BPM and ECM – The War Begins

Even though large tracts of BPM have fallen or may fall into the grip of ECM, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight.

Read more here

Convert VDI to VHD

I recieved a Virtual Machine, that was build in Oracle Sun Virtual Box, and needed to be converted to run in Microsoft Virtual PC, and eventually on Microsoft Hyper-V;

I have found a number of articles, and this article/post was the only one that worked.

1. Convert the .vdi file to a raw disk image (.raw)
Perform a search on your system for existing .vdi files that you are going to convert.

a. Go to a cmd prompt and navigate to the VirtualBox folder (typically c:\program files\sun\VirtualBox).

b. Execute the following command against the .vdi file in question:

vboxmanage.exe internalcommands converttoraw "x\path-to-vdi\diskimage.vdi" "x:\path-to-output-folder\diskimage.raw"

Depending on the size of your .vdi file, the time for conversion may greatly vary.

Also, be sure you have around 2 times the available drive space
that your existing .vdi currently consumes on your logical volume.

2. Convert .raw disk image to .vmdk format using WinImage

a. Open WinImage, click on 'Disk'> 'Convert Virtual Hard Disk image...'

b. Next to the 'File name:' field, click on the file type drop-down and select 'All files (*.*)'.

c. Navigate to the location where you stored your outputted .raw disk file and double-click it.

d. Choose whether you wish to 'Create Fixed Size Virtual Hard Disk' or
'Create Dynamically Expanding Virtual Hard Disk' (I typically pick the latter) and click 'OK'.

e. Navigate to a folder where you wish to store the newly converted image to. Next to
'Save as type:' (for the sake of this How-to) choose 'VMWare VMDK (*.vmdk). and click 'Save'.

You should see a 'Reading disk' progress indicator giving you the status of the conversion process.
I've converted 30Gb images in about 10 minutes or less...but I have no firm numbers.

f. Once the conversion is complete, you'll see a dialog box that will ask you if you wish to connect to the partition. Click 'OK' if you wish to view the contents.

3. Import your disk images into your existing Virtual Infrastructure

Now that the files are converted, copy or move your converted disk image files to your virtualization software's datastore/disk storage folder.
Once moved/copied, you should now be able to create a new Virtual Machine and utilize the disks you just converted.
Note that you will need to install the proper guest additions/tools to the virtual machine when you get it booted, so you will likely not have
network access right off the bat.

Top 10 Mistakes When Building and Maintaining a Database

Building and maintain a SQL Server database environment takes a lot of work. There are many things to consider when you are designing, supporting and troubleshooting your environment. This article identifies a top ten list of mistakes, or things that sometimes are overlooked when supporting a database environment.

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Running Alfresco as Windows Service

Run Tomcat 6 as Windows service:

Info URL:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Configuring_Alfresco_as_a_Windows_Service

Install Command Line:

:\> cd c:\alfresco\tomcat\bin
:\> service.bat install
:\> tomcat6 //US//Tomcat6 --JvmMs=128 --JvmMx=512 --JvmSs=96 ++JvmOptions "-XX:MaxPermSize=128m"

Uninstall Command Line:

:\> service.bat uninstall Tomcat6 (or the "name" used when installing the service)

TomCat6 Service Properties Link:

:\> tomcat6w.exe //ES//Tomcat6 (or the "name" used when installing the service)

ERRORS: TomCat6 SERVICE NOT STARTING

1. prunsrv.c Failed creating java
1. Solution:
• Copy msvcr71.dll from java’s bin directory to windows\system32 folder
2. Known issue
1. Solution:
• Make sure your tomcat’s pointing to correct jvm.dll folder.
• My tomcat pointing to C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_07\bin\client\jvm.dll, try change to C:\Program Files\Java\jre\bin\client\jvm.dll

Run MySQL as Windows Service:

These instructions assume that Alfresco is installed in C:\Alfresco. Before
you can install MySQL as a windows service you need to set the following directories
in the C:\alfresco\mysql\my.ini file

Edit my.ini:

basedir="C:\Alfresco\mysql"
datadir="C:\Alfresco\alf_data\mysql"

Install Command Line:

:\> cd C:\Alfresco\mysql\bin
:\> mysqld.exe --install AlfrescoMySQL --defaults-file=C:\Alfresco\mysql\my.ini

ERRORS: MySQL SERVICE NOT STARTING
None so far...

Cloning / Copying Virtual Hard Drives

I have a base virtual hard drive (VHD) which I use to create new virtual machines (VM) as needed. The base VHD has an operating system (OS) loaded with all latest updates, so when I need a new VM I just make a copy of my base VHD; create new VM with copied VHD. I’ve been using Sun Virtual Box to run my VM’s, it’s got a small memory foot print on the host machine and memory management is better so the precious megabytes on your demo / development pc can be used for fast running VM’s without having to kill each running server on you host machine and it’s free here.

But when cloning / copying VHD’s you sure will be running in to this error:

'Failed to open the hard disk J:\ISO\VPC\RTBase\Base_c.vdi, Cannot register the hard disk ‘J:\ISO\VPC\RTBase\Base_c.vdi’ with  UUID {d6dd48d6-5999-455a-8498-f6f1359ab971} because a hard disk ‘J:\ISO\VPC\RTBase\Base_c.vdi’ with  UUID {d6dd48d6-5999-455a-8498-f6f1359ab971} already exists in the media registry … ' bla-bla-bla

To fix this, Sun Virtual box has a cool command line tool include in its install folder [C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox], VBoxManager. Executing the following command will change / assign a new UUID to the cloned / copied VHD.

Command line:

VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid J:\ISO\VPC\SMDMOSSServer_c.vdi

Result: