Managed Services customers: Submitting a help desk ticket from the desktop

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers, there’s an easy way to submit a help desk ticket to us by using our management agent’s system tray menu. In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Create Service Ticket.

Clicking on this option will open up your email client with our helpdesk email filled in. Just tell us what the issue is and hit send. We’ll take it from there.

Managed Services Customers: Capturing error messages for submitting tickets to the help desk

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers and you submit a helpdesk ticket because an error message popped up on your screen, it is generally very helpful for us to be able to see the full text of that error message. Rather than writing down the entire message which can sometimes be very lengthy, you can capture the information and send it to us using our management agent.

In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Screen Capture.

Clicking on this option will send us a current capture of your screen, complete with whatever error message is on screen at the time.

Then when you submit the helpdesk ticket by calling us or emailing support@lewan.com, just mention that you sent us a screenshot. We’ll be able to find it in our management interface.

LabTech Reboot Messages

If you are one of our Managed Services customers, one of the services provided to you is scheduled patching of your computers . Microsoft releases patches on a regular basis as do some other application vendors and our remote management software (LabTech) will apply these patches to your machines as needed and as approved by our staff.

Once patches are applied to your machine, if those patches require a restart of the computer you will be prompted by LabTech to reboot your computer with the dialog box below.

If it is inconvenient for you to restart your computer at the time the reboot is requested, you can simply dismiss the dialog  by clicking the No button. The dialog box will count down from 90 seconds and if no response is given during that time the dialog box will dismiss itself and not restart the computer. This is to prevent loss of unsaved data should you be away from your computer and not able to answer the question in a timely fashion.

If the dialog box is dismissed it will pop back up hourly to remind you that a reboot is needed. Since the patches will not be effective until after the restart, it is a good idea to save any unsaved work and allow the reboot as soon as possible.

VMware – Best Practice KB Articles for Installing vSphere 4.1 and vCenter 4.1

Here’s a great post over at www.vladan.fr (who’s a well known VMware blogger and vExpert) on some of the KB articles he’s found regarding best practices on installing vSphere 4.1 and vCenter 4.1.
http://www.vladan.fr/best-practices-kb-on-how-to-install-esx-4-1-and-vcenter/

Preparing the vCenter Server Installation Worksheet – Download and fill out the vCenter Server Installation Worksheet.
MicrosoftSQL Server 2005 Express is intended for use with small deployments of up to 5 hosts and/or 50 virtual machines.

Memory – 3GB RAM. RAM requirements may be higher if your database runs on the same machine. VMware VirtualCenter Management WebServices requires 128Mb to 1.5GB of memory which is allocated at startup.Disk storage – 2GB. Disk requirements may be higher if your database runs on the same machine.
• vCenter Server 4.1 requires a 64 bit DSN and MUST NOT be a Domain controller. vSphere Compatibility Matrix.
• The computer name – no more than 15 characters.
• have reliable DNS and Time services.

Recommended, but not mandatory:

• separate database for vCenter Server and vCenter Update Manager

vCenter server needs all this (will be installed as part of vCenter Installation):

• Apache Tomcat (64 bit)
• Java Runtime Environment JRE (64 bit)
• Active Directory Application Management (ADAM)
• Visual C++ 2005 Runtime Redistributable
• .NET 3.0 SP1 or above (optional based on DB selection)

If the machine on which you are installing vCenter Server has a previous version of vCenter installed (if it’s on 64 bit hardware), you might want to upgrade instead of performing a fresh installation of vCenter Server.

Best practices for the ESX installations:

Check on the HCL (hardware compatibility list) page…. – I blogged about that earlier too ….

• System compatibility
• I/O compatibility (Network and HBA cards)
• Storage compatibility
• Backup software compatibility

32bits installation are no longer supported. VMware ESX 4.1 only installs and runs on servers with 64 bit x86 CPUs.

• Check the Enable Intel VT in the BIOS.
• If you are installing to the local disks and you have a  SAN with Fiber Channel connected  to the ESX host, make sure and detach the fiber before continuing with the installation. (Do not disable HBA cards in the BIOS)
• minimum size of the vmdk where the  /, swap, and all the optional partitions are stored should be set for 8GB.
• Make a separate partition for  /var/log.

Source: Installing ESX 4.1 and vCenter Server 4.1 best practices

Installing ESX vSphere 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 Best Practices

I ran across this VMware KB article while actually looking for something else. This KB article has some good information and links to use for general best practices when installing ESX/vSphere 4 and vCenter 4. Enjoy!

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1009080