Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

4sysops is telling its experiences about poor VMware Server 2's web console BTW: It is still a Beta though, and such input can be given to the VMware team as well so they can improve on it: If you are regular reader of my blog, then you’d already know which of the new features really turned me off. Yes, it is VMware Infrastructure Web Access, the new Web-based management interface for VMware Server 2. I thought, Virtual Server’s admin console is the worst imaginable user interface, but VMware managed somehow to beat Microsoft here. At least, Microsoft recognized now that a Web browser is not really made for managing back-end apps. So they decided to give Hyper-V a real user interface. VMware Server 2 ConsoleSo, what is so bad about this new user interface of VMware Server 2? First of all, it is sluggish as all web-interfaces (some of Google’s tools excluded). Second, do you really want to logon to a server using a console that is embedded in a browser window? VMware Server 1 has t...

EW reportign: On Nov. 13, VMware will offer the beta version of its VMware Server 2, a free virtualization tool that allows users to partition a single physical server into multiple virtual machines. The software works both within Microsoft Windows and Linux environments. VMware released the first version of its free software in February 2006, and the company estimates that more than 3 million copies of the software has been downloaded since then. The new beta is available for download Nov. 13 and will become generally available in the first half of 2008. The new version will offer new support for more operating systems, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.10. Unlike VMware products, such as the Virtual Infrastructure 3 suite that allows for bare-metal hardware virtualization, the free Server 2 beta runs on top of the operating system. There are also new management tools, including a Web-based management interface, said Ben Matheson, di...

This SMB product has to be taken more seriously than ever. I must also say that the HowToForge guys spend a huge amount of time in all the installation series. It has been very useful to me, especially when I cooked VAs. This HA/Failoverseries is part of the Linux HA project . Good job and also congrats for the new look! See that installation article here .

Check out the original article... Ubuntu 7.04 is available in desktop and server flavors. The server variant is solid, but, aside from its suitability as a platform for VMware Server, Feisty doesn't do much to rise above the pack of other free Linux server operating system options. As a desktop option, Ubuntu 7.04 is an excellent fit, and is worthy of consideration as a Windows replacement. Most ISVs do still target Windows exclusively, and even though the Linux-supporting alternatives are getting better all the time, this is still a troublesome issue for potential migrators. Once users become acquainted with the Linux applications they require, however, it's much easier to install and update these applications on Ubuntu than it is on Windows. eWeek article .

These results show that ESX Server not only achieves higher throughput than VMware Server for a single VMmark tile (6 workload VMs) but also exhibits better scalability when a second tile is added. This behavior is a natural consequence of the different virtualization approaches taken by the two products. VMware Server runs on top of a heavyweight, general-purpose host operating system, which manages the hardware resources. Read the article.

This is a maintenance release over 1.0.1. Resolved issues : Issues Resolved in VMware Server 1.0.2 This release fixes certain memory leaks in VMware Tools on Windows guests. The vm-support script, which collects log files and other system information, now collects the bootloader configuration file. This release includes improved support for Intel family F processors. This release includes new support for Intel Rockton processors. This release fixes a bug that, under rare conditions, caused a crash when many virtual machines were booting under a heavy load. This release includes prebuilt modules for VMware Tools for SuSE SLES 10. This release fixes a bug that sometimes caused an assertion failure when calling VixVM_Open on an unregistered virtual machine. Starting in this release, guest.commands.allowAnonRootGuestCommandsOnHost and guest.commands.allowAnonRootGuestCommands settings can no longer be included in the .vmx file. To affect all the virtual machines on the host, you c...

It really does not matter what or how you test,as long as you get started with it. And you never know, sometimes you might just need oen in production! and these are the real gains that I am talking about: 1. Being aware of your goals and technologies that will assist you in reaching there. 2. Willingness to act. Thats all you need sometimes. This blogger from Rochester College explains how he reached to that decision-making process: And for a while now we have been using VMware Workstation for simulation and testing purposes. But then one day a print server needed to be replaced and it felt like the right time to jump with both feet in the water and test the VMware Server product. The few benefits are tremendous factors in achieving efficiency and higher/faster success rate in server management and disaster recovery. I personally love the ease of management. Check out the rest .

Well you are not poor by having VMware Server, you just are not ready for the ESX Server yet. Well with that I mean that if you are seriously deploying VMware Server in your test, dev and staging environments (who isn't these days! My wife came to me telling me that her employer is also running VMware, I mean there are high schools experimenting with VMware. Some of them are even onto ESX Servers! Can't divulge anymore names, sorry)then the virtualization bug has bitten you. And its real sweet pain, the kind of pain you experience when you work out in a gym ;) So, are you a poor man by deploying VMware Server instead of ESX. No way! You just are gearing up for virtualization. That is all. You will obviously taste the fruits of ESX Server , the premium flagship product of VMware. But just get started with the VMware Server. Do it on Windows , do it on Linux. Just do it! So sometimes you will find it, other times it will find you. You two will meet at some crossroads, thats for ...

ZDnet guys report (and not totally unexpected actually, the move to push VMware Server into SMB that is). Like I said in my previous Strategy Article about fighting the Low-Cost Rivals, the strategy must revolve around something more concrete than just plain fending off the rivals. And a move to the SMB market is indeed the most logical one. The bundle from VMware includes VirtualCenter for VMware Server and support for $1,500. VMware Server is available for free and anyone can download it. VMware's SMB bundle will enable companies to monitor virtual machines and setup alerts for computing thresholds, provision servers and cut hardware costs. Read the rest. PS: Coming back to another news article and my take on it: View 1: "That's the key. ESX is a big nut to swallow for small businesses," said Marc Mangus, vice president of practice development at MTM Technologies, a Houston-based solution provider. "This is something new for VMWare outside their traditional s...

Besides reporting all the news around the world, I think and strongly believe that crucial decision making takes place at forum level as well. This discussion is about choices between VMware Server and ESX and also the issue of Network Card during multiple conversions with the VMware Converter. .....we use VMWare's P2V converter (for the reason that Kevin mentioned Smiley ) Once, when a physical server broke and wouldn't boot, we created a new VM and restored a backup to it. Suprisingly to us it worked (though I wouldn't recommend that approach for normal use). Another little 'gotcha' when using VMware converter is that when booting it up on some servers the nic is set to half-duplex...... See for yourself and discuss your experiences

Backup is one of the most frustrating, boring (thus allowing the sysadmins to ignore the importance of it) and very cumbersome issue. How many times you have had to encounter the situation: Stuff crashes in test, development and even production and you are looking at the sysadmin looking back at you like "what dýa want from me!?!" Well I have had enough experiences in the past of all kinds of scenario where some production environments were not even backed up! Well it might sound like "Geez dude, where were you employed, Elbonia?" No sir, this happens all over the place. Taneja ( a respected storage man) too has somethings to say about VCB... "Time-consuming and labor-intensive backup and recovery processes have frustrated customers for years," says Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at the Taneja Group. "VMware Consolidated Backup eliminates the backup load from production servers while enabling faster recovery of entire virtual machines....

As a reminder, if you search google , my articles will come up front. But many users seem to miss out on the Linux (RHEL/CentOS 4.x) articles. Please click here for the whole article series. or Google me! Installation ( Windows , Linux , Will continue for Solaris etc) Administration and Performance Multi-part series All these series have been tested on VMware 4.x through 6.x Workstation, VMware Server 1.x, GSX Server and ESX 2.5 and ESX 3.x Servers.

And this could be an extremely ridiculously cheaper option. These Gurock guys just found that out. But based on my observations and tests, I suspect that such a server should easily handle all the common services like Subversion, E-Mail, File Server, Active Directory and web based applications for up to 10 users or more and therefore makes it a very economical solution for small ISVs. And besides the space and cost savings such virtual servers provide, it becomes ridiculous easy to backup entire servers just by copying or burning the virtual machine files. Now how can you argue with that.

I did interview the CEO last and was wondering how the guys were doing? I will be needing the Veeam software for training purposes should my client want to go for VMware Server instead of ESX. Although it'd be better if they make a wise decision and go for the ESX Server. In any case we will be using the simplicity of Veeam with the datacenter capabilities of openQRM . Maybe I'll just ping the CEO and check up on him.

If this post about a hacker finding the free VMware Server is free in 2007 doesn't move you, then you are not living on this planet ;-) Today I found out that VMWare server is now free for download. Their major upsell is service contracts and add-ons, but if you don’t tend to use that or need it for testing and you run Windows but want to run other operating systems or perform potentially dangerous tests, this is the software for you. Moral of the story: It's never too late. But hey, doesn't this say something about the VMware Server's marketing? or the lack thereof? Check it out...

Go get it and start playing!

Installation A couple of nexts and you see it's really our GSX server. But only a better and a powerful virtualization platform to get all those crazy ideas of yours running! And after a couple of next clicks you're done! Things that I spotted on this quick look! It has dual CPU support, so if you have a hyperthreaded CPU laptop, your VM will also see dual CPU. I had to get rid of my both ESX and GSX client programs and my VM WorkStation. :-| It is in DEBUG mode, so be careful. I've reloaded my UBuntu in it and it gave me this warning. This piece of software could go anywhere, in my opinion its gonna be a community product , the idea behind is to beat Xen to the punch in its *open source* game and beat MS in it *can't get any cheaper than free, ain't it?* game! Attagirl, Greene. I like your style! :-)

Well coming Monday all the Virtualization experts, enthusiasts and novices will be waiting to apply for the beta trial and testing. So what's the deal? Well VMware is going to give away it's GSX type but even better in terms of VT (Virtualization technology which is called Vanderpool by Intel and Pacifica by AMD ) Quote from Register The VMware Server, for example, has a feature not even present in GSX Server. It supports Intel's VT technology for improving virtualization performance. In addition, it supports 64-bit guest operating systems - including Solaris x86 - and has support for virtual SMPs. So, it's not just some crippled, low-end product. So no cheap low end product this. Apparently the Register guys were very confident of the link to the server as well and have given all the folks to ping/poll this VMware Server url until Sunday midnight. Inquirer says it rather plainly "VMware gives it away". VMware says that it is out there to educate the folks ...