Dell

I use a Windows XP Unattended Installation instead of a Desktop imaging application, and I wanted to share my setup. ( all software licensing is your responsibility )
I will go over the basics, and expect that I will get a few questions, which is fine. What I wont do is explain what setting does what, as this is a how to, I can expand on things, just ask, and I am sure people will find typo’s.
First we have some work to do to get things in order, this setup requires that you know what model of computer’s your using, and that you have domain access to add devices to Network. You will also need full access to a network share, and a Windows XP disk of your choice.

Additionally, you will need a Windows 98 boot disk, and network boot disk. Plus, you will need to download the chipset, audio, video, and Lan drivers for the computer your building, and you’ll need 7zip to extract the drivers from each installer.

Once you have downloaded each driver put them each in a separate folder, under the computer model, and right click each and use 7zip to extract them.

Make sure you download wireless and or TMP drivers as well. Once you have the drivers in something like 755, and under that a folder for chipset, audio, video, lan, and have extracted each, C:driver755audio , C:driver755video ( tested with HP/ Dell / IBM / computers, this should give you lots of files and a few folders in each sub folder, and not just one installer, ) we can come back to the files later.
In my Example, I am going to use Windows XP Pro OEM, and a Dell Optiplex 755 USFF that has a XP Pro OEM Key.
1. On your network share, create a unattended folder, and share it as unatt$
2. Inside of the unattended folder, crease a folder for each version of Windows XP you want to create, in my case, I am only using one ( for this example ) so I will call it OEM.
3 .Insert your Windows XP CD, and copy the I386 directory, ( make sure you have the folder options setup to see hidden files ) , paste the directory into your folder in unattended. My case I am using drive X:unattendedoemI386 , so now you should have a copy of your windows CD’s I386 directory for your unattended.
4. Browse back to X:unattendedoem and make a $OEM$ folder, this will hold your files for the unattended install ( drivers and such )
5. google SMARTDRV.EXE, and download it to X:unattended, and copy it X:unattendedoem also.
6. Browse to X:unattended , and make a file called oem.bat, and put in the following. ( this will be ran from dos )
“
SMARTDRV.EXE
net use /Y X: /delete
net use X: \servershareunatt$
cd unatten~1
cd oem
Call X:oemXPDRIVER.BAT
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7. Browse back to X:unattendedoem and make a file called XPDRIVER.BAT and put in the following
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8. make a file called XPDRIVER.SIF, and put in the following, enter in your name and company name as needed. ( FullName=”putinnamehere” OrgName=”putincompanyhere” ) but leave everything else. ( I am removing games, and components, and turning off windows firewall here, see below. )
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;SetupMgrTag
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Data]
AutoPartition=1
MsDosInitiated=”1″
UnattendedInstall=”Yes”
AutomaticUpdates=no
[Unattended]
UnattendMode=FullUnattended
OemPreinstall=Yes
ConfirmHardware=No
TargetPath=WINDOWS
FileSystem=ConvertNTFS
Repartition=Yes
OemSkipEula=Yes
UnattendSwitch=”yes”
WaitForReboot=”No”
OemFilesPath=”X:OEM$OEM$”
OemPnPDriversPath=”Drivers00;Drivers01;Drivers02″
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
Hibernation=No
KeyboardLayout=”US”
[GuiUnattended]
OEMSkipRegional=1
TimeZone=20
OemSkipWelcome=1

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9. Browse to X:unattendedOEM$OEM$ , and create a file called cmdlines.txt, and put in the following.
“

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10. Create a file called domain.cmd and put in the following, add in the domain , and user, if you wanted you can do * for user, but then you’d have to type it every time, the reason I have type 1 and 2, is in case you mistype.
“

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11. Create a file called drivers.cmd and put in the following ( here I have a desktop and laptop configuration, but for this example I will only walk us through the desktop setup, you would just copy the desktop configuration and rename it ldrivers.cmd if you needed both)
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@ECHO off

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12. Create a file called ip.cmd, and put in the following.
“

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13. Create a file called unpack.cmd and put in the following.
“

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14. In X:unattendedOEM$OEM$ create the following folders.
15. $1 , $$ , and C , go into $1, and create a folder called Drivers, and in Drivers, create a folder 000, 001, and 002.

16. Next browse to where you extracted your chipset drivers to, and copy all of the files ( should be lots of INF and Cat files, from the All Folder) into 000 and 001.
17. Next browse to the folder where you extracted the lan drivers, and find the sub folder where the .ini and .cat files are, and copy everything in that folder to the 002 folder. ( in my case it was something like lanPRO100Win32
18. Once you have copied the chipset, and lan drivers to the folders, remove there sub folder’s, so you will only have something like audio, video, tpm, wireless, etc, all under C:driver755audio , C:driver755video. browse to C:driver755 ( or the place where you have the video / audio , and etc sub folders, and Highlight the folders, then right click, send to compressed zip folder, name it drivers.zip, we will copy this later.
19. In X:unattendedOEM$OEM$$$ create a INF folder, and copy the contents of X:unattendedOEM$OEM$Drivers00 to it.
20. In X:unattendedOEM$OEM$c create a folder called INSTALL, then browse to X:unattendedOEM$OEM$cinstall
21. Download http://www.info-zip.org/UnZip.html and extract the .exe to the folder.
22. Create a file called Clean.cmd and put in the following contents.
“
@echo on
REM cleaning install files
cd C:

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23. Create a file called clean2.cmd and put in the following contents.
“

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24. Create a file called ddrivers.cmd and put in the following contents( here you can make a new entry for more drivers.)
“

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25. Create a file called icon.cmd and put in the following contents, ( this deletes the following shortcuts )
“

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26. Create a file called logon.reg, and put in the following, put in your domain name where it says putinyourdomainhere.
“
REGEDIT4

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27. Create a file called install.cmd and put in the following contents.

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28. Download netdom.exe , ( get from the admin tool kit ) and copy it to the folder.
29. Copy the .zip file with the rest of the drivers you created into the X:unattendedOEM$OEM$CINSTALL folder.
Congrats! , you are done with setup.

Now, here we go for install procedure.

1. boot from the windows 98 boot disk, fdisk , delete the partition, and create a primary dos partition, and reboot back to the boot the same 98 boot disk.
2. do a format C: /s ( at this point you could make a disk image of a blank drive to save two reboots )
3. boot from a network boot disk, and map X: to \servershareunatt$ being your unattended share.
4. run “oem.bat” and it should take off ( multiple reboots, and it will prompt for the pc name, password, and windows key. ( use the windows OEM key, or the key needed by the disk you copied your I386 from )
5. next, it will ask for drivers, and follow the screen directions
6. next, it asks for static ip or dhcp
7. next, it asks to join domain.
8. your done, windows is installed, at first login the clean and clean2 bat files should delete temp files.

What’s left for next time?

Installing applications before windows boots.
Setting up default user

EDIT: made some readability changes, and fixed a typo.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

http://it.anandtech.com/ has a nice write up on Server CPU’s Titled : The Best Server CPUs Compared, Part 1

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The past several months have seen both Intel and AMD introducing interesting updates to their CPU lines. Intel started with the E-stepping of the Xeon. Even at 3GHz, the four cores of the Xeon 5450 need 80W at the most, and if speed is all you care about a 120W 5470 is available at 3.33GHz. The big news came of course from AMD. The “only native x86 quad-core” is finally shining bright thanks to a very successful transition to 45nm immersion lithography as you can read here. The result is a faster and larger 6MB L3 cache, higher clock speeds, and lower memory latency. AMD’s quad-core is finally ready to be a Xeon killer.

So it was time for a new server CPU shoot out as server buyers are confronted with quickly growing server CPU pricelists. Talking about pricelists, is someone at marketing taking revenge on a strict math teacher that made him/her suffer a few years ago? How else can you explain that the Xeon 5470 is faster than the 5472, and that the Xeon 5472 and 5450 are running at the same clock speed? The deranged Intel (and in a lesser degree AMD) numbering system now forces you to read through spec sheets the size of a phone book just to get an idea of what you are getting. Or you could use a full-blown search engine to understand what exactly you can or will buy. The marketing departments are happy though: besides the technical white papers you need to read to build a server, reading white papers to simply buy a CPU is now necessary too. Market segmentation and creative numbering…a slightly insane combination.

Anyway, if you are an investor trying to understand how the different offerings compare, or you are out to buy a new server and are asking yourself what CPU should be in there, this article will help guide you through the newest offerings of Intel and AMD. In addition, as the Xeon 55xx – based on the Nehalem architecture – is not far off, we will also try it to see what this CPU will bring to the table. This article is different from the previous ones, as we have changed the collection of benchmarks we use to evaluate server CPUs. Read on, and find out why we feel this is a better and more realistic approach.
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Thanks to the lower world switch times, higher clock speed, and larger cache, the new “Shanghai” Opteron 8384 improves the already impressive scores of the AMD “Barcelona” 8356 by almost 43%. The only Intel that comes somewhat close is the hex-core behemoth known as the Xeon X7460, which needs a lot more power. IBM is capable of performing a tiny bit better than Dell thanks to its custom high performance chipset.

It is clear that the Xeon 7350 is at the end of its life: it offers a little more than 2/3 of the performance of the best Opteron while using a lot more power. Even the latest improved stepping, the Xeon X5470 at 3.33GHz, cannot keep up with the new Opteron quad-core. The reason is simple: as the number of VMs increase, so do the bandwidth requirements and the amount of world switches. That is exactly where the Opteron is far superior. It is game over here for Intel… until the Xeon 5570 2.93GHz arrives in March.

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Closing Thoughts

If you skipped to this page immediately, you can find our “market analysis” on the previous page.

Looking at the Server CPUs from the point of view of the market was surprising and refreshing. The whole problem with running every benchmark you can get your hands on is that it just gets confusing. Sure we can have 10 more benchmarks that can be categorized under “other”, but if either the Xeon or Opteron wins them, would that give you a better view of the market? That is why we decided to focus on finally getting that Oracle and MCS benchmark right. That is also why we rely on the more reliable industry standard benchmarks to make our analysis complete.

Right now, it is clear that the latest AMD Opteron is in the lead. We are really at the pivotal moment in time. No matter how good the current Xeon “Harpertown” and “Dunnington” architectures are, they lose too many battles due to the platform they are running on. The FSB architecture is singing its swan song. Only a small part of the market, namely:

* The ERP people who don’t care about power, but who need the highest performance at any cost
* The HPC people who have extremely intensive code which does not work on sparse matrices
* The people who render

…can ignore the shortcomings of the FSB-based platform.

For most other applications, the AMD platform is simply better in price/performance and performance/watt (see our previous Shanghai review). It won’t last long though, as the performance that the new Nehalem architecture has shown in OLTP, ERP, and OLAP is simply amazing. Moreover, there is little doubt that the dual Xeon 5570 with 34GB/s of bandwidth (dual Opteron is 20-21GB/s) will shine in HPC too. AMD servers can use the HyperTransport 3.0 and higher clock speeds to counter this, but that is for a later article….

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I find the results interesting, what are others thoughts?

Full Credit to Anandtech

Full Article http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3484&p=1

I was browsing the net looking for ESXi configuration information and found this : VMware® ESXi Dell Solution Guide @ Dell’s Website.

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VMware® ESXi Dell Solution Guide

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There is some good information here, both on configuration’s for ESXi, and Dell Specific information.

Full Post : http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/eslvmwre/EN/VES_3i/Solutions%20Guide/HTML/body.htm

I recently tryied to boot a USB memory stick in a new Dell OptiPlex 760 USFF, and I had to do the following to get it to work.

I downloaded a Dr. Dos 7.1 disk image, and installed it to a USB floppy.

Then I inserted the USB drive, and rebooted.

In Dos ( on the floppy ) I did a fdisk, selected the USB disk, and created a Primary Dos partition.

Then I rebooted and did a format C: /S

This allowed me to create a bootable USB drive, that works, and I can insert use it in a XP device also if needed

I then put the drive in my system, and copy the Windows CD of choice to the drive, and do a Dos Unattended windows Install. ( more on this as time permits. )

We have been looking at the Dell Equallogic PS5000E iSCSI Array as our in house San solution.

Here is some product information and video’s I have gathered.

Dell EqualLogic PS5000E Spec Sheet

Dell EqualLogic PS Series Brochure

Dell EqualLogic PS Series Guidebook

Dell EqualLogic Architecture Whitepaper

Dell EqualLogic PS Series Quick Reference

Core Product Demo

VMware Demo

Microsoft SQL Demo

What I like about the solution for Equallogic, is that when you buy the hardware, you also buy all of the software at once.

Meaning, that all of the software like,
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• Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition²
• Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition³
• Automatic MPIO Connection Management
• Microsoft VSS and VDS Providers
• Smart Copy for Microsoft^® Exchange^® , SQL Server^® ,Windows^® File Systems and VMware^® VMFS
• VMware^® Site Recovery Manager Adapter”

is included, without any licensing costs.