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After installing VMWare ESX 3.5 hypervisor host server I would like to manage this system with SSH remotely. Server is manufactured by Dell and the DRAC mgmt card interface is available but I prefer to use SSH. SSH is enabled by default but disallows access for root.

See my work log and screenshots how to enable this feature:

• Login with root from the console
• Change directory with “cd /etc/ssh”
• Open sshd_config with “vi sshd_config”

• Locate Authentication section and change “PermitRootLogin no” to “PermitRootLogin yes”; for going into edit mode type i; press ESC to exit

• Type “:wq!” to save and exit the file
• Restart the SSH deamon with “service sshd restart”

• Start putty.exe or any of you favorite SSH remote management tools to connect to your ESX 3.5 server.

This procedure also applies to version 3.x. With this procedure I achieved to manage my ESX server remotely so I don’t need to use my remote management access card. SSH daemon also support secure file copy protocol which can be used to connect with WinSCP and download or upload any file/virtual machine to your VMFS file system.

Please be aware of any security implications! I enabled this kind of access because the management interface is sitting in a different VLAN than the vSwitch networks within virtual machine which are trunked amongst different networks.

Since I am dual booting between Ubuntu and Windows Vista on my desktop workstation I am missing my linux volumes on Vista. I have three large 500GB SATA2 disks and one of them is partitioned and formatted with Ext2 linux file system. I have two options to read my linux volumes from windows:

a) Explore2fs which is a simple tool and I don’t need to install any low level system drivers. Explore2fs only operates in Read-Only mode.
b) Ext2IFS which is a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, which actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (x86/x64) operating system to include the Ext2 file system.

I want to have full read-write mode on my linux volumes and I installed option b.

• Go to http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html and download Ext2IFS_1_11.exe
• Run the setup file and walk though the installation wizards.
• In the Drive Letters Wizard choose your linux partition and assign a drive letter. I used drive L:

Drive L:\ is now mounted in READ/Write mode from my Windows Vista SP1 x64 operating system.

You have a Windows File Server and you want to migrate the windows shares. What options do you have to complete this job? A) recreate them or B) migrate them from ServerA to ServerB. Sometimes option A is the only one you have but in most cases you want to keep those Windows Shares available as they were before and using some kind of script would be nice. Microsoft published a KB125996 article based on following procedures and my option B:

• Reinstall Windows over an existing installation (a clean install, not an upgrade).
• Move all of your data drives from one server to another.
• Install Windows to another folder or drive on a computer that already has Windows installed.

I am performing a clean installation of a application server which has several file shares associated for application functionality. I don’t want to recreate them manually and I am using the next steps to complete this task.

a) Verify the shares you want to migrate and the drive letter location is the same on both servers.

b) Export the Shares key from HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares

reg export HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares LanmanServer.reg

c) Make sure the user and group still exist in the domain! When migrating from DomainA to Domain B make sure you recreate all users and groups. Copy LanmanServer.reg to ServerB and import the registry file.

Reboot the file server and verify the share with “net share” command; also check the System Eventlog for any warnings or errors.