vmwarez.com
           -Where Virtualization is a Reality!

Good stuff... I think that VMWare is a class-act. And after that last post... then this one, you may just want to call me a kool-aid drinker... Sure, my name is Jim Jones. So what? I have virtualized. I drank the punch. No poison here... come on in, the water is fine!

There are just so many things wrong with this article... I don't even know where to start. I think that this gal just plain does not have a clue about what virtualization is all about.

...when I think of disaster recovery, virtualization looks like a loser.

That wins first place for the "clueless about virtualization" award...

We use a layered approach to security that includes router access-control lists; firewalls; intrusion detection; security policies; Active Directory; an aggressive program of weekly patching of servers and desktops; round-the-clock updating of our antivirus, antispam and antispyware controls; and Veritas backup and restore tools. Our environment hums.

We have not had a single incident of a worm or virus attacking our environment in over a year. So, what's the problem? We don't really have one. I got sidetracked after listening to that webcast by the whole idea of virtualization and what it really means. I don't think it means anything to us.

I think that by this last quote, she thinks that virtualization replaces all these things...

I tried to think of reasons why I might want to use virtualization. The obvious benefits involve cost savings, since virtualization can maximize the utilization of systems and ease systems administration.

Yep, who cares if it costs more to do it the old fashoned way... it isn't your money anyway! Oh wait, who do you work for? Ah, it is our money! The tax-payer's money. But she doesn't need to worry. There's an unlimited supply of that.

As I listened to the webcast from a sister state agency describing what cool new things it was doing, I couldn't help talking back. "Why do technical people always try to make it sound like they are doing something much bigger and better than anyone else?...

Because... duh! That's what we do! We're proud of our work. Or is it wrong to not be equal in ALL things?

Then he said that his agency had "virtualized" its environment and suggested that other agencies look into EMC 's VMware. This was too much for me. If I'd been in the meeting, I would have spoken up. I like to work in a collaborative environment, where you ask people to help you understand a problem, not tell them that you've solved it and they should listen up. Chances are, you've probably solved only a small piece of it and you could learn a lot by hearing other people's ideas.

Point and counter point... flip and flop... First she's upset that this guy suggested that other agencies look into VMWare... then she slaps him down saying that you could learn a lot by hearing other people's ideas... My guess is that she voted for Kerry :)

EMC Unveils New Storage and Virtualization Technologies that Extend Benefits of ILM

New Platforms and Innovative IP Storage Software Help Customers Simplify and More
Cost-Effectively Tier Storage and Leverage IP Networks

LONDON-Thursday, January 26, 2006

EMC Corporation today introduced a broad range of new storage and virtualization solutions, including availability of the world's largest and most flexible high-end storage array, innovative new file system software and new network attached storage (NAS) virtualization capabilities. These new solutions simplify and extend the benefits of information lifecycle management (ILM) to more applications and more information using cost-effective and ubiquitous IP (internet protocol) networks.

The announcement was made at a media and analyst event in London with EMC senior executives detailing several innovative new technologies and additions to the EMC product lineup that help customers bring more of their information together (see related releases) for improved economics and management.

EMC today introduced:

• Entry-level and high-end configurations of its flagship EMC® Symmetrix® DMX-3 storage array, including those featuring new low-cost, Fibre Channel (LC-FC) 500 GB (gigabyte) disk drives, which enable a single high-end storage array, for the first time ever, to scale beyond a petabyte (1,024 terabytes) of capacity. This new feature enables more information from more applications to be stored on a single array and enables multiple tiers of storage to be managed on the Symmetrix DMX-3 platform.
• EMC Multi-Path File System for iSCSI (MPFSi) file system software, which is a first in the industry. This software delivers substantial performance and cost improvements for customers in data intensive environments that process large files over IP networks, including grid computing, rich media, software development and others.
• Major enhancements to the EMC Rainfinity™ Global File Virtualization platform, including Global Namespace Management, which provides a unified view of all files and file systems located on heterogeneous file servers on an IP network. The Rainfinity platform now also includes Synchronous IP Replication, which provides improved protection capabilities.
• Enhancements to EMC Centera™ content addressed storage (CAS) system, including Event-based Retention and Litigation Hold software features that give customers more security, flexibility and control over their archived information for regulatory and legal purposes.

(see related releases and EMC.com for additional information)

"Managing the growth and complexity of an IT infrastructure has become an enormous challenge for customers," said EMC Chairman, President and CEO Joe Tucci. "In 2005, data stored on disk arrays grew more than 70%. That growth, combined with changing requirements in areas like governance and protection, has resulted in increased costs and information management challenges. These new technologies, which leverage cost-effective IP networks, help customers make their information infrastructure more cost effective, simpler and smarter and extend the reach of their ILM strategy."

Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, said, "IP Storage is red hot. IT pro's are realizing that the same benefits they get from their fibre channel SAN's can and should be extended throughout the entire enterprise - and that means IP. EMC has realized this and will provide customers a seamless way to integrate and centralize storage access, whether file or block, to all reaches of the enterprise. IP is the great enabler to attach to every server, not just the big ones."

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

For more on EMC news, events, and recent media coverage visit the news section of EMC.com. Note to editors: For further information about this release contact EMC Public Relations at pr@emc.com

You no longer need to log-in to your blogger account to post comments. Hopefully this will encourage more activity/feedback.

As we post more pre-built VMs... and the newest is 10 times larger than the others... we have to ask for some help... even if just a little bit. $1.00 from enough of you would make a huge difference. We ask that if you find our warez helpful, send us a buck or two.

Click the following link to donate:
http://www.vmwarez.com/paypal/donate/

Thanks!

Jim

Here's a list of the VMs that we've prebuilt for you to download. These are made with VMware's Workstation 5.5. My goal with these virtual machines is to make it easy for people to try out new technology and promote the use of virtualization.

• TrixBox 1.0 w/ VMware tools & Webmin (for Player, Server & Workstation 5.5)


• IPCop w/urlfilter & advproxy (for Player, Server or Workstation 5.5)


• IPCop w/urlfilter & advproxy (for ESX 2.5.2)


• Basic Asterisk at Home 2.8 (for Player, Server or Workstation 5.5)


• LiveCD Player Virtual Machine

Click here to download VMWare Player.
Click here to download VMware Server.
Click here for info about VMWare Workstation.

For more pre-built VM's click here:

VMWare's Community Virtual Machine Center

According to Bob Parsons, Founder and President of GoDaddy.com, "We've been asked by our customers to offer a Windows-based virtual hosting solution. By teaming up with SWsoft, we are able to meet the needs of our customers efficiently and with a powerful utility. Go Daddy's virtual dedicated servers provide premium value in server performance and technical control."

Has anyone else had any luck selling virtual servers to their clients using their ESX infrastructure? SWSoft has a pretty large advantage since they do the plesk control panel software... but their "virtualization" isn't the same as VMWare's...

Here's a great article from CIO.com about "The Virtues of Virtualization."

Unreal Future
During the next year or two, virtualization is on track to move from its current success in storage, servers and development, to networks and data centers. So CIOs will then be able to build software versions of firewalls, switches, routers, load balancers, accelerators and caches, exactly as needed. Everything that was once embodied in cards, disks and physical equipment of any kind, will be organized around a single point of control. If virtualization vendor promises materialize, changes that once were out of the question, or that at least would have required considerable man-hours and operational risk, will be done in minutes, routinely.

UPDATE 6/6/2006 - This is an update that fixes the NIC so that it works... Who needs a NIC, right?. Click here for info about this VM.

UPDATE 6/2/2006 - VM is now TrixBox 1.0 w/ VMware Tools & Webmin. No other updates, passwords are all unchanged. Click here for info about this VM.

UPDATE 4/20/2006 - VM is now Asterisk@Home 2.8 BareBones. No updates at all, passwords are all unchanged. Click here for info about this VM.

UPDATE 3/10/2006 - VM is now Asterisk@Home 2.7 BareBones. No updates at all, passwords are all unchanged. New download file is here (558MB).

UPDATE 3/2/2006 - LinuxTracker.org has published another torrent for us... the AAH26bb file is available here.

UPDATE 3/1/2006 - VM is now Asterisk@Home 2.6 BareBones. No updates at all, passwords are all unchanged. New download file is here (540MB).

UPDATE 2/9/2006 - Torrent download available. Click here for more details.

UPDATED 2/4/2006 - VM is now running Asterisk@Home 2.5 w/ updates applied according to "Soup to Nuts" article at NerdVittles

I've been playing with Asterisk at Home for a couple months now... I have one running at home on an older Dell Optiplex 900MHz w/ 512MB ram & a 20GB hard drive.


Click picture to download a full sized PDF.

But to do testing, I run a second one in VMWare Workstation. This first go-around, I've posted a plain-jane fresh install of Asterisk@Home version 2.4 for download. It was created in VMWare Workstation 5.5 and will run fine in VMWare's VM Player & VMware Server. I don't recommend running a production Asterisk box in a virtual machine because of timing issues.

Just download this zip file, unzip it and run the vmx file in either VMWare Player or VMWare Workstation 5.5. The VMDK file is about 1.5GB when uncompressed.

The zip file is about 600mb in size. If you were to install this yourself off the original ISO, you'd have to download a 500mb ISO and then go through the very long install. The part that takes the longest is when it compiles all the Asterisk bits and pieces... On a very fast desktop, this takes about 40 minutes... This VM is ready to go once you get it uncompressed. Consider this a huge time saver :)

To read more about AAH, go to http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net

To read more about Asterisk go to http://www.asterisk.org

Lots of good articles are available at www.voip-info.org or www.nerdvittles.com and a new one at www.voipjots.com.

To log onto this virtual asterisk at home box, the console user is root and pw is password. the web username is maint and the pw is password.

For a nice, free softphone to use with Asterisk@Home, try Idefisk: available here. The best part about it is that it does not require install. I just copied the files onto my USB drive and that way I can access my home PBX from anywhere.

If you need a headset for this, HippoDeals has nice stereo ones for $3.00 ea.

Asterisk@Home Features:

• Asterisk 1.2
• Flash Operator Panel 0.24
• Festival Speech Engine version 1.96
• weather agi scripts
• wakeup calls
• Integrated WebMeetMe GUI
• AMP-1.10.010 BETA
• CentOS 4.2
• SugarCRM with Cisco XML Services interface + Click to Dial
• Native Music On Hold
• Fax support (spanDSP)
• xPL support
• Digium card auto-config

As time permits, I'll trick-out this VM with lots of extras... for now, it is just a standard install.

Also, note that this Asterisk@Home install cannot use any hardware interfaces. E.G. Digium boards. You can, however, use any IP based ATAs, soft Phones, VoIP phones, etc.

Click here for more vmwarez.com pre-built VMs.

This is a great article about desktop virtualization... it does talk a little about server consolidation, but its main focus is how a company in the banking industry settled on VMWare ACE for their secure desktop environments.

Here @ WTC, we've started doing destop hosting in an ESX infrastructure... but there are clear advantages to running ACE. For more info about what we're doing w/ desktop hosting on ESX, click here.

We just emailed back the final draft of our success story. They said it would be posted on their site soon. I'll post a link to it as soon as it is up.

VMware gets what it deserves: Accolades by ZDNet's David Berlind -- According to InfoWorld's 2006 Technology of the Year Awards VMware has "swept" the system virtualization category (one award for desktops, the other for servers). OK, so it's not like the category is a hotly contested one across very many vendors. There's the open source Xen project (mostly uses on servers), SWSoft's Virtuozzo (also for servers), [...]

I've created an ESX version of the IPCop virtual machine. You can download it here. This one is about 96MB.

For more info on what we (at vmwarez) have done w/ IPCop, check out these two posts:

IPCop Pre-built VM Updated IPCop Test Rig...

For more info on IPCop, check out www.ipcop.org.
The add-ons that are already installed in this VM are: urlfilter, advproxy w/ Classroom Extensions & Calamaris Proxy Report Generator.

Also, check out other prebuilt virtual machines on VMWare's Community Virtual Machine Center.

I've used this in a production VMWare ESX installation as a firewall for a hosted server... It works great.

To get to the console, you have to SSH or open the console... The username is root and the pw is vmwarez. Once you're in, you'll need to change the IP addresses to suit your needs... then the web-interface can be accessed on the "private" side by going to http://IPADDRESS:81. The username for that is admin and the pw is also vmwarez.

Enjoy... and if you have any questions, post comments and I'll answer there.

Click here for more vmwarez.com pre-built VMs.

I'm not usually a big fan of cutsie kinds of stuff... but I am a big fan of google's mapping technology and this site caught my eye... Enjoy:

Click here to see the map.

Click here to add yourself to the map.

When you add your location to the map, there is also a poll to see what kind of VM user you are.

Enjoy :)

Hi all... I've updated my feed URL. If you're subscribing, please update your rss reader:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/vmwarez

Thanks!

Jim

As easy as it is to deply new VMs, some times we get carried away and overstep our licenses... NO!!! not that!! yep... it happens to the best of us. I found a good deal at TigerDirect for Windows XP Pro OEM licenses... $139 ea. They come with the COA, so I suppose that means that if you have them, you are ok. Anyone know any different?

Click Here for the deal....

Man do I want one of these!!!

You mastered Donkey Kong in pre-school. You hacked your first school terminal during recess before you were ten. You speak and think in various programming languages. And you can type faster than most dullards think. Finally, there is a keyboard that understands you: Das Keyboard.

Das Keyboard is an enhanced 104-key USB PC keyboard equipped with 100% blank keys mounted on individually-weighted, precision key switches. While most keyboards require 55 grams of force to register each key, Das Keyboard's keys are divided into five differentially weighted zones (from 35 grams to 80 grams). These zones correspond to the strength of the finger that touches the keys, which results in a more comfortable typing experience.

Not as elite a typist as you want to be? Not a problem. Das Keyboard can teach you to type exponentially faster in just a couple of weeks. Since there are no letters to look at when typing, your brain is forced to memorize the key positions. Slower typers almost double their speed and fast typers become über fast! Built to outlast your typing career, Das Keyboard will provide a long life of comfortable, awe-inspiring typing. Give your old keyboard Das Boot with Das Keyboard, and remain Das Elite.

Click the picture to check it out...

Read the Press Release here:
http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/ws_eweek_award.html

As an ISP hosting multiple domains and having thousands of accounts, Exchange was out of the question. I started with Ipswitch's Imail back in 1997. It was good for a while, a long while... but there were a few fatal flaws. One of which is the way it stores mail. Each folder is one file. If you have 10,000 emails in your inbox, those are all in one file. If you delete one email, the server rewrites that whole file, minus the one email. If you're running in a virtual environment, especially with a SAN backend, you know why this is bad. Now, we found a nice piece of software called Visnetic Mail Server.... It keeps all emails in folders and each email is its own file. If you delete an email, the server whacks the file - Minimal Disk IO.

Right now we're migrating email off the old Imail server onto the new Visnetic server... It is going smoothly thanks to a nice migration utility provided by the makers of VMS - Deerfield.com. I'm finding that I have a ton of files now. Does anyone know the limit to the number of files one can have on a file system? We're running Windows Server 2003 with NTFS partitions, of course.

VMware has posted links to user's websites that have built and host-for-download preconfigured virtual machines. As of this post, there are three main categories of VMs:

General Applications
Security Applications
Operating Environments

If you go there, you'll see one for IPCop under Security Apps. That's from this site :)

What an excellent way to play with new tools/OSes w/o zortching a PC every time.

These all should work with VMware Player, VMware's free "VM Viewer."

Click here for vmwarez.com pre-built VMs.

zdNet in the UK is giving away 5 copies of VMware Workstation 5.5 as part of their post-Christmas campaign.... Answer a question, login to their site and check back on January 17. The game ends on the 16th.

2006 is going to be the year of the virtual machine, and if there's one thing you should be doing it's getting to understand the technology. To help you, we have five copies of the latest version of VMWare Workstation to give away.

VMWare was the pioneer of virtual machine software for PCs and servers, and its Workstation 5.5 product runs virtual operating systems on both Windows and Linux hosts, letting you develop and test the most complex, networked applications on a single desktop. For the first time it now supports 64-bit operating systems, and can take advantage of the virtual machine hardware support that will appear in AMD and Intel processors next year.

During the development process you can save time by adding or changing operating systems without repartitioning disks or rebooting. The cost of purchasing multiple machines is avoided by running new operating systems and legacy applications on the same computer. And systems administrators can also use the software to test service packs, application updates and OS patches to ensure that everything works before committing to the changes.

Tools such as live snapshots, drag-and-drop, and shared folders enhance performance and integration whether you are checking out the latest Linux application or archiving and restoring your test environments.

Here's a good article that will give an intro to the higher-ups in your company. Some times it is good for them to hear about it from an outside source first, so that when you start talking about it, they don't feel stupid and you look smart :)

If there is one technology that took hold in the enterprise in 2005, it's virtualization. The software moved from test and development and into the data center faster than anyone imagined, including the experts. And while there are sure to be some bumps in the road in 2006 as the technology moves from awareness to adoption, you can bet most IT pros will be running virtualization in the data center before the end of next year.

Here's a couple FREE tools that are very handy when working with VMware ESX. I've always known about PuTTY, but WinSCP is new to me. Call me a caveman, that's fine. Anyway, they're very handy tools:

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms,
along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.

WinSCP is an open source SFTP client for Windows. Its main function is the
secure file transfer between a local and a remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP
offers basic file manager functionality. It uses Secure Shell (SSH) and
supports, in addition to Secure FTP, also legacy SCP protocol.

PuTTY can be found here.
WinSCP can be found here.

For those with deeper pockets, you may like SecureCRT from http://www.vandyke.com

May this be your best year yet... virtually.

God Bless,

Jim