How To Deploy The Fog Service Client From GPO

At my last two companies, and my current company I have implemented probably the best open source OS and software deployment platform ever created. It's called Fog, and I have blogged about it in the past. It's free, and completely awesome. With it you can boot to PXE, re-image workstations, wipe drives, blank passwords, deploy software packages, and remap printers. It really is great!

The only issue with it is it requires a client service to run on computers you wish to manage. Once installed, everything in your life gets easier. The trick is to get that service on workstations silently, in mass quantities, and have it configured correctly! I have yet to find a tutorial on how to do this, so here you go.

In order to do this correctly, you will need to re-package the MSI file for the Fog Client Service installation. You can do that with a free tool called Winstall LE.

• Open Winstall LE, right click on Windows Installer Packages and select Import Package
• Browse to the Fog Client MSI, and give it a description of Fog Silent
• Right click Fog Slient and Select Decompress...
• At the Expand dialog, click Expand

• Expand the Fog Silent tree, and delete the following components because you don't need them:

{7A0D8B0C-D68A-E7BE-76B6-8D70577B4F38}

{A4389213-D1C5-59F6-260E-D84F4D4BE41A}

• Now browse to \\localhost\WinINSTALL\Packages\fog silent\etc
• Edit the config.ini file so it has the IP address or FQDN of your fog server under ipaddress= then save it
• Go back to Winstall LE, right click on Fog Silent and select Compress, then press the Compress button

• Now browse to \\localhost\WinINSTALL\Packages\fog silent\ and your FOG Service Installer.msi file is ready to deploy!
• Place the new FOG Service Installer.msi and the original setup.exe in a fileshare that is accessible by everyone. I created a deploy Samba share on my Fog server.
• Now open Group Policy Management on your domain controller and create a new Group Policy Object called something clever like Fog Deploy
• Right click on Fog Deploy and select Edit
• Navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Software Settings > Software Installation
• Right click on Software Installation and select New > Package
• Browse to your file share, and select your custom Fog Service Installer.msi file and select Open
• Leave the Assigned radio button checked and click OK

• Now link your new GPO to the OU where you keep the workstations you want to manage with Fog, and you're good to go!
• Users will get the install the next time they reboot, and even better it will be automatically configured!

For some reason Fog doesn't talk about how to do a custom deploy of their client in their documentation. They do say you can do a silent install using the setup.exe package which is nice, but it doesn't have switches for autoconfiguration, and it puts an annoying tray icon that is pretty much useless in the users system tray. My method makes Fog completely transparent, and it is pre-configured at install. Plus, since it uses the MSI file, we can deploy it using Active Directory!

del.icio.us tags: how to, deploy, fog, client, msi, custom, winstall le, gpo, group policy, activedirectory

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Tech Chop Episode 7– Home Grown SAN Solutions

I know it’s been a few months since I released an episode of Tech Chop. I have seriously been slacking in that department. After the last one, I ran out and got a bunch of new equipment including a camera, lighting set and a portable collapsible green/blue screen. Then they sat around in the garage for a while.

A lot of that has to do with me changing jobs a few months ago. I took over the IT department for a small company in La Jolla California, and getting everything up to speed there has taken up a lot of my time. Some of the things I’ve done for them was virtualize the servers at the home office using Xen Server, moved data centers, and built them a 20TB redundant SAN using Ubuntu. That’s just to name a few.

The best thing though was building the SAN, and I thought I would do a Tech Chop on the options I explored in the open source world. Oh yeah, and I have a new background! Check it out!

 

The software I mention in the video are:

• Openfiler
• FreeNAS
• IET

If you’ve followed along for a while, you know that I found the IET on Ubuntu option to be the best choice by far!

Do you use any of the above for iSCSI in your environments? What’s your favorite? Why? Let us know in the comments!

del.icio.us tags: build free freenas how iet iscsi linux openfiler own roll san to ubuntu unix your zfs

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Can't Erase Tapes in Microsoft DPM 2010 That Have Been Previously Used With Backup Exec or NTBackup

I recently wrote about my new backup strategy using CrashPlan with Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010 for tape backups. It's working out pretty great so far, and I'm glad I set it up the way I did.

One of the issues though with my setup is that the previous admins used to backup everything using NTBackup. Not a bad solution. It worked well for them, I just prefer Microsoft DPM. Actually, I had more than just tape backups running with DPM when I first started, but decided to switch over to Crashplan for the free dedup features.

Anyway, now that some of the older tapes are coming back into rotation I have found that Microsoft DPM has a problem erasing tapes that have previously been written on using NTBackup or Backup Exec. Apparently DPM has an issue with the block size that NTBackup and Backup Exec use to write to tape, and the DPM GUI will just error out when trying to inventory it, or erase it.

The error I kept seeing was:

The operation failed because of a protection agent failure. (ID 998 Details: A tape access reached a filemark (0x8007044D))

It turns out that there is a nice little command line utility called MyTape.exe that can fix this. You can download MyTape.exe here: (MyTape Password: bauerpower)

To erase your tape just do the following:

• In DPM Admin Console, under Management > Libraries find the Tape ID, right click on it and select copy row.

• Stop the DPMLA service
• Open a command prompt in the directory where you downloaded MyTape.exe
• Run the following:

c:\>mytape.exe \\.\Tape1234567890

\\.\Tape1234567890>LoadTape

\\.\Tape1234567890>TapeRewind

\\.\Tape1234567890>EraseTape s

\\.\Tape1234567890>quit

 

After that, start DPMLA, and re-inventory your tape. Everything should be right as rain now! The tape should now be marked as free, and you can now back up to it!

del.icio.us tags: microsoft, dpm, 2010, tape, erase, failed, mytape.exe, download

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Openfiler SAN Cluster vs Ubuntu SAN Cluster

A few days ago I brought to you my how-to post on setting up your own failover iSCSI SAN cluster using Ubuntu, IET, GlusterFS and ZFS. It has been a fairly popular article so far. In fact, it's in my top 20 most visited articles of the month! Obviously it's something people are looking at doing themselves. I mean why not? Storage is a necessity, and if you can save some money setting up your own, then you should go ahead and do that!

Well, in the spirit of promoting this SAN solution running on Ubuntu Linux, I thought I would share with you guys a quick little video I put together. It has clips of my SAN cluster when it was running Openfiler using DRBD as the sync mechanism, and it has a new clip of my SAN cluster now running on Ubuntu with GlusterFS as the sync mechanism. Pay special attention to the blinking lights of both shots. You'll notice why DRBD sucks!

 

Did you see how friggin' hard the disks were working when it was using DRBD? I thought I was going to have a seizure looking at those blinking lights! Plus the iowait was pretty consistant at 30%. It really made using it completely unbearable.

With GlusterFS, the disks look like they are bearly being used at all. Performance on the Ubuntu cluster, running the same load is almost at 0% even using 7200RPM SATA disks! I think the proof is in the pudding. 

Want to setup your own Ubuntu SAN? Check out my how-to article here: (Ubuntu iSCSI SAN Cluster)

del.icio.us tags: openfiler, san, cluster, drbd, vs, ubuntu, iscsi, glusterfs, iscsitarget, iet, enterprise,target, comparison

 

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Simple Batch Script for Remapping Network Printers

I am trying to eradicate all the remaining Windows 2008 domain controllers in my environment so I can upgrade the functional level of my domain to Windows 2008 R2 native. The only thing in my way? One lowsy Windows 2008 domain controller that also doubles as a print server.

I decided to deploy some new Windows 2008 R2 domain controllers running on Windows 2008 R2 Core to save on resources, and on one of them I installed the Printer Services role. As anyone who has ever replaced a print server in an office knows, the easy part is setting up the new server. The hard part is remapping everyone to the new print server.

I have seen a lot of VBS scripts that perform this task, which is fine, but in my opinion VBS scripts can be unnecessarily complicated, especially if it can be done with a batch script instead. Batch scripts are just easier.

Anyway, If you want to remove a network printer, then add a new one and mark it as default you only need three lines of code. Ready? Here you go:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /dn /q /n\\oldservename\oldprintername

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /q /n\\newservername\newprintername

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /y /n\\newservername\newprintername

The first line quietly deletes the old server mapping, the second line maps to the new server, and the last line sets the printer as default. Simple right?

I have tested this on Windows xp, and Windows 7 and it works without a hitch!

del.icio.us tags: how to, add, map, delete, set default, network, printer, batch, script, commandline, windows, xp, vista, 7, seven

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Backups, Store More On Less For Free

Not sure if you’ve seen it, but I recently posted an article on creating your own redundant SAN using Ubuntu, GlusterFS, and ZFS. This solution provides you with a lot of cost effective storage with cool features like deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning for half the cost of the big boys.

What if you don’t have a storage solution with compression or dedupe though? Or what if you do, but you want to maximize what you store on it as far as backups? What if you are like me, and you want to pack as much data onto an LTO3 tape as you possibly can? Well, let me introduce you to one of my favorite backup solutions, CrashPlan!
CrashPlan comes in a few different flavors, Free, CrashPlan+, CrashPlan Pro, and CrashPlan Pro Enterprise. If you want to take advantage of CrashPlan’s cloud solution, you must pay for either CrashPlan+ or better.

If you are a business user, and want to use their cloud solution you must purchase a CrashPlan Pro plan or better. If you are just backing up locally, then the Free version will do just fine. It’s also legit. I received this email from CrashPlan’s support team about using the free version for business use:

Good day Paul,
You are more than welcome to use the Free version of the CrashPlan software to backup those business files as long as you are not backing them up to our servers!
Have a great day,
~Michael

Anyway, one of the cool things about CrashPlan, even in the free version, is that it protects your data with 256 bit encryption, and performs block level deduplication so it saves a ton of space! If you have a dedupe SAN, and you save your CrashPlan backups to it, it can dedupe the dedupe saving even more space!

What I like about it is that I inherited a single LTO3 backup drive from my predecessors when I took over my current job. LTO3 tapes will only hold 800GB of compressed data. All the other shops I worked at had tape autoloaders, with multiple drives so space wasn’t an issue. Now that I have to take a trip to the data center every week to swap out one lousy tape, I want to make sure I’m getting more bang for my buck!

So here is what I am doing. I have installed the Free CrashPlan software on all my servers that I need to backup. I don’t have Microsoft Exchange to worry about, but I do have Microsoft SQL. For the SQL servers I have maintenance plans to backup databases to local storage, then with CrashPlan I backup those files to an iSCSI LUN attached to my backup server. On web and file servers I use CrashPlan to backup to the iSCSI LUN on my backup server as well. Then from there I backup the CrashPlan backup directory to tape!

For tape backup I am using Microsoft Data Protection Manager because my backup server is running Windows 2008 R2. If your backup server is running Windows 2003 though, NTBackup is built in and can write to tape! Mmmmm, smells like free!
 
I am now able to pack over 2TB of data into a little over 500GB of space! I can now fit my entire environment onto a single LTO3 tape! Boom!
 
If I ever have to restore, I can restore from disk fairly quickly. Way quicker than tape that is for damned sure. However, if I have to restore from tape, CrashPlan can mount a previously made backup archive.

If you have the budget for it, I would highly recommend purchasing their pro products as well. In fact, for home use I recommend their CrashPlan+ Unlimited for about $10 per month! I switched from Mozy to CrashPlan+ earlier this year and never looked back. I have found their backups to be highly reliable, and well worth it! Plus, the ability to have multiple backup destinations for free is huge!

del.icio.us Tags: free,deduplication,backup,software,windows,mac,linux,crashplan,business use,LTO3,tape

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How To Backup VMware Data Recovery To Tape in Windows

A lot of you out there are VMware admins like me right? How many of you know about VMware's really awesome backup appliance called VMware Data Recovery? How many of you know that it backs up full VM's directly from within vSphere, and stores them using  deduplication? Now answer me how many of you don't use it because it only backs up to disk, and not to tape?

I'm sure there are quite a few of you out there still using VCB, or something similar to backup full VMs, as well as send them offsite using tape because you can't get that with VMware Data Recovery. Hell, some of you probably use both. VMware Data Recovery for fast restores, and VCB to get offsite. Well, now you can stop using both, and just use VMware Data Recovery.

Using some Linux scripting skills and some WinSCP scripting skills in Windows, we can easily snap a backup of your VMware Data Recovery backups and wisk them off to tape.

Here's what you do:

• On you VMware Data Recovery Server create a new /etc/crontab file using your favorite text editor. I like nano. For example:

                #nano /etc/crontab

• Paste in the following:

                # run-parts
               01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
               02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
               22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
               42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

               # Weekly VMware Tarball
               0 5 * * 0 root  /root/vmwareback.sh

• Restart the Cron service:

                #/etc/init.d/crond restart

• Create a script in /root called vmwareback.sh
• Paste in the following:

               #!/bin/sh
               cd /SCSI-0\:1/
               tar -czvf VMwareDR-$(date +%m%d%y).tgz VMwareDataRecovery/

• Make the script executable:

               #chmod +x vmwareback.sh

The above options creates a weekly tarball of the /SCSI-0:1/VMwareDataRecovery directory with the data appended to it every Monday at 5:00am. I'll let you Google how to change the date and time options for Cron on your own. I do mine on Monday because VMware Data recovery runs all weekend, and I want to get the weekend's backups off site by Wednesday.

Now that is done, download and install WinSCP on your Windows backup server.

Hint: NTBackup in Windows 2003 and below has the ability to backup to tape. If all you need to do it backup your VMware environment, this may be a completely free solution for you.

• Once WinSCP is installed, create a folder for your scripts, and place to store the tarball we created in the previous steps. I put mine in E:\vmware. To keep things simple, I copied my WinSCP.exe program from C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP to E:\vmware.
• Create two batch files. One called VMware.cmd and the other called WinSCP.cmd.
• In VMware.cmd paste the following:

               option batch on
               option confirm off
               open root:password@IP_OF_VMDR
               cd /SCSI-0:1/
               option transfer binary
               get *.tgz
               rm *.tgz
               close
               exit

• In WinSCP.cmd paste the following:

               e:
               cd e:\vmware
               winscp.exe /console /script=e:\vmware\vmware.cmd

• Now add a scheduled task in WIndows to run your WinSCP.cmd script once a week one day after your Cron job on the VMware Data Recovery server runs and it will automatically go out, grab the tarball to e:\vmware then delete it from the server.

Once your tarball is on your Windows backup server, you can then back it up to tape! To restore it later, all you have to do is setup a new VMware Data Recovery Server. Create a LUN on your SAN, and format it with ext3, then copy your tarball to the LUN. Extract the tarball with the following:

tar –xzvf *.tgz

Which should create a VMwareDataRecovery folder on the root of that LUN. Now mount that LUN to VMware Data Recovery. VMware Data Recovery should now rescan it, and be able to see your old backups.

If you're a corporate user that's interested in backing up an entire network, you can take a look at some of the solutions for VMware at Dell.com that include data center services.

Did this work for you? Did it not? Do you do it a different way? Let us know in the comments!

del.icio.us Tags: how to,backup,vmware,data,recovery,tape,winscp,linux,windows

 

 

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