Tom Finnis | Bio
For his day job Tom Finnis is Technical Operations Manager at help4IT - a London, UK based company specialising in outsourced IT support for small to medium enterprises. As well as his Petri articles he also blogs on a range of IT subjects on the help4IT website.
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Tom's Recent Posts
Virtualization Storage and the Importance of IOPS
We’re talking serious storage specification! Learn more as we go into virtualization and an overview of IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second).
Setting Out of Office (OOF) for Another User in Exchange 2010
Learn how to configure the Out of Office (OOF) message for any user with the Exchange Management Shell.
Converting VMware VMDK Files to Microsoft’s VHD Format and VHD to VMDK
There are two popular and mutually incompatible virtual disk file formats in common use today: VMware’s VMDK format and Microsoft’s VHD format. In order to attach a VHD disk to a VMware virtual machine, or vice-versa, you have to convert it first. This guide by virtualization and storage expert Tom Finnis explains how to use Starwind’s V2V Converter utility to do just that, with a detailed example explaining how to convert a VMDK virtual disk to VHD format and then mount it in a Windows system in order to edit the files it contains.
How to Resize Windows Virtual Machine Disks
As fast as hard drive capacities grow, so does the amount of data users expect to store on them. In this post, storage expert Tom Finnis shows how to re-size existing drives in Windows, when what may have seemed like plenty of storage when you first installed a Windows VM is now not enough.
AutoDiscover Configuration for Exchange 2007 and 2010
AutoDiscover in Exchange is often overlooked but can provide some excellent functionality to your users, making it easier to setup new mail clients and smartphones. Tom Finnis explains how to configure AutoDiscover for Exchange 2007 and 2010 as well as covers some common problems to look out for.
How to Install ESXi 5 – The Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor
ESXi5 is the latest version of VMware’s virtualization hypervisor, which enables multiple virtual machines to run simultaneously on a single physical host, and is free to download and use. In this article Tom Finnis describes the new features in this version and discusses how you might benefit from installing it, whilst covering the basics like hardware requirements and the installation procedure.
Deploying Printers Using Group Policy – Networking Printers & Windows 2008 Server Part 2
In this second part of Tom Finnis’ article on deploying printers on your network he explains how to assign your printers to specific users and computers using Group Policy and the Active Directory. He also covers in depth how to avoid the most common problem encountered, the lack of built-in support for GPO printer deployment in Windows XP
Moving Mailboxes to Exchange 2010 and the BadItemLimit
Exchange 2010 has made the process of upgrading much easier, and now includes a simple wizard to assist with moving mailboxes to your new server. SBS and Exchange expert Tom Finnis provides a guide for moving mailboxes to Exchange 2010, including step-by-step instructions for using the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) to override the BadItemLimit when moving large mailboxes.
Networking Printers & Windows 2008 Server – Part 1
In this article Tom Finnis explains how to add the Print Services role to a Windows 2008 Server and then shows you how to use the Print Management console to share printers on your network.
How to Backup Fault Tolerant VMs in vSphere 4
vSphere based backup solutions such as VMware Data Recovery and Veeam Backup and Replication v5 rely on vSphere’s snapshot technology to backup live VMs, which excludes Fault Tolerant VMs as they do not allow snapshots. In this article, Tom Finnis explains how to use custom scripts to work around these restrictions and enable regular scheduled backups of Fault Tolerance protected Virtual Machines.
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