Eric Sloof

I’m delivering a VMware View training this week. When I reached the “Replicate Server” chapter we had to do a lab with the “Hercules virtual appliance”. The goal of the lab is building a multiple “Connection Server” environment and let the appliance do the load-balancing.  Although the “Hercules virtual appliance” is well documented and even has a VA page at the VMware website, I had a hard time to get it working. The virtual appliances available on http://istanbul.sourceforge.net/ either have a IDE disk or an old SCSI disk which isn’t compatible with ESX 3.5. I converted the “Hercules virtual appliance” to the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), and it’s available for download at the following address :

http://www.ntpro.nl/software/Hercules-SCSI-ESX3.zip

Here’s the way to set it up:

• Import the OVF virtual aplience.
• Power-on the Hercules VM.
• Open a console. Login as a user-ID of "root" with a password of "root".
• Enter the following command at the command line:
• pen 443 10.168.100.3:443 10.168.100.4:443

The format of the command is: pen <port-number> <first-server:port> <second-server:port>. There is a space between the first port number and the first server IP. There is a second space between the first server's 443 port and the second server's IP.

It runs on a Linux OS built from scratch to have a minimal footprint. It can run with just 32MB memory for normal usage and you can increase memory requirements for the appliance as you need. It also has a built in web server, SSH server, DHCP client. You can administer the machine remotely via SSH. It is setup for DHCP so the networking is setup automatically. A webserver is installed to both serve up this page and to help you test different configurations. The load balancing functionality is provided by the excellent open source project pen.
The amount of disk space used by it is 4.0 MB. The virtual disk will expand as needed and has a maximum size of 100 MB. This is the minimum size of a virtual disk that can be created in VMware Workstation.  The  compressed/zipped image of this appliance is 2.5 MB !

Did you ever wonder when a particular version of VMware ESX was launched? Well Harold Schoofs, my former colleague at the Kadaster in Apeldoorn has searched through history and created a time-line containing al launched ESX versions. The timeline ends at December 2008, maybe we can add a new version to this timeline next week.

Tripwire is proud to announce OpsCheck- a free tool to ensure vMotion operation. OpsCheck analyzes configurations of ESX servers and their VMs, many of which are often easily overlooked. If OpsCheck discovers any configuration discrepancies that affect VMotion, Tripwire's vMotion Troubleshooting Guidance provides tactical, specific recommendations for your environment, allowing you to immediately bring your system into a "VMotionable" state.

The new module supports the following platforms: Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, Virtual Iron and VMware ESX. Here is what’s unique about the module:

It provides advanced modeling and side-by-side comparison for a broad set virtualization platforms. Unlike other solutions that focus only on servers and platforms, the module takes into account both technical and commercial dimensions of each solution:

• Hardware, Servers – new, redeployed and upgraded. 
• Storage arrays and HBAs since these components dramatically affect the TCO.
• Software licensing costs for virtualization platforms and management software.
• Services (e.g. training, consulting).

The module leverages a rich repository with servers, blade enclosures, storage arrays, HBAs and virtualization software maintained and constantly updated by Lanamark. Based on conversations with Lanamark's customers and partners, it became clear that calculating the number of servers required and balancing workloads across these servers is not enough. What is needed is the ability to design and compare end-to-end server virtualization solutions across virtualization platforms with hardware, software and service components.

The VMworld Europe 2009 Vimeo Group provides a great way to swap your VMworld movies. This VMworld Vimeo Group is much the same as other Groups you can join online. Vimeo Groups are places where people of similar interests meet to exchange videos. At this Vimeo Group, you also can follow other VMworld Europe 2009 fanatics who are visiting Cannes.

http://vimeo.com/groups/vmworldeurope

 

VMware vCenter Converter lets users quickly, easily and affordably convert Microsoft Windows and Linux based physical machines and third party image formats to VMware virtual machines. It also converts virtual machines between VMware platforms.

VMware vCenter Converter is available in two different versions – Standalone Converter and Converter integrated with VMware vCenter Server.

This VMotion error was new to me, it happened during my DSA training this afternoon.

Troubleshooting Migration compatibility error: Currently connected network interface uses network, which is configured for different offload or security policies.

When performing a VMotion migration the following compatibility error is displayed:

• Unable to migrate from <source server> to <destination server>: Currently connected network interface '<device>' uses network '<network>', which is configured for different offload or security policies on the destination host than on the source host.

This unable to migrate error indicates that the source and destination servers have different security or offload settings configured on the virtual switch or portgroup that the virtual machine is connected to. The security and offload settings between virtual switches need to be the same to ensure that the functionality of the virtual machines is not affected upon migration. 
 

As an important add-on to vCenter Server, vCenter Server Heartbeat addresses a key enterprise customer requirement – ensuring high availability for vCenter Server itself, monitoring and protecting VMware’s management platform against network, hardware, OS or application issues. By fully protecting the infrastructure, it helps eliminate barriers to deployment of Tier 1 critical applications on VMware by providing high availability for the entire infrastructure. Via Duncan Epping at Yellow-Bricks.com.

My prior WhiteBox suddenly didn’t start-up anymore; the guys over at Alternate did some tests and concluded; the motherboard was broken. They didn’t give me a replacement, but will send the barebone to Asus. I should expect it to return in six weeks! Yes, I definitely made some noise over there and finally got discount on the new model, the Asus V3-P5G45. I also swapped the DVD-DMA for a DVD-SATA, and placed all the other parts into the new box. I pressed the power button with crossed fingers, and the Asus V3-P5G45 works like a charm. I only had to answer some relocation questions when I tried to start the VM’s. So here’s my new shopping list:

• Bare bone Asus V3-P5G45
• Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33 GHz
• Memory GeiL 8 GB DDR2-667 Kit
• Storage  Samsung HD501LJ 500GB Internal SATA 16MB 7200RPM Hard Drive
• Network Intel® PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter
• DVD-ROM Samsung SA-D163

Speakers: Jeroen van de Kamp, CTO at Login Consultants and Ruben Spruijt, Solutions Architect at PQR.

More and more people ask advice about the hardware virtualization solutions, particularly in a Terminal Server and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure context. PQR and Login Consultants have decided to compare the various hardware virtualization platforms in relationship to the end-user performance experience using the freely available benchmarking methodology of Login Consultants, VSI. Jointly they will deliver the outcome of the investigations and benchmarks to a broader audience, as part of the joint venture “Project: Virtual Reality Check (VRC)”. Running Terminal Server workloads on virtual hardware is generally not recommended, but recent developments give grounds to a re-evaluation of current best practices. By bench¬marking these and the Virtual Desktop workloads on physical servers and various virtualization solutions, Ruben Spruijt and Jeroen van de Kamp will give you valuable and most importantly unbiased experience and insights.

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