Virtualization

VMWare Server

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We just bought our first (of many I hope) license of VMware GSX server. We also just picked up a nice Dell Poweredge 2650 off of eBay to run it on. We are plugging it into an existing SCSI disk array we had. We are bumping the ram to 4gig and with the existing dual Xeon 2.8ghz processors should make this a nice little server. VMware suggests 3-5 virtual machines per physical box depending on its configuration. I figure I can get more if I have several virtual machines that need to be always up, but are not always worked on. I already have a list of a bunch of projects that can be virtual machines, vs buying a physical server. We already built a Biztalk 2004 Server and SQL server to go along with it in GSX virtual machines using the demo copy we had. Once this new server is built we will port them over. Since it is just copying a few files it is trivial to move the VM’s to a new server.

I am also itching to try out the beta of VMware Workstation 5.0. I downloaded the beta but have not had a chance to try it yet. it looks like there is a bunch of new features. The more I use this software, the more I think it is the wave of the future for an environment such as ours. I can cut down the number of servers I have and save money doing so. Allot of my dev and QA servers are old, and will slowly need replacing. Putting them into VM’s makes sense. I see a ton of other applications for the software. This is our first foray into VM’s for server use. If successful I hope to do more with it.

Virtual Machines

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I launched my first “live” virtual machine today. it is not really live. It is actually a dev box, but users other than my team are going to use it. To me that makes this our first official VM. It has been mostly ready for a few days but I wanted to tweak it a bit before I turned it over to the users.

I am waiting on purchase approval on a more powerful box to put VMware on. For now we are fine, but if we want to put several VM’s on a server we will need more power.

Pimped Out Desktop

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Between meetings, cleaning my office, and real work I tricked out an old desktop today. Jayson and I seem to accumulate computers at work. He has 1 for normal use, it is a tricked out P4 so he can run multiple VMWares. He then has a laptop, and I think a desktop is collecting dust under his desk as a Novel 6.x server for testing.

My computers in the office are my laptop, a desktop that is nicely configured for VMWare workstation and burning, etc. I also have an older box setup to run Suse 9.1. I had another machine that I customized for testing, but it finally pissed me off enough today that I needed to replace it. The hard drive is going on it. So I replaced it. then the IDE controller got all flaky on me, so I gave up on it. I took an older (almost 3 years) P-4 1.5 GHZ that for some reason had a gig of ram in it and but a newer burner in it. Cleaned it up, and now it is a Windows 2003 server I am going to use as a test box. We hate that we have desktops proliferating in our office, so I threw on a test copy of VMWare GSX server on this new “super desktop” I built. I am proving that this server software is worth the money to go buy and put on a nice dual processor machine.

Right now I have several tests of software I need to run. First up is Ipswitch’s Collaboration Suite of software. It looks like their Imail mail server on group ware steroids. My company wants exchange like functionality, but they don’t like the cost in software, hardware, and manpower needed to get exchange. This product looks like it will do what most people want to do, and that is share calendars, contact lists, etc right in outlook.

Immediately we need to test and then deploy Intuit’s Track It. We are planning on using it as our support and helpdesk ticketing system. The software arrives tomorrow, and we need it deployed (if we decide to go with it) by January 1, 2005 in order to support some changes we are planning in our support structure for the new year.

Another focus I had today was getting the specs needed to setup another VPN tunnel to a partner of ours in India. That was a fun conference call.

Then I had a bunch of meetings about some data migrations we are planning, and a failover drill that is 4 months in the making.

Gus and I also went over a power point I am making for a big presentation next week. He had some changes and I created a few new slides. Have I mentioned I don’t like power point? The funny thing is when I first started out on the helpdesk all those years ago, I actually was very good at power points. I just haven’t done them in a while.

All around a very busy day. I didn’t leave work until 7:30PM tonight. I need to make dinner now. I just felt like writing when I got home. Some days (most days) I don’t feel like writing right away after I sat at a computer all day, but today I did. Go figure?

Classic VMWare

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I have babbled on about VMWare for the past 2 days. I know, I have. Well I will probibly continue to do so for the forseable future. Why? Because that software is so cool. But in the short term I will stop my raving. I have finished installing Windows 3.11 for workgroups, Windows 95, 98, & ME in virtual machines. All I really need to create is a Windows 98SE vmware. Probibly no real reason to do it, but I will probibly do it anyway.

All the virtual machines work great. The only one with an issue is Win 3.11. I am not sure if the network card is properly configured. Since it didn’t come with an option to install a TCP/IP stack I will need to find that somewhere and give the network on that VM a try. it came with Netbeu, and IPX, but no TCP/IP.

Now that all that work is done I need to offload the virtual machines off my laptop since I only have 2 gigs of space left on it now.

This entry was written while listening to 100 Years from the album The Battle For Everything by Five for Fighting

Really Old School Virtual Machines

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After getting Win 98, and 95 installed I gave a crack at Windows 3.11. First off OS’s built when the 386 or 486 were common install on a P-4 with 750megs of ram (even if it is in a virtual machine) rather fast. I got DOS 6.22 installed in the Virtual Machine in 5 minutes. It took longer to get the virtual disk to be formated with FAT16 and the install files onto the disk than it did to run the install. Windows 3.11, actually Windows for Workgroups 3.11 took like 15 minutes total to install. Probably less. I didn’t test the network settings, but I was glad that the thing installed. I have saved all the configurations. I have no real use for them, except for having them and making sure they actually work. You never know when you will need and old OS.

It turns out the problems I had installing all of the above mentioned OS’s was not me, but my AMD Atholon 1500+ desktop. Some piece of hardware is crashing windows, and vmware. it was doing similar things a few months ago when I was trying to install win95. Now I think it is the machine. When it happened before I thought it was what I was trying to do. I got everything to work just fine on my Thinkpad T40.

Old School Virtual Machines

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I am in the process of installing into VMWare Workstation 4.0. Win 98 went ok, so I am working my way backward now. I am building up to trying Windows 3.1. I got the install files for 3.1 off MSDN a few years ago but haven’t been able to get it to install. I am on a role so far with older OS’s, so maybe I will get 3.1 to install ok. I need to track down an old version of DOS 6.x or 5.x also.

I wanted to get an original Windows 95 install, but the only legal disk I have of original windows 95 is an upgrade. So I am sticking to the Windows 95b flavor since I have a ton of licenses for it that I have not used in nearly 8 years.

I can safely say that Windows 95 takes less than 30 minutes to install on a new computer. I was surprised how quick the install took.

What does suck is having an OS (Windows 95) that doesn’t support network devices out of the box. It was easier today to install a newtwork driver on 95 than I remember it. But it was still a pain in the ass. From what I have dealt with on 95, I am not 100% sure I will want to get Win 3.1 up and running.

Windows 98 Basic

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Did you know you can’t even access windows update with the out of the box install of Windows 98? I am downloading the latest IE that you can get. Hopefully I can patch this thing up to make it almost usable.

Not sure what I am going to do when I install Windows 95 and it doesn’t even have IE 4 on it. I think it comes with IE 2.0, but that browser sucked even then. Who knows if I will even be able to get something newer installed. All this classic OS installing brings me back. Not getting that many good memories about dealing with this OS. I am so glad I am writing this from my Mac running OS 10.3 you can’t imagine. To think I was actually excited when Windows 98 first came out. I guess it was “good” back then, but look at what we have now, it was a joke. To be honest by the time 98 came out I was using Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. The only problem was almost no hardware peripherals worked with it, so I would always duel boot with the latest 9x flavor until Windows 2000 came out.

Windows 98 As a VMWare Virtual Machine

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I solved my boot disk issue that stopped me from installing Windows 98 into VMWare. A few months back I tried to put Win 95, and Win 98 into Virtual Machines using EMC’s VMWare. I had to play around with the boot options but I finally got one of my old Windows 98 CD’s to work. I took me a while to find what key code worked with the CD I had decided to use, but everything looks ok now.

Once this is build I plan on taking on Windows 95, and Windows 98 Second Edition. I want a basic Virtual Machine image of all the windows OS’s. You never know they will come in handy. I already used a Windows NT 4 Workstation image I made at work for troubleshooting a problem we were having.

On another Virtual Machine note I convinced Gus to evaluate the cost benefit of having a VMWare server (probably GSX Server) instead of buying hardware for some of the more obscure QA tests we run. It fits into our plan to emulate our production environment as much as possible, but why would we buy hardware for an ftp server in QA if we only use it once every few weeks. If we just built a virtual machine and used it when necessary we could save a bunch on hardware.

Product Recovery

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I finally gave into the desire. I just got finished backing up all (i hope) of my data on my IBM Thinkpad T-40. As I write this I am running the IBM rapid restore function. Basically a hidden partition on the hard drive has all the settings and software that the machine had when it was bought. I am just returning it to the factory fresh setup.

I do this every once and a while. I may have done it once or twice before on this particular machine and I have only had it for 11 months. When I had more free time I would do this almost every 2-3 months. Now I don’t have the time, so it is a big pain in the ass to do, but it does wonders for the performance of the box.

I was having issues with the machine freezing up and then begin to work again after 30 seconds or so. I also realized how much crap I had accumulated on the machine. Now I am going to put Windows XP (pro), all the security patches and a few other pieces of software. Everything else I need I will put in a VMWare Virtual Machine. I will put VMWare workstation 4.5 on my machine. I just downloaded the free upgrade from 4.0. I want to keep this laptop as clean as possible. I know deep down that it will never happen in reality, but at least I will try.

I will spend the next week installing the main pieces of software I will need. I will spend the next month after that installing other miscellaneous pieces of software until I am finally happy with the setup.

Whenever I do this I always hope I remembered to back everything up. I almost always forget something. Sometimes important stuff, but usually something stupid, that will just take me time to get again, or I say goodbye forever to it.

Work Computers

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I have several computers at my desk at work. Scary as it may seem, I need them all. Ever few weeks I try to get rid of one or more, but only end up cleaning up wires.

Currently I have a computer for running VMWare sessions. It needs to have allot of ram and hard drive space, and I like to keep very little on the OS besides the VMWare.

I then have a machine that has 2 CD-ROM’s in it so I can burn disks. That machine also doubles as a box on a special V-LAN so I can test our softphone and other voice applications. That network is the only one where I can do that.

Then I have an old desktop that I run Linux on. Currently I have Suse 9.0 on that machine.

I have a spot for my powerbook. I have a 4 port KVM and all 3 other machines are on it, so I put the powerbook on the last port. I am finding recently that I am using it as my primary machine for email and office application work. Go Apple.

On another monitor setup I have my company Thinkpad T-40. This is my primary machine. It has all the day to day programs I use, and all my files on it.

At last count that was 5 machines. I have also been known to put a server or other desktops by my desk and hook them up to a kvn so I can build them or work on them. It gets really load in my office when I do that. Add to that Keith’s 2-3 machines and we have allot of heat also during the summer.

The crazy thing is we probably need space for more computers, not less. We are always tinkering with something new. And that is why I like what I do!!!