system administrator – AgileOps

Reset Admin password for Cisco UCS Director

Ibrahim Quraishi — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 00:57:57 +0000

Hi All,

In this post i am going to take you through the process of resting the admin password of UCS Director.

As you might be aware that UCS director is a CentOS based appliance and the process to rest the root or the admin password is a bit different then other CentOS based server as this is highly customized appliance by Cisco.

Step1

To login to the ssh shell we have to use the user ‘shelladmin’ the default password set by Cisco is ‘changeme’ on you first login you will be required to change this.

Reenter the new password

Step2

You will be then presented with a menu. you need to press option 22 to change or reset the root password.

22) Manage Root Access

Type 22 as shown in the screen below

SELECT> 22

You can notice that a simple password was not accepted so i had to give a complex password. create one with letters numbers and special case.

Step3

Then login to the shell as root and run the scrip in the location.
/opt/infra/dbPwdReset.sh

As you can see below the option to specify admin password is not give as the password will be rest to the default password which is ‘changeme’

Then you can login to the UCS Director UI as admin and change the password from ‘changeme’ to your desired password. Make sure you keep this password safe or remember it for the next time you login.

Once the password is change you will be logout, you will need to reenter the password to login again to mange the UCS Director

More information about Cisco UCS Director can be found on the links below

Getting Started guide

httpss://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/ucs-director/getting-started-guide/6-5/cisco-ucs-director-getting-started-65.html

Overview of Cisco UCS Director
httpss://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/ucs-director/fundamentals-guide/5-4/b_UCS_Director_Fundamentals_Guide_54/Overview.pdf

References:

httpss://www.cisco.com/c/pt_br/products/servers-unified-computing/ucs-director/index.html

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How to recover Windows 2008/ R2 and Windows 7 Administrator account

Ibrahim Quraishi — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 02:07:20 +0000

I have some steps to explain you how to do it! Click Next and select Repair my Computer

The next screen will will identify all the windows installations and highlight in my case Windows 7 which is installed on C: drive select Next

Select the Command Prompt

Follow the steps given in the Command window bellow:

switch to Windows\System32 and copy Utilman.exe Utilman.exe.bak ( this is just to create a backup file of Utilman.exe)
then the most important step Copy cmd.exe to Utilman.exe as shown below copy cmd.exe Utilman.exe then you will get a prompt say yes by ‘y’
You should see a confirmation that one file copied
Restart the Server or in my case Laptop.

Copy cmd.exe over Utilman

Once the Server/ Laptop is rebooted press Windows key + U or click on the icon of Utilman, and you will see the command prompt.

give the following command to change the administrator password

net user administrator * (if your administrator account is renamed you can give that user name as I have given Ibrahim.quraishi below)

you will asked the enter the password ( the characters will not appear but dont worry as it will not show for security)

yo will be asked to reenter the password again as a confirmation.
Then you should be able to use the new password which you have set for the Administrator to login to the server.

Change the Administrator Password on cmd.exe

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Virtualization Technologies used today and its benefits!

Ibrahim Quraishi — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 02:18:51 +0000

Reduce power and space requirement in data centres

Fast application and service provisioning

Improved manageability

Business continuity

When these factors are measured by a survey taken by f5 few years a go we got the following results. This clearly explains that the Businesses are focused to do server consolidation and reduction of power and space requirement which is the driving factors even today. The types of virtualization do we currently have ? as discussed this on my previous post, I am going to compare them today. According to surveys taken recently we have the following stats. This clearly explains us that most of the Virtualization technologies are been used today, however still the most popular one is Server virtualization. Never the less this is taken on a different level today to get the Desktop virtualization for the end users companies like Citrix and VMware have got a lot of powerful products for this.

Finally I would like to discuss the products which are used in the industry and to what extent. The most widely used product is VMware ESX and then comes Microsoft Hyper-V. As we can see from the table below.

I will be disscussing VMware and Hyper-V Technologies and theire benifites over one and outher in detail in my next post.

Source: https://www.f5.com/pdf/reports/enterprise-virtualization.pd https://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/2008/ https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmug/us_northeast/boston httpss://2008.msteched.com/itpro/public/precons.aspx www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx

www.f5.com/solutions/resources/white-papers/

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Memory Support in Windows – Kernal v User Virtual Addressing

Ibrahim Quraishi — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:02:43 +0000

example: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT=”*****” /3GB Note: “*****” Can be any of the following operating system versions: Windows XP Professional Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition Windows 2000 Advanced Server Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Windows NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition So if you think you need more memory you can give it a short. However if your Kernal is already struggling then,I would not suggest you to try this. you can try some other options like increasing the virtual memory. reference: https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/pae/paemem.mspx]]>

How to Virtualize Your Computer

Ibrahim Quraishi — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 14:08:36 +0000

Last Friday I have virtualized my Windows XP Laptop, before I start telling you guys, how its done I think its worth mentioning why I need to do it?

We normal Virtualize the physical server that are very old and start getting faults very often or they are too big for us to keep in our data centres. I have dual booted my laptop with Windows 7 ’64 bit’ edition, Which works brilliant. However Win7 is as this is 64 bit version of Windows I had to work around quite a few applications which I use on daily basis to get them work on Win7. However the most important software which I need to work from home is the vpn client provided by CISCO. The VPN client is yet to be rewritten for Win ’64 bit’ CPU. As a result I could not use Win7 to work from home, as I was unable to install VPN client to deil. Now you can guess why I virtualized my Windows XP OS. For P2V (Physical to virtual Conversion) all you need is VM ware Vcenter which is the software that does this beautiful job of converting the Physical machine in my case Laptop to a VM ware Virtual machine more specifically it rebuilds it to a .VMDK file (a specific file format for VMware virtual machines). This is how you do it:

1. Open VCenter and select Convert Mechine

: VCenter

2. Specify Source: On the new screen you we will need to select source which will be the system you want to virtulize.

• From the dropdown select Power-on machine. • Make sure you select this local machine.

: Specify Source

3. Specify Destination: On this screen you will need to specify the destination and destination type i.e. if you want the virtual machine to be a workstation or a vmware Infrastructure guest machine.

• Select the destination type as Vmware Workstation or Other VMware or virtual machine • Select a VMware product VMware Worksation 6.5.x • On the virtual machine details section You will need to give the name of the system (what ever you want it to be known as) • Specify the destination to store the vm ( you will find the .vmdx file eg. TechnoMechine.vmdx)

: Specify Destination

4. Specify Destination View and Edit Options: On this screen you can edit all Virtual machine and select the requirement you need for your virtual machine.

• We can give the storage size by default VCenter will like to give the same size of the source drive where your Operating system is installed. • I have my XP installed on 30 GB partition and I have now extended it to 50 GB as I was struggling for disk space. • You can click on the Advanced to view more option.

: View and Edit VMware

View and Edit VMware 5. Devices : This section is to setup the number of CPU you want your VM to use and the Memory you want to give to the VM.

6.Networks: this section is to choose how you want the vm to connect to the network.

We have 3 options: •Bridge that allows you to connect directly to the physical network. •NAT (Network Address Translation) Used to share the host IP address. (recommended) •Host-only that setup a private network share with the host machine.

7.Services: always make sure you disable all the services which are specific to the hardware as you will not need them once the system is virtualized. an example is Apple Mobile device for iPhone.

8. Ready to Complete: Summery of all the selections you have made just go through it to be sure that you have selection is correct. If you wish to change something you can still hit on the back button and get it changed.

Once you confident that you have everything correct on this page click Finish and sit back and relax. Once you confident that you have everything correct on this page click Finish.

: Physical to Virtual Conversion by VmWare Vcenter

After the P2V is completed, I used the VM ware Player to open the .vmdk file this understands that it’s a virtual machine and starts the system. Just by chose the option that says open an existing VM machine. And browse to the .vmdx file, you should be ready to play the vm.

We can also Save/Restore the VM to save time which is similar to hibernation After opening XP vm I am connecting to the VPN to make sure the RSA still work after vitalizing. If anyone wants to do this and need any help just let me know I will update this post with step by step instructions for doing the P2V conversion. Advantages of virtualization: • Save hardware replacement cost on event of hardware failure. best for old servers that are running crappy hardware and keeps braking every other week. • Save maintenance cost. • Save energy as your not powering it on its running on another Server • You will eventually save money on cooling too. • Most importantly if you think that the Virtual machine needs more memory all you would need to do is shut down and increase memory. • The same applies to disk space all you will need to do is add a new Virtual disk image and map it to the VM it will start looking at the new data store in My Computer. If anyone has any questions please feel free to comment .]]>

Get more done by working Smarter!

Ibrahim Quraishi — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:04:47 +0000

Working as a System Analyst is very exiting job, but if your not smart enough! It can become a little boring. let me give you a simple example, I was doing some of the housekeeping of the Servers that we support, which involved me to do a series of task on each Server, you might be thinking that’s not a big deal ! well reconsider it once more if you have to do that task 300 times, the same steeps on all the Servers (if you have 300 Servers) or if you have to do a task several time a day on few Servers, Now that can get very tedious job, and off course can become boring too. the only solution around this problem is scripting or Coding or Programming. Ok hang on are you one of the guy who likes to keep away form programming like me ? Well in all honesty, I use to say that programming is not my peace of cake as I am a system Admin, but let me give you another example. As you’re the Administrator you are been told to create a user account for a new starter, well if he just needs the domain access your job is very easy as you just need to create one user at the Active directory dome controller. But if you need to give him logon locally access you have to create a local account on each of the Server, if you have 300 Servers, then its not wise to logon each server and careate a user. Ok now you will need a method or a script to do that job for you, You do not need to be an expert to do it, you should just know, want to be done. Dint get it ? I know scripting sounds scary isn’t it, don’t worry you do not need to learn every thing, Scripting is very simple, its a set of commands which you want to do. If your very lucky you can find a ready to use code on the internet, all you got to do now is download it and edit it according to your need then please do not forget to test before you implement. once your convinced that the script is doing the exact job as you wanted. Wala Believe me it does make our life a lot easy so if your need to do a task more then once which can take 10 minutes each time you do it. Try to write a Script. if you have to do a series of admin tasks on several computers Try to write a script If you want to run a particular task at a time when you wont be in the office or it simply does not need any monitoring. Again try to write a script. just write a simple script and keep it. so wheen you need to do it again you can just execute that code and it will do it for you Magic isn’t it J Ok this is how you can work smatter rather then harder I have gathered some useful links which is worth watching.

Special thanks to my friend Nathan who has not only given me this idea but helped me by going through some of the scripts which he wrote earlier, now I have managed to do the same task with in a matter of minutes just by working smarter.

Hear are some of the links you can find useful other wise just use Google

You will find a lot of new scripting tools like windows Power Shell, and other useful software and technical articles for making the Admin task easy by scripting

Microsoft TechNet :

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/default.mspx

Scripting: Your First Steps

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/beginner/firststeps.mspx

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