Chui’s counterpoint

I had written up a VMWare Server review for the beta release earlier. Given that VMWare Server 2.0 Beta is already available, here’s a rundown on the differences between VMWare Server 2.0 and VMWare Server 1.x.

• Web based management - this beats having to Remote Desktop to the host operating system to manage virtual machines.
• Virtual guest OS can access 8 Gb RAM - assuming that your host is a 64bit OS (otherwise you are stuck with only 4Gb addressable memory).

Here’s a screenshot of the web-based management interface on VMWare Server 2.0. It prompts you to install an ActiveX control in order to view the server console. There used to be an annotation feature in 1.x server, so that you can write comments against a virtual machine. This useful feature seemed to have been dropped in 2.0.

The performance of the viewer is not as good as Remote Desktop, although it’s comparable to VNC. There is a full screen option, but it needs more work before final release. It messes around with the resolution of my second monitor. The folks over at 4sysops don’t think too highly of the new VMWare web-based user-interface, and I’m afraid I too concur. It simply takes a little too much screen estate, especially with the frameset in the web pages, plus the space used by the browser chrome. I hope they fix that before the 2.0 release proper.

P2V assistant is now free

The physical machine to virtual machine converter is now free. It’s known as the VM Converter, and is available for download free. I haven’t had the need to use this yet, but I’ll look to using it when I migrate off the laptop I’m writing this post on.

Review of the Scripting Interfaces on VMWare Server

The virtual server now supports VIX API 1.2. The documentation for the VIX API is here. I’ll post more after having a play around with it. The API itself is quite useful, as it permits automation of processes running in the guest. The following function names give an indication how what you can do with the API:

• CopyFileFromHostToGuest
• RunProgramInGuest
• OpenUrlInGuest

Just make sure your VMWare virtual hard disk is at least 2.5 Gb.

Ubuntu will not install properly from LiveCD (which is the default download) when the virtual hard disk is 2.0 Gb. Grub

It seems like 2007 is going to be year when web hosters move en-masse to virtualizating their shared-server. In the past, virtual hosting is simply the practice of hosting lots of websites on a single box, and a web hoster may run tens of boxes.

With clustered hosting, every website is served by every box, using a fast SAN. This means that for shared-nothing applications like PHP, your website is able to take on bursts of traffic without everybody else on your box suffering from a “bad neighbour” effect. 10 years ago, one only has to worry about slashdotting. However, with social media on the rise, websites are just so much more susceptible to traffic surges.

Offerings:

• ElasticLive Xen + Amazon EC Clustered Hosting
• Amazon EC2 - strictly not managed hosting. This is really DIY
• LayeredTech Grid Layer
• Hosting Zoom Clustered Web Hosting CPanel (Actually it’s more like failover than grid)
• Concentric clustered hosting
• Netfirms
• Cartika Hosting Interesting - will dynamically move to dedicated server when there is a traffic burst
• DataReturn
• Mosso
• Media Temple has some solutions which support clustering for Ruby On Rails, which means processes have to be provisioned on boxes

Please leave a comment if you are aware of other hosters. Thanks.

Platforms: AppLogic Amazon EC2
Source: Netcraft - Price Competition in Grid Hosting

A Samba Primary Domain Controller is useful if you want to secure access for a small business network.

1. apt-get install samba
2. sudo vim /etc/samba/smb.conf
3. comment out

   invalid users = root

   … otherwise you can’t add machine account from a client computer

4. wins support = yes
5. security = user (i.e. no anonymous access)
6. domain logons = yes (otherwise it won’t be a domain controller)
7. domain master = yes (a primary domain controller)
8. preferred master = yes (master browser for netbios)
9. add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -m %u
10. add machine script = /usr/sbin/useradd -s /bin/false -d /dev/null -g machines %u
11. uncomment [netlogon] section
12. uncomment [profiles] section

Troubleshooting

1. XP Explorer crashes twext.dll http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903234/
2. Samba 3 supports sign-and-seal. No need to tweak any registries to support Windows XP or Windows 2000.
3. smbclient is your friend in troubleshooting.
4. smbclient -U root //yourserver/sharename
5. smbclient -L yourserver
6. Terpstra’s Samba-3 by Example
7. Troubleshooting samba checklist, Troubleshooting and here. I wish someone would turn this into a script. It’ll save a lot of troubleshooting.

Phil Windley revies Parallels and mentions that “Virtualization will become part of our everyday lives”. I tend to view virtualization on the desktop as a necessary evil rather than being a good thing on its own.

I had to use a colleagues desktop, running Linux with a Windows running in VMWare which then had a remote desktop connection to a server in the server-room upstairs. It was a tough exercise, because Gnome sidebars kept popping up whenever I hovered to close to the edge, and email messages from Evolution causes me to lose focus on my current window. I had to give up.

(Read my VMWare Server Review)

I’m not affliated with VMWare in any way. If you haven’t signed up for the VMWare e-mail newsletters, go do it now. It’s not spammy, and has plenty of meaty technical material.

The latest e-mail points to the VMWorld 2005 Conference Sessions. There are free audio downloads for you to listen on your MP3 player. Hint to VMWorld: Make a RSS Feed for the sessions.

If you think that CPU virtualization (AMD Pacifica and Intel Vanderpool Technology) will kill VMWare’s business, think again. The bar to virtualization is going to be lowered and will allow customers to focus on high availability, regulatory compliance (HIPAA, SOX), and clustering. Link

I’m listening to the one on Security Best Practices for VMWare. You should start at 8 minutes mark, because before that it’s general administration for the conference. Interesting: the virtual machine is locked from spoofing virtual MAC addresses, and is unable to sniff traffic from other virtual machines running off the same network card.

Update: VMWare Server 2.0 review

VMWare’s web site boasts of a case study where AXA saved $550k in hardware through virtualization. With savings like that, one cannot ignore virtualization, especially given that VMWare Server Beta (download) is now free. VMWare Player is still free, and this review aims to cover the differences between the Player and VMWare Server. There are some security issues that you should also be aware of.
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