1. Detach all USB devices from the host.
   The Recovery CD installs the ESXi image on the first USB memory device that it discovers. Unplug all USB devices before you use the Recovery CD to rebuild the ESX image on the internal USB device.
2. For Dell servers with DRAC 5 firmware, disable the Virtual Flash drive.
3. Insert the Recovery CD into the ESXi host.
4. Use the system BIOS to change the boot order so that the CD-ROM drive is listed first. To modify the boot sequence:
   1. Reboot the host.
   2. While the host is powering on, press a function key or Delete to open the BIOS setup.
   3. Select the CD-ROM drive and move it to the first position in the list.
      The option to open the BIOS setup might be different for your server. You might need to open the BIOS configuration screens to modify the boot setting. As the host continues to power on, the Recovery CD Welcome screen appears.
5. Press Enter to continue through the screens.
   To cancel the recovery operation, press the Esc key. If you press the Esc key, the host reboots and the data contained on your server’s embedded USB flash remains intact. If you press Enter through all the screens and the recovery operation begins, you cannot cancel or undo the recovery.
6. Press Enter to reboot the host.
7. Remove the CD from the CD-ROM drive.
8. Reopen the system BIOS to change the boot order so that the USB flash is listed first.
9. Verify that the host boots into ESXi.

In a scan run by Lookout Inc., nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple’s iPhone and phones built with Google’s Android software were tested, and it was found that many of them had software that is secretly pulling private information out of your phone.

This private info includes full details about your contacts, your pictures, text messages, and Internet search histories. This is a huge concern everyone who actively use the free applications available on the services.

In general, this info is used by companies to personally tailor ads to the specific person, the danger is malicious hackers, and can enable people to easily commit the crime and identity theft if the company isn’t careful about the security of the information.

Lookout released the info at this weeks Black Hat computer security conference held in Las Vegas.

Lookout stated that they found nearly a quarter of Apple applications and almost half Android capable applications, had this software hidden within it.

The code used has been written by 3rd parties, and is placed in the applications, primarily for the purposes of the adverts. But the code winds up forcing the application to collect more information than it actually requires. Developers may not even realize that this is happening on their applications. John Hering, CEO of the San Francisco-based Lookout had this to say:

“We found that not only users, but developers as well, don’t know what’s happening in their apps, even in their own apps, which is fascinating,”.

The problem arises when the smart phones don’t inform the users of the data that they are accessing and sending to the company. iPhones only alert the user when the application is accessing their location, not when it is accessing other personal information. Android applications have a wider set of warnings, but most users would go straight through them without properly reading what is being said.

Neither Apple or Google responded when questioned about this topic, it may be best to be more careful when downloading free applications from either service in future.

This release is available to users who currently own a FlashFXP license via Live Update from within FlashFXP, from the main menu > Help > Check for new version.

Everyone else can create an account on the flashfxp website <Sign Up> (if you don’t already have one) or <Sign In> and then Download FlashFXP v4.0 Preview release 1

This release will be posted on the main download page in the next couple days.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the changes.

1. The skip list
The skip list has been completely redone, Each skip list rule has a scope of where it can be applied. name of file, name of folder, path of file, path of folder, and any. You can define per site skip lists.

When you import your v3 data files your skiplist is converted to the new format and if you had the “skip list applies to directories” option in v3 checked then all existing skiplist entries are set with a scope of any.

That means it will match name of file, name of folder, path of file, path of folder. You can multi-select and right click to change multiple rules at once.  Rules containing a open bracket [ will be escaped as \[ see below for an explanation.

Please make sure your rules are set properly.

The pattern matching system has changed in v4, We now use a subset of the regular expression rules for pattern matching.

Matches a subset of regular expressions (* ? and [])
* Matches zero or more of any character
? Matches exactly one character
[<char set>] Matches character from <char set>
[^<char set>] Matches character not in <char set>
where <char set> can include multiple ranges and escaped characters \\ matches a slash \, \[ matches a open bracket [

Only characters within <char set> need to be escaped, with the exception of the [ character, If you need to match a [ then it must always be escaped.

Example:
Pattern "[a-z0-9_]bc?*c”    Filename “abcabc”    Match = True

2. The task scheduler.
The task scheduler uses Windows scheduling service to run the tasks, there’s email notification and lots of different options that is sure to suite your needs.

You can assign individual selective transfer rulesets to each task.

The old queue schedule is available for people who want to do one time scheduling and this is now moved to the right click queue menu.

3. Windows 7 users will see the file progress on the task bar button.

4. Improved and optimized local shell file browser.

5. Improved and optimized file transfers.

6. Improved and optimized tcp/ip buffer sizes.
You can now select larger buffers as well as the new auto mode. The auto mode may provide better results than default but not necessary better than a larger fixed size. It depends on the network conditions. You can also configure tcp/ip buffers per-site. In my tests a larger buffer size works best with LAN based servers. This build displays a debug message on connect indicating whether or not auto buffer shaping is activated.

7. Improved FTP File Search
The FTP File Search now provides an additional filter which allows you to do a sub search on the results. When the sub-search is activated the background color changes to a light blue.

The New right click options.
Open <folder/file> location, which changes to the folder in the remote browser.
Copy to Clipboard (Copy HTTP, URL, Name, Path + Name)

New File (Now you can create a file locally and when you save the changes it will upload it to the server.)

8. Improved and optimized performance and display of the ftp session window.
In addition if the FlashFXP application window is activated you’ll see the lines scroll and appear more fluid like. If the window is inactive then the updates are grouped together.

9. Queue changes.
You can now change the type of transfer to/from upload, download, fxp.
You can assign a selective transfer rule set to each individual item in the queue (i.e. transfer only log files in one folder and only php files in another).
Synchronize with delete allows you to delete any files from the target that do not exist on the source.

10. Improved logging system.
You can now have multiple log files per session instead of a single merged log like in v3.x.
In addition you can configure the type of information that is logged including schedule tasks.
Session Log
File Transfers (Upload, Download, Site to Site)
As well as the transfer results (Successful, Failed, or skipped)
File Transfer Summary
For example you can configure FlashFXP to only log uploads that are successful.

11. New toolbar backgrounds.
We’ve included 43 different background themes to use on the tool bar, or you can use your own.
For debug purposes we’ve numbered them, if you have an issue with one of them please let me know.

If you’d like to design a background (width 1 pixel by height 30 pixels)  to be included as one of the defaults please contact us and we’ll try to get it included.

Bitmap Backgrounds can be loaded externally.

12. LiveUpdate settings have been moved into the Preferences.

13. You can now define the default character encoding in the Preferences.
Previously this setting was only per-site.

14. You can now customize the file listing font and background colors.

15. New File Transfer Rule system.
The new rule system can evaluate the file size and/or date. Use the MLSD command for directory listing is recommended for accuracy. If you add a rule that wont be evaluated because a preceding rule takes precedence then the rule will appear in red and striked out.

16. New Remote editing feature that automatically detects when the file has been changed and uploads the file.
You can disable automatic uploads per file type under File Associations for files that you need to manually upload.

17. Upgraded to the latest version of FastMM memory manager.

18. Updated SFTP engine to the latest version, this improves compatibility with certain SFTP servers.

19. Updated MadExcept to the latest version.
MadExcept is used for exception handling, the new version should improve crash reports and make life a little easier

20. Updated button images and redesigned a couple interface dialogs.

21. Many improvements and redesign to the preferences, site manager dialogues as well as adding new dialogues and preference categories to support new features.
There is more control over the options since all existing and new options are now in their correct categories, previously this was not quite the case. The intention is to improve usability and allow the  user to exercise better control over their desired set up to meet the requirements of their specific network conditions.

22. New Integrated Translation Editor.
Everyone who submits a line of text that is used in the final translation will receive credit. Translation credits will be displayed on a new special tab in the about box.

Known issues:
The language translation editor is incomplete and work in progress. Specifically users will not be able to download translations that other users have updated.
Everything else is fully functional.

Seems like the website wirelesslogic.co.uk (one of the companies that Peter Jones from the Dragon’s Den TV Programme) is currently down.

Whether it was hacked or DDOS we are not sure, but I think its a bit embarassing for a company with such power (leading network technology in the UK) to not have solutions for failover/recovery and security.

Peter if you are reading this, please make sure your guys fix it asap.

Its interesting to know that the following websites are currently hosted side by side with wirelesslogic.co.uk [which of course means that they are all currently down]:

enterprisecup.com

pjinteractive.com

platinum.dataselect.co.uk

reggae-reggae.co.uk

thenea.org

venor-resourcing.com

www.dataselect.co.uk

www.fulmerwood.com

www.lifes-a-beach.co.uk

www.pjmediasolutions.com

www.reggae-reggae.co.uk

www.thenea.org

www.thenea.org.uk

www.venor-resourcing.co.uk

www.wirelesslogic.co.uk

www2.wirelesslogic.co.uk

-This was first noticed by SmootHosting Ltd.

Update: Websites are now up and running

What’s New

The VMware vCenter Converter 4.2 is a substantial upgrade from vCenter Converter 4.1 and includes the following new functionality (previously found only in vCenter Converter Standalone 4.0.x):

• Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Linux sources including:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, and 11.0
  • Ubuntu 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, and 8.x
• Hot cloning improvements to clone any incremental changes to physical machine during the P2V conversion process
• Support for converting new third-party image formats including Parallels Desktop virtual machines, newer versions of Symantec, Acronis, and StorageCraft
• Workflow automation enhancements to include automatic source shutdown, automatic start-up of the destination virtual machine as well as shutting down one or more services at the source and starting up selected services at the destination
• Destination disk selection and the ability to specify how the volumes are laid out in the new destination virtual machine
• Destination virtual machine configuration, including CPU, memory, and disk controller type

In addition, vCenter Converter 4.2 adds functionality not found in the standalone Converter product including:

• Support for VMware vSphere 4.1 as source and destination targets
• Support for importing powered-off Microsoft Hyper-V R1 and Hyper-V R2 virtual machines
• Support for importing Windows 7 sources
• Ability to throttle the data transfer from source to destination based on network bandwidth or CPU
• IPv6 support

Discontinued Support

• You cannot schedule recurring conversion tasks with vCenter Converter 4.2.
• Support of the following operating systems is discontinued:
  • Windows 2000
  • Windows NT
• VMware vSphere 4.1 is the last major release for VMware vCenter Converter plug-in. VMware will continue to provide technical support for vCenter Converter through the end of its support lifecycle. VMware will continue to update and support the free vCenter Converter Standalone product, which enables conversions from sources such as physical machines, VMware and Microsoft virtual machine formats, and certain third-party disk image formats.

The following information was gathere from Yellow Bricks

When installing vCenter 4.1 on Windows 2008 R2 64-bit one of my colleagues ran into the following error message:

This product can only be installed on the following 64-bit operating systems:

Windows XP SP2 or above
Windows 2003
Windows 2008

Although this message is actually correct it was not what was causing this problem as he followed the documentation and installed Windows 2008 64-bit. In this case Active Directory had been installed and that was the reason it was failing. As vCenter installs ADAM it can’t run on top of a server which hosts AD.

Facebook announced today that is has surpassed 500 million active users worldwide on its site. That is half a billion users on a single website.

The social network started in 2004 as a way for people in Harvard to connect with one another. Within a year of it’s initial release, Facebook grew to over one million active users.

To help celebrate Facebook reaching half a billion users, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, CEO & president of Facebook, is launching Facebook Stories. The idea behind this new application is for users to share their success stories with the rest of the world, including one success story of a mother in Pheonix who read a friend’s status message telling her to check for breast cancer, who was diagnosed in time to treat the disease.

Facebook reached it’s last milestone of 400 million active users earlier this year in February. It took Facebook only six months to gain another 100 million active users.

In light of all of this, Facebook announced recently that a movie will be releasing soon, titled “The Social Network.” The movie will star Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, and will follow his life from through Harvard and how he created Facebook.

Jolicloud, the free netbook OS that strives to keep users always connected, has hit the 1.0 release milestone. An all new HTML 5-based front-end is the biggest touted feature. In a blog post describing the latest release, Jolicloud said, “Imagine an operating system centered around interacting with your friends. Imagine never having to worry about updates and software installs. Imagine that all your machines are automatically synchronized with one another. Imagine having your Internet ecosystem natively integrated to your machine, with all the coolest apps at your fingertips.”

Utilizing cloud-based syncing, among the new stand-out features is the App Directory, a curated application library that is manageable from any HTML 5 capable device. From here, apps can be organized and installed, and deleted, with all changes automatically pushed to all Jolicloud devices on the same account. App updates are also automatically pushed-out so there is no need to manually update. Jolicloud focuses on cloud-based computing, but apps may also utilize local storage. Noteable apps include: Firefox, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Boxee, Hulu and more. Networking is also a focus with the Social Stream hub providing integration with Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and more.

The real draw of Jolicloud is its fresh and streamlined interface. It is compatible with most netbooks, can be installed directly from Windows, and is a free download. This may be just the thing to make the aging netbook segment exciting again.