I know at some point in your IT career you have came across a server with  low disk space and wished you could extend the space without the added issues. In the pass it was easy to extend a storage drive by using the diskpart command however this would not work if you are trying to expand the system drive. Today I will show you how to correct your space allocation issues using VMware V to V technology.

First insure that you have the “VMware converter” plugin installed. If not do the following:

Click on the “Plug-ins” tab then “download & install” the converter plugin.

Click next and complete the install process

Once you have the plug-in successfully installed, shutdown the server you want to expand the hard drive on and do the following:

Right click one of your ESX host and select “Import Machine”

You will be presented with the import wizard, click next

Select vSphere Virtual Machine

Enter your ESX or vCenter IP/hostname along with the  username and password–>click next

Select a Virtual Machine to import

This is the important part:

• Choose option 2 “select volumes and re-size to save or add space”
• Click the drop down arrow under “new disk space” and select “Type Size in GB”–> type in your desired disk size.

Click next and choose a destination and name  for the new virtual machine

• Choose a datastore for the new virtual machine
• Map the VM NICs to a ESX network
• Customize your VM (install tools, remove restore points

• Select to run task immediately
• Verify your config summary, you can also choose to power n the new VM after it has been created.

  Once you are satisfied click finish, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy your new and improve space!

I was recently at a client trying to get a better understanding of their undocumented network to troubleshoot a problem. The only tools that were at my disposal apart from the basic Windows XP networking tools,Nmap, Wireshark, and WirelessKeyView.

Phase 1: “Wireless Network Mapping”

The first thing I did was run Nirsofts’s Wireless key view on a Laptop that was already connected to the Wifi network. After obtaining the Wifi key and connecting to the network I did a Nmap –sP 192.168.1.0/24 to ping sweep the Wifi network to get an idea of hostnames and IP address of the machines that were turned on.

Phase 2: “LAN Mapping”

I noticed a Cisco 2950 series catalysis switch was in one of the offices with several cables connected, so naturally I attempted to connect my Laptop to one of the ports assuming that port security was not turned on.

After connecting to the switch port I noticed that I was not getting an IP address via DHCP, but instead I received a default none Internet routing IP address within the following range, 169.x.x.x .

Now since I was unable to do a ping sweep from this segment, here is where Wireshark comes into the picture. I launched Wireshark and did a passive sniff of the network from my 169.x.x.x IP address, and received exactly what I was looking for, “an IP address, and broadcast scope”.

Fig 1 Wireshark capture screen

What can we learn from this capture?

1. We can obtain a valid IP address and subnet mass 192.168.76.0/24 , the reason why we know it’s a class C is  because the destination broadcast address was 192.168.76.255.
2. We can clearly see a hostname for one of the Cisco devices “ComSW13“, and a switch port of interest “FastEthernet 0/21”.
3. Looking closely you can also notice a printer  “TDYCC_PRINTER”

Phase 3: “Getting Connected”

Now that I have a valid IP range the first thing I did was reconfigured my LAN setting on the Laptop and added a static address of 192.168.76.202/24. Now you might think what’s so special about .202? I  usually like to pick a higher address since the possibility of that address being given out in a DHCP scope is pretty slim.

Now just in case you picked an address and you get an “error message” saying that the address is already in use, just keep picking another address. Once you have a working IP address you can always use a universal DNS address like 4.2.2.2 if you need to get out to the Internet.

At this point you can repeat the same Nmap command “nmap –sP 192.168.76.0/24” and pipe the output to a file for further documentation. Next I ran “nmap –A 192.168.76.0/24” to get a bit more detailed of the host that were found on the network.

And lastly just for fun I ran nmap192.168.76.82 –script=smb-brute.nse and to my surprise the script located several usable username/password to gain basic SMB access to the machine.

Fig 2 Nmap –script=smb-brute.nse

In conclusion with only a few tools you can see how effective it is gain some degree of information on a undocumented network.

Reference:

http://nmap.org/book/

http://www.wireshark.org/

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wireless_key.html

In this post I will be documenting the steps I I took I prep our SAN and Virtual infrastructure prior to the creation of several VM’s for a project.

1. Log into your SAN URL in my case it was a Navisphere https://SAN-01

2. Click on Disk Pools (1) –>Select available drives (2) type of Raid configuration then

create Disk Pool.

Creating Virtual Disks

1. Log into https://SAN-01

2. Click on Virtual Disks (1) Create New Virtual Disk(2)

Click on the Disk Pool tab –>(1) Select a Disk pool with free space –>(2) Type in your Virtual Disk name –>(3) Choose virtual disk size –>(4)Optionally you can pick a Server to apply this Disk too –>(5) Select apply to complete

Presenting the Virtual disk to a VMware Blade Server

1. First click on Virtual Disks

4. Select only one Servers so you can present the VDisk to be formatted–> apply OK.

6. Select the Server you assigned the virtual disk too –>Once you can see your newly presented virtual disk –>select Configuration tab of that Server–>Under hardware click Storage –>Then proceed by clicking “Add storage” on the upper right hand corner

7.

Once the new windows pops up select “Disk/Lun” –> click next choose the virtual disk you just presented –>Click next twice –>Give it the same name as it appears when you log into https://SAN-01 (Navisphere )

Now you can log back into https://SAN-01