VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘virtualization’

David Davis has done it again! A new vSphere Troubleshooting video training course from Train Signal has been released. According to Davis, the course took 3 months to create, and it’s full of 30 videos with almost 14 hours of content. Like all Train Signal training, it’s available via streaming online video (iPad compatible) and in the DVD offline format.

Davis explained more about the video training in an email I received:

In this course, I educate viewers on how to troubleshoot vSphere networking, storage, management processes (and much more), from the GUI but especially from the CLI.

The new vSphere Troubleshooting course will be part of an upcoming VCAP-DCA training package so I have covered all topics related to troubleshooting on the DCA blueprint. Even if viewers aren’t interested in the VCAP-DCA certification, I designed the course so that it is an excellent resource to learn how to solve virtual infrastructure trouble.

I was honored that Mike Laverick agreed to be the tech editor for the course.

Go to the vSphere Troubleshooting course product page where you can see the entire course outline.

Check out the following sample videos from the new training, and then be sure to get a full copy for your own library.

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I was inspired to try a full install of the Androidx86 OS in a VMware Workstation VM after Eric Sloof created a video of the Androidx86 LiveCD running in a vSphere VM. I’ve documented building the VM and configuring it to run in this post. I also list some navigation tips for getting around inside Androidx86. Finally check out my video of the working VM.

Since most are probably wondering I’ll mention this now, once the VM is connected to the Internet you can download a very limited selection of Apps, but I had sporadic success with the various Apps I tried. For the few that I did get to install, I wasn’t able to get all of them running. So, use an Androidx86 VM as a way to get a feel for what an Android device is like. Maybe it will help you make a decision about buying a Tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Browsing the web worked great. I do not test email.

Download, Create New VM, and Install Androidx86 from .ISO

Download the latest revision of the Androidx86 .ISO here:

http://www.androidx86.org/downloads.html

Build a new “typical” VMware Workstation VM (this should work just the same with the free VMware Player), and when you point the install wizard at the Androidx86 .iso the OS type FreeBSD is auto detected. I chose to install the operating system later as I did not want to invoke the auto download of the VMware Tools.

This choice forces you to manually specify FreeBSD from the next screen of the wizard.

I kept the default disk size of 8GB and to chose to store the virtual disk as a single file.

I customized the virtual hardware and did the following

• bumped the RAM to 512 mb. The Workstation wizard suggested 256 mb.
• deleted the floppy
• pointed the vCD/DVD at the Androidx86 .iso and made sure it was connected at power on.
• changed the vNIC to Bridged. NAT should work just fine too. (Note that additional networking changes need to be made later)

Once your ready, boot your new VM and choose to install to harddisk when prompted by the Android Installer.

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John Troyer recently rounded up 3/4 of the Infosmack family for episode 122 of his VMTN Communities Roundtable Podcast.

Join Greg Knieriemen, Rick Vanover and I as we reminisce about podcasts past from 2010, and then make some virtualization and cloud predictions for 2011. As always, John’s show is live, so many others join in the fun.

Listen to the episode in the embedded player here, or go to the Talkshoe page to get this great episode.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-12-20/

A post title like that got you attention, didn’t it?

Happy Holidays to all!

Veeam products can be installed on the same virtual machine allowing administrators to easily create a cost effective and valuable solution for documenting, managing, and maintaining ESX datacenters. With the recent announcement of free Veeam NFRs for VCPs, VCDXs, vExperts, and VCIs, many will be looking to build VMs to explore Veeam products. This post serves as a high level guide for combining the free versions of Veeam Reporter, Veeam Monitor, and Veeam Business View to create a single “Veeam ONE” Monitor Plus VM.

BTW, you might have missed that Veeam’s products were voted the top 3 free tools for vSphere by the virtualization community?! Check out vmwarevideos.com and vChat – Episode 11 – Results of the Best Free vSphere Tools Survey & Answering Viewer Questions.

Although I am using the free versions in this post, the process is the same for the licensed versions as well. See a comparison of free versus licensed features here for Reporter and here for Monitor.

FYI, all Veeam products can be downloaded in a fully functioning 30 day trial mode.  I highly recommend admins utilize them for a test drive this way, and when the trial expires the products will default to the free versions.

For larger environments, installing Monitor and Reporter in their own separate VMs may result in better performance. All products can share the same remote SQL or SQLExpress instance for their databases, however. Refer to each product’s current Release Notes and User Guide for planning, installation, and configuration information.

Disclaimer: I am a Senior Systems Engineer for Veeam Software.

Recommended Veeam ONE server requirements (for Proof of Concepts, SMBs, and some MID size datacenters)

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A common request since I started at Veeam Software has been for the ability to plug in Veeam’s products to vCenter and/or the vSphere Client. After all, VMware admins are used to the idea that they can go to the same interface to accomplish almost everything. VMware’s strategy to make their client expandable via a plugin architecture is brilliant, and many Technology Partners have introduced vCenter and vSphere Client plugins for their products as a result.  Veeam, for whatever reasons (maybe because the developers have been focused on new game changing features!), has not created plugins to date. However, since most of the Veeam Software suite has web pages for management interfaces already, it is very simple to create plugins yourself!

This post  provides unofficial, unsupported template files and a basic “how to” instructions for using vSphere Client plugins for the following Veeam web management interfaces:

• Veeam Backup and Replication Enterprise Management Console
• Veeam Reporter Dashboard
• Veeam Business View Dashboard

These plugins should work whether you are using any Veeam product versions or whether you have the paid or free versions of Monitor and Reporter. Bottom line: If you can make the Veeam web pages work correctly in a standard web browser on the system where you have the vSphere Client installed, then the plugins should work too.

You may have noticed that Veeam Monitor has been left out of the plugin list. That is because Monitor does not have a web interface. However, be sure to read the end of this post to see how you can use the vSphere Client from within Veeam Monitor. It’s “the photo negative” of what VMware admins are used to, but it accomplishes the same benefits.

Also understand, you can use the templates as a base for whatever web interface you want to pull into the vSphere Client.  This is not just applicable to Veeam products.

I want to credit Carter Shanklin, Eric Sloof, and Ricky El-Qasem for originally providing information about how to create web based plugins several years ago. El-Qasem even released a handy .NET tool for auto creating and registering plugins with vCenter which involved making the resulting .xml files centrally available via Tomcat from the vCenter Server. I followed the trail of crumbs from these guys.

Download the Veeam vSphere Plugin templates

Veeam vSphere Plugin Templates (560)

The rest of this post contains basic instructions, some screen shots, and a tip for making Reporter work correctly in the vSphere Client. Finally, integrating Veeam Monitor and the vSphere Client is covered briefly.

How To Modify the Templates and Instructions for Using the Plugins

The following is the contents of the README file included in the .zip

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VIRTUMANIA Episode 26 features Patrick O’Rourke and Jeff Woolsey from Microsoft!. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 26 – Exploring What’s Next With Microsoft Virtualization Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com host special guests Patrick O’Rourke (@virtualization) and Jeff Woolsey. Both Patrick and Jeff contribute posts to the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog at blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization. This week’s episode focuses on Microsoft’s latest virtualization features with a lot of talk about the new 2010 products. Topics include managing multi-vendor hypervisor environments with System Center, the latest information about stateless applications with Server App-V, cloud computing with Azure and BPOS, tier 1 applications on Hyper-V, and finally backing up VMs, physical servers, applications and DR site fail-over with DPM. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.