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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

ESX Server 3.5 /VirtualCenter 2.5 are now generally available!

Here is the release notes for the new versions of ESX and VirtualCenter.

Loads of new features!! 64Gig VMs, Storage VMotion, Update Manager and more!

Monday, November 12, 2007

iPhone...unleashed

Check this site out. If you have an iPhone and want to be able to install tons of new apps, this would be the place to go first. I like their quote at the top of the homepage.... "Our stuff is better than theirs"

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Apple to Allow Virtual Mac OS X Server Instances

I saw this over at Slashdot


"Enabling Leopard Server to run in a virtual machine may take some time, but we're working closely with Apple on it and will make it public as quickly as possible."


All I can say is WOW...
Go read the full story.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

What's New in the ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 Release

Go here to read the full release notes.
This release of VMware ESX Server offers the following improvements:

Support for selected servers based on the Intel Quad-Core Xeon 7300 series processors. Refer to the Systems Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x for information on which servers are supported.
Driver updates for the megaraid_sas, bnx2, cciss, and forcedeth drivers. Refer to the I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x for more information.
Patches Contained in ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1
ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 contains a roll-up of all ESX Server 3.0.2 patches released prior to this release date. See the VMware ESX Server 3.0.2 Patches for more information at http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches_302.html.

ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 installs ESX Server 3.0.2, all prior ESX Server 3.0.2 patches, and all of the following patches on the host:

ESX-1001902 - cciss Driver Upgrade, Support for 16+ Logical Drives
For more information, see KB 1001902.
ESX-1001903 - bnx2 Driver Upgrade, Support for Broadcom 5709 Based Network Card (NIC)
For more information, see KB 1001903.
ESX-1001904 - nVidia forcedeth Interrupt Storm Fix
For more information, see KB 1001904.
ESX-1001905 - Support for AMD CPU 64-bit Guest Operating Systems
For more information, see KB 1001905.
ESX-1001906 - megaraid_sas Driver Upgrade, Support for the LSI Logic 1078 HBA
For more information, see KB 1001906.
ESX-1001907 - SMBIOS Fix; PRE-enablement Support for AMD and Intel CPUs
For more information, see KB 1001907.
ESX-1001908 - e1000 Driver Upgrade, Support for New Network Interface Card (NIC)
For more information, see KB 1001908.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Welcome to the Collective

We are baaaaack!!!

A year ago I started working for a new company called Collective Technologies. A while later we merged with MTI and attempted to merge the two companies. Well... if you have not heard, MTI just closed up shopRead their press release here

To that end, Collective has reformed and we are back in biz!! W00T! This will be a much better deal and I am excited about the possibilities!

So fear not! I still plan on Virtualizing the world!

The new website is here so check it out!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

VMware: how to get more performance counters in VirtualCenter

VMware: how to get more performance counters in VirtualCenter

Found this and it is blogworthy enough to repost here.

Ever wondered why you could select gazillion performance counters in real-time, but only 1 or 2 counters when selecting Per Day/Per Week/Per Month/Per Year/Custom? Here is the solution: in the VIClient, go to VirtualCenter Management Configuration and then statistics. By default, the Statistics Collection Level is set to 1 (Basic Metrics).


Ideally, you could set the level to 3 or even 4. After a while, you will notice new performance counters available for selection in the chart options menu! These are great for doing memory sizing/ CPU sizing over a longer period of time. Great huh?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

ESX Server 3i presentation

Loads of good information on the next generation of hypervisor.

32 meg footprint which they say does not rely on a "general purpose OS" which means they have done away with Redhat I assume...
Multi-core processors
Extra memory banks for larger memory configs (at lower cost they say)
More NICs and PCI slots....
Diskless....

Check out page 11 where they talk about the Service Console...

And check out the patching method!!
ESX 3i Patching
Grab the pdf and see for yourself. It sounds exciting to me!

ESX Server 3i presentation

New features in ESX 3.5

From things I have found out on the net...
This is a good read.
They are FINALY bringing what they call "Vmotion Storage" where you can change the datastore that your VM uses without having to shut it down and do a migrate.. Yippie!

Also new HA features... Read the snippit from the above link.


Last he end with a “High Availability” section. Detailing the “record the execution” feature now available experimentally in Workstation 6 where real-time activity is recorded and logged to disk, and replayed at will for application debugging purposes. This new feature has been dubbed “Continious Available” for ESX. In this case you have a primary and second VM on two different ESX hosts. The primary VM on the primary ESX host is continuelly sending the record data to the other VM - not to a log file. The two VMs held in synch. In the demo, when Mendal clicked the start menu you saw this happen on two VMs on two different ESX hosts at the SAME time! See it like two VMs mirrored. Next the pulled power cords out the back of the primary ESX host - and the other VM just kept on running. It was an Exchange server with 100+ of emulated user activity… So this is great - what everyone has been asking HA to do, which currently does do. Sounds great huh? But just remember if the primary VM has a BSOD - so will its mirror…

Monday, October 1, 2007

Archives

Do not edit this page

Configure multiple VMware ESX vswitches at once

http://www.run-virtual.com/?page_id=160



So if you are managing 2 or 3 hosts this is no big deal... But if you have 12-100 hosts and they all need the same switch config..... This is hot..

Thank you google

Thanks to google.com I was able to recover a blog post I made right after I rebuilt the site, but right before the site got trashed and I restored from backup again..

The new install of wordpress must have had google.com scan and record this post immediately as it was only live for 5 min before I did the restore and the post was gone...

Thank you google... Remember me well when you rule the world.

SNMP, Dell OMSA and VMware

If you are using VMware ESX on Dell hardware you need to make sure you have the OpenManage agents installed on the host so that you can get hardware alerts. That said, I ran into some issues last week making six new ESX hosts talk back to the central OMSA server and I found this link. Because the internet changes I will post the important steps that you must take in order to have your ESX hosts show up as something other than “unknown” in the IT Assistant interface.

First, the esx firewall needs to be opened up to allow the various trafic.

esxcfg-firewall -o 1311,tcp,in,OpenManageRequest
esxcfg-firewall -o 162,udp,out,snmptrap
esxcfg-firewall -o 162,udp,in,snmptrap
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,tcp,in,snmp
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,tcp,out,snmp
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,udp,in,snmp
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,udp,out,snmp

Second, make your /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file look something like this:

### snmpd.conf configuration file

# sec.name source community
com2sec ita 192.168.1.50 ITACommunity

# group.name sec.model sec.name
group itagroup v1 ita
group itagroup v2c ita

# name incl/excl subtree mask(optional)
view all included .1

# group.name context sec.model sec.level prefix read write notif
access itagroup "" any noauth exact all all none

# Added for support of bcm5820 cards.
pass .1.3.6.1.4.1.4413.4.1 /usr/bin/ucd5820stat

# Send traps to the ita box.
trapsink 192.168.1.50 ITACommunity

# Allow Systems Management Data Engine SNMP to connect to using SMUX
smuxpeer .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1

# VMware MIB modules.
dlmod SNMPESX /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/libSNMPESX.so

Of course you will need to change the ip address to point to your OMSA server and you may want to change the community name as well.

Thanks to the folks over at VMTN for creating such a good resource!

Sunday, September 30, 2007

New Theme

I know, it sucks... But something is broken with the other one and I dont have time to fix it.... So rather than everyone not being able to see it, I changed it...

Huntsville AL





Huntsville AL

Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison


It is pretty up here

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Apache WM6!!!

Thanks to Helmi_C we are soon to have the joys of WM6 on our 6700 (aka Apache) phones!!!

Here is the link: Apache WM6

I dont know how he does it, but dude!!! WM6!!! [insert dance of joy]

Saturday, August 25, 2007

BeyondTV Version: 4.7.1 (Build 4376)

OK. For those of you who have known me for a while know that I dumped my Tivo on ebay about 4 years ago and went with BeyondTV from Snapstream.com.
They just put out a new beta (4.7.1 beta 2) and it has a new feature that I thought blogworthy...
There is a new rssfeed option built in as well as support for H.264 otherwise known as iTunes/iPod files. So now I can showsqueze my recordings directly to ipod format and still watch them from BeyondTV in the living room without having to keep them in regular mpeg format.

The other neat thing is that it supports podcasts... You can go to http://philhome.dyndns.org:8129/rssfeed.aspx from iTunes and see all the recordings I have and even download them to watch on your iPod...

Way cool! Keep up the good work SnapStream dudes!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Launch Virtual Machine Console:Error

If you have a problem opening a remote console on a VM running on ESX hosts at a remote site try this fix....

The Doc ID at kb.vmware.com is 749640
The current working URL is: found here.

Even if you are not NATing between the sites, try it anyway. It worked for me.
Short version:
Log on to the ESX Server host's service console as root.


Edit /etc/vmware/config. Add the following line:

vmauthd.server.alwaysProxy = "TRUE"


Issue the following command to restart xinetd:

service xinetd restart

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

VMware VCP Study Questions

VI3 Study Questions

Got this here:
Rob Scmidt's VMware VCP Study Questions

But I am also putting a copy on my own website in case Rob's site goes down.

Petri Forum member, Rob Schmidt has prepared some great study questions!

Believe it or not, there are over 310 questions in flashcard format!

And yes, Rob has been generous enough to offer all these questions to us for FREE.

If you have questions on VMware and Virtualization, please post them in the Petri VMware Virtualization Forum

If you like these questions please email Rob at rschmidt1300@yahoo.com.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Subtropical Storm ANDREA

WTH!!! It's MAY, we are not supposed to see these for a few more months.... I sure am glad John has that new generator. You know, the one 3rd world countries use to power small villages....

Subtropical Storm ANDREA

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

HUGE NEWS:first possibly Earthlike extrasolar planet found

Bad Astronomy Blog HUGE NEWS first possibly Earthlike extrasolar planet found

It sounds like it will take a while to get more information but it sure sounds exciting!

Phil Stacey

OMG I can not believe it!

I voted for him like 10 times.... That was the best song of the night and I just don't understand why he wasn't put through.


I hope he gets a record deal because I would buy it.

Monday, April 30, 2007

American Idol voting record3A true or the rebirth of war dialers

War dialers and American Idol
This is just too funny.

It's a little out dated as they are talking about someone who has been voted off, but sure saves a bunch of time if you want to vote 100000000 times for your favorite person...

Friday, April 27, 2007

Monday, April 23, 2007

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Hotdoll: The Sex Doll for Dogs - Gizmodo

Hotdoll: The Sex Doll for Dogs - Gizmodo

 Oh my goodness.  My side hurts from all the laughing.  Make sure to read the comments...

BlackBerry email still down, withdrawal setting in - Engadget

BlackBerry email still down, withdrawal setting in - Engadget

 Makes me glad I use Exchange ActiveSync over-the-air...

Virtrix - Virtual Tricks: VMware: PAM Password Aging in ESX 3.0.1

Virtrix - Virtual Tricks: VMware: PAM Password Aging in ESX 3.0.1

 You may be asking "Who cares" as you would want passwords to expire on regular users...

But not if you are using Active Directory authentication where you are using your domain ID to log into the box...  If your host username has the password expired then it won't pass your log-in attempt off to the DC... 

So, if you are using esxcfg-auth back to a DC for user authentication you should look at that article.

Monday, April 16, 2007

VMTN Discussion Forums Vmotion without vpxa agent...

VMTN20Discussion20Forums3A20Vmotion20without20vpxa20agent20-20...

 This is a good read.  The moral of the story is to never never do a hard nfs mount within the service console.  If the nfs server goes away it can cause serious heartburn for the ESX host....

snip..

I've resolved the issue and did not need to restart the host. The reason why VPXA died and did not exit was that the process was waiting for a stale NFS handle. For various reasons, the Service Console had an NFS mount of a remote server that had gone offline. As a consequence, several processes including VPXA had gone into "waiting for IO" state and were never woken up again.

Since NFS mounts are totally unkillable once they go stale, I had to configure another server with the IP of the old NFS server, and create an equivalent path which I shared out to my hung service console. After restarting the nfs server, the service discovered that my mounted share was stale, and allowed a umount.

Immediately after the umount, the defunct vpxa process disappeared. And after restarting hostd and vpxa, the system came straight back into Virtual Center.

So the moral of the story? Never _ever_ do a hard NFS mount inside your service console. You *will* regret it

Monday, April 9, 2007

Phone News - Sprint PRL 20227 Released

Phone News - Sprint PRL 20227 Released

For those of you in Pensacola know this.  Before this PRL my 6700 only had a 1x connection.  I updated to 20227 and now I have EvDo!!!  W00t!

SnapStream Blog » Blog Archive » Beyond TV 4.6.1 now shipping

SnapStream Blog » Blog Archive » Beyond TV 4.6.1 now shipping

 I just updated my BeyondTV box...  Seems to be running much faster now...  I like the divx streaming option which came in 4.6 but I missed it...

Sunday, February 11, 2007

New Windows Vista Feature

I just found something that I thought I would share.

 If you travel quite a bit you might find yourself wondering if your time is set for local time or the time at home..

In Vista, if you go to change date and time settings you can see that you can add another clock(time zone) to the display.  Now, I can click on the clock in the system tray and it shows two dials with (Pensacola) over the smaller one....

 

Verry cool!

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Goodbye Anna

I'm sure you have heard... but if not, just google "anna nicole smith".

RIP. We will miss you... and you and you...

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

VMware Converter 3.0 released

 

VMware Converter 3.0 released

VMware Converter 3.0 is an enterprise-class migration tool that enables you to convert multiple physical machines into virtual machines simultaneously and without any downtime. It comes in two editions: the free VMware Converter Starter for single conversions, and VMware Converter Enterprise for managing and automating large scale conversions. VMware Converter is the successor to P2V Assistant and VM Importer.

[VMware RSS Feed]

Thursday, January 11, 2007

My help.





My help.

Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.


Looks like I have a helper today. Tigger would not be moved...