While researching ESX architecture and performance, I came accross a VMWare KB article about the performance impact of shared interrupt lines.

It comes down to this: if you have two controllers on the same interrupt line, and one controller is managed by the console OS while the other is managed by the VMKernel, performance can be impacted. This could be a USB controller that is managed by the console OS and a storage controller that is managed by the VMKernel. Performance is impacted because of context switches between the console OS and the VMKernel.

So, the golden rule is: disable unused controllers such as USB controllers.

By the way: when you configure a controller (such as a storage controller) to be dedicated to virtual machines but shared with the console OS, it is the VMKernel that manages the device.

If you want to change the IP subnets of the host only, NAT or any other network, you can use vmnetcfg.exe.

vmnetcfg.exe can be found in the installation folder, usually C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player. VMWare Player needs to be restarted to use the new settings.

It's easy to create a vmdk and vmx file for use with VMWare Player. The VMWare Player is free but does not let you create virtual machines.

Steps:

1. Create VMDK with qemu-img.exe
2. Create VMX with VMXBuilder

1. Create the VMDK

Create a VMDK file with qemu-img.exe. This exe is part of QEMU, downloadable from http://free.oszoo.org/ftp/qemu/win32/release/QemuInstall-0.7.2.exe.

Command line:

• qemu-img create -f vmdk Windows2003Server.vmdk 10G

This creates a vmdk that can grow up to 10G. It will actually create a file of about 1,2MB.

2. Create the VMX

Create a .vmx file. To easily do that, use http://sanbarrow.com/vmxbuilder.html. You will find a batch file there that will create a vmx for you.

The batch file just asks questions. You can:

• set the virtual hardware type
• set the OS
• define SCSI and IDE disks: of course, refer here to the disk you made with qemu-img.exe
• define an ISO file to attach
• define network cards
• set advanced properties like virtual SMP, clustering support, etc....
• ....

Once you have the VMX, open it with VMWare player and you are done. You can now start installing an OS to the empty disk. It is easiest to just use an ISO file of the OS installation cd and configure the iso in VMXBuilder. When you start the VM, you will boot from the ISO!

I decided to play around with Xen a bit, just to see how Xen works as opposed to VMWare's virtualization products. Now you have to understand that I am not a Linux expert. In fact, my knowledge of Linux is limited, to say the least. Luckily, there are quite a lot of docs out there that describe what you have to do (as always).   more »

Quest have again created an interesting product: Availability Manager for Exchange.

It works by having an agent (or MOM) check the status of the server or store. When the server or store is down, mailboxes (empty ones) will be created on another server and mailbox information on the user's account will be updated to point to the new location. A user needs to stop and start Outlook to access the new mailbox. When service is restored, users can connect back to their original mailbox. The data from the temporary mailbox is copied to the original one.

Interesting, especially for users who always need to be able to send and receive mail (dispatchers etc...). It is all a bit more automatic than Microsoft's Dial tone recovery procedure which, essentially, provides the same basic feature.

Product Information

The article on the MS Exchange Blog clearly explains the changes such as the database limits, logical vs. physical size of the databases and so on.

 

This tool optimizes the size of virtual machine disks. It works with Virtual PC/Server and VMWare Workstation/GSX. The tool is run inside the VM. Windows guests only!

After running, you can compact the file with the tools provided by Microsoft and VMWare.

The difference before and after can be enormous. Check out the website and review with the links below. I will certainly give it a try!

http://www.invirtus.com

Review with screenshots

Microsoft's Exchange Disaster Recovery Analyzer (ExDRA 1.0) is a tool to inspect Exchange database files and log files. Basically, you point the tool to your Exchange server, you select (dismounted) databases and the tool starts to do its work.

Under the hood, the tools inspects the headers of database files and log files and uses that information to present you with a list of possible errors.

Of course, you can also get this information with eseutil.exe (normally in c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin).

To examine the header of a dismounted database, you can use eseutil /mh <path_to_edb_file>. From the header, you can read the shutdown state. During a disaster recovery, it will be in Dirty Shutdown mode. Under that line, you will see the logs that are required during the soft recovery process. From the header, you can also read the database signature, the log signatures and so on. But then you are on your own because you need to be able to interpret the data. That's always tricky!

So basically, ExDRA 1.0 gets the same information as eseutil.exe but automatically makes some conclusions depending on the output. It can certainly help during a disaster recovery because of the "level of stress" that can be involved.  

For an overview of how the tool works and some screenshots: Overview and screenshots

The security configuration wizard of Windows Server 2003 SP1 is an optional component to secure your server. With a simple wizard, you can apply security settings, IPSec policies, disable unnecessary services and block IP ports all based on the type of server.

The settings are saved in an XML file and can be easily deployed using the SCW user interface or scwcmd.exe (command-line). But what if you want to deploy these settings using group policies?

To deploy SCW settings using group policies, use the following command:

scwcmd transform /p:policyfile /g:GPOname

The above command transform the setting in the XML file (policyfile) to a GPO (display name:GPOname). The GPO will not be linked to any OU. Link the GPO with the GPO editor or GPMC.

Some settings will be lost because they are not supported in a GPO. This is the case for IIS security settings. These can be set with the SCW but not with a GPO.

RDC or Remote Differential Compression is a new feature of Windows Server 2003 R2. When files are replicated by DFS, RDC can be used to only replicate the deltas.

Contrary to what many people think, you cannot use the new DFS replication features and RDC together with the sysvol share. The sysvol share will need to use FRS, even when Windows Server 2003 R2 is used and DFS/RDC is installed.

On VMTN, a whitepaper can be found that describes how to configure VMWare ACE as the user's primary desktop environment. Basically, VMWare ACE is automatically started in fullscreen mode when the user logs on to the machine. The user does not interact with the host machine.

It is an interesting concept that has some advantages. The main advantage is that the underlying hardware of the guest is always the same. That makes deploying the os, patches and applications simpler. Because of the many ACE policies you can set, you can prevent copying the virtual machine to another location. ACE also includes a packet filter so that network access can be restricted on the host and the guest. In addition, the virtual machine can be set to expire at a certain date.

According to information in this document, it should be ok to run another copy of Windows XP (or 2000) in a virtual machine while Windows XP is used as the host as long as you have some kind of volume licensing agreement. Better doublecheck with Microsoft before you think about deploying a VMWare ACE solution though.

VMWare ACE as a primary desktop environment

Although it is difficult to describe what Web 2.0 is, it is easiest to describe it with examples. The table below comes from a page at O’Reilly (http://www.oreillynet.com) with more information about it. In essence, Web 2.0 can be seen as a general term that encompasses the next wave of Internet applications. Now that Microsoft has also entered this arena with live.com and start.com, its importance cannot be neglected. Again, lots of companies and individuals beat Microsoft to the punch and as a result, MS is playing catchup.

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

Anyway, many of these Web 2.0 applications present you with an enhanced start page (such as Microsoft’s start.com). Of those start pages, I like NetVibes (http://www.netvibes.com) the best. Go check it out and create your personal start page. Another example is http://www.protopage.com.

No problem running Exchange 2003 on 64–bit hardware, as long as you are running a 32–bit OS. Of course, Exchange 12 will require 64–bit hardware and a 64–bit OS. No Itanium though, just x64 or EM64T.

This article contains more info: You Had Me At EHLO... : x64 bit hardware will run Exchange 2003 on 32 bit Windows

NetIQ has announced the availability of AppManager modules to manage VMWare Virtual Infrastructure (GSX, ESX).

It is not a very cheap solution though (5000$ per server).

Microsoft has released Virtual Server R2 to manufacturing and also announced pricing. The prices are extremely low:

- Standard edition (up to 4 CPUs): $99
- Enterprise edition (up to 32CPUs): $199

The only difference between the versions is the amount of physical CPUs that are supported. There is no SMP support within a guest OS on Virtual Server R2.

With features like this and an incredibly low price, it will be hard to convince customers to use VMWare's GSX Server. I still prefer GSX because of the performance, ease of use by providing both a web interface and a GUI, and the flexible networking features.

VMWare has also cut the price of GSX Server. The price is not as low as the R2 price, but definitely a big difference compared to the previous price points.

Some of the new features in the R2 release:

- Host clustering: see earlier post
- iSCSI support: allows you to create a "guest" cluster accross two R2 boxes
- x64 support: host only (you cannot run 64-bit guests)
- many others such as improved PXE support etc...

Intel is ready to release VT-enabled desktop processors. They already released Xeon CPUs with VT. VT (Virtualization Technology) will make it easier to deal with hard-to-virtualize x86 instructions. Virtualization vendors deal with these hard-to-virtualize instructions in different ways. It is important to note that VT technology helps with CPU virtualization, not with memory or I/O devices virtualization.

Virtualization software will need to be written to take advantage of VT. ESX 3.0 will use it, as will Xen.

Important to note here is that VT support in Xen will allow you to run an unmodified operating system in Xen. Before VT (and AMD's Pacifica), a modified guest OS was required. This technique (paravirtualization) meant low overhead (2%-8%) but prevented you from running Windows as a guest.

Microsoft has released a document with details about Virtual Server 2005 R2 host clustering. This is similar to the solution by VM6 for VMWare GSX in that a virtual machine (guest) is configured as a clustered resource. A regular MSCS cluster can be configured to fail over guests to another node in the case of failure.

Full details here: Virtual Server Host Clustering Step-by-Step Guide for Virtual Server 2005 R2

When you have to design a branch office solution, it has always been an issue to decide when to place servers in a branch. For example, do you put a file server in a branch office or will users access the files over the WAN? In a lot of cases, servers are placed in the branch that have to be managed and backed up, increasing capital expenditure and operational costs.

There are several technologies available to optimize branch office deployments. WAFS (Wide Are File Services) is one of those technologies.

WAFS is usually deployed using appliances. For example, Brocade (http://www.brocade.com) has a WAFS solution in their Tapestry Product Family. An appliance in the branch will talk to an appliance in the data center to optimize WAN traffic for file access. A range of different techniques are used (including caching) but the end result can be a 100x speed increase. Users can save large files to a central file server in the data center without having to wait a long time before the save is complete. Watch a demo.

While WAFS optimizes file-based access, WDS (Wide Area Data Services), goes even a step further. You can see WDS as a superset of WAFS. Again, WDS is usually implemented using an appliance. The appliance optimizes all TCP traffic, not just SMB/NFS file-based traffic. This optimization is application independent but can be enhanced with application-specific modules (for example for CIFS). For an example of a WDS solution, check out http://www.riverbed.com (SteelHead appliances).

Check it out here.

Here's a floppy image with FreeSCO that you can use in VMWare as a software router. Although its main purpose is routing, it also has firewall functions. It works with the standard vlance nics and not with vmxnet nics.

It's great to simulate different subnets, for example, when you are doing an AD site design etc...

Download

VM6 is a company that has a piece of software that integrates VMWare GSX with MSCS (Microsoft Cluster Server). In essence, a virtual machine is made a clustered resource.

The software monitors a clustered VM and when it fails, the virtual machine is started on the other MSCS node.

A 30-day evaluation version can be downloaded from their site.

I installed the Vista CTP (Community Technology Preview) in VMWare Workstation 5.5. I followed the steps below:

• Create a new VM and select Windows Vista (experimental).
• Follow the prompts but select a disk greater than 8GB. I created a disk of 12GB.
• Connect the downloaded ISO file to the virtual cd and start the VM.
• When Vista comes to the part where you need to select the disk, it will probably complain that no suitable disk was found. I created two partitions, one of 8GB and one of 4GB. You can create these partitions with the graphical installer or you can use shift-F10 to get a command prompt and use diskpart.
• I then restarted the installation because Vista still did not recognize the disk.
• In the new installation, I selected the partition of 8GB and was able to continue beyond that point. It took something like 30 minutes to install the whole thing.
• After installation, install the VMWare tools. You might get some errors during installation. I clicked Ignore to get past those.
• After the installation, reboot Vista. After the reboot, the virtual video card should be recognized. The network card should already have been recognized during installation of the VMWare Tools.

I started playing around a bit and loaded blog.baeke.info in Internet Explorer 7. Here’s the result:

Apparently, http://blog.baeke.info is seen as a suspicious web site by the Phishing Filter in Vista. Probably based on the characteristics of the site plus the fact it is not registered as safe.

Check out this whitepaper from Veritas (Symantec). It explains how Veritas Cluster Server for Linux works with ESX to provide high-availability.

When VMWare releases version 3.0, this product is probably less useful because ESX 3.0 supports clustering with DAS (Distributed Availability Service).

esxRanger is a product from VizionCore that allows you to create backups of a virtual machine's vmdk file while it is running. You run the product from a Windows machine which makes it very easy. Check some of the screenshots below:

The product can be used entirely from the GUI or command line.

We did some tests with the product and it works as advertised. We only had one issue: the rights to the restored vmx file were not properly set. The root user did not have execute rights on the file, which prevented us from opening a remote console.

There are built-in scripts and other free scripts on the net that can do the same thing but using those requires a bit more knowledge. The advantage of VizionCore (over free tools from the net) is of course that there is a support structure behind it which makes it more suitable for enterprise use.

Technorati : esx, vmware

VMWare ESX has the vmkusage tool to collect and display performance data. When vmkusage is configured with vmkusagectl install, it will schedule cron jobs to get the performance data and to generate graphs. You can see the performance data using http://esxserver/vmkusage.

The freeware tool vmktree uses the same performance data but displays it better (screenshot). While the graphs in vmkusage are generated every 5 minutes, the graphs in vmktree are generated real-time. An interesting feature is realtime stats. It shows the result of esxtop in a browser window every x minutes.

Technorati : vmware virtualization