VM Squad

The team over at bluebear just released an update to their very cool management app called Kodiak. Myself and others have blogged about it before and have overall been impressed with the direction they are headed.

I think the biggest thing that I noticed first is that they have created an option to bypass the SSL stack in windows so you can finally skip the infinite SSL verification bug found in earlier versions.

Also their password vault also peaked my interest, I haven’t had a chance to install it yet but i’m wondering if it works with the guest OS also since their goal is an “IT IDE”.

Their download page still shows 0 invites available but leave a comment and I’ll start handing them out as soon as they refill them.

Kodiak 0.0.3 Release Notes

Download or register for the best program

For a few weeks now I’ve had both of the ESX hosts in my main cluster display not responding in VC. I’ve tried reconnecting them but this only solves the problem for a minute or two. Restarting the VC service will fix this for 10-15 minutes but it still falls back to “not responding”.

VMware has a checklist of stuff to check when an ESX host displays “not responding”

VMware Checklist

I made it down to number 8 before the problem seems to have finally been fixed. Time will tell as always.

VMware KB#1003490 “Restarting the Management agents on an ESX Server”

I know it’s been blogged about before, but I needed the location for the sysprep files today and found a nice list of download links and locations of where the contents need to go.

Sysprep files and locations

Well I’m not really sure of the exact process for starting a VMUG but I’m going to try and start. VMware has a few details but they seem to apply to already established user groups.There seems to be some interest judging from the Oklahoma City section of the VMware forum. I’ve registered a domain name (okcvmug.org) and am wanting anyone in the Oklahoma City area to please stay tuned to the website for a meeting date and details. We’ve got sponsors for a location and lunch and hopefully we can schedule a speaker or demo of some sorts.

Registered users will have the option to sign up for a newsletter so you’ll never miss any meetings or new information.

CharlesTwin from the Petri.co.il Forums has started a thread about two applications he wrote to help gain knowledge about VMware ESX 3.5. He requests that you simply email him with some info about your knowledge about VMware and your quest to learn more and he’ll email the applications to you. He’s already responded to my request for the apps so hopefully i’ll get them soon so I can write an article about them.

For more information check out his thread over at the Petri forums. Click Here

Well I noticed that Windows 7 Beta 1 was added to our MSDN account the other day so I decided to throw in on my personal laptop to test drive it for awhile.

I had been running Ubuntu 8.10 but it just wasn’t working out for me with all of the windows only apps I need to use daily at work. So far I’m pretty impressed with this latest beta from MS. The installation was quicker then the previous version of Windows 7 and it just seems to run a bit quicker also. Once I found my wireless drivers on Dell’s website, Windows Update was able to find the drivers for my audio. For those interested I’m running this on a Dell Latitude D600 with a Pentium M 1.6ghz with 1gb of ram.

Well this past week a few of our upper executives toured our DR facility. Thankfully they were wowed by the facility and the capabilities of it. An idea we have been tossing around and discussing inside of our department is moving our production equipment to the DR site and bringing back the equipment we have there essentially reversing our DR plan.

I had a chance to talk with our CEO after they had returned from the DR site and was surprised to hear him tell me that he thinks it’s a great idea. With four remote offices and more issues every week with the local power grid I am also behind this idea.

So this month we get to start testing how well the applications will run over our 100mbit T-LAN from Cox and if we need to upgrade that once replication on our LeftHand modules start. We will also have to create a new replication schedule for all of the volume groups but overall I can wait for this to happen.

Parallels must be feeling the holiday spirit these days. I noticed on SlickDeals.net this afternoon a posting about Parallels Workstation being given away. Simply register, download the installer for your OS and check your email for the activation key. I love these free giveaways companies do, it really gets their product into peoples hands who may not have tried their software otherwise.

Link for registeration

I love FastSCP, it was one of the first tools that I used when I started working with ESX. So of course I was excited to see that on Dec 22nd they are giving away a free christmas present to anyone that registers.

Rich from vmetc.com has a sneak peak on his website. Click here to read his post and click here to go register for it at Veeam’s website.

VMware has offically release Workstation 6.5. I love their Workstation product and use it just about every day for testing and to run my Ubuntu VM at work.

VMware Workstation 6.5 is packed with new features, including:

• “Unity” view provides a seamless desktop experience.
• DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 2 graphics enable Windows 3D applications and games.
• Easy Install simplifies the creation of Windows and Linux virtual machines.
• Powerful Record and Replay for groundbreaking debugging capabilities

Check the new product page to learn more, VMware Workstation 6.5

Well like most of us I’ve attempted to install Kodiak onto my Windows desktop at work. Upon logging in i’m flooding with certificate trust popups that will never stop. Very frustrating for sure but this is an AIR bug so don’t get pissed at BlueBear for it. A few have mentioned this isn’t an issue on Linux but I don’t feel like running a VM just yet only to test this software.

Well I checked their support page today and they had posted an update to their workaround instructions. I didn’t want to rename the VC server so I just added a dns entry for “VMware” into DNS as an A record and once it started resolving i just typed VMware as the server name in Kodiak and continued to login as normally. Tada!

Thanks BlueBear for the update on this very annoying AIR bug, greatly appreciated!

Well it’s good to see active development from the Kodiak team. They released version 0.0.2 today but I still can’t get around the trust issues that they’ve even posted a work around for. I still have some invites left so if you need one just post a comment and i’ll try to get them out as soon as I can.

Duncan from Yellow-Bricks.com posted a great review here of version 0.0.1 if you’d like to catch up on the hype.

Taken from their release notes:

New functionality:
We have added support for configuring existing virtual machines. All the expected functions are available. Configuration for a Virtual Machine is accessible via the configure button attached to a given VM object on the screen (Inspector Panels / Map)

Configuration of all standard resources is available, e.g. Memory Size, CPU allocation/shares, virtual disks, virtual NICs, and removable devices.

Usage Notes

1. Virtual disks are of the “preallocated/thick” type, support for all disk types will be available in the next release.
2. ‘Host-device-backed’ virtual devices (e.g. floppy/cdrom/raw) are not supported, but will be available in a future release.
3. ‘Remote-backed’ virtual devices (e.g. floppy/cdrom/ISO images on the client) are not supported, but will be available in a future release.
4. VMs must be powered off for configuration. While it is possible to reconfigure a running VM, it may result in a host fault that will cause your changes to be discarded.
5. If you make changes to a VM that you don’t want to commit, simply close the configure window and the changes will be discarded, (or hit the discard button).
6. Support for VM Creation will be available in the next release.

Known Issues

• Untrusted certificates on windows may cause an authorization dialog to continually appear. The certificate must be added to the local store, please see this page for a work-around.

• License keycodes are case sensitive, please ensure you enter them exactly.

• VirtualCenter is not yet fully supported. While it might work, functionality is not guaranteed to give predictable results. We are currently adapting Kodiak’s back-end data model to more effectively handle VirtualCenter’s data structures.