VMware

Manage VMware Server 2.0 with Virtual Infrastructure Client instead of the Web UI

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I personally find the Web UI a little slow for managing VMware Server 2.0 on my home lab and also prefer to use an interface more like the one I use at work when managing our vCenter and ESX hosts. So here is how to use the VMware Infrastructure Client to manage VMware Server 2.0. For this to work, ensure you use an older version of the Infrastructure Client. The one that comes with ESX 3.0 / 3.5 hosts seems to work well. The newer vSphere Client doesn’t work and gives you an error message when you try to login.

1. Grab a copy of the Virtual Infrastructure client and install it on the machine you are accessing your VMware Server Host from. I had trouble finding a download link, so I needed to pull it off an old ESX 3.5 host.

2. Install the client, then run it. At the login prompt enter the full web UI address of your VMware Server Host in the IP Address / Name section. So if you were trying locally on your host, you could enter https://localhost:8333 or from a remote machine use the IP address in the format https://x.x.x.x:8333

3. Enter your user name and password and hit “Login”. This should load up your VMware Server 2.0 server in the infrastructure client. Enjoy!

An update on what I have been busy with lately…

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Thought I would do a quick blog post on what I have been busy with lately.

1. My first iPhone / iPod Touch game (released on Cydia for Jailbroken devices)

So this is something I have been busy with over the last few months – coding bits and pieces here and there whenever I get a bit of spare time on my hands. Its nothing special – just a simple Maze game. You use your device’s accelerometer to navigate your character through 5 maze levels. If you touch the walls you lose health. The longer you take to complete the maze, the more score you lose too. So the point is to get through in the quickest possible time without touching walls. I learnt the basics of how to work with the accelerometer, game loops, twitter integration, a little bit of PHP and mySQL for the Highscore system and a fair amount of general objectiveC code. There are a couple of bugs in the game at the moment (like the way you get a little stuck on walls – issue with my game loop) that I don’t really have time to sort out at the moment. But hopefully I’ll get more time in the near future to figure out my mistakes and fix these. You can check the game out in more detail here or you can download it for Jailbroken Apple devices on Cydia. Search for “Speed Maze”.

2. Moving

Well we’re moving house in the next month or so. We have found a place a little closer in to London that is going to offer far more room, an awesome garden, park across the road, and to top it all off, its in a nice quiet cal-de-sac. As such, I have been taking the opportunity to eBay some surpluss hardware and gadgets I have had lying around for a while. This includes various PCs and bits of hardware I have had lying around, plus around 20U worth of Dell PowerEdge servers! (See image above).

3. Other

My home VMware lab – I have also been building various ESX and vCenter labs here at home to play with in a non-production environment. This is great as it allows me to test all kinds of crazy things I really don’t want to try out at work! I have chopped and changed the hardware, but finally have two different labs going. One is a nested set up of virtualized ESX 4.0 hosts, running under a main ESX 4.0 host if you see what I mean.  The other is running on a PowerEdge 6850 server at the moment – 4 x Xeon 3.16GHz CPUs and 4GB RAM. The issue I have here is that there is no Intel VT (hardware virtualization) support on these processors. So although ESX 4.0 runs OK, I can only run 32-bit VMs for now. Exchange 2010 and other 64-bit VMs will have to stay on my main gaming PC for now then. I also found this great WordPress plugin by lynxbat on Twitter. Once set up, it displays statistics from your VMware ESX host or vCenter Server. You can take a look at my current lab stats on the right in the sidebar. Get the plugin over here: WP-vSphereStats. Apart from that, we have also been planning one or two soon to be taken, well deserved holidays. We’ll be off to France soon, after which we’ll be taking a nice long holiday in South Africa. Excited to see friends and family again soon!

VMware Partner Forum 2009, Esher

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I just got back from the VMware Partner Forum 2009 in Esher. It was held at the Sandown Park Racecourse this year. I attended a bunch of different break out sessions choosing the most interesting or applicable options for myself. Here is what I attended at the forum:

1. Keynote
2. How to upsell vSphere for VI3 customers – 5 great reasons to upgrade customers from VI3 to vSphere 4.
3. Partner enablement – Profit from your knowledge and meet your new competency requirements.
4. Technical session – Configure Host Profiles / Distributed Virtual Switch.
5. Hosting – vCloud and the VMWare Service Provider Program.
6. Technical session – Upgrade VI3 to vSphere 4.

There were lots of refreshments and breaks in-between each session as well as a great lunch.

Naturally I found the technical sessions the most interesting. In the Upgrade VI3 to vSphere 4 session I found out about the three different methods of upgrading ESX 3/3.5 Hosts to vSphere 4.0. The Host Profiles / dvSwitch session was something I already knew about, but had not yet tried it in a lab environment until today.

Hosting was quite interesting too – there were a bunch of people that got caught out providing hosted vmware solutions to the public without the required partner program status. Good thing my company has the necessary credentials to provided hosted platforms!

I also got to see a demo of Veeam’s new Backup 4.0 – still in development but they have many improvements and new features.

As per usual there was a bag of goodies given out to each attendee.

My workspace and hardware zen

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Everyone has their own relax or zen area where they like to spend time getting away from reality and de-stressing. One of mine just happens to be the same place where I get a lot of work done – my main gaming platform and home office area! Since we moved into our new flat, I found that there wasn’t much space to set up my PC. Last weekend I whipped out the old jigsaw and sliced a couple of inches off the side of my PC desk in order to get it to fit into this corner.

I then decided to neaten up and organise everything a bit to enhance my working conditions when I do work from home. I made a “ghetto” iPhone dock out of the packaging the phone came in, using the plastic dish the phone is cradled in. I cut out a small area at the bottom for the iPhone connector to fit in, then routed the cabling into the box itself, which sits diagonally in the lid of the box, flipped upside down. The cable then comes out the back and plugs in to the power socket behind my desk. This keeps the cabling nice and neat and I just plonk the phone down into the dock when I get home for a charge. I don’t need a USB connection to the PC as I have SSH enabled via a jailbreak – I therefore use Wifi access and WinSCP or SCP from Putty to transfer files between PC and phone.

Behind this is my touch sensitive desk lamp, in front of the dock is my work IP phone which connects up to our VOIP server. Then we have my main PC which consists of the following: Asus P45 P5Q motherboard, E8400 3.0GHz Core2Duo CPU overclocked to 3.6GHz in Summer and 4.0GHz in Winter. 4GB OCZ DDR800 RAM running at DDR1000 speeds and an ATI HD 4870 graphics card which has a custom flashed bios which overvolts the GPU and applies a generous overclock. I used to have a nice quiet watercooling loop in the PC, but sold it recently and went back to air cooling. I plan on doing another Watercooling build soon and will hopefully post the process and worklog here when I do. The other peripherals consist of a Dell 24″ LCD (1920×1200), G15 Keyboard and Logitech MX518 mouse.

I use this PC for just about everything – all my PC gaming, Web browsing, a little bit of programming and Virtualisation (On top of Windows 7 Professional it is running VMWare Server 2.0) with a variety of guest VMs that I use for testing and practising various Windows and Linux server technologies.

Other hardware I have lying around is an old Dell Poweredge 2U server which I run VMWare ESX 3.5 and a Dell Optiplex machine running uBuntu 8.04, with VMWare Server 2.0 for linux and a guest VM operating system running on top of that which runs uBuntu Server 9.04 and this very website.

Anyway here are a few photos of my nice clean new workspace.

Update, life and VMWare

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So lately I have been quite busy. Here are some of the major events that have happened over the last six months.

1. Got married. We did all the planning in just under one month. As you can imagine there was a ton of stress involved! You wouldn’t believe the amount of documentation/admin work that is created when you get married.

2. Started a new job. I now have  a more challenging and stimulating job where I am learning much more than what I was at the last company. Minus the cushy Audi A3 2.0 TDI though.

I seem to have settled in to my new company quite well. Its been six months since I started.  The staff are friendly, we often have social get togethers after work, and I got to take my first long holiday (two weeks) since moving to the UK. I have been learning a lot and also taking more and more interest in VMWare. Incidently, my first encounter with VMWare was the free “Server” version back in 2007. I first got to play with ESX near the end of last year and since starting my new job I now have far more exposure – I work on Virtual Center all day managing VMs and our various ESX hosts and the clusters they form. I have also built myself my own little ESX lab at home complete with it’s own NAS/iSCSI datastore. All I need now is a second ESX host to build myself a HA/DRS cluster.

The other part of the VMWare story that has been keeping me busy is studying. Although I would ideally like to be concentrating on doing my VCP (VMWare Certified Professional) for vSphere, I have recently completed a VTSP (VMWare Technical Sales Professional) accreditation for my company. See the shiny new logo below. Next on the agenda is to complete the vSphere VCP course though! My company has agreed to send me for the mandatory class room training course, so hopefully this will be under way soon.

3. Moved house. After sharing a stunning two bedroom house in Wimbledon with a best friend and his fiancé, we all decided to go our separate ways earlier this year after my wife and I got married. It was quite a mission packing up and moving to a new area and even more of a mission to settle in to the new area and get all the new utility bills in place. The plus side is that we now have our own place to ourselves. I just need to break free from the public transport system. I can’t stand not having a company car any more and absolutely hate travelling on the bus to work when it is too cold to cycle in to work!