Agh!! Vista is driving me nuts. Yes, I am a Windows and Linux admin, so I need to work with Microsoft OS's as well. I have been test driving Vista for the past few months. At first, it wasn't so bad. But as real work needs to get done I get very frustrated with its performance.
Example, I was running Fedora as the main OS on the machine I run VMware Server on. I could run about four or five VMs in the background and you tended to forget they were even running in the background. Now I am running Vista with VMware Server. Ugh! Even running *one* VM is painful! Just to start it and the OS starts hitting the disk heavily. Once it gets running it isn't too bad - but keep in mind I am running *one* VM compared to the four or five I used to run.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Google Apps
I am giving Google Apps a try for one of my domains. I really hadn't been planning on trying it, I was relatively happy with my current hosting situation. Several months ago I started forwarding all of my email to the various domains I have to Gmail. The Gmail interface worked for me, I could access it from any computer without needing to setup IMAP settings on each PC. And now that Gmail offers IMAP access I always have the possibility of using a thick client if I feel then need. This setup has worked well for the past several months.
Then this week happened. Any emails forwarded from my hosting provider to Gmail have been taking 12 to 24 hours to get passed through. The hosting provider is aware of the issue and is supposedly working with Gmail to resolve the issue. But as of yet, no change for the better. Most of the mailing lists I subscribe to are affected by this forward. Now I could have resubscribed to the lists with a gmail address directly, but the reason for the forward is to minimize me ever having to change the subscribed address - I could just update the forward.
After three days of this I decided to setup a Google Apps account for one my busier email domains. The setup was pretty painless. I still have to play with some of the features, but for now my email is happily flowing without delay.
Then this week happened. Any emails forwarded from my hosting provider to Gmail have been taking 12 to 24 hours to get passed through. The hosting provider is aware of the issue and is supposedly working with Gmail to resolve the issue. But as of yet, no change for the better. Most of the mailing lists I subscribe to are affected by this forward. Now I could have resubscribed to the lists with a gmail address directly, but the reason for the forward is to minimize me ever having to change the subscribed address - I could just update the forward.
After three days of this I decided to setup a Google Apps account for one my busier email domains. The setup was pretty painless. I still have to play with some of the features, but for now my email is happily flowing without delay.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Laptop Repaired and Fedora 8
I finally have my laptop display repaired... again! Supposedly they replaced the LCD this time. Hopefully my display will actually continue to work. The turn around was pretty quick this time though - we used a different after market warranty provider this time. I sent it in Monday afternoon, received a call from them on Tuesday while they were working on it and received it on Wednesday - just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.
First thing I did was install Fedora 8 on it (reminder, it's HP nx7400). I have been anxious to play with it on my main laptop to see how much the suspend and hibernation efforts paid off, as well as seeing if my onboard wireless worked without jumping through hoops and sacrificing a chicken.
Very pleased so far! Wireless was working with minimal fuss. Suspend works quite nicely and hibernate also works, though a little slow, but it works. The buttons for volume control work as well. Adjusting brightness with the fn key also works with no issues. The lights for those buttons do not work, but that is not a major deal. The wireless light also does not work - though the wireless is working.
Everything is very snappy, I as able to enable Compiz with no issues. I installed Compiz Fusion, but haven't been able to get it to work completely. I have not spent much time with that yet. I may be missing something simple though. We'll see when I have more time to look at it.
So.... Another laptop and another success!
First thing I did was install Fedora 8 on it (reminder, it's HP nx7400). I have been anxious to play with it on my main laptop to see how much the suspend and hibernation efforts paid off, as well as seeing if my onboard wireless worked without jumping through hoops and sacrificing a chicken.
Very pleased so far! Wireless was working with minimal fuss. Suspend works quite nicely and hibernate also works, though a little slow, but it works. The buttons for volume control work as well. Adjusting brightness with the fn key also works with no issues. The lights for those buttons do not work, but that is not a major deal. The wireless light also does not work - though the wireless is working.
Everything is very snappy, I as able to enable Compiz with no issues. I installed Compiz Fusion, but haven't been able to get it to work completely. I have not spent much time with that yet. I may be missing something simple though. We'll see when I have more time to look at it.
So.... Another laptop and another success!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Fedora 8
This week I took the time to work with the latest Fedora release - Fedora 8. My main laptop is still suffering from LCD issues, so I have not been able to use it as I normally would. Earlier this week I used the Live CD to get a glimpse of it.
The first boot was on a VM running on VMware Server. Everything just worked (as expected). I tried out the install to Hard Disk option which also worked great. No issues with that install.
I needed Fedora install on a laptop for a Release Party on Thursday night. With mine in the shop I figured I would make use of the Fedora 8 Live CD. I used it on a Sony laptop, which I have found needs one to jump through a few more hoops than I find on other vendor's machines. Depsite that, the Live CD worked great - the largest issue being brightness control. That was easily fixed by installing the spicctrl package and cranking the brightness up. It ran great.
This weekend I added a Fedora 8 install image to my installs served via http and the PXE boot setup I have at home. Today I installed Fedora 8 on an older Dell laptop via my PXE boot setup. The install took a little time, but that was to be expected for the older hardware I installed on.
I am always impressed at how much better and complete Linux installs get with each new release. I think most everything is working on this laptop with a minimum amount of fuss. Even the on-board wireless card is working - something I tend to cheat on and just toss in an old Orinoco card that always works. On top of that - the laptop specs are a Celeron 1GHz with 256MB of RAM. For those type of specs the OS runs remarkably well. Sure it swaps out when I open too many apps, but adding some more RAM to the machine would surely solve that.
Fedora 8 seems to be a great release. I can't wait until my LCD is finally fixed on my main laptop so I can get it installed on there. If you haven't tried Fedora 8, grab the Live CD and give it a try! You would be amazed at how much more life your old hardware has left in it.
The first boot was on a VM running on VMware Server. Everything just worked (as expected). I tried out the install to Hard Disk option which also worked great. No issues with that install.
I needed Fedora install on a laptop for a Release Party on Thursday night. With mine in the shop I figured I would make use of the Fedora 8 Live CD. I used it on a Sony laptop, which I have found needs one to jump through a few more hoops than I find on other vendor's machines. Depsite that, the Live CD worked great - the largest issue being brightness control. That was easily fixed by installing the spicctrl package and cranking the brightness up. It ran great.
This weekend I added a Fedora 8 install image to my installs served via http and the PXE boot setup I have at home. Today I installed Fedora 8 on an older Dell laptop via my PXE boot setup. The install took a little time, but that was to be expected for the older hardware I installed on.
I am always impressed at how much better and complete Linux installs get with each new release. I think most everything is working on this laptop with a minimum amount of fuss. Even the on-board wireless card is working - something I tend to cheat on and just toss in an old Orinoco card that always works. On top of that - the laptop specs are a Celeron 1GHz with 256MB of RAM. For those type of specs the OS runs remarkably well. Sure it swaps out when I open too many apps, but adding some more RAM to the machine would surely solve that.
Fedora 8 seems to be a great release. I can't wait until my LCD is finally fixed on my main laptop so I can get it installed on there. If you haven't tried Fedora 8, grab the Live CD and give it a try! You would be amazed at how much more life your old hardware has left in it.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Back to VMware
Over the past two months I have been working with Microsoft Virtual Server. When working on various numbers this year the licensing costs for VMware forced us to look at possible alternatives - one of these being Microsoft Virtual Server, with a possible move to Windows Virtualization when it is finally released.
Most of the experience with the Microsoft solution was very positive. Once the Virtual Additions were loaded in the Windows guest VMs I was able to get very good performance out of them. I ran a variety of servers on the host (which was running Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 and the most recent Microsoft Virtual Server) and could run several VMs at once and still have good performance.
I was down to two final things to test when I finally ran into what we will consider a show stopper for any chance of us moving to the Microsoft solution. The first was to test a Linux guest VM and the second to test hot backups. Linux guests are now supported in the Microsoft solution and hot backups can supposedly be done through Microsoft Data Protection Manager using VSS. I never made it to testing hot backups, as the Linux experience proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
I installed a CentOS 4.x guest. The install went with no issues and it was easy to get setup. Wanting to use a SCSI disk I managed to get the Linux Virtual Additions to install. I wasn't very happy with this install though, mainly because they require you to use the --force switch to RPM to get the X portion of the extensions to install. In my opinion if you ever have to use the --force switch with RPM, something is wrong.
To get the SCSI portion to start at boot I needed to integrate it into initrd. This was not too bad and soon I had the vmadd-SCSI starting with no errors. Part of my testing was to test IO performance. I did this by running iostat in the background and using dd to create a 2GB file on the virtual disk. My first time doing this caused the guest to get numerous disk errors and render the Linux VM unusable. My other running Windows VMs did still run and respond to requests. However, when powering off the Linux VM it hung on shutdown. The only way I could find to power it off was to restart the host server. Luckily this was a test environment, but had this occurred in production it would have been unacceptable.
I tried more that afternooon to get the Linux VM to fail after I brought the host server backup. I could not get the Linux VM to fail though. When I came in the next morning though the Linux guest had died again with the same errors as seen the previous day. It had died at 8pm the previous night - the only thing going on at that time was the iostat command I left running refreshing every 2 seconds. Again, it required a reboot of the Virtual Server host to get the Linux guest to come back up.
Now, it is possible the actual issue within the guest could have been fixed. But, I had seen enough. There is apparently some condition that exists that can crash a guest VM bad enough that the whole server needs restarted. I cannot risk going into production when such conditions are found in testing.
I tested VMware ESX Server similarly when we considered it for production. I was never able to crash a guest VM to the point that the entire ESX server needed rebooted to resolve the issue. Powering off the guest always worked. Perhaps I just haven't run into the issue with ESX and there is some condition out there that will force me to reboot a production ESX box to fix one broken guest - but with the Microsoft solution I have actually confronted this issue in testing.
So we are back on track to continue our VMware ESX implementation. It feels good to move forward again. It also helps that VMware's new Foundation packs coming in December will really help smaller businesses like the one I work for afford the ESX products.
Most of the experience with the Microsoft solution was very positive. Once the Virtual Additions were loaded in the Windows guest VMs I was able to get very good performance out of them. I ran a variety of servers on the host (which was running Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 and the most recent Microsoft Virtual Server) and could run several VMs at once and still have good performance.
I was down to two final things to test when I finally ran into what we will consider a show stopper for any chance of us moving to the Microsoft solution. The first was to test a Linux guest VM and the second to test hot backups. Linux guests are now supported in the Microsoft solution and hot backups can supposedly be done through Microsoft Data Protection Manager using VSS. I never made it to testing hot backups, as the Linux experience proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
I installed a CentOS 4.x guest. The install went with no issues and it was easy to get setup. Wanting to use a SCSI disk I managed to get the Linux Virtual Additions to install. I wasn't very happy with this install though, mainly because they require you to use the --force switch to RPM to get the X portion of the extensions to install. In my opinion if you ever have to use the --force switch with RPM, something is wrong.
To get the SCSI portion to start at boot I needed to integrate it into initrd. This was not too bad and soon I had the vmadd-SCSI starting with no errors. Part of my testing was to test IO performance. I did this by running iostat in the background and using dd to create a 2GB file on the virtual disk. My first time doing this caused the guest to get numerous disk errors and render the Linux VM unusable. My other running Windows VMs did still run and respond to requests. However, when powering off the Linux VM it hung on shutdown. The only way I could find to power it off was to restart the host server. Luckily this was a test environment, but had this occurred in production it would have been unacceptable.
I tried more that afternooon to get the Linux VM to fail after I brought the host server backup. I could not get the Linux VM to fail though. When I came in the next morning though the Linux guest had died again with the same errors as seen the previous day. It had died at 8pm the previous night - the only thing going on at that time was the iostat command I left running refreshing every 2 seconds. Again, it required a reboot of the Virtual Server host to get the Linux guest to come back up.
Now, it is possible the actual issue within the guest could have been fixed. But, I had seen enough. There is apparently some condition that exists that can crash a guest VM bad enough that the whole server needs restarted. I cannot risk going into production when such conditions are found in testing.
I tested VMware ESX Server similarly when we considered it for production. I was never able to crash a guest VM to the point that the entire ESX server needed rebooted to resolve the issue. Powering off the guest always worked. Perhaps I just haven't run into the issue with ESX and there is some condition out there that will force me to reboot a production ESX box to fix one broken guest - but with the Microsoft solution I have actually confronted this issue in testing.
So we are back on track to continue our VMware ESX implementation. It feels good to move forward again. It also helps that VMware's new Foundation packs coming in December will really help smaller businesses like the one I work for afford the ESX products.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Even more nx7400 LCD Display Issues
The display on my primary laptop, an HP nx7400 has once again quit working. This is the third time this has happened in one year. The laptop boots with no issues, just no LCD display. Looks like another trip back to the repair depot for it...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Busy News Days for Virtualization
It has been a busy couple of days in the virtualization realm of technology. Yesterday VMware had their IPO. Their stock did very well, increasing around 75%. Personally I expected this. They do make a very good product and are certainly the leaders in this arena for now.
Today Citrix announced their acquisition of XenSource for $500 million.
Meanwhile Microsoft continues to work on their virtualization products for the Enterprise with Virtual Server available now and Windows Server Virtualization coming 180 days after the release of Windows Server 2008.
Certainly very interesting times in the virtual world. It seems more and more companies are seeing the value in virtualization. Now it is just a matter of choosing which solution will work the best for you.
Today Citrix announced their acquisition of XenSource for $500 million.
Meanwhile Microsoft continues to work on their virtualization products for the Enterprise with Virtual Server available now and Windows Server Virtualization coming 180 days after the release of Windows Server 2008.
Certainly very interesting times in the virtual world. It seems more and more companies are seeing the value in virtualization. Now it is just a matter of choosing which solution will work the best for you.
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