VM /ETC

Archive for January, 2009

The Computerworld.com article NFL’s Super Bowl IT team gets ready for game day explains how the NFL has assigned a 17 person IT staff the responsibility for Super Bowl XLIII IT operations at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL on Sunday Feb 1, 2009. Computerworld explains that the team is using four IBM BladeCenter S chassis located across multiple locations. The article also mentions that virtualization software is in use.

Read the entire article, but here’s some interesting excerpts revealing more about the IT team and how they are taking advantage of server consolidation with IBM blades and virtualization.

“That team was tasked with creating a complete IT operation for Super Bowl XLIII in a matter of weeks. Its coaches are Joe Manto, the NFL’s vice president of IT, and Jon Kelly, the league’s director of infrastructure computing. Their opponent is the same one that IT managers face everywhere: anything that can threaten system availability and uptime.

It doesn’t help matters that one of the four IBM BladeCenter S systems being used in Tampa is located on a wood floor in a tent that lacks any climate control capabilities. But so far, so good — and with the four BladeCenter boxes at different locations, and virtualization software ready to provide redundancy, neither Manto nor Kelly seems all that worried.”

Unfortunately the type of virtualization software is not revealed, and though the author only mentions virtualization in the context of redundancy, later in the article there is evidence that there has also been a significant reduction in hardware from past Super Bowls.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was surprised to find there is not a “send ctrl+alt+del” menu command in VMware Server 2.0 (updated 01.30.09) when connecting from an Ubuntu desktop. It’s not in the Remote Console menus nor in the Commands section of the Web Interface. Normally that is not a big deal because you can always use “ctrl+alt+ins” to log on to a Windows VM, but it did not work.

I was banging away at my keyboard wondering what was wrong. I had just finished installing Server 2008 remotely from one of my Intrepid desktops and was ready to log back in to run dcpromo but I could not get to the log on prompt. I thought maybe my ins key went bad, but I knew that could not be the case. When I tried to use another Ubuntu desktop I had the same problem. Then I discovered there was not a menu command either! I silently questioned whether the VMware Server team’s parents were married when they were born, and then I did some research.

I quickly found the answer at the following thread on the Ubuntu Forums: vmware server 2.0 in intrepid ibex [Archive] – Ubuntu Forums. Turns out you have to use the Del key from the number pad on your Ubuntu desktop’s keyboard because the keyboard mappings in Ubuntu 8.10 are not correct! The working key combination is therefore “ctrl+alt+[numberpad]del.

updated 4.30.09 – if you do not have a number pad on your keyboard (laptops) then make this quick config change.

add just one line to the file ~/.vmware/config:

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

Close the VM web console and reopen it for the change to take effect.

VMware please add a “send ctrl+alt+del” command to the (update 01.30.09) Linux Remote Console in the next update/version of VMware Server. Ubuntu, why are the keyboard mappings messed up?

updated 01.30.09 – I added the following screen shots to show the menu options when using the Remote Console from my Ubuntu desktops. I should point out I am using Firefox 3.0.5. I also updated the opening sentence of this post by adding “when connecting from an Ubuntu desktop” and the last sentence with “Linux Remote Console”. As Dracolith points out in his comment and screen shot link below, the “send ctrl+alt+del” command exists when connecting from a Windows host. I confirmed The ctrl+alt+ins key combination works as expected too. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Boche’s post titled Idle Memory Tax is a great read if you are trying to understand ESX memory allocation between virtual machines (VMs). Specifically, the post does a great job explaining how it works when you over commit your physical host’s memory. In other words, the sum of all the RAM assigned to the VMs running on a host is greater than the actual physical RAM of the ESX server.

Here’s a quote from Jason that briefly explains part of the technology that makes over commit possible: the Idle Memory Tax (IMT).

“Quite simply it’s a mechanism to take idle/unused memory from guest VMs that are hogging it in order to give that memory to another VM where it’s more badly needed. Sort of like Robin Hood for VI. By default this is performed using VMware’s balloon driver which is the more optimal of the two available methods. Out of the box, the amount of idle memory that will be reclaimed is 75% as configured by Mem.IdleTax under advanced host configuration. The VMKernel polls for idle memory in guest VMs every 60 seconds.”

Read the entire post for much more technical details and examples.

I’ve blogged before about the symptoms when the IMT and the ESX balloon driver can no longer keep up and it’s time to add another ESX host and spread the VM load.

I believe that ESX 3.x changed the need to Read the rest of this entry »

SB said BS so I had to show that installing Hyper-V Server 2008 in a VM is possible! Hopefully he/she will allow a VM hosted  on the free VMware Server 2.0  as acceptable proof. My virtualization host is a 64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 desktop running VMware 2.0. I created the VM from my Vista notebook using the VMware Server web interface. Once again, it’s a very simple, straightforward process.

I’m not claiming to be able to run virtual machines on the Hyper-V VM. Fact is I have not tried. My intent is testing and learning the remote administration for now. I am planning on joining this VM to an Active Directory Domain along with my Windows 7 Beta install. Hopefully joining the server and client to a domain won’t be as frustrating as trying to figure out the configuration for a workgroup! I’ll probably post that process too when I get around to it.

So, the rest of this post shows the build in a table formatted steps with images. SB, this one’s for you! Read the rest of this entry »

Most physical to virtual migrations (P2V) of servers end up as virtual machines with the partitions encapsulated in virtual disk (.vmdk or .vhd) files. But what if the physical server already has a partition that’s configured through an iSCSI connection to the SAN, and what if that’s the same SAN that the new VM will run on? Of course, the new VM will have to be on a different LUN (formatted for use by the virtualization host), but should you encapsulate the current NTFS iSCSI partition or should you maintain the iSCSI initiator within the resulting VM? The former option depends on how much available SAN space you have to work with, the latter requires some extra thinking before you begin.

When you decide to maintain a server’s existing iSCSI partitions as a VM, there are several configuration considerations to plan for.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post explains how to install the virtual machine tools or additions when running a virtualized Terminal Server. For example, if a VMware ESX virtual machine (VM) is providing published applications via Remote Desktops (RDP) from Microsoft Terminal Server then the normal process of installing the required VMware Tools will take place in a mode which assumes the tools need to be a published application in the user sessions. Since this is not the case, special steps must be taken to ensure the guest additions are installed for the local VM’s operating system only. Although I mentioned VMware Tools and MS Terminal Server, the process is similar for any Server Based Computing solution that provides published applications virtualized on any hypervisor platform.

I tried to keep this post generic as possible. This is a high level overview of preparing Windows for the tools or additions install.

Steps to correctly install guest tools or additions: Read the rest of this entry »

The Change.gov group has published a video on YouTube titled Inside the Transition: Technology, Innovation and Government. In this 4 minute video the Technology Innovation and Reform Team (TIGR) discusses how the U.S. Government has fallen behind in technology and how the new administration will implement and explore modern web applications to provide services, lower costs of operations, and provide better transparency to the people. At about 2:50 into the video, cloud computing is recognized as a way to drastically reduce the cost of Information Technology compared to traditional server infrastructure, and the shift to cloud computing will be one of the most important transformations the Federal Government will go through.

Earlier this week I posted about Obama’s Citizen Briefing Book and the need to vote up virtualization ideas for the new administration. The virtualization idea is obviously related to this video, and it’s great to see the TIGR team and the new administration focused on advancing cloud computing technology in our Government.

I found out about the video from Read the rest of this entry »