Everything-Virtual

Category: Home Labs

  • Restoring the IX4 – Firmware and Bootstrap issues

    I was recently sent a request to re-upload my IX4 Acronis image again, this image can be used to image replacement disks to put into an IX4 (as Iomega don’t officially support non Iomega purchased disks). As I no longer had the original TIB file I decided to load up my old 500gb drives (they sit on my shelf gathering dust) and once I was happy that the IX4 didn’t have any fixed IP addresses was going to take an image of the drive and provide it again.

    This is where things started to go wrong, placing the disks into the IX4 they would stick at 95% and wouldn’t go beyond that, in-fact even loading a single drive prompted the same results. It was then that I had an idea, I already figured out that the bootstrap for the IX4 doesn’t actually only reside on the disk (it was the initial assumption when people tried putting blank disks into the IX4), instead the bootstrap is loaded into NVR and then looks at the makeup of the disk and continues to load the disk up if it matches what it expects to see. (more…)

  • Installing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 in my Home Lab

    I recently decided to upgrade my vSphere 4 lab to vSphere 5, one of the things I did at the time was consolidate my SQL environments to a single platform (I have in the past had SQL 2005, 2008 and various SQL Express environments up for one reason or another), I decided at this time that I was going to install a dedicated SQL server (VM of course) that would be my single source for any db. requirements.

    I decided to install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 as this happens to be the latest supported product (Denali having only just come out I am not sure on the number of the products that support it), like most of my environment SQL 2008 R2 will be hosted on a Windows 2008 R2 server joined to my AD domain.

    Installing SQL 2008 R2 isn’t taxing, for the most part it’s a next next next but there are a couple of caveats that you need to be aware of, especially if you’re going to be using it as the host for any VMware products.

    Using my TechNet subscription I downloaded SQL 2008 R2 to run the installation.

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  • Installing Windows 8 Customer Preview on VMware Workstation 8

    Last week Microsoft launched the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, rather than installing the preview onto any of my existing hardware I decided to give it a go on VMware Workstation 8 before trusting it to a dedicated machine.

    As this is pre-release software Microsoft advise that there may well be bugs and application compatibility issues (another reason to give it a go on a VM) but generally speaking and after experiencing the Windows 7 preview when that released I am sure that this will be fairly straight forward (the Customer Preview can generally be viewed as a RC with this being close to what the RTM release would look like (unless there are some very serious bugs discovered during testing of this release)).

    The recommended specs for running the Windows 8 Customer Preview are :-

    1 GHz or faster processor
    1 GB RAM for the 32-bit release or 2 GB RAM for the 64-bit release
    16 GB available hard disk space for 32-bit or 20 GB for the 64-bit
    DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

    The Windows 8 Consumer Preview can be downloaded free from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-8/consumer-preview or via your Technet or MSDN subscriptions.

    Follow the step by step process below to successfully install the Windows 8 customer preview on VMware Workstation 8.

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  • Installing vCenter Server 5.0 in my Home Lab

    In this post I am going to document the installation process for VMware vCenter Server 5.0. Keeping inline with the rest of my lab environment I am using Windows 2008 R2 64bit as the OS for my installation.

    Ensure you meet the following hardware and software requirements. The vCenter Server 5.0 installation can be either a physical or a virtual server.

    Minimum Hardware Requirements

    image

    Recommended Hardware Requirements

    Depending on the amount of hosts and powered on VM’s you also have the following recommended configurations.

    For up to 50 hosts and up to 500 powered on VM’s

    image

    For up to 300 hosts and up to 3000 powered on VM’s

    image

    For up to 1000 hosts and up to 10000 powered on VM’s

    image

    vCenter Server 5.0 requires a 64-bit operating system and cannot be installed on a 32-bit operating system, that means you either need to upgrade your existing infrastructure to a 64bit OS’s or you’re going to have to look at the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) instead, word of warning where the Appliance is concerned is that it doesn’t support Microsoft SQL as a db. solution so you’re either going to need to be running Oracle or using the embedded DB2 db..

    Supported Operating Systems are :-

    Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter SP2 64bit
    Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter R2 SP2 64bit
    Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter SP2 64bit
    Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter R2 SP2 64bit

    Supported Databases are:-

    IBM DB2 Express C 9.7.2 -64-bit
    IBM DB2 Express 9.7.2 -64-bit
    IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.7.2 -64-bit
    IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.7.2 -64-bit
    IBM DB2 Express C 9.7.2 – 32-bit
    IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.7.2 -32-bit
    IBM DB2 Enterpirse 9.7.2 -32-bit
    IBM DB2 Express C 9.5 – 32-bit
    IBM DB2 Express 9.5 – 32-bit
    IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.5 -32-bit
    IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.5 -32-bit
    IBM DB2 Enterprise 9
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (R2) – 64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (R2) – 32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard (R2) – 64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard (R2) – 32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express (R2) – 64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (SP2) -64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (SP2) -32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (SP2) -64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (SP2) -32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition (SP2) -64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition (SP2) -32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Datacenter Edition (SP4) -64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Datacenter Edition (SP4) -32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (SP4) -64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (SP4) -32-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (SP4) -64-bit
    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (SP4) -32-bit
    Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 64 bit
    Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 32 bit
    Oracle 11g Standard Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 64 bit
    Oracle 11g Standard Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 32 bit
    Oracle 11g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 64 bit
    Oracle 11g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 32 bit
    Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] 64-bit
    Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] – 32-bit
    Oracle 11g Standard Edition , Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] 64-bit
    Oracle 11g Standard Edition , Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] – 32-bit
    Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 64 bit
    Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 32 bit
    Oracle 10g Standard Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 64 bit
    Oracle 10g Standard Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 32 bit
    Oracle 10g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 64 bit
    Oracle 10g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 32 bit

    Setting up the vCenter 5.0 database

    During the installation of vCenter 5.0 you have the choice of installing a new installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 Express or using an existing db. in my case I am connecting to an existing SQL Server 2008 R2 installation, because of that we need to create the DB and ODBC connection. (more…)

  • VMware ESXi 5.0 – Upgrading VMware Tools on Windows XP Pro SP3 VM vNIC Issues

    Last year I built up a Windows XP VM to allow me to do some performance testing in my vSphere 4.1 lab, the VM used the Flexible type Network card (as that’s the default card type) and worked without issue over a number of ESXi demo installations.

    Since passing my VCP on vSphere 4 I have been slowly migrating my lab environment across to ESXi 5.0 and yesterday it was the turn on my XP machine, I still keep an XP machine around for various testing purposes (used for my Iometer testing last year). Upgrading the Virtual Machine Hardware version went smoothly when I imported the VM into my ESXi environment, starting the VM I managed to get an IP address and started the Windows Update process (it’s been a couple of months since this box was online). After the updates were installed and the machine rebooted I started the upgrade process for VMware Tools, it’s at this point that I started having problems.

    When the VM rebooted I tried to hit Windows Update again (you know how it goes, update after update, but when I tried to access that or any other site I wasn’t getting any kind of response.

    Pulling up a command prompt I was getting the initial DHCP allocated IP address but when trying to ping anything it wouldn’t find anything. Doing an ipconfig /renew timed out as well.

    I then carried out the following to see if there was anything not working in my environment.

    • From another VM on my server I checked to make sure I could still browse the network
    • I removed the vNIC from the VM
    • I enabled hidden devices for device manager (set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1) and then ran devmgmt.msc to remove any hidden vNIC devices from Device Manager

    imageimageimage

    Whilst Device Manager has an option to show hidden devices it doesn’t show disconnected devices, that’s where the set command above comes into play. As you can see in the screen shots above we see the original Device Manager and then the Device Manager with the Show NonPresent Devices setting enabled.

    • Added a vNIC back to the VM (at this time I was still using the Flexible type vNIC).
    • Rebooting the VM still didn’t give me any network connectivity, I just had an APIPA address allocated.
    • At this stage I changed the NIC to the VMXNet 3 and rebooted, still no luck.
    • Finally I re-installed VMware Tools to ensure that the VMXNet 3 drivers were installed correctly.

    After going through the above steps I was able to start browsing the network and Windows Updates started working again.

    I can tell you that I haven’t been able to replicate this behaviour in my lab (I have tried a couple of XP builds and they all upgraded VMware Tools successfully using the Flexible vNIC) but in case you experience the same type of issue you have some things to try.

  • VMware VCP 4 Passed – Lessons Learnt

    As I have stated in the past I have been studying for my VCP for a while, I managed to take the ICM course last year and probably spent a good four months afterwards studying to make sure I passed with ease. Disaster struck when work suddenly went crazy and my study opportunities disappeared. It was only in December that I remembered that I had received a discount voucher from VMware for a 70% discount on the cost of the exam (which for anyone who has sat the exam knows, it’s not cheap at £145).

    The reason for this post is that whilst I was lucky and received this email through the post the other day

    vcp

    It was actually very close to being a “Sorry You Failed, please try harder next time” message, why you ask?

    I booked the exam on the 21st of December, I was scheduled to sit it on the 23rd of December, I hadn’t studied for the exam in over two months and I hadn’t been playing with my lab at home because of time constraints (I spend 14+ hours of the day out of the house either at work or travelling to work, I have a wife and son who also want to see me and spend time with me so really, there wasn’t a lot of time to spare) but I knew that if I wanted to get my VCP instead of procrastinating about it I would have to give myself a reason to actually do it and that’s why I booked it when I did for when I did, I stood to lose the cost of the exam (in this case £52.20 which is what I paid for the exam after the 70% discount Smile). I then spent 2.5 days travelling to and from work (6 hours a day) as well as my lunch hour, studying for the VCP exam. Now luckily for me I have an Apple iPad 2 with the Kindle App installed, I also have a large number of VMware based books purchased from the Amazon store as well as the PDF’s mentioned in my previous post (VMware VCP 4 – Additional Study Material) so I knew I could go over the material I wasn’t sure about.

    This is where I learnt my lesson, 2.5 days is not enough time to cram for an exam, not after a hiatus of 2 months from study. My advice is definitely take more time to study but also make sure you give yourself a deadline to have the exam booked by.

  • FreeNAS 8.0.2 Release is now ready for use

    Back in May of last year I wrote a post about how I thought that FreeNAS 8.0.0 Release wasn’t actually ready or reliable, it had failed on me a couple of times and performance as far as NFS was concerned was dire. Testing of the NAS couldn’t continue because of the difficulties I was experiencing with FreeNAS, so much so that I didn’t finish testing.

    Move forward two releases (with a 3rd just around the corner) and I can say that FreeNAS is now at a point where it does what it’s says on the tin. Let me give you an example.

    I recently built up a new NAS device instead of purchasing the ever so slightly over priced Iomega PX6, the idea being that I thought (correctly in this instance) that I could build up a server offering the same kind of functionality that’s on offer from the impressive PX6. My final solution was actually based on FreeNAS 8.0.2 after testing various products and I had been running my home lab from it for a couple of weeks.

    Because I had been experiencing some issues with my servers (three Lenovo TS200’s) I decided to run some memory tests on those boxes for a couple of days (as it stands the ram in all the servers ran fine for 48 hours so it mush have been issues with the installation of Windows 2008 R2 that I had been testing due to work). Once I had finished with my Hyper-V environment I decided to upgrade to vSphere 5 and start studying for my VCP 5 exam. This is where my change of heart for FreeNAS really came through.

    Having stacked my storage devices into Ghetto Rack I decided to install the latest release of FreeNAS onto my HP Microserver, I plugged in my SanDisk Cruzer and proceeded to “upgrade” FreeNAS onto it, I say “upgrade” because I had thought that the drive I was using had been used for something else but at the time I didn’t really think about it. With the Microserver now having FreeNAS on it I decided to boot up my GhettoPX but was alarmed when I discovered that it didn’t actually boot into FreeNAS but instead into OpenDSS (which is what I had thought was on the drive in the Microserver), it was then that I realised that I had used the wrong USB key, the concern now was that the GhettoPX had all my VM’s on it (around 20 different machines used for different projects).

    Disconnecting the 6 internal SATA drives I proceeded to install FreeNAS and tried to configure it to see if I could restore the environment back to how it was (no, at this stage I didn’t have a copy of the latest config which is silly because I always did so when I was using OpenFiler).

    I managed to import the disk set, which to be honest was a start but when I did that I couldn’t see anything on the disks, so going through the same configuration steps used when I originally created the iSCSI extents and targets I re-created them.

    Lo and Behold, by ensuring I created the targets and extents with the same names and sizes I was able to recover my iSCSI volumes, now all I needed to do was discover them in my last ESXi 4 server so that I could migrate them from the datastore to allow me to upgrade my entire lab (servers as well as datastores) to the vSphere 5 infrastructure. Using the vCenter console I was able to mount the datastore and migrate the data across to my NFS datastore on my IX4.


    What could have been a total disaster for me as far as lab build goes actually went very well, FreeNAS didn’t baulk at my lack of config files, didn’t stop at me recovering my existing iSCSI volumes and actually worked on the browser I wanted to use (actually I have tested it on both Firefox and IE9 successfully, something that the original 8.0.0 release wouldn’t have done).

    FreeNAS team, I know I was hard on you back in May of last year but the progress you are making on FreeNAS 8 is definitely moving in the right direction, it’s also nice to see that unlike OpenFiler you are keeping the releases flowing at a decent rate. I would like to see an improvement in NFS performance but as the current usage for the NAS is for my new ESXi 5 environment I will be playing with VMFS for the moment so NFS isn’t such a great issue… for now.

  • Goals for 2012

    Reminding myself of the goals I had set for 2011 I discovered that I have accomplished the majority of my goals for 2011.

    To recap my goals for 2011 were.

    * Sit and pass my VCP vSphere 4 Exam Sat and passed my exam on the 23rd of December
    * Improve my VMware product knowledge (VMware View in particular) Having installed VMware View in my homelab and played with ThinApp my knowledge of both has greatly improved.
    * Produce more technical content for this site (as well as my-homelab.com) I had produced more content including a couple of videos but those were done for my-techvideos.com instead.
    * Move more into the VMware Virtualisation platform market and less of the Microsoft one. I took a position with a major online gambling company in their Windows Team Sad smile
    * Become a recognised VMware blogger (I want my vExpert). Obviously not in the same league as other bloggers but with 22k unique visitors to my blog in 2011 I am happy with that.
    * Continue to improve my home lab environment. Yes on this one, I have continued to play with various technologies including various SAN\NAS providers as well as other technologies


    As you can see the goals I set in 2011 were pretty wellWhat that’s meant for me is that my goals for 2011 were both realistic and in the main, achievable. It also means that I have to improve my goals for 2012 which could be difficult.

    My goals for 2012 are.

    * Sit and pass my VCP vSphere 5 Exam
    * Sit and pass my VCA-DT 4 Exam
    * Continue to produce technical content for both this site and my-techvideos.com
    * Continue to grow my VMware blogger status (I still want my vExpert), this includes attending more VMUG’s as well as VMworld 2012 this year.
    * Continue to build up my home lab environment and experiment with various technologies.

  • VMware STOP: 0x0000005d Error

    In my work I deal with our System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (Config Mgr) environment and ensure that it’s configured and running correctly, part of that is working on the Operating System Deployment (OSD) functionality, for the last couple of weeks I have been creating Windows 2008 R2 images and doing lots of testing in my VMware vSphere environment. With the 2008 R2 builds all working correctly the next step was working on the 2003 R2 builds, so using vSphere I have been building up 4 different flavours of Windows 2003 (Standard and Enterprise x64 and x86 architecture). Using the New Virtual Machine wizard I have created the machines with the correct OS types and built and patched the servers up to the latest patch levels, I also installed the Config Mgr client and placed the contents of the deploy.cab file into the C:\Sysprep folder. When I was ready I inserted my OSDCapture ISO file and let the autorun program launch, this was created on the Config Mgr console and in my case uses the x64 WIN-PE boot media (the majority of my environment is 64bit).

    All was fine with capture process until the server rebooted, it reboots after Sysprep has run to actually capture the image (either locally to an additional disk or to a network location) but as soon as I rebooted I was presented with the following screen.

    stop5d

    A little search around and I found out that the reason for this is due to the WIN-PE image being used is different from the original Win 2003 OS, one is 32bit whilst the other is 64bit, shutting down the OS and changing the OS version Architecture type from 32 to 64bit and rebooting allowed the capture process to continue.

    If you encounter this error in the future make sure that you change your hardware profile to reflect the change in OS architecture type.

  • Building an Iomega PX6 Replacement – Part Two

    In part one I discussed how I didn’t want to splash out for an Iomega PX6 due to the poor cost performance figures I had seen for it. I had spent a long time before the PX4 and PX6 units actually shipped trying to decide whether to purchase a unit and in the end I decided against it. Having decided to self build a replacement for the Iomega PX6 I needed to decide on hardware, in part 1 I had already decided on the only mini-itx motherboard out there with 6 Sata3 ports on it, the Zotac M880G.

    In part two we will look at case options for the PX6 Replacement unit.

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