Andrei Baronov

Autordp beta continues...

2007-03-10T03:29:00.000-08:00

My thanks go to Stefan who discovered the problems with localized mstsc 6. He was pretty helpful in identifying the bug. He spent his time installing the special debug build and sending me the trace log.

Thanks, Stefan!

Here is the link to what I consider to be autordp beta 2:

http://www.abinsight.com/tools/beta/private/autordp.exe

Still, I don’t feel comfortable to name the new version the “release”. If there are folks out there with localized windows and mstsc who can confirm this build is working or state otherwise, I would really appreciate it!

Thanks,
Andrei

Root Access

2007-02-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

Being tired of installing ESX 3.0.1 and forgetting to enable remote root access all the time, I decided to write a small free utility to automate the root access enabling. The utility uses a combination of native SOAP API and ssh to modify the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and enable or disable the remote root access to the ESX server.
The tool will also optionally create an ordinary non-root account on the ESX server. The regular account created by the utility can be used to remote access the ESX server using an ssh client.

How it works:
The tool connects to the ESX server using root credentials through SSL on port 443. This is similar to how VMware infrastructure client connects to the server. The same API is used to create an ordinary account on the ESX server.
In order to enable or disable the remote root access, the tool uses ssh under an ordinary account. After ssh session is established, the program issues ‘su’ command and executes a perl script (sshdcfg.pl) to change the PermitRootLogin setting in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

I hope the utility will make my life a little bit easier.
Download: http://www.veeam.com/download/veeam_rootaccess.msi

RDP Auto logon 2.0 beta 1

2007-02-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

Microsoft recently released new mstsc 6.0. Unfortunately autordp 1.x does not work with this new version of the remote desktop client.

This is why I'll release autordp 2.0 - the utility that is compatible with both previous and the new released mstsc.
The current status of the utility is beta because I do not have enough resources (computers/OSes) at home to test it. I'll spend some time testing it this week and hopefully change the status to release by the end of the week.
Any help in testing is very welcome. I would appreciate if you post a comment if the utility works/does not work in your environment.

Here is the download link:
http://www.abinsight.com/tools/beta/autordp.exe

Thanks,
Andrei

Networking with VMWare - Host only and NAT

2007-01-13T04:36:00.000-08:00

It took me more time than I expected to come up with the first article in the virtual networks series - Host only and NAT networking in VMWare server. Here is the link to the article:
http://www.vmweekly.com/articles/networking_in_vmware/1/

I'm currently working on two more articles. First will cover bridged networking and the second will have my observations regarding the term 'Virtual switch' used by VMWare. I believe understanding how virtual switch behaves is important for building secure virtual networks. My current plan is to continue publish these articles on vmweekly.

And by the way, vmweekly has a great article "Expanding the Virtual Disk Size in 4 Steps" by Alex Vasilyev. The article name says it all. Here is the link:
http://www.vmweekly.com/articles/expanding_the_virtual_disk_size_in_4_steps/1/

Networking with VMWare

2006-11-05T03:36:00.000-08:00

When talking to various people, I have realized that there is a lot of misunderstanding on how NAT/Host only and bridged networking are handled by VMWare products. This is why I decided to start a series of articles designed to provide you with information about the design and use of VMWare Networking. Host only, NAT and bridged networking are covered in detail. The design overview is followed by various practical network configuration examples. The examples include isolated Virtual network for R&D purposes, Virtual network for standby replicas of production machines, Virtual network connected to DMZ for internet services (e.g. public SMTP, HTTP, FTP services, etc.) and Virtual network connected to LAN for Application, File and Print services. Understanding the VMWare networking helps to design Virtual network topology that makes most sense from connectivity, security and manageability standpoints.

The first article will cover Host only and NAT networking with VMWare Server and Workstation on Windows. Currently I have a draft of the article. I am still discussing it with some people whom I consider to be experts in the area. If you are interested in reading the draft and are committed to provide creative comments, please drop me a line at abaronov you know what to insert here amustsoft dot com.

Platforms: VMWare Server 1.x, VMWare Workstation 5.x, VMWare ESX Server 3.x
Keywords: VMWare, Networking, NAT, Host only, VSwitch, VMnet

Veeam Software

2006-10-11T02:04:00.000-07:00

In my February 2006 post I mentioned how exiting I’m about virtualization technology. Fortunately, my colleagues shared my excitement and this resulted in the Company expansion to the Virtual Infrastructure Management space. Because customers are different for consumer tools (something Amust Software is doing from the very beginning) and Virtual Infrastructure Management tools, we decided to have a new brand for the new direction. The name we settled on is Veeam Software. It is not a separate Company yet, but we might do a spin off in the future.

Veeam first and exciting products that are just released are:

Veeam FastSCP for VMware ESX Server – a free tool that allows you to deliver an ISO file to ESX Server or make a backup copy of an existing virtual machine (VM). It ensures security by using a one-time password feature and works more than 6 times faster than SCP. Learn more…

Veeam Monitor for VMware facilitates deployment planning and performance troubleshooting of virtual machines (VMs) on VMware Server running on Windows platform. Veeam Monitor is the only tool that directly integrates with VMware Virtualization Layer to provide the most comprehensive performance information and detailed statistics on CPU, Memory, Disk, Network and Pagefile. Learn more…

More products are coming in the near future. One example is Veeam Scanner – the product meant to discover all the details of your virtual infrastructure. With minimal effort the scanner will track all the virtual machines in you network and group them under appropriate vmware hosts.

RDP Auto logon 1.1

2006-09-11T05:48:00.000-07:00

First of all, I appreciate all your comments made to 1.0 version. I’ve implemented some in the current build and will keep updating it from time to time. I would like to say sorry for not being responsive so far. I have only recently learnt that the comments to my blog were being moderated. From now on things are going as they should, and I can answer in time to your comments. Many thanks for your feedback.

Finally, I have decided to publish 1.1 update for my RDP Auto Logon utility.
It is a UNICODE version (plus fixed some bugs) that should work on localized Windows. I’ve successfully tested it on Russian XP,SP2.

To download the RDP Auto Logon 1.1 from my website, follow the link - DOWNLOAD

Vmount 1.1

2006-08-25T01:18:00.000-07:00

To my surprise, Vmount utility is the one that got most of the feedback so far. I guess this means people do use it (unlike the other tools :-) ). Anyway, I’d like to thank those who gave useful feedback. Special thanks go to Rob Bastiaansen and Alex Vasilyev. As the result, I’ve updated the tool. New features of the Vmount 1.1 are:

Recent Volumes – Up to 8 recently mapped volumes are available for quick mount from the context menu

Vmware-mount logging – View Log menu item has been added to help troubleshoot any problem related to the execution of native vmware-mount.exe

Auto-Config – The utility will try to automatically detect full path to the native vmware-mount.exe

The utility is available for download here.

Tip: Menu item www.abinsight.com (online help and latest version information) can be used to identify version of the running Vmount as well as to get up to date product information

Vmount

2006-06-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

Vmount is a free GUI wrapper for command line tool vmware-mount.exe
The user manual for the vmware-mount describes the utility in the following way:
“The VMware DiskMount Utility allows you to mount an unused virtual disk in a
Windows host file system as a separate drive without needing to connect to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual disk if the virtual disk is partitioned.” Read more on http://www.vmware.com

The production network under my control is entirely virtualized and is based on the free vmware server (RC1 stage as of the day of writing). The virtual infrastructure includes Microsoft Domain Controllers, Exchange server, SQL server and other services running on a single physical box. Virtualization allows to reduce both hardware and licensing costs when running Microsoft Windows infrastructure (recent changes in Microsoft licensing policy allows to run up to 4 Windows 2003 R2 servers on a single box without need for additional licenses).

Another great benefit of having virtual infrastructure is greatly simplified backup. The backup procedure I’m using is storing offline replicas of all the machines in a dedicated 200 Gig USB drive attached to my desktop.
I often use mounting offline virtual disks to verify the backup integrity. It’s great to be able to check NTFS drives, look at the fragmentation level, do offline Exchange database integrity checks and much more. All without touching the production servers!
This is why I created the vmount utility – the GUI based tool that uses native vmware-mount.exe to simplify virtual drives mapping management. The utility is written in C# and requires .Net runtime 2.0. If .Net 2.0 is not installed, the setup will detect this and will automatically download it from Microsoft site. The setup will also establish association between vmdk files and the utility. Double-clicking a vmdk file from Windows explorer will automatically mount the drive.
The path to the native vmware-mount is configurable through the Settings dialog. The drive letters pool can also be configured.

Limitations: There is not much error handling in this version. If you think it’s important to better handle errors, support snapshots or have other suggestions for new functionality, please leave a comment in this blog.

Read more about the vmount on abinsight.com

Download Vmmount

Disk Cleaner released

2006-05-15T02:56:00.000-07:00

I’m happy to announce that Disk Cleaner 1.0 is officially released by Amust Software.
More details are available here. Use this link to download the latest release - Download.

AB Sudoku 1.5

2006-04-20T08:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks everyone who provided feedback for AB Sudoku 1.0. I’m happy to announce new release – AB Sudoku 1.5 Download AB Sudoku 1.5

New features are:

- Better support for mouse-based play: When I started writing the Game, my intention was to print puzzles and then solve them. Later, it turned out that people prefer playing on the computer rather than using the printouts. I hope those who like to use mouse to play, will like the way I implemented the mouse control in this version.

- New option to reduce generated game complexity: This option controls how the new game is generated. By default generated games do not have moves where guessing is required.

- Auto-pick last number in a 9 digit sequence: When all the numbers but one are known in a row/column/quadrant, the remaining number can be automatically picked up by mouse. This eliminates necessity for obvious but routine calculations, when the last number is opened in a 9-digit series.

- Optional automatic check for new updates: This ensures easy notification for latest product updates. The check occurs once per week. The check is also available per user request.

Upgrade from version 1.0:
It is recommended to uninstall Ab Sudoku 1.0 before installing the version 1.5.
ABS files saved by previous version are valid for Ab Sudoku 1.5.
New version is available for download at AB Insight

Also for those who like Sudoku, check out this link: http://www.sudokulinks.com/sudoku.html

It has a lot of useful Sudoku-related resources.

See you next time,
Andrei

Disk Cleaner

2006-04-03T02:18:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

My first personal IBM compatible computer had a high hard drive capacity of up to 10 Mb. Today my system is much more advanced and the disk size is 200 Gigs. However one thing has not changed. The day comes when I get ‘Insufficient disk space’ when installing new software or trying to put a new file (e.g. corporate party video) on the disk.

Many utilities exist that claim to solve this problem. Most of them take care of temporary system files, temporary internet files and such to free up disk space. Unfortunately this approach does not help me. Let’s take temporary internet files as an example. On my system the size of the “Temporary Internet Files” folder is close to 150 Mb. If I clean the folder, I still don’t have room to put in a new video (850 Mb), plus my browsing experience sucks and in a week the folder size is 150 Mb again!

A couple of months ago Alexey Vasilyev and I wrote a utility to show you exactly where the free space has gone. It turned out that this application helps to clean the disk and free up as much space as needed without deleting a single file. We decided to call it Disk Cleaner.

In a matter of seconds Disk Cleaner calculates recursive folder size (including all files and sub-folders) for all folders on the entire NTFS drive. It allows drilling down through any particular folder to its subfolders and helps identify space-hungry ones. When a clean-worthy folder has been identified, the tool launches native Windows Explorer against the folder. Than Explorer can be used to do the actual cleaning. Cleaning could mean deleting, moving to DVD or compressing (in rare cases).

Disk Cleaner accesses NTFS through MFT (Master File Table). This is similar to how the native disk defragmenter accesses NTFS to do its job. It’s definitely the fastest way to access all objects and calculate recursive folder size.

When we gave the utility to a couple of friends, the most noticeable feedback was:

the name Disk Cleaner is okay

performance is very good

a 25 MB download size is too big

some were confused why results are different when using the tool versus native Windows Explorer

The download size was big because we used a combination of C# and C++ to create the Disk Cleaner. This resulted in a necessity to include and install Microsoft .NET 2.0 runtime for the utility to work. That’s why Amust Software decided to rewrite it using pure C++. Now download size is 641 Kb, which we consider quite reasonable.

I will do a separate post to this blog to explain the fourth item.

Current status: Disk Cleaner is fully tested and will be released on the Amust web site in a couple of weeks. The only reason not to officially release it now is that there are other significant Amust product releases on the way. The utility is going to be free, without any time limitations or functionality restrictions.

Until the product is released by Amust, download is available here: Disk Cleaner.

RDP Auto logon

2006-02-10T02:39:00.000-08:00

EMC recently introduced Free VMware Server - http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/server_beta.html. The server allows to run multiple virtual machines on a single box.

I think the news is really welcome among developers. Now even smallest dev shops are equipped with robust and powerful platform for application development and testing. I expect more and better tools for both Microsoft Windows and Linux to come from ISVs in the near future.

Being excited about the news, I was playing with VMware COM API in an attempt to create an application useful for my colleagues and educational for myself. The application I created uses a combination of VMware, sockets and Windows APIs to monitor and backup the VMware Server. During this exercise I came across a couple of issues that needed to be solved. Among other things there was a need to resolve MAC address to IPs and to automatically run terminal client and connect/logon to a remote IP. Resolving MAC to IP was challenging enough to deserve a separate post.

To my surprise, the second problem was not as easy as I expected either. I thought simply executing native Windows Remote Connection client (mstsc.exe) with proper command line parameters will do the job. Unfortunately mstsc does not allow including user id and password in the command line. Suggestions I found on the internet (like use other terminal clients) were not helpful. See more details in the end of this posting. One of the possible solutions was to reverse engineer the way Microsoft hashes the password before saving it in a RDP file and use the same algorithm to create the file. But there was a simpler solution. The solution that finally came to my mind is to start native client and send it required parameters through SendMessage (…,WM_SETTEXT,...) API.

As the result, I created a simple utility that implements this method to script terminal client connections. The utility takes arguments from the command line, passes some of them to the native mstsc and sends additional parameters through the SendMessage API.

This free utility can be downloaded here. It does not require installation and works on Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows 2003 server. Please read readme.rtf for usage information. I hope the utility will be of help for those who’d like to script Remote Desktop Connection in Microsoft Windows XP and/or Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Welcome!

2005-12-16T05:41:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Andrei Baronov.

Running large Software projects leaves a little to none room to programming. Nevertheless, I enjoy writing tools by myself and decided to put some of them on this website as free downloads. A couple of my friends, who I discussed this idea with, promised me to also put some of their tools here.

Because I am employed by Amust Software, all the Copyrights belong to this Company. As some of you might notice, I used digital code signing certificate owed by Amust to sign packages and executables at this site. License agreement is also done by Amust's lawyers. I'd like to thank people who provided valuable feedback on the tool before, during and after I did the coding.

My first contribution to this site is Sudoku game called AB SuDoKu. It's not for beginners and I didn't bother to create online help or put rules explanation to the program. A good place to get the idea about SuDoKu and its history is Wikipedia.org, the direct link you will find on AB SuDoKu page. So if the screenshot below does not ring the bell, my program is probably not for you :)

From the other hand, if you are fan of the game and are looking for a little bit more challenging plays than what some other tools consider a 'super-duper paranoid level', try this one! If you are lost, you can use a little bit of cheating - the Expert is there to suggest you a position for the next move, the move itself or the complete game solution. I also found it useful to print the game in case I'm planning to travel or just to play while watching a DVD. Wanna try? Download AB SuDoKu or read more here.