Creating boot USB stick with Windows 7 download tool fails on brand new USB drive

Loads of new USB flash drives come "prepared" with all manner of stuff on it.  If like me, you often just want to use the USB drive as OS build device you need to have it in a "native state" before you can use the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool

http://images2.store.microsoft.com/prod/clustera/framework/w7udt/1.0/en-us/Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe

You will know that your USB drives needs to be when you receive the following error message

"We were unable to copy your files. Please check your USB device and the selected ISO file and try again."

DiskPart
You can resolve the issue using diskpart with the following list of commands

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format quick fs=fat32
assign
exit

This assumed that the USB drive was identified as disk 1

PowerShell
Alternatively you can also use PowerShell in Windows 8 or Server 2012


Get-Disk 
Initialize-Disk -Number 1 -PartitionStyle MBR
Clear-Disk -Number 1 -RemoveData -RemoveOEM
New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize -IsActive -MbrType FAT32 
Get-Partition -DiskNumber 1
Get-Volume
Format-Volume -DriveLetter f -FileSystem FAT32


This assumed that the USB drive was identified as disk 1 and that the partition was assigned drive letter f

Windows HotFix management with PowerShell

Checking if a particular hotfix / update / patch  is installed is often an important post-build check.  With non GUI Windows server deployments you can use the following command lines to get the info you want.

Install from the command line
You can individually download and install windows updates by KB number.  Simply go to download.microsoft.com and search for the KB number.  Once downloaded you can use the Windows Update Standaline Installer to install the update.

wusa .\Windows8-RT-KB2822241-x64.msu /quiet


Retrieving list of installed updates
To get a full list of installed hotfixes run

get-hotfix

Get info on specific KB

Get-HotFix -id KB2803676

If you are looking for a specific few updates you can use a variable

$numbers = "KB2770917","KB2779768"
Get-HotFix -id $numbers

If you want to check for updates installed after a specified date

Get-HotFix | ? installedon -gt 2013/04/01

*Thank to Windows Scripting guy

Alternative commands

There are of course a few other toold that can give you a list of hotfixes but they
You can query the WMI with wmic

wmic qfe list

Our you can run good old systeminfo

systeminfo

Determine Windows system up-time

Knowing how long a Windows server or even desktop has been up for can be very useful.  These command lines will help you find the relevant info you are after.

   net stats srv | find "since"

or

   systeminfo | find "System Boot Time"

Both will return the system boot or running time and from there you can just work out the up-time.  Easiest is just to put the boot date and the current date into Excel subtract the one form the other and it will give you the amount of days.

Manipulating vhd and vhdx with powershell

Everything you want to know about how to create,convert, re-size, mount and attach Hyper-V disks.

The Hyper-V management gui provides great simple to use tools for basic virtual disk manipulation, if however you want to get serious you break out the powershell cmdlets.

Creating a virtual disk
To start things off I will creat a new dynamic disk that is 25GB in size.

New-VHD -Path 'b:\test.vhdx' -Dynamic -SizeBytes 25GB 

To check the properties of the disk as we progress we will keep referring to

Get-VHD .\test.vhdx

After the initial creation we will see


ComputerName            : ET-LAB-HV03
Path                    : B:\test.vhdx
VhdFormat               : VHDX
VhdType                 : Dynamic
FileSize                : 4194304
Size                    : 26843545600
MinimumSize             : 
LogicalSectorSize       : 512
PhysicalSectorSize      : 4096
BlockSize               : 33554432
ParentPath              : 
FragmentationPercentage : 0
Alignment               : 1
Attached                : False
DiskNumber              : 
IsDeleted               : False
Number                  : 

Converting between vhd and vhdx

The only  thing you need to specify is the extention, the correct type is used.

Convert-VHD .\test.vhdx -DestinationPath .\testFixed.vhd

Converting between dynamic and Fixed

This is controlled by the -VHDType parameter

Convert-VHD .\test.vhdx -VHDType Fixed -DestinationPath .\testFixed.vhdx

Attaching a VHD to a virtual machine

Add-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName TestVM -Path B:\test.vhdx

Mounting a virtual disk to a physical host

Server 2012 introduced to feature of being able to mount a vhd as a disk form the OS.

mount-vhd .\test.vhdx 

The disk will now appear as a disk to the operating system.   Since created the disk but no partitions there is no associated volume.

Initialize the disk

Initialize-Disk -Number 1

Create the partition

New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -DriveLetter j -Size 10GB

Create the volume

Format-Volume -DriveLetter j -FileSystem ReFS

Now that we have a volume on the disk we have a new attribute.  if your run get-vhd now you will see a value for  minimumsize

Un-mount the virtual disk

Dismount-VHD -DiskNumber 1

Re-size the fixed disk to a certain size

The vhd can only be as small as the minimumsize (Volume size) but it can be bigger

To shrink or grow the file to a predefined size use

Resize-VHD .\testfixed.vhdx -SizeBytes 15GB

Or to make it is small as possible use

Resize-VHD .\testfixed.vhdx -ToMinimumSize

Conclusion

Using powershell allows you to create and manage virtual disks at all it's life stages.  It also provides more functionality that you have using the GUI tools and allows you to break away from predefined default size restrictions.

F5 Diaries - Episode 4 - Really Simple Inbound Load Balancing with GTM

Outbound load balancing is simply a case of putting a few internet lines together and sending traffic out and
let it route back they same way.  Inbound load balancing is a bit harder.

How it works
I am using the same lab form Episodes 1,2 and 3.  From this we know that we have two Internet connections.  If we want to be able to publish a web site on either connection it would need an IP address associated with each link.

The same site would therefore be available on two different IP addresses.  This is where GTM comes in.  It selects the IP address to return to the requester and this governs over which connection the conversation will happen.

Configure the F5
There are of course many ways of doing this, this guide will cover the basics and this should give you enough understanding to carry on building more complex deployments.

• Provisions the GTM module
• Create a datacentre
• Create links
• Create listeners
• Create a server
• Create a virtual server (LTM)
• Create a GTM pool
• Create a Wide IP

At the end of this you would have a DNS server on the Internet that would return an IP for the site  (virtual server) you created.

Provision the GTM module
The F5 BIG-IP Ve Lab edition on TMOS 11.3 is licensed for GTM, but it is not provisioned by default.

• System
• Resource Provisioning
• Check Global Traffic Management and select Nominal fromt he drap down
• Submit
• Reboot

Create a Data Center
Data centres act as coitainers for the various object and allows them to be logically grouped.

• Global traffic
• Data Centers
• Data Center List
• Create
• Specify a name such as Data_Centre1
• Finish

Create Links
Links represent physical connection links to the internet.  In the lab we have two ADSL lines, one with a fixed public routable IP the other with a dynamic IP, because of this one link would need translation and the other does not.

Create a fixed public rout-able IP link
Use this for creating a link for a internet connection that will always have the same fixed rout-able IP address

• Global traffic
• Links
• Link list
• Create
• Name IS_FixedIP
• Address Translation Disabled
• Router address 169.212.74.65
• UplinkAddress 169.212.74.66 (the ip you get from whatismyip.org)
• Data Centre Data_Centre1
• Health monitors bigip_link

Create a dynamic IP link
Note: the Uplink address is the IP that would be visible on the internet for the F5 itself.  If you are not sure go to whatismyip.org and verify.

• Global traffic
• Links
• Link list
• Create
• Name Telkom_dynamic_IP
• Address Translation Disabled
• Router address 192.168.0.1
• UplinkAddress 105.221.130.246 (the ip you get from whatismyip.org)
• Data Centre Data_Centre1
• Health monitors bigip_link

Create Listeners

Listeners sit on the internet IPs of the F5 and listens for DNS requests.  Listeners will show up a virtual machines in LTM

• Global Traffic
• Listeners
• Create
• Destination is the self IP
• Finish
• Repeat for the second public IP

You should end up with one on 192.168.0.254 and another on 169.212.74.66
These are the IP's and listeners we will be testing later on so keep this in mind when we get to the test pc.

Create a server
A server is a physical device that contains the virtual servers that are ultimately the destination of the DNS request.

• Global traffic
• Servers
• Create
• Name: GTM_and_LTM
• Product: BIG-IP System (single)
• Add both Internet Self IPs to the address list (192.168.0.254 and 169.212.74.66)
• Data Centre Data_Centre1
• Health monitor bigip
• Virtual Server Discovery Enabled
• Link Discovery enabled

Create a virtual server (LTM)
The server we just created needs contain virtual servers.  The easiest place for this is to create a virtual server on the local LTM.  In the lab I have a IIS web site an internal network.

• Local Traffic
• Pools
• Create
• Name pool_test_iis
• Health monitor http
• New Node (ip address of IIS site)
• HTTP
• Finish

• Local Traffic
• Virtual Servers
• Create
• Name vs_test_iis
• Destination Host (This ip is what will be returned in a DNS request - so this is a public ip)
• Service port HTTP
• Default Pool pool_test_iis
• Finish

Create GTM pool
A pool is a collection of  virtual server that can reside on multiple servers.

• Global Traffic
• Pools
• Create
• Name gtm_pool_test_iis
• health monitor http
• Memberlist (Select the virtual server created in the previous step)
• Add
• Finished

Create a Wide IP
A wide IP is a FQDN "DNS entry" that is mapped to the pool members   This is essentially the dynamic DNS name that can return different ip addresses.

• Global Traffic
• Wide IPs
• Create
• Name: www.mytestdomain.com (this is the actual fqdn)
• Add the gtm_pool_test_iis to the pool list
• Finished

By now you should have a online wide ip.  If you don't you need to go back and check the monitors to make sure that the wide ip is online.

Testing GTM from the Internet
Generally the GTM would be an authorative DNS server on the internet.  To test however we can simulate this by specifying the listener IP in an nslookup.

On your test internet connected PC
Open command prompt
nslookup
server 169.212.74.66  (your public ip specified in the listener)
now search for www.google.com - you should got no answer
now search for yourwide IP FQDN

You should get a reply with the IP specified in the LTM virtual server.

To test the same over the second ADSL link do the same but specify the nslookup server to be the other dynamic IP listed in the listeners.  A note here.  Since the dynamic IP can change it is not recommended to use one.  It may be useful for testing but it is not feasable for any real deployment