VM Squad

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 upgraded to WordPress 2.6.2 so please let me know if anything weird shows up.

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.