NTPRO.NL - Eric Sloof

esXpress, created a web based VMDK file descriptor file creator.

Ulli Hankeln over at sanbarrow.com also known as continuum created a nice little tool which recreates a VMDK descriptor file. When you end up with only a flat.vmdk this is a real nice tool. Ulli rulez .

Occasionally ESX VMs crash in such a way that the descriptor file of a vmdk gets lost.
If you ever need to recreate a descriptor from scratch but still have the *-flat.vmdk this little tool may come handy. Tool asks for a flat-file - like used by ESX 3 and Workstation. It ignores the CID and uses a bogus one. Output is named "newdescriptor.vmdk" - rename as needed.
Doesn't work for disks smaller than 1 Gb at the moment.

Oh dear I lost my descriptor

Via ICT-Freak

This book covers the ESX 3.0.x through ESX 3.5.x releases that are the focus of the VCP test. Troubleshooting tips appear throughout the book, making it a useful resource in the virtualized datacenter. The first & only alternative to expensive courses, this highly accessible work provides motivated individuals with a selfaced method to prepare for the VMware Certified Professional exam. Geared toward professionals with basic technical skills, the book focuses on that information which is specific to the exam. It covers the basics needed to install ESX and VirtualCenter, and create virtual machines. It also delves into more advanced material such as how to configure networks, assign rights, and create resource pools, and optimize resource utilization. Questions at the end of each chapter review key topics. Two sample tests provide a gauge of one's readiness.

Patrick Schneider created a PowerShell script which can be used to call the VMware Remote Console (VMware VMRC). If you have any questions for Patrick, you can reach him at s.patrick1982(nospam)@gmail.com

cmdlet New-VMRC {
            Param(
                        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true,HelpMessage="VMs to process")]
                        [String]
                        $vms
            )
           
            $vm = Get-VM $vms
            if($vm.Count) {
                        Write-Output "Define only one host!"
                        break
            } else {
                        if ($vm.id) {
                                   $gvm = Get-View $vm.id
                        } else {
                                   Write-Output "No VM found"
                                   break
                        }
                        C:\Program Files\VMwareVMRC\vmware-vmrc.exe -h $vm.Host -m $gvm.Config.Files.VmPathName
            }
}

The new VMware Remote Console (VMware VMRC) allows accessing the virtual machine consoles independent of the Web-based management interface. In order to access VMware virtual machines, install VMware the VMRC application from VMware Virtual Server web interface or download VMware VMRC application for Windows from the Minicom web site.

ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!

Some of the adventures ScummVM supports include Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; Wyrmkeep's Inherit the Earth; Coktel Vision's Gobliiins; Westwood Studios' The Legend of Kyrandia and games based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more. You can find a thorough list with details on which games are supported and how well on the compatibility page. ScummVM is continually improving, so check back often.

Among the systems on which you can play those games are Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, PocketPC, PalmOS, AmigaOS, BeOS, OS/2, PSP, PS2, SymbianOS and many more...

Splunk easily crosses tiers throughout the entire virtual stack - both inside and outside of the VM - to give you a complete picture of availability. Splunk indexes all IT data across every tier - the physical servers, hypervisor, VMs, and deployed applications, capturing and persisting 100% of your data in real-time. Powerful search and navigation lets you trace performance problems and errors across components. Visibility across VMs highlights resource competition issues. Flexible alerting and reporting give you continuous visibility and monitoring of changing virtual environments. Whether you're testing a new virtualization rollout or managing an existing infrastructure, Splunk puts you back in control.

Why Splunk for Server Virtualization Management?

• Get a comprehensive view of 100% of your IT data - server, hypervisor, VM, guest OS, applications, network, and more.
• Increase visibility even with the greater complexity of virtualized environments.
• Optimize your initial planning and ongoing use of virtualization.
• Retain data from transient guests for root cause analysis and compliance.

Splunk's unique approach of indexing the entire IT infrastructure, both legacy and virtualized, enables end-end diagnostics and tuning to increase ROI. This is particularly powerful in today's datacenter that continue to carry the baggage of legacy non-virtualization applications while making a rapid transition to virtualization.

- Shaw Chuang, former Director of R&D for VMware ESX

Nexenta Storage Appliance (NexentaStor) is a software based network attached storage (NAS) appliance that meets the current feature sets of the best of breed NAS, including unlimited snapshots, snapshot mirroring (replication), NFS v3/v4, CIFS, and easy management of extremely large storage pools. NexentaStor delivers richly featured software in the form of a software appliance that is trivial to install and easy to manage.

NexentaStor Developer Edition: VMware Image will run unmodified on all VMware’s hosted products, including VMware Player, VMware Workstation and VMware Server for Windows and Linux, VMware Fusion for Mac.

Recommended environment:

• VMware ESX 3.x/Workstation 6.x/VMware Server 1.0.4+
• Linux/Windows/MacOSX host operating system
• 1GB of memory (512MB minimum)
• 10GB of free disk space (4GB minimum)

Getting started with NexentaStor Virtual Appliance is very easy – essentially it boils down to unzipping the downloaded image and running it in your preferred VMware environment.

Running ESX.Next under Workstation 6.5.1 is supported. A few weeks ago I filled a support request, because I couldn’t start a virtual machine on ESX.Next while ESX.Next was hosted on Workstation 6.5.0. ESX.Next kept crashing at 95% during the VM Power On.  An anonymous source just brought me up-to-date and whispered the following:

The WS 6.5 bug you noted earlier has been fixed. You will be able to run nested VMs under ESX.Next under WS 6.5.1, subject to the usual caveats (hardware virtualization has to be supported on your host for running the outer guest, and the inner guest is restricted to 32-bits).

What's New:

With this release of VMware Workstation, the following new features and support have been added:

Japanese localization — A localized version of Workstation is now available in Japanese for Windows hosts.

Smart card support for Linux guests — Smart cards are now experimentally supported with Linux guests.

Unity mode on Linux guests — Although support for Unity mode on Linux guests is still experimental, repainting of application windows is much improved.

3-D graphics — Additional improvements have been made to improve 3-D performance on Windows XP guests.

This morning I started my browser to check my Gmail inbox but something was different. I was staring at a beautiful mountain. Annie Chen, Gmail engineer reports:

Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There's even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers -- it's not exactly practical, but it's great for testing out your geek cred. We've also done a minor facelift to Gmail's default look to make it crisper and cleaner -- you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

My personal favourite is the terminal theme.