Tools

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

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

Continue reading "Announcing Splunk for VMware" »

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.

Akorri announced the availability of the BalancePoint Plug-In for VMware vCenter - a new capability sold with its BalancePoint software solution that allows VMware administrators to use BalancePoint directly from their VMware vCenter console, simplifying the management of virtualized environments.