Short answer – YES

For the long answer read on ….

Ever wondered why a good quality computer power supply costs Rs.3000 and upwards whereas you can get a Cabinet+PSU for 1000 Rs. What is the difference ?

Cheap PSU does not include the the following to save costs

AC Filter and Transient Suppressor – This is a relatively simple string of capacitors and surge suppressors which protect the input side of PSU from noise and surges in the utility power. Many local and cheap PSUs omit this stage altogether to save cost.

Power Factor Correction – Power Factor Correction helps to reduce the reactive current in the upstream Utility/UPS systems. To give you an example for powering a 100W load with a PF of 0.5 you need a 200W Utility/UPS power, whereas if the PF was 1.0 you would require only 100W Utility/UPS capacity.

Protection Mechanisms – Good quality PSUs have additional circuitry which monitors output load and shutdown when the PSU capabilities are exceeded. Cheap PSUs does not have such protection mechanisms and causes catastrophic failure when PSU capabilities are exceeded often frying the computer components.

Low quality components

Capacitors – Capacitors are used in PSU circuits to filter the DC to remove the ripple. The ripple content in the DC voltages can cause malfunctioning and premature failure of electronic circuits. Cheap PSUs may not have sufficient ripple control hence significantly reducing the life of your computer components.

Active Components – Cheap PSUs often use low quality MOSFETs and Rectifier Bridges. Further they wont have sufficient safety margins which may cause faster degradation of electrical characteristics. This adversely affects the life of the PSU and may result in premature failure of the same.

Efficiency

Efficiency is the percentage of output power / input power. Since there are AC/DC conversions occurring in a PSU, there will be losses in these processes. A cheap PSU doesn’t care about the conversion losses and will have an efficiency typically in the range of 65-70%. That means if you have PC needs 200W power, a cheap PSU will draw 285W from mains input. The extra 85W is wasted as heat. A good PSU will have efficiency in the range of 80 to 85% where the loss is just 35W and thus less heat is generated in the PSU. Due to less wastage an efficient PSU lower your electricity bills, and also extends the life of the PSU components.

Some of the best PSUs you should consider :-

Seasonic S12-II 430W
Seasonic S12-II 520W
Corsair VX-450

Is it worth paying Rs.2000 extra for a good PSU ?

I would say YES. Questions and Comments are welcome

The user account can be hidden from welcome screen but can be used while sharing etc.

Steps

Create a new account from User Accounts

Make the following changes in registry

Goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\Userlist

Create a new “KEY”  if “SpecialAccounts” is not listed, under special accounts create “userlist” too (again KEY).

Create a new “Dword 32 Bit value” with name of the created account name with the default value  “0″ (Zero), If  Dword value is “1″  account will be shown.

The stock firmware in most of the wireless routers are severely limiting in features and performance. To make the most out of your router, you can switch to alternate firmwares like DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato etc.

However the alternate firmwares are in a constant state of development, which are mostly done in the spare time of developers. There are no ETA for problem fixes and feature additions since it is voluntary work. So have lots of patience and be ready to experiment till your router is fully supported.

The forums of these projects are a wealth of information regarding various router hardware and software. Make sure you search for relevant information there before you venture into flashing your router.

Routers are built around chips from OEMs like Broadcomm, Atheros etc. If you have Broadcomm/Ralink chipset based router DD-WRT or Tomato will be the right choice. If the chipset is Atheros, OpenWRT is what you should try.

The following is a list of routers which are a good buy at their current prices. Please note the prices are approximate market prices.

If you buy a router with USB port, there are some nifty tricks you can try. You can run SAMBA (File Sharing for Windows) on your router and use it as a Network Attached Storage (NAS).

You can install torrent clients directly on the router so that you save on power because you dont need your PC to be on for your downloads. While a PC will use 60W (with monitor switched off and power saving on), the router will hardly need 5W to accomplish the same task.

Most firmware support using a USB 3G dongle on the USB port, so you can configure and use the 3G wireless broadband without your PC/Laptop. The possibilities are endless. The TP-Link 841N and Asus RT-N12 are good candidates for extending your wireless range in a budget.

Please be cautious while flashing alternate firmwares as a wrong flash can brick your router. I will not be responsible for any damages you inflict on router or yourselves by using any information in this post.

I welcome questions and suggestions on this article.

So, it’s been almost six months since the launch of Google+. Back in June and July we were all signing up and creating ‘circles’, but how much have we used it since? More importantly for owners of small businesses, how much do commercial organizations and businesses use the service?

Research shows that the idea of Google+ is very attractive to businesses, or at least, they are unwilling to miss out on the potential clients that Google assured them they were bound to connect with using Plus. Two surveys, by BrightEdge and Simply Measured showed that 77 % and 61 % respectively of the world’s top brands had Google Plus pages, but very few have very many followers.

Of course, many big brands from Starbucks and Party Poker and even Mark Zuckerberg have Google+ pages, but what is the attraction of the service. Well one of its benefits might well be that Google are skewing their results to be more Plus-friendly! BrightEdge have found that Google+ pages are being incorporated into organic Google research. This was revealed in particular when looking at AT&T results and raises a number of interesting questions.

All-in-all Google+ looks to be one of the less successful of the creations from the Internet Midas and just goes to prove that not everything Google touches turns to gold. But then this probably has something to do with the way the company develops its products. Back in 2006 Marissa Mayer, the boss of Google’s Idea Factory told a correspondent from Business Week, “We believe that we should be launching more products than what will ultimately become phenomenally popular”. So, it could well be that Google+ is a very expensive experiment that will never really rival Facebook. But then, when the company has that much income, they can probably afford a few failed experiments.

Exact image size of a Facebook timeline cover photo : 851 X 315 Pixels

How to connect to Vcenter/ESXi Server

First you have to connect to the vmware server. It can be a ESXi server or a Vcenter

PowerCLI C:\> Connect-VIServer

It will prompt the server address.

cmdlet Connect-VIServer at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
Server[0]:

Enter the IP address and hit ENTER

Then a new window will prompt from authentication credentials of the VMware server

Export VM list

Once you connected to the server, you can run VM commands to get the output, Following script will give you a list of guest servers with Name of the virtual machine, Number of CPU, Memory, Disk Space

Get-VM | Select-Object Name, NumCPU, MemoryMB, ProvisionedSpaceGB | Export-Csv "Report.csv"

Find the list of List of VM Property Names here.  you can use this names after “select-object” . separated by comma

Use “out-gridview” instead of “Export-Csv“ to get a sample output. See the figure

PowerState              : Power State
 Version                 : v7
 Description             :
 Notes                   :
 Guest                   : WEB-Server-01:CentOS 4/5 (64-bit)
 NumCpu                  : 1
 MemoryMB                : 4096
 HardDisks               : {Hard disk 1}
 NetworkAdapters         : {Network adapter 1}
 UsbDevices              : {}
 CDDrives                : {CD/DVD Drive 1}
 FloppyDrives            : {Floppy drive 1}
 Host                    : vm01
 HostId                  : HostSystem-host-248
 VMHostId                : HostSystem-host-248
 VMHost                  : vm01
 VApp                    :
 FolderId                : Folder-group-v264
 Folder                  : Production
 ResourcePoolId          : ResourcePool-resgroup-247
 ResourcePool            : Resources
 PersistentId            : 502b8ac0-d052-d637-980d-1e52c6f54340
 UsedSpaceGB             : 40
 ProvisionedSpaceGB      : 40
 DatastoreIdList         : {Datastore-datastore-395}
 HARestartPriority       : ClusterRestartPriority
 HAIsolationResponse     : AsSpecifiedByCluster
 DrsAutomationLevel      : AsSpecifiedByCluster
 VMSwapfilePolicy        : Inherit
 VMResourceConfiguration : CpuShares:Normal/1000 MemShares:Normal/20480
 Name                    : WEB-Server-01
 CustomFields            : {}
 ExtensionData           : VMware.Vim.VirtualMachine
 Id                      : VirtualMachine-vm-407
 Uid                     : /VIServer=root@192.168.1.1:443/VirtualMachine=Virt
 ualMachine-vm-407/

Windows 8 Download link

To install windows8 we can either burn a DVD or create a flash drive and install from it, here I’m using a flash drive.

To create a Win8 Flash installer media you can download Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool

You can either burn a dvd or copy the contents in the image using the above tool, like Win7 the flash drive should be above 4GB.

When using DISKPART command we need open cmd prompt with administartive privilages.

To do so, Start > type “cmd” Ctrl+Shift+Enter/ right click and run as administrator.

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.

C:\Windows\System32>diskpart

DISKPART> create vdisk file=d:\VMs\Win8.vhd type=expandable maximum=40000

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully created the virtual disk file.

DISKPART> select vdisk file=d:\VMs\Win8.vhd

DiskPart successfully selected the virtual disk file.

DISKPART> attach vdisk

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully attached the virtual disk file.

DISKPART> create partition primary

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

We can also do the following step using disk management too.

Boot from the Win8 installation media.

When the installation prompts to select drive to install hit on SHIFT+F10 , on the console use the following diskpart commands to mount the VHD which we have created.

DISKPART> select vdisk file=d:\VMs\Win8.vhd
DISKPART> attach vdisk

Now hit on ALT+TAB and switch to the list of disks and hit on refresh, now the VHD will be listed.

Please note: There will be a warning message saying the VHD can’t be booted to

After a while it will ask you for restart, after restart you may remove the installation media. System will reboot and continue installation from the VHD.

Also note that like windows 7/Vista we don’t need to create BCD entry for VHD, it will create a GUI boot menu automatically.

Configuring Foundry Switch for LACP

in example we are using ports 1/1 to 1/4 and Vlan 100. Configure your device according to  your port configurations and Vlan names.

lag <lag name> static
port e 1/1 to 1/4
primary-port e 1/1

To assign a Vlan to the teamed Ethernet ports go to the VLAN interface, and tag the ports which you want to add the vlan

Vlan 100
tagged e 1/1

Configuring Virtual Switch on ESXi Server

Do following steps to configure vSwitch properties for load balancing:
Open your vSphere and connect to ESXi or VCenter.
1.    Click the ESX host.
2.    Click the Configuration tab.
3.    Click the Networking link.
4.    Click Properties.
5.    Click the virtual switch in the Ports tab and click Edit.
6.    Click the NIC Teaming tab.
7.    From the Load Balancing dropdown, choose Route based on ip hash.
8.    From the Network Failover Detection  dropdown, choose Link Status Only

Here is the command to Backup ESXi server configuration to your local computer. You should have access to the ESXi server using  vSphere CLI tool. This will help administrator to schedule ESXi backup using Scripts. Download vSphere CLI tool from here. Open the CLI console and run following command.

Tool located at C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI>

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl  --server 192.168.0.1  --username root
--password your_password --save backup.cfg

Possible Errors:

CLI Error :  Saving firmware configuration to backup.cfg …
GET https://192.168.0.1/downloads/configBundle-servername..tgz unsuccessful : 404 Not
Found

Event log : Boot partition : /usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/downloads//files cannot be found

Solution :

/usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/downloads is only a link to /scratch/downloads/

and /scratch is link to /tmp/scratch

Problem will be solved after create a folders under /tmp

SSH to ESXi Server

cd /tmp
mkdir scratch
cd scratch
mkdir downloads
cd downloads

How to restore

We are using same command to restore also, Use –load (-l) syntax instead of –save
While restore all the guest machines should in off state. Command will give a message to shutdown all the gust VMs. ESXi will go to maintenance mode and restore the configuration and reboot the server.

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl  --server 192.168.0.1  --username root
--password your_password --load backup.cfg