Andrei Baronov

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

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

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

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/

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

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.

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