing provider this UCM instance is not aware of other UCM servers so we need to manually transfer archive over to the destination UCM instance.

To do this login using SSH to source UCM server and go to archive directory that you were prompted to choose during UCM installation and should be something similar to this:

/home/oracle/ucm/cs/archives/


So:

[oracle@ucm_source ~]$ cd /home/oracle/ucm/cs/archives/

In this folder you will have subfolder named after the archive name you selected in Archiver applet. In my case I created and archive called TestArchive so I have a folder called TestArchive.

We need to compress this folder and transfer it to destination UCM server.

[oracle@ucm_source archives]$ tar cvzf archive_file.tar.gz TestArchive

To perform transfer I use Secure Copy whose synthax is similar to this:

scp source_file.tar.gz <username>@<destination_ucm_server_IP>:/path_to_destination

In my case:

[oracle@ucm_source archives]$ scp archive_file.tar.gz oracle@10.0.0.4:/home/oracle/ucm/cs/archives/

Once file is transferred logout from source UCM and login via SSH to the destination UCM server.

[oracle@ucm_destination ~]$  cd /home/oracle/ucm/cs/archives/

In this folder you will find the source_file.tar.gz transferred from source UCM.

Let's untar it:

[oracle@ucm_destination archives]$ tar xvfz archive_file.tar.gz
Once uncompressd this file will automatically create a folder like in the source UCM server called "TestArchive" which contains all content transferred.

Next step we need to edit collection.hda file which tells UCM server what archives it need to present in Archiver applet and add our new archive.

[oracle@ucm_destination archives]$ nano collection.hda

<?hda version="11gR1-11.1.1.5.0-idcprod1-110413T184243" jcharset=UTF8 encoding=utf-8?>
@Properties LocalData
blFieldTypes=
IDC_Name=srvwcc16200
blDateFormat=M/d{/yy}{ h:mm[:ss]{ a}}!mAM,PM!tGMT+00:00
@end
@ResultSet Archives
2
aArchiveName
aArchiveDescription
TestArchive
This is a test
@end


Once done logout from SSH, go to Administration -> Admin Applets -> Archiver and you will see the manually transferred archive ready to be imported in your UCM instance.

That's all!!

Oracle UCM: customizing QuickSearch searches

QuickSearch is a really useful search tool in UCM because, as the word says, it allow to perform quick searches directly from every content server page just inserting search criteria and not going through the classic search form that searches content by filling certain metadata fields.

By default QuickSearch searches against dDocName, dDocTitle and dDocFullText, if enabled.

If you need to perform searches against other metadata you can easily customize it.

Go to Administration -> Admin Server

Click General Configuration and insert:

QuickSearchFields=dDocName|dDocTitle|dDocFullText|xYour_Custom_Metadata

QuickSearchOperators=hasAsSubstring,hasAsSubstring,fullText,equals

Where:

QuickSearchFields are metadata fields against which searches are performed.
QuickSearchOperators are matching criteria for searches i.e. matches, hasSubstring.

Please note that every metadata inserted in QuickSearchFields field has corresponding search operator in QuickSearchOperators field.

Once done restart your UCM instance.

If you like you can manually enter these configurations by adding them in /home/oracle/<your_ucm_directory>/cs/config/config.cfg

That's al!!

Oracle UCM: Propagate metadata through folders

A basic task performed by UCM users is to create folders in the content server. Obviously in these folders there will be files and these files maybe should inherit some matadata from folders their are within. A problem that sometimes occurs is when folders are yet created and new metadata are added to the system. How can users modify folders metadata and propagate these metadata to child files and folders?

So...In this post I will briefly explain how to edit folders metadata and propagate these metadata changes.

Let's start saying that Folders_g component needs to be enabled in your UCM.

Propagation of metadata will affect child files and sub-folders contained in the folder itself. In this example I will update metadata of a folder named "D" so metadata propagation will affect both folders 2012, 2013 and all files contained in these two folders.

In order to propagate metadata first step is to select which metadata you wish to propagate.

Go to Administration -> Folder Configuration -> Information Field Inherit Configuration and select all metadata you need to propagate.

 

Now let's edit some metadata from our (existing) "D" folder. Click the folder you need to modify metadata...

...and choose Update.

After all metadata are modified you can propagate all changes down the "folder tree"

Please note that depending on how many content is stored "under" folders propagation process could take some time.
 

NOTE: As you probably noticed UCM doesent' have a folder structure as a common operating system.

It stores all contents in a "flat space" assigning a metadata to all files that are in a folder.

Metadata "FolderID" tells UCM that a file is contained in a certain folder. "FolderID" is automatically generated by UCM during folder creation, if not manually entered, and every folder has a unique "FolderID".

Folders themselves have "FolderID" metadata according to their position in the folder tree.

Top level folders have "FolderID" corresponding to the root folder which is Contribution Folders.