IT consultant

Buying a laptop for consulting

So you finally decide it’s time to turn in your old clunker of a computer and buy a shiny new laptop for your IT consulting business. What do you get? Brands aside, what specs do you want on a laptop in the wide world of consulting? How much horsepower do you really need?

Well lucky for you I have gone through tons of laptops in my time consulting and I have come up with a veritable list of must haves for the IT consulting geek! You see in the world of IT consulting, you are constantly on the move and a laptop is your best friend. Gone are the days where you sit in an office and get to work from an all powerful workstation. Sure, I have a nice workstation at home, but I find that I use my laptop the most when going from client site to client site.

Here is my list of must haves in your laptop as a consultant:

• Lots of RAM! - Now with virtualization at the forefront, I would get a minimum of 4 gigs of RAM if not more (make sure your laptop can support more) so you can have lots of virtual machines open on your laptop at the same time
• Multi-core CPU - With the meteoric rise of virtualization, it’s a good idea to have multi-cores so you can turn your laptop into a wonderful test environment without riding your laptop into the ground
• Windows 64 bit (XP/Vista/2008/Windows 7) - A 64 bit version of Windows is essential to use all that RAM. If you limit yourself to a 32 bit version then you aren’t going to be able to use all that RAM to run virtual machines.
• VMware Workstation! - This is my preferred software of choice for creating virtual test environments on my laptop. In my opinion VMware Workstation rules the roost!
• The largest fastest hard drive you can find! - If you have to decide between large and fast, I would lean towards large first. You’re going to need all that space to store your virtual machines. You could instead get the fastest hard drive you can find and then get a small external USB hard drive for extra space too.
• A USB to serial cable! - How are you going to configure all those switches/routers as a consultant without a serial port? Get a good USB to serial cable adapter and use that to connect your laptop to these devices.
• A large USB key! - I carry around a 16GB USB key to transfer large patches and data between machines when needed. Also make sure you encrypt any sensitive data you place on your USB key, there are a lot of free solutions out there. This will save your behind if you lose your USB key
• A portable mini USB powered switch - This will come in extremely handy when you need to connect multiple devices and your laptop to a network and you won’t have to lug around a clunky power adapter in your laptop bag to power the switch.
• A good video card! - Don’t cheap out on your video card, you’ll regret it instantly. In these days of multimedia overload, you can’t go without a good card, make sure you buy a laptop with a good video card with lots of power.
• A CD/DVD burner drive - This almost goes without saying. You’re going to need this to burn countless installation and patch CD/DVDs. It’s part of being a consultant!

-Cheers, RP

BlackBerry announces support for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

So BlackBerry just announced support for Microsoft OCS 2007. What does this mean to us? This means greater support and integration between BlackBerry and Microsoft products.

One of the greatest things missing in my opinion from the BlackBerry suite of software is interoperability with other applications and vendors. This move to support Microsoft OCS 2007 is a great step in that direction. Some of the features they’ve announced such as being able to tell the presence of a user is just fantastic. We’ll see how this plays out. I for one am quite excited about it and can’t wait to test it out in the lab.

Now if only BlackBerry would announce full Asterisk and Jabber IM support I would be in 7th heaven!

You can read more about the announcement here.

-RP

Bare Metal Hypervisors

With Hyper-V out now, the virtualization marketing machine from all the different virtualization companies is in full swing. The battle is on and it looks like it’s going to be an ugly one. With virtualization pros on either side spouting the virtues of their product and claiming why one is better than the other.

Within the past few days I have read about a ton of cost comparisons between all the different offerings out there between Hyper-V, XenServer, and VMWare. I think at the end of the day, you need to delve a little deeper and look at the differences between the technologies that make up these products and what they mean to you and your business.

 One of the core differences that is important to me (and might not be important to you, depending on your needs) is the level/classification of hypervisor that is employed by the various companies. VMWare and Citrix both offer what are called level 1 or type 1 classification hypervisors. These are hypervisors that install on bare metal without an underlying OS. Whereas Microsoft offers Hyper-V only installed as a role on Windows 2008. This is what is called a level 2 hypervisor or type 2 classification hypervisor.

This is important because anytime you have a virtual product using a level 2 hypervisor, the hosting OS gives a larger footprint to attack and can compromise the security or stability of the box more than a level 1 hypervisor would. Now for non mission critical servers this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but for mission critical virtual machines this could be the difference between choosing which virtualization product is right for you.

However, it is said that Microsoft will be developing a level 1 hypervisor. We will have to wait and see how this progresses, because once this comes out, the lines will be even further blurred between the different competitors.

-RP

VMWare’s ESXi vs Hyper-V, the details on what free really means

I was speaking to a co-worker today and he pointed me towards Mike’s blog at http://mikedatl.typepad.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/07/esx-35i-for-fre.html. After reading through it, it was obvious he had made some really great points.

 Microsoft has offered Hyper-V for free essentially with Windows 2008 but it doesn’t include the cost of Windows 2008 itself. ESXi on the other hand is a bare metal Hyper-visor which requires no OS for it’s installation and requires no purchase of Hyper-V.

 Also, in my humble opinion, once you grow out of the SMB market and start moving up, the features of VMWare trounce what Microsoft has to offer with Hyper-V. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Microsoft will continue to develop their offering and play catch up, but VMWare is there right now at what I find a very reasonable price.

 -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

Vista to XP Downgrade on Laptops with No Floppy Drive

For those of you that don’t know, Microsoft provides the ability to legally downgrade your copy of Vista to Windows XP if it’s Vista Home Premium or higher on your laptop. The only requirement is that you have a copy of an XP CD to do this.

However most new laptops have SATA hard drives in them and you cannot access them during the Windows XP Installation sequence. When you try and specify a driver by pressing F6 it automatically asks you to insert a disk in your floppy drive and obviously that is not an option unless you have a portable floppy drive.

Don’t fret, there is an easy solution. There is a program called Nlite that is free to use and allows you to create a bootable XP cd from existing media. What it will do is allow you to integrate the SATA drivers into the installation CD so you have no need to hit the F6 key for the floppy drivers.

You can also integrate service packs and set other options with the program. Goodbye floppy!

-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

Check your thermals…

With it being summer, it’s got me thinking about heat on a daily basis. Especially server room heat. I’ve been through my fair share of server rooms and I’ve seen all sorts of solutions to the ever increasing heat problem. It seems more and more applications require a specific server to run; and more and more software requirements state that this piece of software can’t run on the same box as that piece of software. This leads to purchasing more servers and ends up leading to a lot of power draw and more heat in your server room.

Some people decide to cool servers the proper way by installing the proper cooling units into their server rooms, and other people decide to go the old fashioned way by leaving the server room door open or by putting a lot of home based oscillating fans in the room. Unfortunately this leads only to two very bad things, poor physical security and recirculation of hot air over the already warm servers.

If you need to cool your server room and don’t have the proper cooling, you seriously need to figure that into your next budget so you can have it. Also see what you can do to consolidate the roles of your servers so you have less servers taking up valuable space in your server room and also less servers generating heat.

 As I’ve mentioned before, Blade servers and VMWare are a very good idea for server consolidation. Not only are they good for saving power but they are great for keeping the heat down. Also with Windows 2008 out now and Hyper-V, there really is no reason not to try and virtualize even if you are not a VMWare expert. Any way you slice it the thermal savings will be substantial.

 -RP

VMWare Tools in Windows Server 2008 Core

Hi folks, if you have ever used VMWare before, then you will be familiar with the VMWare Tools. This is a set of tools you can install into a guest os in VMWare to allow better functionality with your virtual machine. However this is a graphical install and it isn’t exactly clear how to run VMWare Tools if you have installed Windows Server 2008 in Core mode in your virtual environment.

Just recently I ran into this problem while running some testing and was able to do it by choosing to install VMWare tools first and then changing drive letters to the d:. Then I ran the setup.exe file to start the VMWare Tools installer.

This started the VMWare Tools gui. However this throws a DLL error on the screen. Just go to task manager during the install and kill the rundll process. Then click past any errors and the install should finish without a hitch. I used the “typical” install mode.

Then reboot the virtual machine and when the server comes back up you should have a working guest os with Windows Server 2008 Core and VMWare Tools installed!

-RP

Installing BES in a Virtual Environment

Hi folks, today I’d like to talk about BES installations. I find that BES is one of those server installations that lends itself well to virtualization. You see I like to run BES on it’s own server so if you need to reboot it or perform any maintenance, it won’t affect other services.

Of course buying a brand new server just for BES isn’t exactly cost effective. This is where virtualization comes in. Using VMWare you can easily setup a tiny VM with minimal resources just for BES. The downside to this however is that how are you going to plug in a BlackBerry directly to the BES server via USB cable if you need to troubleshoot a BlackBerry device that isn’t synchronizing properly wirelessly?

Well the solution to this is actually pretty straightforward. In most virtualized environments you will usually have one server that is not virtual (a management server as I like to call them), that allows you to manage the virtualized environment with all the administration tools installed on it and perhaps even backup software to backup or replicate the virtual machines to another location. On this same server you can just install the Blackberry Management console and point it at the BES server. This way you can plug in USB devices to the physical management server and the devices will communicate with your virtual BES server.

-RP