Virtualization

3ware 9650se & HP Mini 311 on the way!

Looks like Christmas is coming a little but early this year in the RighteousHack household. I just ordered a new netbook for my significant other. After much research and being thoroughly disappointed by Dell’s “new” offerings, we decided to look at HP. From the looks of things that I found on the HP Mini 311 in text and live video on YouTube, it seems like the little netbook with Nvidia ION graphics will be a solid performer considering that its a netbook. Better yet, the system runs DDR3 and the Intel N280 chip so it should be as fast or faster than most netbooks out there.

Next up in my ever increasing list of hardware is the 3ware 9650se PCI-E RAID controller. I have a need for a modern / high performing RAID card that won’t totally break the budget. This card will be used as a datastore only solution for my ESXi 4.0 server. All of the reviews led to two cards: 3ware 9650se and the Areca 1210. I have had more experience with Areca controllers than 3ware, but the reviews and ESXi compatibility issues pushed me towards 3ware. In addition to the tech stuff, 3ware support is reportedly awesome whereas Areca’s is nowhere to be found.

–Himuraken

Convert Thick Virtual Disks to Thin

When working with virtual machines, it is often advantageous to over allocate and under utilize resources. When it comes to virtual hard disks, this is even more common place. On low use or low demand servers, I always use thin provisioning. This saves disk space by only using physical disk space when the guest actually uses the virtual disk. But what about those disks that were created using the thick option, or brought over as thick automatically during a P2V conversion? Time to convert your thick virtual disk to thin.

As always, I recommend backing up all of your data and knowing what you are doing. Test this in a non-production environment.

Converting disks from thick to thin is actually quite easy and can be accomplished using these steps:

1. Log into your ESX host using SSH and cd into the VM directory that contains your virtual disk.

2. Shutdown the VM so that we can get exlusive access to the virtual disk.

3. Run vmkfstools -i yourthickdisk.vmdk -d thin yourthindisk.vmdk

4. Edit the settings for your VM and remove the existing drive. Add a new hard drive and choose the existing drive option.

5. Boot the VM and enjoy.

Note: Dont forget to go back to ESX server and remove the old .vmdk and -flat.vmdk files once you are sure that your VM is operating normally off the thin disk.

–Himuraken

MySQL errors after installing FOG

Recently, I converted a decently spec’d terminal server into an ESXi server after doing a P2V on the TS. After that, it was time to play. I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 9.04 server and then installed FOG. If you don’t know what FOG is, you may want to read FOG’s overview here. Once I got it all installed I kept getting an error when connecting to the web-based management interface. I have pasted in the error and resolution below, including credit on the source of the resolution.

–Himuraken

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’ (using password: NO) in /var/www/fog/management/index.php on line 34
Unable to connect to Database

I am not sure what else to tell you from here, I am at a standstill. Thanks for any help you can offer up.

RE: Problem with mySQL database after install
By: microleaks (microleaksProject AdminAccepting Donations) – 2008-02-06 15:52
All you need to do is go to /var/www/html/fog/commons/config.php and change the mysql password in that file you match whatever you set it as.

VMware User Group Meeting in Tampa, FL

Drove up to Tampa today to attend my first VMUG (VMware User Group) meet-up. The meeting was held at Southwest Florida Water Management District’s Tampa location and was really good. Representatives from SWFLWMD, VMware, EMC, Data Domain, Veeam!, and Symantec were present. The presentations were kicked off by the Senior System Administrator of SWFLWMD which was followed by presentations by VMware, EMC, and Data Domain. Overall the meeting was neat for me because it wasn’t the normal sales pitch / PowerPoint you to death onslaught that is normally standard fair for these type of gatherings. Apparently the Tampa area VMUG meetings are held quarterly. I am going to be attending more of these meetings in the future, it is worth the drive.

–Himuraken

Virtualization Lab: Part 2 – Concepts and Terminology

Virtualization Lab: Part 2 – Concepts and Terminology

Welcome to part two of my Virtualization Lab series. If you haven’t read part one, I would recommend reading it first.

In this post I want to go over the concepts and terms that are used so frequently. Understanding the gist of virtualization will help lay a steady foundation upon which advanced topics seem more natural and intuitive.

Commonly used terms:
Host – This term is used to describe the operating system and physical computer that exists and runs virtual software/hardware.

Guest – This term is used when referring to a virtual computer or operating system which is running on a host system.

VM – a Virtual Machine is the same thing as a guest and is used much more frequently.

Hypervisor: A hypervisor is a lower level operating system that exists somewhere between the physical hardware and the VM’s. A hypervisor usually takes the place of your user system and is essentially a small highly optimized operating system for running virtual machines.

P2V: This acronym stands for Physical to Virtual. P2V conversions are great when they work and help convert current systems into a VM.

There are many other terms and acronyms out there, but these are the most common.

Where to start:
For the absolute beginner and most others, I recommend installing VirtualBox which can be downloaded here. Go ahead and get VirtualBox installed since we will be going over it in more detail in part three of this series. You will also need to download a .iso file for next weeks post. I will be installing Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope 32bit which can be downloaded from here.

–Himuraken

Virtualization Lab: Part 1 – The Basics

Virtualization Lab: Part 1 – The Basics

Many people are wondering what virtualization is really all about, and for good reason. In this multi-part series, I will take the virtualization novice from the ground up to a working lab/light production system.

I’ll start with a bit of a rant: It seems that people on the Internet and everyone in the tech industry in general never seem to run out of buzz words. Everything is virtual, or it is green, or it is in the cloud. As my friend Numchuk would say, “Set my hair on fire and put it out with a sledge hammer.” I hate it for the most part, and for good reason. Everyone starts flapping their jaws about this and that and all reality goes out the window. That is to say, principals and baselines are momentarily forgotten.

With that being said, virtualization is here to stay. Albeit a popular buzz word at the moment, it is the most usable and beneficial thing that I can think of at the moment.

Most technicians and engineers have used some sort of virtualization product at this point. If you haven’t that is fine, but it is time to catch up with the rest of the pack.

My first experience was with VMWare’s Workstation product running on Windows 98 or 2000, I honestly cannot recall. But back then, it was all about installing Linux and BeOS and still being able to use my Windows box when I got stuck somewhere. Nowadays, I have ditched VMWare’s Workstation and started using Sun’s VirtualBox. What I virtualize has also changed, I now use VM software to virtualize Windows for the very few applications I use that don’t run properly in Linux, which I now use exclusively. Products of this type are excellent for running older or differing operating systems so that you can access that Windows application on your Macintosh, or that Linux application on your Windows box.

While that is all very convenient and good, the real fun starts when you start virtualizing servers. With a single high-powered physical server you can run 3-10 virtual servers depending on their types. Your company only has one domain controller and it is running WINS, DNS, and DHCP? What if that one installation of Windows goes south? Spread it out across physical and virtual servers.

But before we get ahead of ourselves we must learn the in’s and out’s of such a system prior to putting it into a production environment. You have heard the old adage along the lines of “with great power comes great responsibility” or something like that right? Well that is most certainly the case with virtualization.

–Himuraken

New Dell PowerEdge R610 on the way.

We recently purchased Kaseya and needed a better server to put it on. After deciding to setup Kaseya as a VM on a ESX host and a little capacity planning, I determined that a new server would be needed. After getting the corporate overlords to approve, I ordered up a new Dell PowerEdge R610 with 12GB of RAM and six HDD’s. I’m thinking RAID 10 for this box, but a little research will make the final call.

–Himuraken

Converting VMWare Workstation images to VMWare ESXi 3.5

After getting my Dell PowerEdge loaded up with ESXi 3.5, I decided to try out one of the Ubuntu JEOS loads from the VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace. After unzipping the 7zip file I was left with the normal VMWare file types such as .vmx and .vmdk, but ESXi only gives me the option to bring in a Virtual Appliance from a .ovf file. After a little research I determined that a conversion would be required.

I found two different ways to get this done, from the command line or using VMWare vCenter Converter:

Use SCP to copy your Workstation files over to the ESX server. The path is /vmfs/volumes/YourDataStore. Next, ssh into your ESX server and run the following command:

vmkfstools -i sourcefile.vmdk /vmfs/vmfsname/destinationfile.vmdk

Once that process is complete you can point ESX at that file and start it up. Make sure you delete the source files so you aren’t wasting space on the ESX server.

The second and possibly easier way to do this is to download and install the vCenter Converter from VMWare. Once you have the application installed, simply follow the steps in the conversion wizard. It takes you from start to finish, including the transfer of files to the ESX server itself.

–Himuraken