Seitics.de Weblog

Ich wünsche euch ruhige und entspannte Weihnachtsfeiertage und ein erfolgreiches neues Jahr 2009! Schon wieder geht ein Jahrzehnt ins letzte Jahr, es ist unglaublich wie schnell die Zeit vergeht.

Happy holidays and a happy new year 2009 everyone! Another decade is already drawing to an end. Time really does fly, doesn't it.

Many kinds of mobile devices are now detected by the server and you will be redirected to the mobile version of this site automatically. The content is the same, but the layout is switched to a 1-column design which is much better suited for small screens. Let me know what you think about it.

While at it, I fixed some CSS bugs and replaced the unstable Javascript archive menu with the default archive link list. The layout now looks nicer than ever.

Finally, you can now reach the site by IPv4 or IPv6 using plain HTTP or encrypted HTTPS protocols.

Thank you for dropping by!

At work we implement VMware ESX solutions for customers and when the installation does not call for it, we often put vCenter and its SQL server on the same box. The only problem with this setup is that when Windows Server boots up, SQL server is not ready to serve requests from the vCenter server and therefore the vCenter service will remain in stopped state.

I tried to fix this using service dependencies for vpxd 3.5 in the registry on Windows 2003 Server like so:

DependOnService

ProtectedStorage
lanmanworkstation
netlogon
VMware License Server
MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM

and it didn't work. Looks like SQL Server spawns off a worker into background going about its business to start up while the main service process will almost immediately claim "yup, service has started!".

I fixed this by setting the vpxd service to "manual" and adding a scheduled task that runs this batch file once on machine startup:

@echo off
echo Sleeping 2 minutes before starting vCenter Server service
sleep 120
net start vpxd

I put up a zip file with the necessary components, extract them to C:\Program Files\bin or similar and set the scheduled task to execute the batch file. And that's the end of the "One or more services failed to start" message box on your vCenter server login screen.

After various prolongations, Microsoft is finally ending all sales of Windows XP Professional to the OEM channel. That means after January 2009 (with luck maybe February or March) distributors will have no more stock of it. PC system makers like Lenovo will be forced to switch to Vista as well. Retail sales of WinXP are long gone, can't even remember what the retail box looked like.

Very cool! After they ended Office 2003 and replaced it with Office 2007 to break more third party components than Ballmer has hairs on his balls, they now effectively force smaller companies without SA licensing to adopt Windows Vista.

They keep selling Windows XP Home though for small laptops to keep Linux away from those eeePC machines which are way too slow to handle Vista in all its glory. Talk about market pressure. Another alternative called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs ("WinFLP") which is an nlited and Vista intallerized Windows XP SP2 sans the crap would be ideal for VDI deployments or bridge the gap until Windows 7 has proven to be a better alternative than Vista. But you will need SA licensing for WinFLP as well, you can't just buy it.

Of course you can use Vista in production once you sorted some of the group policy quirks out, disabled the well-ment-but-failed UAC and assorted other items. It's just a pig on disk (12 GB for the system alone), a pig in RAM (2 GB are ok) and a pig with the CPU resources (Windows Defender and Search Indexer come to mind). If you have to use it, don't buy low power hardware to run it on.

Today during a coffee break I upgraded the site to SSL, so you can now surf to https://www.seitics.de as well and have a little bit more privacy. The web server will only accept ciphers from the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard which basically means no symmetric key sizes below 128 bits, no SSLv2 and no broken ciphers either.

You will need to install the embinet GmbH Global Root CA which you can get as a certificate file or by downloading and executing embinet's Windows executable installer which will let you add the Root CA's certificate to your Firefox profile and Windows certificate store automatically.

If you don't install the certificate you will get some nasty warnings that the site is using an invalid certificate bla bla might be forged bla bla... well in essence the message says that the owner of this site didn't really feel like paying the certificate monopolists money for 'perfect' authenticity. Just wait a couple of weeks for someone to subvert your browsers security which would enable the attacker to add any root certificate he likes anyway. The certificate system is not the weakest link by far, you are.