Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Desktop

ESX in Workstation

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Lately I’ve been testing scripted builds of ESX hosts and several other tools like RDA. Because of this I had to reinstall my ESX hosts several times. Sometimes I actually had to completely delete them before I could start over again. You can consider this blog posting as a note to myself, this way I can do a simple search on my own blog when everything is screwed up again:

  1. Create Virtual Machine, Custom
  2. WS 6.5 Compatibility
  3. Linux Kernel, other
  4. Number of processors: 2
  5. Memory: 1024
  6. Bridged Networking (change to team later on)
  7. LSI Logic
  8. New disc, SCSI
  9. 6GB, pre-allocated, single file
  10. Customize hardware, remove: soundcard, usb, floppy
    set execution mode to: Intel VT-x
  11. Edit .vmx and add the following:
    ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
    monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"
  12. Install ESX
  13. Add VM to Team and select “LAN 1” for networking(keep the test vm’s completely isolated)

What’s in a name…

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This will probably take me a couple of weeks and maybe months to get fully adjusted to the new names VMware is going to use for their products.

Most of the name changes were already announced during VMworld. And there are three major ones in the actual list:

  1. VirtualCenter → VMware vCenter
  2. VDI → VMware View
  3. VMFS → VMware vStorage VMFS

So most related products also had a revamp, Lifecycle Manager became VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager and so on. Makes sense to me with the Virtual Datacenter OS coming up.

So learn this list by heart and we will do a test tomorrow 😉

VMware Workstation, Ubuntu and Unity

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I’ve been trying to get Unity working for VMware Workstation on Ubuntu. I had one PC working and one that wasn’t working. Both ran Ubuntu 8.10, but one with 32bits and the other with the 64bits version. So I expected this to be the problem. After a close examination of the VMware Workstation setup I noticed that the one that didn’t work had the following line in /etc/vmware/config:

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

This was added manually so I could still use key combo’s like “ctrl-alt-ins”. But on the machine that does have a working Unity mode I implemented the second option described in this blog post.

So I decided to also implement this on my 64bit Ubuntu 8.10 workstation. After restarting VMware workstation this was the result:


Windows Event Viewer running on Ubuntu 8.10 in Unity mode…

VMware Workstation also 25% off and Fusion still 50% off

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I just noticed that you can also use the coupon code “CyberMondayDeal” to buy VMware Workstation. Using the code today, and today only, will give you 25% reduction. In other words pick up VMware Workstation 6.5.1 for $141.75.

And still a few hours left on this deal, so be sure to either pick up Fusion and/or Workstation while you still can.

Thanks to everyone using these links! My kids can have a decent dinner again 😉

Buy VMware Fusion on monday

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It’s bargain monday! Pick up VMware fusion for just a few bucks and support Yellow-Bricks at the same time. Fusion normally costs $ 71.99, with this promo code “CyberMondayDeal” you can pick it up for only $ 39,99 and support Yellow-Bricks at the same time. And if you already own Parallels or VirtualPC you can get an additional $ 30,- rebate.(US/Canada only!) Pick it up, it would make a great christmas gift, or for the people in the netherlands… Sinterklaas.