Category: Tools

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Microsoft Tools Uncategorized

Need help resizing your Hard drive?! AOMEI Partition Assistant to the rescue.

I was asked to assist with a SSD replacement for a drive that was starting to degrade. I started off by using CloneZilla to backup the drive but de to the degradation of the 90 GB SSD I was not able to complete the backup to my drive. In order to get around this issue I was able to use the Windows backup utility to create a disk image (which for some reason worked) an then restore the image to a new 1 TB drive.

At that point I thought I was made in the shade. Until I realized that I was not able to expand the C:\ Partition as there was another partition at the end of the disk. Windows Disk Manager would not allow me to move partitions (thanks Microsoft!) so I had to look for a third party solution to help. I came across AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard which said it would do the trick.

For the purpose of this exercise I went with the freeware download as I was only going to need to do this once and the Freeware edition should have been able to do what I needed. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed.

I installed it on the computer and from there I was able to not only move the partition on the disk, but I was able to expand the C:\ from 90 GB to 990 GB all at the same time. After submitting the job, it asks for a reboot which took a while but once the computer came back up it was working great!.

If you are ever in this situation you should totally check these guys out as they are now going to be a staple in my tool kit for the foreseeable future.

Categories
Raspberry PI Raspbian Tools VMUG

VMUG Controller and how I finally got it working

So a last year one of the projects I was working on that consumed me was trying to set up a VMUG Controller. The VMUG Controller is a Raspberry Pi appliance that allows you to check in and events and has a printer to print out a name badge. The whole system is a closed environments which means to access the web page you need to be connected to the vmugc Wifi. The whole process for setup has been very well documented by Dan Barr of the Central PA VMUG. You can find the instructions here on his Github.

However no matter how good the instructions are there are a few issues that need to be addressed.

Hardware: You need to use either a Raspberry Pi 2 or Pi 3 B+

Operating System: Rasbian Jessie – In order for the installation script to work you need to find the right version of Raspbian Jessie (I think this is the right version). If not you can find older versions of Rasbian here.

Do not Update the OS or this will break the whole thing. You will also need to install PHP7 as Jessie only has PHP 5 which you can find instructions on how to do that below.

How to install php7 on Raspbian
://help.nextcloud.com/t/upgrade-php5-to-php7-on-raspbian-jessie-8-0/24537

Once this is complete you can proceed with following the installation script.

Once the install has completed you will then see the new WiFi SSID VMUGC which you will need to connect to in order to access the web page.

After that it should just work.

I hope you found this post helpful, If so please share it with your friends. We could really use the support and to get the word out there.

Categories
Tools Virtualization Vmware

Tools Discussion – VMWare Converter Standalone

Today I wanted to talk about VMware Converter Standalone which has been a constant in my bag of tricks for a long time. VMware Converter is a tool that allows you to convert a Physical Machine to a Virtual Machine which can run on a VMware ESXi host or VMware Workstation / Player. You can also use VMware Converter to resize Virtual machines or even convert them from Thick Provisioned virtual disks to thin.

Before VMware Converter was a free Standalone product, it was an add-on to vCenter (version 3-4.1 if my memory was correct) that was licensed by VMware. It enabled you (much like it does now) to convert a physical machine and turn it into a Virtual Machine. Pretty Sweet huh?!

Somewhere between vSphere 4 and 5 they decided to remove it from vCenter as an add on and make it a a separate product and best of all made it free!

During the installation process you are now asked to decide if you are doing a standalone installation or a Client Server install. I will probably do an install guide for this later so I can discuss further as both have their merits.

If you are interested in getting a copy of VMware Converter Standalone you can follow this link. It will also be available on the Tools page once this post goes live.

I hope you found this post helpful and please check back later for more articles.