Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Howto

VMware Technical papers

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VMware lately published a whole bunch of must read technical papers:

Storage Design Options for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Companies planning to deploy VDI face decisions about the use of both local and shared storage,
and in the case of shared storage solutions, choosing between differing technologies available in
today’s market. Selecting the appropriate storage model is important for both performance and costs reasons. Certain solutions require less overhead than others, as do different implementations of the same technology. Costs can vary greatly depending on which storage options are chosen. Fortunately organizations can leverage a myriad of best practices to help drive these costs down, while improving performance. This paper provides information on technical concepts related to storage implementations in a VMware ® Virtual Desktop Infrastructure ( VDI) environment.

VMware View Reference Architecture Kit

This reference architecture kit is comprised of four distinct papers written by VMware and our supporting partners to serve as a guide to assist in the early phases of planning, design and deployment of VMware View based solutions. The building block approach uses common components to minimize support costs and deployment risks during the planning of VMware View based deployments.

SQL Server Workload Consolidation

Database workloads are very diverse. While most database servers are lightly loaded, larger database workloads can be resource-intensive, exhibiting high I/O rates or consuming large amounts of memory. With improvements in virtualization technology and hardware, even servers running large database workloads run well in virtual machines. Servers running Microsoft’s SQL Server, among the top database server platforms in the industry today, are no exception.

Using IP Multi Cast with VMware

IP multicast is a popular protocol implemented in many applications for simultaneously and efficiently delivering information to multiple destinations. Multicast sources send single copies of information over the network and let the network take responsibility for replicating and forwarding the information to multiple recipients.

Reset your lost Windows password

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Just had to reset a lost Windows XP password for the second time and thought it would be useful for myself to have a howto online:

  1. Boot from the System Rescue CD
  2. Mount the disk:
    ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows -o force
  3. This depends on the OS install if there are caps used, but usually:
    cd /mnt/windows/Windows/System32/config
  4. List the account in the SAM datbase:
    chntpw -l SAM
  5. Reset the password of the Administrator:
    chntpw -u Administrator SAM
  6. Press 1 to clear the current password
  7. Reboot the server/workstation:
    reboot

So if you’ve forgotten your Windows XP / 2000 / 2003 password this is the way to clear it or reset it.

Clear the VI Client connect box server address list

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If you’re a consultant you probably connect with your Virtual Infrastructure Client to a dozen different VirtualCenter servers or ESX hosts every week. After a couple of months the drop down list “IP Address / Name” gets all saturated and it’s impossible to find the right server… So it might come in handy to clear the list every once in a while:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware\VMware Infrastructure Client\Preferences

Just delete all “connections” that are obsolete in the “RecentConnections” value.

VMware Workstation & Ubuntu ctrl-alt-ins not working?

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I just noticed that when running a VM on VMware Workstation 6.5 and Ubuntu 8.10(but this problem probably also occurs on other non-Windows OS’es), you can’t use the arrow keys. But also ctrl-alt-ins isn’t working, which is annoying cause you would have to do it with the mouse. And no arrow keys also means that you can’t browse through your command-line history in Windows or Linux for that matter. Luckily there are two work arounds:

  1. sudo gedit /etc/vmware/config
  3. If that doesn’t work try adding the following:
    xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
    xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
    xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
    xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
    xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
    xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
    xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
    xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
    xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
    xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
    xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
    xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
    xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
    xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
    xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
    xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
    xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
    xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
    xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

Thanks goes out to AlexPX and Johannes for pointing us out to this solution. There’s also a KB article on this one I just noticed.

ESX in a Box with Shared storage but…

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I was just rebuilding my “ESX in a box” setup. I wanted to install an iSCSI Virtual San Appliance but why should I? Your answer probably is: well because you need shared storage to do a VMotion / HA / DRS etc. Yes you are completely right I do need shared storage to have these capabilities, but there’s no need for an iSCSI VSA or NFS appliance for that matter.

A while ago Bouke G. of Jume wrote a nice blog on how to set up shared storage without a SAN appliance. In short you just create an additional disk(scsi id 1:0) on the first ESX VM. Close down VMware Workstation and edit your .vmx file. I would suggest a copy and paste of the following lines and remove the duplicate lines. (scsi1:0.filename etc)

scsi1.present = “TRUE”
scsi1.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
scsi1.sharedBus = “VIRTUAL”
scsi1:0.present = “TRUE”
scsi1:0.fileName = “D:\Virtual Machines\shared_disk.vmdk”
scsi1:0.mode = “independent-persistent”
scsi1:0.redo = “”

disk.locking = “FALSE”
diskLib.dataCacheMaxSize = “0”
diskLib.dataCacheMaxReadAheadSize = “0”
diskLib.dataCacheMinReadAheadSize = “0”
diskLib.dataCachePageSize = “4096”
diskLib.maxUnsyncedWrites = “0”

Now copy the correct .vmx entries to the second ESX VM’s .vmx file and just boot them up. It’s as simple as that. Yes I know setting up iSCSI isn’t difficult but this will save you precious memory, especially when running this as a demo kit on your laptop!