This free tool, LPAR2RRD collects performance data and generates actual, historical and future trends utilization graphs of your virtual environment.  It is agentless (it receives everything from the management stations like vCenter or HMC).

The product supports IBM Power Systems and VMware virtualization platforms. Collected data set can be extended to data provided by the OS Agents or NMON files.

The only problem, only to me, is that it can only be hosted on any Unix based operating systems. If you like me, a Windows guy most of the time, you may pass.

Free Windows backup for desktops and laptops.

//via Veeam and review on 4sysops

//via 4sysops

Because this is a virtual machine built on VMware, I couldn’t easily physically attach an audio device to it. My first thought is to install a virtual audio driver to emulate the sound stream over the RDP session. But here is a much easier way. You actually don’t need any sound driver or devices physically installed on the Remote Server to be able to stream the audio. All you need to do is turn back on the Audio Redirection option that is disabled by default from the beginning.

Here is how:

1. Log into the server console.

2. Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Remote Desktop Services, and open Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration.

3. Right click on RDP-TCP from the Connections list, and choose Properties.

4. Go to Client Settings tab, and uncheck Audio and Video playback option from Disable the following list section.

5. Click OK, and the change will be taking affect next time when you log into the server.

The Remote audio playback option on Remote Desktop Client is also need to be configured in order to make the redirection work.  The option is enabled by default. If you don’t see the audio redirected to your local computer, check the Remote Desktop Client Option to make sure the Play on this computer option is checked under Local Resources tab.

You think you will never need to deal with such an old thing like Windows 2000 computers because we are already in 2011. But in reality, you may still have to without many choices. For example, I just recently had to move 2 ancient Windows 2000 machines to vSphere server. Not as easy as you do it on any recent version of operating systems.

1st, service pack 4 needs to be installed on these Windows 2000 machines.

2nd, this update rollup needs to be installed on these windows 2000 sp4 machines.

3rd, use VMware vCenter Converter 3.0.3 on the local machine to do the P-2-V.

Lastly, the steps described above works for both Professional and Server editions. Hope you don’t have to deal with it in any chances but if you do I wish this post can help you out a little bit.