64 bit

64 Bit Rant

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

VMWare Infrastructure Client now runs on 64-bit

Hi folks, just a quick update to a previous blog post. The VMWare Infrastructure client now runs on 64 bit as of 3.5 update 1 and VC 2.5 update 1. No need to perform any tricks or hacks to get it to work. Just install it as per usual and it should work just fine.

-RP

VMWare’s Virtual Infrastructure Client in a 64 bit OS

For those of you getting into VMWare, you might try and install the VI client on your machine. If you have a 64 bit OS such as XP or Vista 64, you will get an error message saying you can’t install it because it’s only supported in a 32 bit environment.

The long and the short of it is that VMWare has made some changes to the client that might cause issues in 64 bit so the developers blocked 64 bit installations intentionally. You can still get around this however.

My personal favourite way is to just install a VM on your computer with a 32 bit OS and then run the client out of there. There are other things you can do is well and I suggest you read this link found here about the situation.

-RP

The Confusion with Hyper-V and 32 bit vs 64 bit

Now that Hyper-V is available, I know a lot of people are raring to go ready to try it out. I know a few people have been bit by not knowing the system requirements, especially in regards to 32 bit vs 64 bit so I figured I’d mention a bit about it here.

Hyper-V as many people know is available with Windows 2008. You can also get a version of Windows 2008 without Hyper-V. I suspect this is due to trying to avoid any anti-trust issues. Anyways, the Hyper-V component is available in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows 2008. This is where the confusion comes in. If one doesn’t read the available documentation clearly, one would assume that Hyper-V works in both 32 bit and 64 bit 2008, but then that person would be wrong. You see the tools available to manage Hyper-V are available in both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows 2008, however you can only run Hyper-V on a Windows 2008 64 bit box. If you were to try and do this in a 32 bit environment it just would not work.

 You can however run a guest os (a guest os is an operating system you run inside a virtual machine) in 32 bit mode inside of Hyper-V. If you want to run a 64 bit guest os you can do that as well. So if you want to build a cheap test box for yourself then you will have to buy a 64 bit processor and build a workstation for yourself and install Hyper-V on that. There will be no reusing of an old 32 bit system to run a Hyper-V test box.

If you do want to virtualize in a 32 bit environment I  suggest you check out VMWare, you can easily do it with any of the VMWare products. Until next blog, have fun virtualizing!

 -Cheers, RP

Windows 2008 and Itanium Feature Support

I recently tried to implement Windows 2008 on an HP Integrity server and wanted to share a bit about my experiences. One of the things that Microsoft says is they support Windows 2008 on an Itanium box.

 I was able to install Windows 2008 in Full installation mode on the Itanium box. The first thing I noticed is that there were only 2 roles available to me. I suppose I could install some Itanium based apps on the server and it would be good for that, but I couldn’t really use the box to do much else.

The other thing I noticed is that the much touted Windows 2008 Core mode installation is not supported on Itanium systems. As well there is no Hyper-V support on Itanium either. So realistically speaking, if you want to use a 64 bit system for Hyper-V you can’t use ia64, you are limited to x64.

So essentially unless you need to run something specific to Integrity servers you should  stick with x64.

 -RP