Dugie’s Pensieve

Nowdays creating VMs with multi-processors is an easy thing.  It’s not necessarily a good thing.  I Highly recommend you stick with single vCPUs — and only really use multi-cpu VMs if you really need the raw thumping multi-threaded grunt.  (such as the Microsoft Transporter for Domino)

So now you have the problem of a multi cpu VM, with a Multi Processor HAL.  But you need to convert it back to a single processor VM.  You need to do more than remove a virtual CPU, you need to also downgrade to a uni processor hal. 

I’ll round up some resources and post them back here.

Yeah ok, you lot.  So I’m back blogging on a regular basis - and you lot return the love, by poking fun at me.  *chuckles*  Figures, serves me right!  =)

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m going to blog all those little [virtualization] questions.  The ones that I get asked every day about interop with Windows in Virtual Machines.  The type of questions, that you often assume, that everybody knows (like Ctrl+C with a messagebox, or F7 at the command prompt)

So sit back, relax, and enjoy all the snippets the follow.

My good mate James, has taken a new role as Sales Engineer for Vizioncore for the Australia and NZ region.

Vizioncore do some seriously cool stuff with VI3, Vizioncore’s solutions include (copy and paste from his email) -

• vRanger Pro – Hot image backups for virtual environments
• vReplicator – Host-level replication for virtualised environments
• vCharter Pro – Enterprise class virtual infrastructure performance monitoring and analytics
• vConverter – P2V and V2V to VMware, XenServer and Microsoft Virtual Server
• vMigrator – Easy migration from ESX 2.5 to VI3
• vOptimizer – Optimisation of Windows-hosted VMware and Microsoft VM’s
• vPackager – Virtual appliance packaging for Windows VMs

So if you’re in Sunny Queensland (or Australia for that matter), drop James a line, and say g’day.

I heard a bit of geek humour that made me giggle today:

If your in an airplane, would you rather it have "High Availability" or "Disaster Recovery"

Ahhh, Scotch.  If you’ve spent any time on my blog, you’ll know just how much I enjoy a “wee dram“.   Each year I go through and clean out all the bottles that I’ve kept (and enjoyed) from the year before.  The scotch itself I may not necessarily have enjoyed, but I will have enjoyed it in the company of good friends - so it gets added to the shelf.

Well, I’ve cleaned out the shelf, and here they are (duplicates removed):

• Dalwhinnie 15
• Johnnie Walker 12
• Johnnie Walker Green 15
• Johnnie Walker Blue
• Glenlivet 12
• Glenfiddich 12
• Glenfiddich 15
• Glenfiddich 18
• Glenfiddich 21
• Glenmorangie 10
• Glenmorangie 18
• GlenDronach 12
• Talisker 10
• Ardbeg 10
• Glenwood
• Cardhu
• Suntory - MattO has this bottle
• Laphroaig - went camping never made it back

Here’s “bottom’s up” to the year ahead!

Windows Centro is the codename for Windows Essential Business Server.  I think it’s a very cool offering.  Take the fully fledged products of Exchange 2008, SQL 2008, System Center and wrap them up on 4x Windows Server 2008 installs.  Codename Centro comes in at $7200 USD (about $7500 AUD) and scales to 300 users.

So I’ve been doing some "field testing" with Centro and configuring 7x VM roles across 3x physical hosts using VMware VI3.  I’m using the Microsoft official system requirements and some fairly vanilla resource pools; It’s all working really well.  The VI3 install was easy, installing Centro on top of that was straight forward. 

Everything is humming along quite nicely. My seven Virtual Machines so far are (a mix of x64 and 32 bit):

1. Centro Management Server
2. Centro Messaging Server
3. Centro Security Server
4. Centro Database Server
5. Microsoft Terminal Server
6. Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server
7. VMware Virtual Center

I’m toying with the idea of adding a Web Server VM in a DMZ, I’ll need to make a few snazzy changes to my virtual switches;  Cool huh?

It’s a pretty sweet setup - my plan is to have enough capacity left over to use VMware Lab Manager to create an identical copy of all the whole environment on the same hardware.  If I put the copy in it’s own resource pool, I can have a full test environment.  So it’s constantly updated without incurring a performance or storage hit.  I think it’ll hit a sweet spot!!

Once I get it all sorted in a few weeks I’ll post back.

I have the itch for another road trip on the bike, and those on MSN or Twitter have probably picked up on this :)

This year I plan to jump on a bike head, and ride into the great outback – off to a place called Cameron Corner (check the trip in Google Maps). The idea of riding to the single point in Australia that joins Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales has always appealed to me. …more so after watching “The Long Way Down” on DVD.

I’ve bought myself a Sat Nav, the Tom Tom Rider and I’ve been really impressed with it.  I’m in the process of playing interop with my camera, blog, and phone.  It’s going pretty well.

So I guess the next step is a new bike. I thought I wanted to upgrade my trusty TransAlp to the latest model, but finding somewhere to do that is just a little to hard at the moment.  So for a while now I’ve been struggling with the decision between the Ducati Multistrada, the BMW GS or the Triumph Tiger.  Oh the decisions you have to make in life =)

Anyway, so whilst I decide on which bike I get, I’ll leave you with this funny youtube clip, sent to me by a mate:  Got the wrong Bike.

A picture is worth a thousand words =)

…and I happen to whole heartedly agree!