Blue Gears

Well, as time permits I have been slowly upgrading my VMs to the latest virtual hardware. When I started this process, it was before VMware instituted a warning within the Upgrade Virtual Hardware that you first need to upgrade VMware Tools. This problem bit me twice and it was enough that I put in my own policy to always upgrade VMware Tools BEFORE upgrading the Virtual Hardware.

When you play around with Windows 2008 R2, if you do not properly upgrade VMware Tools before a Virtual Hardware Upgrade your VM will spin out of control sucking up CPU until you kill it. Which you have to do, in order to fix the issue. A reboot will fix the issue, but then you must upgrade VMware Tools before anything else happens. I suggest using Safe-Mode.

In one of the updates VMware kindly introduced a warning box when you upgrade Virtual Hardware to let you know that you need to update VMware Tools first. If you do not install VMware Tools due to security concerns, you may want to not upgrade your virtual hardware. I have not tried removing the tools after Virtual Hardware Upgrade, which may be another option.

I like to play Windows based games on my Linux based Quad Core computer. To do this I use Codeweaver’s Cross Over Games. In general, it meets all my gaming needs. So far I have been able to install and play the following games:

• Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars using the instructions located at Codeweaver’s C&C3: Tiberium Wars compatibility page. It is important to use the ‘Default Install’ as an Advance Install will fail. Also, you will want to install inside an Unsupported Bottle, I use one named CNC3.
• Rise of Nations requires additional instructions. First you need to use the Codeweaver’s installation tool to install Steam to get the necessary version of DirectX, then follow the instructions on the Codeweaver’s Rise of Nations Compatibility page.
• Rise of Nations: Throne and Patriots should just install. All updates work as well. However, to get sound working go to http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9027 and follow most of those instructions remembering that CrossOver Games does some thing slightly differently.
• Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath installs fine but you need to follow the instructions for the Tiberium War’s compatibility page to get a running copy. Just substitute Kane’s Wrath for Tiberium Wars in most cases.
• Escape the Museum is just fun and installs fine with no issues what so ever.
• Command and Conquer 4 will not WORK with any form of Wine yet as it requires .NET 3.5 which does not run yet. Not sure CNC4 should be played at all given that you ‘always’ need a live connection.

What is interesting about installing these games makes me think of a Games Virtual Desktop using JeOS and Crossover Games. Granted, the video performance would be incredibly bad, but the idea is interesting.

I actually have two home labs in use for Virtualization testing. The first is the traditional hardware lab, and the second is a lab built using one system. One stays at home and the other travels with me every where I go.

Traditional Lab

The traditional lab consists of the following:

• 2 DL380G5s with 2 ES5450s and 16GBs of memory each <- 3rd on its way soon
• IBM DS3400 SAN w/3TBs of Disk
• 2 Brocade 240E 4 GB Fibre Switches
• Several HP and Cisco GigE Switches
• 2 APC SmartUPS 2200RM
• DISC BluSafe as Backup Device Continue reading ‘Home Lab’ »

In my continuing story on upgrading to VMware vSphere it is possible to use Host Profiles even without an Enterprise Plus license, at least for a short period of time. Check out my Blue Gears blog on Network World for the complete story.

Read the ongoing saga of the next phase of the upgrade on the Network World Blue Gears site.

I have been trying to upgrade from VMware VI3 to VMware vSphere 4, but it is not as simple as that. First you have to upgrade VMware vCenter then upgrade ESX 3 to ESX 4. That all sounds wonderful, but I have one little issue. I am running VMware vCenter with MS SQL 2000, which is no longer supported.

So first I need to upgrade to MS SQL 2005 or 2008, but since I have to perform a pretty major SQL upgrade, I might as well go for the whole 9 yards and move my VMware vCenter server to Microsoft Windows 2008 R2. This decision however causes many other items to need an upgrade. Mainly some infrastructure items like my Samba Domain Controller so that it can accept Windows 2008 R2 domain members. Continue reading ‘Upgrading to vSphere – The Saga Starts’ »

I was not able to get to my yard for 3 weeks so the grass was once more 4-5″ high and a bit damp from all the rain we had. My Neuton Power 6.3 mowed this down with no issues. The old Black & Decker CMM1000 in its heyday still would have taken 3 days to complete. While I took 2 days to finish everything with the Neuton Power it was not the lack of charge that slowed me down. But my own abilities to do everything in one day. Next time I fully expect to use just one battery charge for the entire yard. 1 charge got 3/4s of the field and the second battery wiped out the rest of the upper deck brush and the other half of the yard.  This included using the weed whacker attachment. I know it is hard to picture my yard but let me tell you this is a vast improvement and the yard looks much better now. Continue reading ‘Neuton Power — Still Positive’ »

I have documented my steps to go green within my small data center. But I have been going green with yard work for years as I have been using a battery powered mower for over 15 years.  But now I have found something much better and it will save me in charging costs moving forward. What is this? Neuton Power CE6.3 Lawn Mower.

Over 15 years ago, when I lived in Austin TX, Austin had a trade in program: Bring your gas mower in and we will give you a voucher to buy a brand new electric corded or battery mower. I took advantage of this and purchased a Black and Decker CMM1000 24 Volt lawn mower. It did yeoman work while it lasted even with all its problems. Continue reading ‘Neuton Power — Going Green with Yard Work’ »

In my desire to limit the amount of power my Virtual Environment draws, I am in the midst of decommissioning my DLT4 Tape Libraries in favor of a DISC Blu-Safe which holds 15 50GB Read/Erasable (RE) Blu-Ray disks. This unit draws less power than my larger Dell PowerVault 128T or the Breecehill Q7 I used previously while also much smaller in size so it can fit better within my reduced rack space design. Lastly, this device is USB 2.0 based and not SCSI based. So attaching it directly to a VM like I could with my SCSI device is not an option. Continue reading ‘DISC Blu-Safe to the Rescue’ »

In my previous post I explained how SVMotion saved the day, this blog post is about the need for storage fabric redundancy. Storage fabric/network redundancy makes simple upgrades work without the need to power off any VMs or virtualization hosts. My recent upgrade to a Brocade 240E went smoothly once I could access the device. Continue reading ‘VMware ESX, upgrade to 4GB Switch – Redundancy is what it is about!’ »