Moving VMs from local disk to shared storage

We've had VMware Infrastructure 3 for over a year, but our usage of it has been "organic" (read: unplanned and unstructured). Yesterday I started making moves to rectify that.

One of the things we didn't get right at the start was setting up the SAN to store all VMs. This resulted in a number of VMs crammed onto internal storage. Some VMs were loaded on SAN LUNs, but we didn't have the LUN mappings setup to allow multiple ESX servers to see them.

As I said, it was an organic install.

So yesterday I created a new 250GB LUN on the SAN and mapped it to our "infrastructure" ESX servers (three HP DL360 G4 servers - not super fast, but sufficient for domain controllers etc.). For the first time, multiple ESX servers could see the same storage.

My first action was to create a small Linux server on the shared storage and test Vmotion. This worked fine, so I started copying the VMs from internal storage to the shared LUN. To do this, I shutdown the VM, browsed to the VM folder in the datastore browser, highlighted it and selected "Move to..." from the context sensitive menu. I then selected the new SAN LUN and started the move.

Once moved, the VMX file needs to have the execute bit set (using chmod from the ESX service console), and I then removed the VM from the Virtual Center inventory. I then re-added the VM by right-clicking the VMX file in the datastore browser and selecting "Add to inventory".

Upon starting the VM, a question needs to be answered (the icon for the VM changes to a speech bubble - right click and select Answer Question). Because the VM has been moved, elect to "Keep" the VM id. The VM will then fire up properly.

Or it did in most cases. One VM gave an error that it was "Unable to lock file". A quick Google suggested a LCK file, but I didn't have one of those. To resolve this problem, I edited the VM settings and removed the hard disk (from the VM, NOT the disk file!). I then re-added the same disk, and the VM started without problems.

Migration to Google Mail

Although I've had a Google Mail account for a few years, I've really only used it as a test account, or when I've not had access to my personal email. Instead, my main (church) email address has been accessed by Thunderbird on my local machine. Obviously this is not ideal from a cloud computing perspective.

So tonight I took the step of migrating all my email from Thunderbird to Google. I did this using the IMAP interface to Gmail and dragging and dropping messages up to the cloud.

In order to ensure that all new messages go to Google, I configured Gmail to download my email using POP. I've also got the webmaster account on a Google Apps domain for a local charity, which I've now changed to forward to Gmail.

The net result was an inbox with > 1700 messages and taking 325MB (out of a quota of 7178MB).

The next step was to use the Gmail filter capabilities to add tags for my emails based on destination email address. Once this was done, I spent a couple of minutes archiving all email older than 1 month.

Now I have a tidy inbox, accessible from everywhere I can use a browser, collecting email from three different addresses and automatically tagging incoming messages.

VMware ESXi on an HP ML110 G5

I recently bought an HP ML110 G5 from Ebuyer because it was going very cheap (£220 for a dual core Xeon, 1GB RAM and 250GB hard disk). This box will be my new server, possibly for trying things out with, but maybe as a replacement for my Shuttle that currently runs VMware Server on OpenSUSE.

Unfortunately, the first attempt at installing ESXi failed with the message that no storage devices could be found. After some searching, I found that by changing the disk settings in the BIOS from "Auto" to "SATA" fixed the problem and the disk was found (full details here.

The installer again failed with the following error: "Unable to write image to the selected disk. This maybe caused by bad sectors on the device or another hardware problem."

One comment I read suggested the amount of memory could be a problem. As this is to be a VM server, I ordered another 4GB RAM (CT810056 4GB kit (2GBx2), 240-pin DIMM Upgrade for a HP - Compaq ProLiant ML110 G5 System) from Crucial and fitted it this morning.

ESXi installed without any problems. Now to install some VMs...

The essential Windows setup

Although my home environment has only a single Windows machine (T's desktop), I occasionally get involved in the support of other people's PCs and laptops. Over the time, the list of things that I do on these machines has evolved. This is what I do with new PCs (August 2008 edition :-))

Get a broadband router

I always recommend a router instead of an ADSL modem. This provides the security of a hardware firewall as well as the ability to have multiple machines connecting and wireless access. My preferred model is the Netgear DG834G which fulfills all the requirements. I'm sure there are equally good models out there, but this is cheap and works reliably. It's the model we recommend for our users at work and it's the same model I've deployed to almost all my users.

Operating System choices

Despite the fact that Vista has been given a battering for being resource intensive, with enough memory (2GB minimum), it can do a pretty decent job for the average user. I always make sure the machine can handle Aero Glass (if it can't, then it's too underspec to consider).

I'd like to be able to recommend a Mac or Linux, but for most of my users, it's easier to go the Vista route.


Remove the bloat

The first step is to remove the "value add" software and trial software. First culprit is usually the evil Norton Internet Security. By removing these unasked for applications, and tidying up the URL shortcuts to various ISPs, Ebay etc. can speed the boot time up considerably.

Create a rescue CD

If the machine does not come with OS media or a "Recovery Disc", it is essential to create one. This usually involves the creation of a set of disks that copy the data on a resuce partition to DVD. Keep these safe in case the hard drive dies.

Fix the default IE page

Set it to about:blank and not the advert infested mess that the manufacturer points you to. It's worth doing for those rare times when IE is a necessity.

Install Firefox

Although IE7 was an improvement over IE6, Firefox is my favoured browser and one I recommend to all my users. This typically requires the additional download of the Flash plugin afterwards in order to allow access to YouTube etc.

Install some Anti-Virus Software

I used to recommend the free version of AVG, but found recently that Microsoft OneCare is pretty decent for the price. It's fairly unintrusive and can be installed on several machines using the same licence. It's since become my recommended AV solution and the one that I have been installing on my users' machines.

Recommend an external hard drive

I'll always recommend an external hard drive for users to backup their data. People often put so much data onto their machines that it's folly not to have some form of backup. Then it's a matter of configuring the backup to run(!), using either the Vista backup or letting OneCare handle it.

Limited user rights

This can be tricky to deploy and depends largely on the needs of the users, but if possible configure the main login to be a normal, non-administrative user. This can drastically reduce the amount of spyware that gets on the machine. (This doesn't always work as the daughter of one family managed to guess the admin password and escalated herself to an administrator. She then proceeded to download all sorts of malware).

Remote Admin

I only do this on a few machines, and always with the consent of the owner. An install of VNC running as a service, and the appropriate firewall forwarding rule has allowed me to manage some machines remotely (mostly family). This often requires the router to be configured to use dyndns.org (which the Netgear does) so I can connect via hostname, even when their ISP uses DHCP.

Summary

Although there is nothing here that is rocket science, the result is a nice, quickly booting machine that isn't loaded up with crap and is a nice setup for most users.

The iPhone 3G: First Impressions

After a 50 minute queue at the local O2 store, and the problems of actually getting an activated iPhone, I managed to walk away with on Friday, and after a busy 24 hours, I've finally got around to setting it up and having a play.

First impressions?

This is completely unlike any mobile phone I have ever used. The iPhone is awesome!

What's there to like?

1) I can access all my mail accounts - personal IMAP server, Google Mail and Yahoo Mail.
2) Safari is completely usable and supports multiple pages being active - a real "wow" moment when I found this.
3) It has picked up my iCal calendars, including my Google Calendars.
4) The Maps GPS location is very cool.
5) The App Store makes adding applications a breeze. So far, I've only tried one (the Bible), but will have a proper hunt later
6) Predictive text with spell correction is very cool and I'm starting to get used to the virtual keyboard.

No negatives yet (although I'm sure there will be some).

Summary: Best. Phone. Ever.

Is OneNote a Cul de Sac?

There has been a lot of buzz around the office recently about Microsoft OneNote 2007. For the uninitiated, this application is basically a collection of notebooks for jotting down information. Notebooks (e.g., Work, Personal) have sections (imagine dividers in a traditional notebook) which contain pages. It's possible to create free form text, drag and drop image, links etc.

All in all, a very nice application that I'm looking forward to getting stuck in with.

My only reservation is that it uses a proprietary file format to store the notebooks, and it appears to be very single-user focused. There are ways of sharing notebooks, but these seem to be limited to placing them on file shares.

In some ways, it's a bit like SharePoint - easy to setup and load stuff into, but more difficult to untangle yourself from should you decide to migrate away from Microsoft. Perhaps that's the plan...

Zoho has a Notebook application on the cloud which is very advanced, but I'd be more reluctant to trust a small company with my data than managing it myself.

If only someone could come up with an application that does everything OneNote can do, but in a true client/server model, with offline capabilities, web access, and an open source licence. Any takers?

A week of interesting technology

Last week I had the opportunity to use a number of interesting technologies and applications. I've already blogged about the Cisco Network Assistant, but that was only the beginning.

We were running a VMware Server virtual machine that was not performing correctly. The physical hardware was not up to the job, so we wanted to migrate the VM to our ESX server. The VM was configured to use a virtual IDE disk which prevented us from importing it directly into ESX. Enter VMware Converter. This piece of software allowed us to step through a wizard where we selected the source VM files, and then entered the server name we wanted to save the machine. A few other options later (selecting the destination datastore and similar), and the conversion process started. Twenty five minutes later it was all done. The converted VM had been streamed into place and was ready to go. Really simple and worked first time. I was impressed!

The end of the week gave me the opportunity to experiment with Sun Logical Domains (LDOMs). This hypervisor based VM technology can be found on the Coolthreads range (using the new sun4v architecture). Unlike Containers, LDOMs allow different Solaris versions to be installed. We're testing the performance of the machine to run as an Ingres server, so I'll most probably update the blog later this week with more information.

This week looks equally promising - Apple's WWDC was yesterday, although I haven't watched the keynote yet. The 3G iPhone isn't unexpected, but is now quite tempting, even with a £35/month contract as I can't think of a better mobile web browsing device. And then there is the announcement of "MobileMe" (aka, "Exchange for the rest of us"). It's certainly something to look into to...