February, 2009

Feb 28 2009   10:18PM GMT

Citrix XenServer now free

Posted by: Raj Perumal
VMWare, Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Essentials, virtualization wars, ESX, ESXi, virtual center

Hi folks, you may have heard that Citrix XenServer is now free. This is great news for the virtualization world because now we have yet another fully capable virtualization product without virtual machine limits (the old Xen Express had a 4 machine limit) to to compete with Microsoft and VMware.

However I do have to speak to something regarding this recent announcement. Apparently some people have been saying that this is the first free hypervisor that is actually capable of being deployed in a production environment. Now I don’t know about you but that smells like a lot of marketing BS to me.

As far as I’m concerned even VMware’s free ESXi has always been a fully capable production environment product. I have used it in countless customer sites and it runs solid, stable and with great performance. Likely that comment is designed to affect the opinions of people who haven’t had much experience with virtualization and aren’t in the know from trying it themselves.

Citrix is joining forces with Micrsoft with the Citrix Essentials product which support Hyper-V and XenServer. I think this is going to backfire because Microsoft is not going to let Citrix’s virtualization product eclipse their own. Sure they have had a great relationship for years and years, but when it comes to this virtualization war, Microsoft is not going to settle for being behind Citrix.

On the other side, VMware will have to watch out, because it’s obvious it’s competitors have VMware set firmly in their sights as their number one target.

-RP

Feb 27 2009   9:25PM GMT

64 Bit Rant

Posted by: Raj Perumal
64 bit, 64 bit rant, Windows 64 bit OS, Windows Vista 64, Windows XP 64, 64 bit compatible software, 64 bit compatibility

So I’d like to rant a little bit about something today, and that’s 64 bit desktop (not server) support in a Windows world. I’ve been using 64 bit Windows operating systems for quite some time now and I still have to say that I’m not impressed with what is out there.

 

Whether we’re talking Windows XP, or Vista, I am not happy with what vendors have to offer. A lot of times I have tried to download drivers or even download some free or trial product to test out on my system only to find out that it is not compatible with my 64 bit Windows OS.

 

What’s the deal with that? It’s not like nobody uses it. As a matter of fact, I know tons of like-minded IT professionals that use 64 bit Windows OS’ and don’t have a choice because they need the high amount of RAM on their computers to run programs like VMware Workstation for instance.

 

I’d just like to say it’s high time for you software companies out there to start putting out 64 bit applications for Windows, and not just as an after thought, but with some serious focus. And to those of you that are already doing this? Kudos!

 

-RP

Feb 27 2009   9:09PM GMT

The new HP Blade: HP ProLiant BL495c

Posted by: Raj Perumal
HP BL495c, BL495, BL 495, HP ProLiant BL495c G5, flex-10, virtual connect, Virtualization, VMWare, Hyper-V

Hi folks, today I wanted to talk about the new BL495c blade from HP. This is a Blade server that was made just for virtualization. How you ask?

 

Well to start, it comes with a maximum memory capacity of 128 GB of RAM, along with support for HP’s Virtual Connect Flex-10 network technology. This means you can carve up 10 GBe worth of network traffic and virtualize the heck out of each BL495c you stick in your enclosure.

 

Couple this with a C7000 enclosure which can fit 16 of these bad boys per enclosure and you’re talking about some serious horsepower. Even with the C3000 enclosure we’re talking about 8 blades per enclosure which is nothing to sneeze at.

 

Granted the server is running AMD cpus and I’m currently a fan of the Intel procs for virtualization but when we’re talking virtualization, it’s the memory capacity that is really going to help you out here. It would be awesome if they released an Intel version of this blade.

 

You can read more about it here.

 

-RP

Feb 27 2009   8:39PM GMT

My Experience with Windows 7

Posted by: Raj Perumal
Windows 7, Beta, Vista, Windows Server 2008, laptop, beta test

Hi folks, so I tried out the recent beta of Windows 7 on my laptop having been absolutely fed up with my Vista 64 bit installation. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. My computer ran really slick as compared to the Vista OS. It looks like they ‘ve come a long way to making this OS better.

 

I didn’t experience any of the constant headaches that I was having with Vista. Things actually seemed to be running smoothly. I currently use Windows Server 2008 64 bit with the desktop experience enabled on my laptop and it runs great. I found that the Windows 7 installation ran quite similarly to Windows Server 2008 if not a little quicker.

 

I do have some gripes however. I got some really strange errors that seemed to be related to the .NET Framework when trying to install Microsoft Office 2007. I tried using the released .NET sdk and framework for Windows 7 that Microsoft released but it wouldn’t install. Also Windows updates worked for a while and then they completely bombed out. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the Windows updates part of Windows 7 working again. I can forgive these things for the time being because they are still in beta.

 

I have now wiped Windows 7 from my system and am using Windows Server 2008 as my laptop OS. I will try Windows 7 again on my laptop when the next release comes out.

 

-RP

Feb 27 2009   4:33PM GMT

HP and EDS Pay Cuts

Posted by: Raj Perumal
HP, EDS, pay cuts, paycuts, layoffs, economic downturn

Hi folks, the recent pay cut announcement at HP and EDS has been taken with mixed reactions. If you haven’t heard yet, they have announced that workers will be receiving a pay cut in lieu of layoffs.

 

Now I don’t know about you but in an industry where workers are already underpaid to begin with, the prospect of a pay cut is that much more crazy. Of course on the other side of the coin, would you rather lose your job or lose some of your pay? For most people it’s almost the same thing because they need that pay to make ends meet.

 

The executives have also taken a pay cut as well. Unfortunately that isn’t being taken very well by some employees and they are concerned about this whole situation regardless of that fact. I sincerely hope everything works out well in the end and that all the people involved are able to keep their jobs. I also hope that once the tough times are over, that HP rewards their employees for their loyalty and hard work.

 

-RP

Feb 15 2009   10:22PM GMT

Rumours regarding Windows 7 upgrade from Vista

Posted by: Raj Perumal
Vista, Windows 7, Tech ARP, Microsoft, Rollout, Windows 7 rollout, Windows 7 upgrade for free, low cost Windows 7 upgrade

So unless your head has been under the sand lately, you’ve probably heard the latest rumours. The rumours are that Microsoft is considering providing a Windows 7 upgrade to recent Windows Vista buyers for free or for a substantially low upgrade price.

There is a post out there on a site called Tech ARP that lists a timeline for rollout of Windows 7. The question is if this is legitimate or not?

Regardless if it is, I think it’s a great idea for Microsoft to offer Windows 7 as a free upgrade or at least as a low cost upgrade to it’s current Windows Vista user base. This would go a long way to gaining trust and support from a user base that feels that Microsoft has largely given them the shaft.

-RP

Feb 15 2009   2:28AM GMT

VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA)

Posted by: Raj Perumal
VMWare, VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant, VIMA, scripts, scripting, VMware remote command line, remote cli, VI Perl Toolkit, VI Remote CLI, William Lam, http://www.vmware.com/go/importvima/vima1.ovf, virtual appliance, lamw

Hi folks, I wanted to bring your attention to a VMware virtual appliance. This appliance is called VIMA, VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant. It is a virtual appliance running Red Hat Enterprise Linux from which you can run scripts and agents from.

There are many cool scripts out there that you can run from VIMA, especially some of the cool scripts from William Lam. Many scripts out there use VIMA as a launching pad.

To install and configure VIMA, just launch your VMware client and follow the simple instructions posted here.

After a while the import will finish and you will now  have a new virtual machine. At this point you can boot it up and set the IP address for the VIMA box. After you have done that you can mount an NFS share if you need one by modifying the /etc/fstab file just like you normally would in Red Hat Linux.

In future blogs I will write about some of the cool things you can do from within VIMA.

-RP

Feb 14 2009   11:22PM GMT

Configuring NFS in Windows

Posted by: Raj Perumal
Windows Services for Unix, Windows services for Unix 3.5, NFS, SFU, MMC, Mount Windows Share as NFS Share, mount windows folder as NFS share, NFS Server for Windows, Windows 2003, backups, virtual machine backups, VMware backups, backup ESXi, backups VMware ESXi, VMware ESXi, VMware ESX, backup free vmware, VCB, backup without VCB, backup script, ghettoVCB, ghetto VCB, ghettoVCB.sh, William Lam, lamw, http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760, how to implement ghettoVCB, how to backup virtual machine, how to backup ESXi, how to backup ESX, how to backup VMware, file level backup, virtual machine level backup, putty, plink, Allegro NFS, how to backup virtual machines, script to backup vmware

Hello again folks! As I had mentioned previously, I want to talk a little bit about configuring NFS in Windows. Since last we spoke I had mentioned using the Allegro NFS product and that I was considering purchasing it after my trial was over.

NFS is a great solution to use along with the ghettoVCB scripts I mentioned in my previous posts. This way you can backup your virtual machines to USB storage connected to a workstation or server.

Well my trial is over and I have now purchased it for use in my home lab. I have to say it works flawlessly. I experimented with some free NFS software that is out there but nothing seemed to work perfectly. I found that a lot of products would just stop working after a period of time and then you’d have to restart the service or program in question.

Allegro NFS is pretty easy to configure. You start the program, you specify the windows path name you want to share out via NFS, then you specify the hosts and rights you want to give to the share. Then you just go to your client computer and mount the NFS share as you normally would. Pretty straightforward, it doesn’t get any easier than this. This is a great solution for users using workstation operating systems such as Windows Vista to share out external USB drives as NAS storage.

However if you want to use a workable free solution in your server environment then I would suggest using the Windows Services for Unix download with your Windows 2003 install. To get this working please do the following:

• Download the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group from your ESX or ESXi server using WinSCP
• Create a folder on your C drive called c:\nfs and place the passwd and group files in there
• Download Windows Services for Unix 3.5 from here and install it
• Make sure you install the Server for NFS and User Mapping components during the install
• During the user mapping configuration portion of the install, choose Local User Name Mapping Server and choose Password and Group files
• In the User Name mapping screen type in the path name for the passwd and group files (c:\nfs\passwd and c:\nfs\group)
• After it’s installed, click on Start and Run then type MMC
• Add the Windows Services for Unix Snap-in to the MMC console
• Select User Name Mapping on the left hand pane and then select the MAPS section in the right hand pane
• Ensure Simple Maps is checked and then click on Show User Maps
• Then click on list Windows Users and list UNIX users
• Select Administrator from the Windows user list and select root from the UNIX users list and then click Add
• Check the Display simple maps in Mapped users list checkbox
• Click on Apply in the top right hand corner of the MMC console
• Close the MMC console
• Create a folder and right click on it and choose Sharing and Security
• Click on the NFS Sharing tab
• Click share this folder and give it a share name, in this example we’ll call it NFSBackup
• Click on permissions
• Check the Allow root access box
• Change the Type of Access drop down menu to Read-Write and then click OK and then click OK again

Now you can mount the share from VMware. When you go to add NFS storage just point it at the IP of the server and the path. So if the server’s IP address is 192.168.1.10 for example, then the serer name would be 192.168.1.10 and the NFS path would be /NFSBackup.

That’s it!

-Cheers, RP

Feb 8 2009   12:29AM GMT

Scheduling jobs in ESXi the Easy Way

Posted by: Raj Perumal
backups, virtual machine backups, VMware backups, backup ESXi, backups VMware ESXi, VMware ESXi, VMware ESX, backup free vmware, VCB, backup without VCB, backup script, ghettoVCB, ghetto VCB, ghettoVCB.sh, William Lam, lamw, http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760, how to implement ghettoVCB, how to backup virtual machine, how to backup ESXi, how to backup ESX, how to backup VMware, file level backup, virtual machine level backup, putty, plink, NFS, Windows services for Unix 3.5, Allegro NFS, schedule ESXi ghettoVCB.sh, schedule jobs in ESXi, cron, crond, crontab, cron jobs, how to backup virtual machines

So continued from my previous blogs, I wanted to discuss scheduling jobs in ESXi. Due to the way ESXi is made, you cannot edit the cron jobs and expect them to still be there with their changes past a reboot. Rebooting an ESXi server clears the cron jobs. The cron jobs reset back to their default settings.

In my last blog post I spoke of a program called Plink. Plink is a command line interface to Putty. This allows us to connect to an SSH session from the command line. This can be leveraged using batch scripting and windows scheduled tasks to schedule ESXi jobs.

For my example I will show you how to schedule the ghettoVCB.sh script I spoke about in my last blog entry. Please see my detailed instructions on how to do this in my blog post here.

-RP

Feb 7 2009   11:09PM GMT

Creating virtual machine backups in VMware continued…

Posted by: Raj Perumal
backups, virtual machine backups, VMware backups, backup ESXi, backups VMware ESXi, VMware ESXi, VMware ESX, backup free vmware, VCB, backup without VCB, backup script, ghettoVCB, ghetto VCB, ghettoVCB.sh, William Lam, lamw, http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760, how to implement ghettoVCB, how to backup virtual machine, how to backup ESXi, how to backup ESX, how to backup VMware, file level backup, virtual machine level backup, putty, plink, NFS, Windows services for Unix 3.5, Allegro NFS, how to backup virtual machines, script to backup vmware

Hello again, so here we go continued from my previous post. I am going to explain how to implement this script in VMware ESXi as this is the most likely way people will be using this script. Most peole using the full VMware ESX version will probably go with a commercial 3rd party product backup solution.

So in order to implement this script you will first have to enable SSH access to the ESXi server. You can do this by following my enable SSH instructions in my blog post here.

Then after you have enabled SSH, please follow my detailed instructions in my blog post here.

-Cheers, RP