VM Squad

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.

I’ve uploaded pictures of our DR and HQ setups and included notes on everything installed in the racks. If you have any questions please feel free to post a comment.

Server Rack set on Flickr

So a month at the new day job and I’m tasked with getting a new Cisco ASA 5510 configured and ready to install at our DR site. Last thing I worked on with Cisco was an old 1700 router so not exactly the same but oh well. We already have one 5510 installed at our main office, copied the config, updated the boot and asdm images and ready to go. Changed the IP addresses for the new router before putting on the network and tested to make sure everything came up correctly on reload and it did. Hooray for me, always nice to have something actually work when you have no experience with it.

Our DR hardware consists of an IBM x3650 server with dual quads and 32GB of ram and one LeftHand storage module that has a total of 1.6TB of storage I think. We’ve had this equipment installed and running here at our main location for a few months and one of my tasks when I started this new job was to get this DR equipment actually installed at the DR site. So yesterday the boss and I took a road trip with the equipment up to the DR site. We have a 100mbit link TLAN link from Cox between our HQ and DR sites so replication is not an issue. The only major issue we had setting everything up was actually getting the link to come up between the two sites. It had been installed for three months, we were getting a link up there but Cox said they couldn’t see anything at our HQ location. Upon getting back to the office, noticed that the cable was unplugged. Yea it kind of helps when things are actually plugged in but lesson learned.

So now I get to continue planning for a failover test later this month to show the people who sign our checks that yes, this money actually did buy something useful.

I’ve recently landed a position with a local company as an Network Technician with a growing company. A large part of deciding to take on this job was that they already have a LeftHand SAN installed along with a growing ESX 3.5 installation in place. I love seeing a company move in this direction and it was a direction that i wanted to keep in my carreer path.

Still getting used to the new network and getting some projects that are long overdue completed but i’ll try to start posting again in the near future.

Kodiak, the only product I’ve found to promise VMware ESX management on Linux has released their private beta. I can not wait to test this out soon. To sign up for their private beta visit their website, click here. This will be getting installed on the laptop tonight so I hit the ground running early next week.

On the job front I’ve verbally accepted a position with a local company here in Oklahoma City that has a small VMware deployment, so hopefully i’ll start signing paperwork tomorrow to concrete the deal. This is a major change of pace from over 100 physical servers to less then 15 but they are wanting to concentrate on growing their VMware footprint along with growing the IT department in both size and capabilities so this will hopefully be a great place to both learn more and do great things with my skill set.

Well as with many companies in this economy we’ve been hit with the layoff parasite. Both myself and our level 1 helpdesk guy were layed off friday under the guise of “Reduction in Force”. In laymen terms, we can’t keep clients and we can’t get new ones to cover the ones we lost. I’ve got a few leads already but if anyone knows any contacts in the Oklahoma City area please feel free to contact me.

I’m not a fan of using beta software for production purposes. But I decided to try and use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with the latest beta from VMWare. Installation went fine and most of the virtual machines I installed ran without problems. I then got a request for a 32-bit Vista VM to consolidate some older DUD’s (Dressed Up Desktops) that were being used for automation processes. Installation went smooth as expected. Got it logged in and joined to our AD domain without a hitch. Turned off all pretty effects to speed it up a bit. Installed SNMP and IIS and handed it over to the user. I come back this morning and he’s telling me it’s down. I boot it up and it goes through some type of registery check. It configures some updates and logs in finally. I goto check that snmp is still enabled and it’s complaining about low resources. Reboot and the same thing. Google doesn’t turn up anything usefull so i’m assuming either the developer installed something wacky or the VM got corrupted yet again. I had a similiar thing happen the first time i tried Vista on Server 2.0 Beta on this server.

So I’ve gone back to Server 1.0.6 after fighting through dependency hell. Fingers crossed that I can finally get this user up and running so I can eliminate more of these damned DUD’s.

Well as meetings progress and executives sit impatiently, our D.R. plan is slowly coming together. Having to test and choose products is always a great learning experience, though doing this with deadlines takes some of the fun away.

We’ve already sat through the presentations from Lefthand and Equallogic since we’ve narrowed our choices for our production SAN down to these two venders. Just from meeting the reps from both of these companies, I’d have to say that the Lefthand guys seem more down to earth and know what the hell they are talking about. The Equallogic reps we’ve had out are just salesmen who have had minor hardware training and only answer questions with generic answers. The Lefthand guys do this for a living and for fun it seems, the Equallogic guys are just salesmen, period.

One of the biggest downsides for us with Equallogic was that when it comes down to upgrading the firmware on the modules, it will take down network connectivity for 15 seconds while it switchs over to the secondary controller inside the array. I don’t know about other companies and how they would handle their SAN being down for 15 seconds a couple times a year but I’ll pass. With Lefthand, because of their network RAID design, no downtime is required. I’d have to say we’re leaning very heavily towards Lefthand for the SAN purchase.

We’ve settled on VMware 3.5 for our virtualization needs. Virtual Iron will hopefully make it into our plans some day but they just aren’t mature enough for what we need. I’d like to actually use the licenses we’ve purchased for Virtual Iron to create a testing lab for our dept since we just don’t have space for phsyical machines.

And I finally found the time to install and configure Cacti to replace Servers Alive. The newest release from CactiEZ is really the best and easiest solution i’ve found for the price paid, FREE! The features that cacti has and the plugins available really do compare to most enterprise solutions that cost a bucket full of cash. I have almost all of our servers setup and am going through networking equipment to add as needed. In the past if a developer said they needed a new server because a current server just couldn’t handle the load, we would just buy it. Now with performance monitoring and tracking I can ask them to prove the need. In the past month i’ve had to pull statistics on a few servers for this exact reason.

There is now a big player in the VDI market with this purchase, VMware. Now on the board against companies like Microsoft with their purchase of Softricity and Citrix with their purchase of XenSource.

To those who have doubts about VDI and it’s potential this adds even more fuel to the fire for it. This will better allow VMware to streamline VDI deployments and better support it. Can’t wait!

VMware Press Release

Source - virtualization.info