vmwarez.com
           -Where Virtualization is a Reality!

From VMware.com:

Are you up for the challenge of creating the industry’s most innovative virtual appliance? VMware invites you to put your skills to the test, go head-to-head with your peers, and develop the best virtual appliance the industry has ever seen. Using open source or freely distributable components and/or your own code, create the most inventive and useful virtual appliance and win the $100,000 first prize! The Challenge is open to anyone worldwide and will be judged by a panel of industry experts with input from the community.

Why the Challenge? VMware's customers are building valuable virtual appliances to solve a variety of IT problems. The Challenge will make those appliances available to the whole community while rewarding their creators with cash and recognition.

Top Prizes are:

• $100,000 - First Prize


• $50,000 - Second Prize


• $25,000 - Third Prize


• Five $5,000 Best of Category Prizes

Time to start thinking :)

This just in!

I just came across a VERY cool service that you need
to get signed up for RIGHT NOW! And it won't cost
you a dime. In fact, you will actually earn cash :-)

If you have a cell phone, click this link and get $5.00
INSTANTLY in your TextPayMe account...

http://www.vmwarez.com/textpayme

TextPayMe is like Paypal, only COOLER. While PayPal
allows you to send and receive funds via email, TextPayMe
lets you send and receive funds using your cell phone!

Let's say you go out to dinner or the movies and
need to split the bill. Simply TextPayMe your
friend instantly for your portion!

Or perhaps you want to buy or sell something on
Craigslist.com, TextPayMe the money!

When you sign up now for FREE (seriously, NO
strings attached...) they will give you $5.00
in your account.

I don't know about you, but I like FREE MONEY.

So that's why I am posting an ad on Friday, even
though it doesn't have anything to do with
virtualization, server consolidation, VMware
or Xen. I thought this was very cool and a great
way to end the week. :-)

Have a great weekend!

http://www.vmwarez.com/textpayme

Jim

My friend over at VoIPJots just released a very cool add-on to Asterisk@Home. I may be including it in my next pre-built asterisk virtual machine, but for now you can check it out yourself over at his website.

It seems everyone is talking about Click-to-Call functionality these days. Google has announced they are going to do it, EBay will be doing it before too long, and there are other websites out there that I've recently noticed are offering this service.

Click-to-Call seems like it would be a complicated task to setup; enabling a website visitor to click a button to allow them to submit their phone number, and receive a call from someone a few seconds later, with no long distance charges for the visitor.
If you have an AAH or Asterisk box, it really is not that difficult to add such a feature to your website. A very simple PHP page hosted either on your AAH box, or another PHP-capable web server (that has TCP connectivity to your AAH/Asterisk box) is all you need. Last night I developed such a script, and though it is rather simple, it's effective. I plan on doing more with it later, but thought I'd share it will all of you so that you can begin playing with it, or customizing it yourself. This script was written for AAH, so it probably will not work with a regular Asterisk box without some modifications, or even a heavily customized AAH box. However, it's very straight-forward, and should not be hard to debug if you have problems with it.

To the expert PHP'ers out there, this was my first attempt at doing anything with PHP (I'm an ASP guy), so have pity on me!:)

Go to www.VoIPJots.com to read the rest!

Welp, it is official, VMware has done a "success story" on WTC. WTC is where I work (my day job) as their Network Administrator. VMware was nice enough to spend some time talking to me on the phone about how we use their products and as a result, they came up with this nice article. Also, we've become a VMware Core Customer too. Woo Hoo! Click here to read the story.
 

Another good read:

ONStor’s Jon Toor explains why he believes that 2006 may be the year that use of virtualization technologies really takes off.

While we’ve heard about storage virtualization for years, wide scale deployment has not yet materialized. The technology was supposed to deliver benefits such as reduced management costs and better storage utilization, but for all the promise adoption among users remains low, its perceived cost and complexity remain high, and, frankly, the marketing hype has left users confused over the supposed advantages. In 2006, however, this will start to change. Virtualization will emerge this year as a useful tool, though it may not appear in quite the same form we’re accustomed to. To understand this transition, it helps to dig into what virtualization really is.

"Other companies fight server sprawl with virtualisation too"

This looks like a pretty good read...

Analyst firm IDC expects the number of servers in the US to grow from 2.8 million in 2005 to 4.9 million by 2009. Data centres "are becoming more and more swollen," causing IT costs to rise quickly, IDC analyst Vernon Turner said at the IDC Virtualization Forum, which was held here last week.

Desert Schools Federal Credit Union in Phoenix expects to cut costs significantly by running VMware's virtualisation software on two two-way, dual-core Opteron-based blade servers, which were installed last week, said Doug Baer, a systems engineer at the firm. Baer said the new systems are expected to handle the workload that is running on the five two-way, single-core Xeon machines they are replacing. "I can hardly imagine buying another server," said Baer, crediting the virtualisation software from EMC's VMware subsidiary. "Once you build your virtual infrastructure, you are definitely slowing down your server proliferation."

Looks like they've added a lot of new features, fixed a lot of bugs and have quite a bit new in the way of hardware support. While this would have seemed like tight competition for VMware a month ago, since the beta release of the free VMware Server product, this pales. It is still pretty cool software and is helping to get virtualization into the mainstream IT world.

Click here to read about it on their site and to download the beta.

New Features:

• A completely new, visually stunning user interface.


• Better virtual machine performance, stability and isolation.


• “Suspend and resume” functionality lets you instantly suspend a virtual machine’s state and resume it at a later time without having to completely shut down and start up a guest operating system.


• Support for Physical Address Extension (PAE) allows Workstation 2.1 to run on PAE-enabled primary OSes with up to 4GB of RAM.


• An improved, redesigned Parallels Tools package for Windows that provides useful add-on features that let each user customize their Parallels Workstation experience. New tools include guest/host time synchronization and complete support for normal video modes in Windows 95, 98 and Me.

Stronger Hardware Support

• USB Support enables you to access a wide range of popular USB devices directly in virtual machines.


• Wireless networking support in Windows frees users from network cables. Now, you can connect virtual machines to the internet via any WiFi connection.


• Improved sound support and sound recording feature. Now you can work with your favorite programs which require microphone or line in inside Parallels.


• Stronger support for Intel VT® technology that improves the speed, performance and stability of virtual machines running on VT-powered computers.


• Virtual processor supports more features and improves performance of a modern operating systems in virtual machines.


• Better programmable interval timer (PIT) support: extends legacy OSes and legacy applications support.

Broader OS Support:

• Primary and guest OS support for SUSE Linux 10.


• Guest OS support for Sun Solaris.

Major Bug Fixes

• Many major bugs were fixed.

Known Issues:

• Isochronous USB devices are not supported yet (such as web cameras, USB sound cards and so on).

OK, this is it. I now have VMware Server running on my desktop. I am running XP, so I did get an error and a little problem that was easily overcome. I'll explain.

The install went fine till it popped up this error:


Click to enlarge.

Or read it here:

The VMware Management Interface Website was correctly configured but failed to start. The site will have to be started manually from the IIS configuration console.

I clicked OK and the installation finished normally. When it was done, I had two new icons on my desktop, one for "VMware Server Console" and one for "VMware Virtual Machine Console." Which probably explains why we had to un-install the old VMware remote console before installing Server. This install also added the "VMware Server Console" icon to my quicklaunch bar.

Now that the install is finally done, I just need to start that website as described in the above error. Since I'm running on XP, and IIS in XP is limited to one virtual website, the new VMware Management Interface (VMI from now on)website would not start; as shown here:



So, to start it, simply stop the "Default Web Site" and then start the VMI website. Once that is done, you're good to go.



From what I understand, VMware will not support VMware Server running on XP. Once it is out of beta, they will only support it in a production environment if it running on a server class OS. I'm not sure what the requirements are for running it on Linux.... This is not official or anything, it is just my gut feeling. More will be known after it comes out of beta.

OK, I think that after this time, I'll get it installed. First thing that I did differently was to choose "Custom Install" to see what exactly is in the full install. Here's a screenshot:

Looks like we get the VMware Server, The VMware Management Interface, the VMware VmCOM Scripting API and the VMware VmPerl Scripting API. I opted for the full install... just in case I want to mess the the APIs.

Then, just as it seemed like it was going to finish, I got this error:

Setup has detected that VMware Virtual Machine Console is installed on this machine. Please uninstall it through Add/Remove Programs and try again.

So, here I go... hopefully just one more try. I'll get that uninstalled and try again.

Welp, I finally got some time to start playing with VMware Server. I uninstalled workstation (which may end up biting me in the tail) and started the Server install. It went through the first few screens just fine, then told me that I need to have IIS installed in order to install the VMware Management Interface. It said that if I want to go ahead and install VMware Server without the Management Interface, I could... Which means that you can probably manage multiple VMware Servers from one management interface? We'll see. Next I am going to install IIS and start over.

Click the picture for a full sized view.

Assumptions:

• We're talking about virtualizing servers in a VMware ESX environment.


• We know that it is possible to have a connection between a virtual machine's comm port and the physical machine's comm port.


• In a virtual infrastructure, it is common to have a 8 to 1 ratio of virtual machines to physical machines.

Problems:

• It is not possible to VMotion a VM while it is connected to a physical device on the host.


• Connecting a VM to a physical device is a large drain on the ESX box and that performance between the device and the VM will suffer because of it.


• Without using specialized hardware, there are commonly only 2 serial ports on a server. VMware ESX does not support much in the way of specialized hardware. If each of our virtual servers is using one serial port, there are not enough serial ports to go around.

The solution is quite simple. Thanks to the nice folks at Avocent, you can now connect your VMs to serial devices over the network and nobody's the wiser. Your applications will never know the difference... you'll still be able to VMotion your virtual computers, performance will not suffer and you'll have as many ports as your little heart desires.



With the ESP-4 MI from Avocent, you can have your cake and eat it too. Basically you install software on your virtual machine, whether it is linux or windows (or whatever else they support), then configure the software to create a virtual comm port. This comm port looks and feels like a comm port as far as any application is concerned. You configure the software to connect the virtual comm port to one of the physical comm ports on this ESP-4 via the network. Plug your devices in and away you go.

They have these units with up to 16 comm ports, some with specialized features such as opto-isolated I/O, RS-422, RS-485, etc... You can read their site if you're interested in more details.

These units have a nice management software package and broad OS support... including: WinNT, Win2k, Win2k3, WinXP, Citrix, Linux, AIX, SCO, Unix & Solaris.



It seems like they have not caught on to the virtual market place as a niche market for their products... Yet!

I have not tested this product myself, so I cannot say from first hand experience that this is a good product, but the idea seems solid. The company's been around for a long time and seems like they will be for a long time to come. Hopefully I'll be able to test one of these myself and report back on how it worked.

I have an immediate need to do so as soon as this year's budget stuff gets approved. We have a time clock that runs off a serial connection. If we want to virtualize that server, our options are to replace the time clock with an ethernet-based one (approx $1,500) or get one of these devices (approx $300). Also, our Digital Cable TV Head-End is about to get a face lift. New middleware. This new middleware requires that we use a serial-based EAS (Emergency Alert System). If we wanted to virtualize this new middleware server, we'd be out of luck without a device like this. I hope it works as well as I think it might!

Buy.com has these at a pretty good price and they have a coupon out now that will save a little money if you opt to order one. This coupon expires 2/28/2006, so hurry if you're planning on getting one.
$10 OFF $175 or more in ALL Stores at Buy.com! New Customers. Exp 2/28!

They have the 4 port model (ESP-4 MI) for $445.99 and the 2 port model (ESP-2 MI) for $281.99.

I'm not sure that this is 100% accurate all of the time. Maybe if the virtual machines are given raw access to the luns... but still, the file system that the virtual disk (vmdk)files are kept on are a file system that windows can't read (vmfs)... I'm not really sure what this guy's talking about. Maybe someone could help me out here... It almost sounds like a bomb throwing... since these same problems exist in a non-vm environment too. Seems like more of just a SAN issue.

Targeted at embedded apps, this departure from the Netburst architecture marks an interesting twist in the road.

Indications are that the first chips will ship at speeds of up to 2GHz, and will represent a four-fold increase in performance/watt over existing single-core Xeons. The primary target for these new chips will be embedded apps.

Here's a good article about AMD & Intel helping move virtualization ahead. It even talks a little about hosting the corporate desktop in a virtual infrastructure:

Another use for virtualization of the desktop is to enhance mobility: A user could place a PC image onto a USB storage device and take it along to be uploaded into another PC when needed. "Mobility is a huge benefit of desktop [virtualization]," Raghuram said.

Mediocrity reigns at Microsoft again... Rumor has it that the next version of Microsoft's Virtual Server platform will not support 64Bit guest operating systems. The MSVS product will support running on a 64Bit host, though. While that should give some performance boost, it lags far behind VMWare's new free offering in that VMWare Server will support 64Bit OSs... not even experimentally as with VMware Workstation, but true support.

Interesting read:

When I speak of virtualization, I don't mean the kind of virtualization that makes Rosetta so slow because it has to do costly PowerPC to Intel x86 CPU emulation. I'm speaking of the type of virtualization that's never been available to Apple before but is now because of the new Intel CPUs. The new form of emulation is a thin translation layer that minimizes resource overhead and there are many possibilities.

Industry experts now believe virtualization will be built into every layer of IT within the next five years.

I've been saying that for the last year or so... but it became clear that I was right when I heard at VMWorld 2005 that Microsoft will be including their Virtual Server technology in their next server platform. Once that happens, everyone who runs their software will get a taste of what virtualization is all about. Then they'll look for the best way to pull it off. I can see that using MS's stuff will be good for the light user, but IT organizations wanting real server consolidation will have to look elsewhere. This is based on my experience w/ MSVS2005EE... and my opinion that it won't really change that much between now and when it is included w/ the OS. They will be happy with mediocrity. But alas, it will be everywhere and more and more people will get a taste of the good-life. Once they know it is good, they will look elsewhere for a serious solution.

Last week I posted my "LiveCD Virtual Machine" which allows people to run LiveCDs on their PCs without having to reboot. While this is nicer than having to reboot to play with a new operating system, it doesn't give a REAL view to the user of what that OS is like. There are limitations, you can't save your files or your settings between reboots, you can't persistently install new software and on some live cds you can't even install any new software.

Live CDs are not only imperfect from an end user's point of view, but they are also a lot of work for the developers. Imagine how much time and effort is put into making an OS boot and run from a CD. All this could be avoided if developers moved from making live cds to runnable virtual machines. The tools are now free. They are available for windows or Linux. And they work! Users can run an OS on their PC without interrupting their normal work, they can save files in their VMs, when they reboot their virtual machine, their settings are saved... and the developer can put out a new virtual machine with little or no effort.

VMware is listing lots of these pre-built virtual machines for people to download on their community virtual machine site. Check them out... learn about other OS's without having to reboot!
If you find some of these Virtual Machines useful, let the developers know. Let them know how you prefer to download a VM over a LiveCD. Let the world know how cool virtualization is!

PS: This does not apply to all LiveCDs, so please don't flame me. There are some whose reason for existence is that they run off a CD... Like disaster recovery stuff, etc.

Good article about another industry getting its feet wet with virtualization. I've worked in an industry that was heavy into telemetry and with all the back-end systems, virtualization makes perfect sense.

VMware says they're still on track for the February 16 start date of the VMware ESX 3.0 / Virtual Center 2.0 beta program. If you're on their email list you have access to a couple webinars... and tomorrow they suppose to be posting one with in-depth details of ESX3/VC2. Woo Hoo!

Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain

The brain is a fearsomely complex information-processing environment--one that often eludes our ability to understand it. At any given time, the brain is collecting, filtering, and analyzing information and, in response, performing countless intricate processes, some of which are automatic, some voluntary, some conscious, and some unconscious. And, it's squishy.

Mind Hacks is a collection of probes into the moment-by-moment works of the brain. Using cognitive neuroscience, these experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention (we at ThinkGeek have very good attention spa…ooh, a butterfly), cognition, subliminal perception, and more throw light on how the human brain works. Each hack examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, we pick up clues about the architecture and design of the brain, learning a little bit more about how the brain is put together. Among the 100 hacks in this book, you'll find:

• Release Eye Fixations for Faster Reactions


• See Movement When All is Still


• Feel the Presence and Loss of Attention


• Detect Sounds on the Margins of Certainty


• Mold Your Body Schema


• Test Your Handedness


• See a Person in Moving Lights


• Make Events Understandable as Cause-and-Effect


• Boost Memory by Using Context


• Understand Detail and the Limits of Attention

Click the picture to read more about it or to buy it...

Williamts99 was nice enough to create a torrent to make downloading this virtual machine easier. If you don't know what a torrent is, check out www.bittorrent.com. It is an awesome way to quickly download large files and it helps ease the stress on individual servers.

Just wanted to let you know that I created a Torrent over at LinuxTracker.org

http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=1427

Even if you have already downloaded the file, you can help spread it by downloading the torrent to the same location as you already have the file and help seed.

Thanks williamts99!

If you're wondering where the info on the VM is, check out this post:
http://www.vmwarez.com/2006/02/asteriskhome-virtual-machine-updated.html

The funny thing is that Information Week is reporting this as if it is a new idea... Those smart people at SWsoft! Sorry, it is still early in the morning... I'm sure that SWsoft has a good product, but I don't know that it is really virtualization so much as partitioning or something. When I was looking into ESX for the first time, I was at a trade show where SWsoft had a booth. They were trying to explain how they differed from VMware. It never really sunk in, I guess I'm either too thick or their guys were just way too confusing. Either way, I've talked to a few people since then that use their stuff and are very happy... So, true virtualization or not, they must make a good product.

Let me just say this... The virtualization industry is on fire! Every day there are more and more companies embracing the idea of virtualization. I predict that in less than five years it will be normal for people to be running multiple OS's on one server. We already know that MS is planning on including their Virtual Server product in the next server platform, but I think that beyond that, everyone will be doing it, not just the MS-heads...

I still have not gotten around to fully installing the new VMware server beta. Time is short today. I did hear from someone-who-would-know this very interesting fact about a limitation of VMware Server... maybe not now but surely once it comes out of beta... and I quote:

I hope people realize that it's not going to run on XP.

That makes sense and answers another question... why would anyone buy workstation if server is free? Besides the fact that Workstation has way more features for developers, I really doubt that workstation users are going to change their OS's to a server class OS. It would be cheaper to just buy workstation.

I'm sure there will be some people who complain about this, but I say forget about them... VMware is nice enough to give us this product... they are under no obligation to do so. So, all you whiners can just go away or grow up.

I found out today that I made a mistake when configuring our webserver. I limited the bandwidth for the downdoads of virtual machines to 5120Megabytes per second... When I meant to limit the downloads to 5120Megabits/sec. Oops. So far this month we've seen 1.638 terabits/second of bandwidth consumed.

Please feel free to ease the pain :) Click here to donate.... Even if it just a buck.

Thanks!

Looks like you have to uninstall any previous vmware apps before installing the new server software.



I'll have to wait to play with it till later. I can't be without workstation all day :)

I've used LiveCDs in the past for checking out new operating systems or applications. They are a very handy way to do this without having to trash a computer... Then VMWare came along. It was easy to create a VM and try out new stuff. But that still took time. I found myself going back to playing with LiveCDs because I could boot into a pre-configured environment. One that looks just like the developer wanted it to look (provided you have all the right and supported hardware). The best way to do this would be if every developer realized the power of virtualization and made a VM for their project. But since they don't all do that and some still take the time to do a LiveCD, I've now gone to booting LiveCDs within virtual machines.

Normally you'd have to be using VMware Workstation to pull this off... (And, yes, I know there are tools out there for creating VMs, but I figured this would just be easier.) But now with Player being free and all, it is something that you can have ZERO virtualization experience and get up and running LiveCDs on your PC - within a virtual machine - in no time flat. I'm assuming, though that you have VMware Player or Workstation installed. If you don't go here to get player.

1) First, download and unzip this file. Don't worry, this file is only about 4kb in size (and it is only that large because I included a 2gb drive since some LiveCDs were complaining about the lack of a hard drive).

2) Then download the LiveCD of your liking. For this example I downloaded the Knoppix version 4 LiveCD.

3) Once you have the LiveCD ISO file on your computer, copy or move it to the folder where you extracted the files in step 1. and rename the file "livecd.iso" I put a blank file there with that name as a placeholder. You'll need to delete it before renaming your real LiveCD ISO.

4) Now that the files are in place it should look something like this:


5) Now you should be able to open the vmx file with VMware player or workstation... Here's the splash screen of knoppix starting and then a screen-cap of the whole desktop after it booted:






Here's a list of LiveCDs:

• SLAX


• Kanotix


• 3Anoppix


• ABC Linux


• Adios


• AdvanceCD


• FreeBSD


• GamesGo


• Xen Demo (not sure if this works under a VM

In what seems to be a very bold move by VMware we can now download for free their next generation GSX server product. Over the last year we've heard little tidbits here and there about what cool stuff we may see in GSX 4.0. Virtual SMP, 64bit guests, support for Intel VT chips... the list goes on. Now, it seems that the GSX product line will go away and will be replaced with VMware Server. Like GSX, it runs on Windows or Linux and can be used in a production server environment.

Unlike Workstation, it cannot do all the fancy teaming, cloning, sharing, snapshotting... so for those of you who ask why anyone would buy workstation when the "Server" product is free... now you know. Workstation is the cutting edge of VMware's technology. Features seen in Workstation usually do filter down into GSX (now Server) and then into ESX. At least that's the way they explained it at VMWorld 2005.

VMware will have paid support available for the new Server product. And vmdk's (virtual disks) will be very compatible with ESX, providing a clear upgrade path to VMware's flagship product.

While GSX could be managed from VirtualCenter, it seems that this feature has been left out of VMware Server, though the product comparison page suggests that this feature will return in future releases. Vmotion is not an option, and I doubt it ever will be on a non-ESX platform. Vlans are still not an option. That would be my number one pick for new features! Vlans are a Godsend!

Memory wise, the specs say that you can assign up to 3.6GB per host. That's awesome, but keep in mind that GSX and this new VMware Server only does static memory allocation. Meaning that you cannot over-sell memory like you can in ESX.

Once I get this installed, I'll post some screenshots and any notes of interest.

I've updated this VM. It is built on Asterisk@Home version 2.5. The only real difference in the base build is that the main Asterisk application has been updated to version 1.2.4 which fixes a memory leak. This VM also has all the YUM updates applied and Webmin installed as per the instructions found on the NerdVittles blog.

To download the newly updated VM, check out the original post for a link to the download file:

http://www.vmwarez.com/2006/01/asteriskhome-voip-opensource-pbx.html

Update 2/9/06:
OR - Check out this post for a torrent for a quicker download.

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.

If you're looking for more info on VOIP, a good place to start is www.voipjots.com. They have a prebuilt VM of SipX, another opensource voip phone system.

How could I resist this one: The Retro Phone Headset!

This is WAY more fashionable than the "Bluetooth Borg" look.

Yeah, we know all about bluetooth headsets for cell phones, but forget that stuff! We have here the latest development in cell phone technology and it's a big hunk of beautiful plastic. An accessory for your phone that you can really grab onto. Something with heft and that good-old-American solid construction feel - like a 1972 Cadillac.
The Retro Phone Handset is a new production replica of the Western Electric 500-series model, which was the classic phone handset for several decades. It's been slightly modified to work with the headset jack of most cell phones (or via a "hands free" adapter kit, sold elsewhere). Just plug-in and dial - or for added effect, put your cell phone in your pant's pocket - then it looks like you're talking on a phone connected to... well, who knows?

Also has these great features.

• 2.5mm jack will work with most phones (Motorola, LG, Samsung)
• Connection can also be made using a "hands free" adapter kit (not included)
• No batteries required
• Includes: handset and classic curly phone cord with connector
• Adapters now available for: Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens (more details) - $4.99 each
• Works with Blackberry, does not work with RAZR phones

Click the Picture for more info or to buy one :)

This is interesting... Looks like an "ACE" like product that does not need to be installed. Like something you could really carry with you on your usb drive or nano. It says that this softricity company is partners with, among others, vmware. I wonder if their underlying technology is ACE...

Virtual servers have a high protection need, with multiple critical workloads on the same server. Double-Take for Virtual Systems provides real-time data protection and high availability within virtual machines, with one license supporting up to five virtual machines on the same host, with pricing starting at $7,995. The licensing scheme could reduce the acquisition costs of data protection for virtual machines by as much as 75%, adding to the cost savings that virtual machines such as VMware provide, NSI says.

It seems that in response to competition from all sides VMWare is making a pretty big step to stay top of mind for IT folk. Several news sources say that they have learned that VMWare will announce on Monday that they are going to start giving away their GSX product. VMWare GSX sits somewhere between Workstation and ESX. It is managable by Virtual Center but it still runs on-top of a host operating system.

I've used it a time or two and it isn't bad. Give me the money and I'll take ESX over it any day. Even though you can manage a GSX install with VC, you cannot VMotion... Which makes since if you understand all the underlying technologies required for Vmotion... but that along with the lack of low level resource management removes it from most IT department's aim. ESX or bust... that's how it is in our shop. Not so for smaller installs.

While I was at VMWorld 2005 in Las Vegas, Microsoft was there giving away licensed copies of their MS Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition... So I picked up a few. At the time, the price on the street was about a grand. I planned on selling them on eBay. That weekend they announced that prices for this product would go down to the $100 range and that Vista Server would include this technology for free. What the heck, it became hardly worth my time to list them for online auction, so I decided to keep them and try to put them to use. I have, now, one copy running in production... MSVS2005EE is like GSX in so many ways... but in the end, it isn't as robust. I have frequent crashes while running only on virtual machine. Needless to say, if what is said about VMWare giving away GSX on Monday, I'm excited. I'll replace my MSVS install in a heartbeat. Way to go VMWare :)

Here's some links to news sites about this announcement:

VMware to make server product free
VMware moves to free with Server product
VMware to make server product free

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If you are a hands-on technologist, industry expert, or IT guru interested in increasing your expertise, optimizing performance, and maximizing functionality of your EMC technology, please join us in Boston, MA for the 6th Annual EMC Technology Summit at EMC World.

For the first time, the Annual EMC Technology Summit is incorporated into EMC World – the ultimate technical user conference on information infrastructure – providing unparalleled access to EMC engineering, developers, product managers, and the technical experts who make it all happen. Breakout session formats include lectures, live demonstrations, and more hands-on workshops than ever before, offering varied technical information for everyone – from novice to expert.

Throughout the four days of technical training, attendees will experience total immersion in EMC’s entire portfolio of software, platforms, solutions, and services. 334 technical sessions offer curriculum based on:

-Resource Management
-Consolidation
-Comprehensive backup, recovery, and archiving
-Integrated solutions
-Enterprise applications and databases
-Mainframe platforms
-Content and information management
-Continuity
-Virtual infrastructure
-Compliance

Click here to view breakout sessions and abstracts offered at EMC World 2006.

Are you ready for some exciting news? The VMware engineering teams have been making great progress towards the release of Beta 2. We are ready to announce an updated release date. Previously we told the Beta 1 participants the software would be ready for download on March 2nd 2006. We are now on track for a February 16th 2006 start date!

Now, just so you know, I'm not ANTI-Linux by any stretch of the imagination. I've been around long enough to know that a person should use the right tool for the job. I hate reading all these flame wars online about how "Linux is the best, no windows is, no, os/2 is." :) I couldn't resist that last one. No doubt it will get me in trouble with the die hard IBM guys out there. (Hi Joe!)

But really. Let's put things in perspective. Yes, windows is easier, yes Linux is harder. No it doesn't mean that if you are a windows admin, you're a loser! Does it sound like I have a complex? It should... but I don't. I'm not a sys admin. I work on routers & switches... oh and a few VMWare ESX servers... mostly the infrastructure part, anyway.

I'll admit that I don't know a ton about Linux. I do know, though that it is not for everyone... and it is not equal to windows. NOTHING in this world is equal. God made it that way! Thankfully, too. How boring would it be if we were all equal in every respect? Enough ranting... I'm completely off topic. Enjoy the article anyway... besides, since it was on linux.com, not windows.com, it was targeted at Linux users... so why did I get so freaked out? Maybe I DO have a complex.

St. Valentine's Day is coming soon!

Consider getting one of these from ThinkGeek for your sweatheart:

The Bard's got nuthin on us.

The eloquence of a few lines of verse can be a powerful thing. Poetry can cause you to pause and think about life. It can incite feelings of rage. A good poem can even bring you to tears. We're not sure where this one lies in the spectrum of emotional reactions, but we're thinking somewhere between a chuckle and a look of heartfelt confusion. This shirt designed by ThinkGeek Love Labs® makes an especially good gift to one you love or love to confuse, depending on their knowledge of hex and Internet lore.

Click the Picture to check it out...

Here's another example of someone with their blinders on... The article starts talking about how virtualization is no new thing... that is just in there to set themselves up as "experts" in the field. Then it brags a little bit about how near-native performance Xen is, how open source is always better than closed... then how vmware is slow. That's all they say about vmware!!

Then, the awesomeness of Xen & Linux is touted:

Linux is a superior platform for supporting 64-bit processors, multi-processors, and blade/cluster architectures, plus you don't get trapped in licensing hell, so it's a natural as a host system for all sorts of virtualization scenarios. You get horsepower, stability and flexibility. Linux + Xen promises to be the real VMWare killer, for those who require "killer" scenarios. (Us peaceniks will settle for "something that works faster and more better. Oh yeah, and doesn't have a big price tag.")

But then the truth comes out:

Xen is just a baby, though a fast-growing baby, so it's still pretty limited. See the OS compatibility page for current status. Xen supports up to 4GB RAM, and currently supports only IA32, so it won't run on Itanium. It will run on any AMD64, since these have native support for IA32. Xen supports SMP on the host system, but not the guest OSes.

Hold on to your seats... there's more. I love this part especially:

I really wanted to make this a nice Xen howto, all about installing it to a hard drive and installing guest operating systems, but I couldn't get the blimey thing to work. Installing Xen is easy- getting the guest OS to work on my test Ubuntu system just didn't work. Either I'm dim, or it's difficult. I vote for difficult. And, the steps are different for every Linux distribution. So instead here a list of howtos for different distros:

Fedora Xen Quickstart
A moment of Xen: Virtualize Linux to test your apps (for Fedora)
Custom Xen Kernels on Debian
Setting up a XEN host with Debian
The Perfect Xen Setup For Debian And Ubuntu

Fedora 4 and SuSE 9.3 both come with Xen, it's in Debian Unstable, and Red Hat EL5 will have it.

If it is so awesome, why all the trouble? Just install it and get busy... Oh... like most other open source stuff, nothing is ever really FINISHED.

The last two paragraphs are good reading... you'll have to click over there to see for yourself. Mostly it says you should bother with Xen because some day it is going to grow up... and that the evil-companies-that-make-money are at fault for virtualization not taking off sooner.

Very cool... I'll need to play with this and report back on how it works. I have a couple physical servers myself that I need to virtualize. This should be interesting.

Ultimate-P2V (fix-vmscsi) is a free plug-in that allows you to clone a physical machine to virtual machine - and perform the neccessary “system reconfiguration” required to make it bootable. Without this tool or a commerical P2V tool the virtual machine would just give a “blue screen of death”

This document outlines how to configure a BartPE Boot-CD with the appropriate drivers and plug-ins to perform the P2V. We use Symantec Ghost 8 merely as an example of a disk cloning tool - but really any cloning software (with a supported plug-in) would work just as well.

The guide walks you through a completely manual creation of these plug-ins and drivers. The intention is allow you to configure a BartPE with the lastest drivers if you so wish. Alternatively, you can use the pre-configured plug-ins below.

Article Source

Vizioncore on Tuesday said it has enhanced its application for virtualizing the storage environment that sits behind servers virtualized using VMware software.

Vizioncore's esxRanger Professional now enables users to improve their ability to track the movements of virtual servers created by VMware's ESX Server application and better optimize their virtual IT infrastructure, said David Bieneman, CEO of Antioch, Ill.-based Vizioncore.

This article has some pretty good highlights of their new product features. Pricing is pretty reasonable too:

esxRanger Professional is available starting this week at $499 per CPU or per socket for dual-core servers.

This is the ever-handy Ethernet Crossover Adapter.

There's this little series of numbers that goes something like "1, 2, 3, 6" to which the audience responds "3, 6, 1, 2". Sure, it's not exactly the most exciting call and response game ever devised, but it will help you remember the pattern for making an ethernet crossover cable.

Or you could just carry the Ethernet Crossover Adapter on your keyring and forget about those stupid numbers. Along with our Ethernet Loopback Jack, the crossover adapter could just help you out of a tight network jam. And besides, having this adapter on your keyring quietly shows the world your status as a prepared geek.

Click on the picture for more details...