Ha …! Ha…! I thought I am the only person disappointed with the fact no Open Source database support. Luckilly I was not so extreme compare to what I have read. Take a look at “Dissappointing Tech preview of the vCenter on Linux” I was still giving some chances hoping VMware will take some serious action. No doubt someone commented they plan to have DB2 included but it is still a “monster” compare to some other light weight databases.

Related posts:

1. VCenter Installation Error 28038
2. vCenter Services stop after Windows Server rebooted

Beside OS dependancy it also require a database which currently so sad only work with Oracle or MSSQL. During TA3201 session under “Linux Initiatives“ mentioned vCenter will have a Linux appliance version as well as a Cross Platform Client. As follow are some highlight what’s is in the vCenter Linux appliance. The interesting part is there is no mention whether it will support OpenSource databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.

I am really interested to know & looking forward for the release.

Option 1:
# grep buildNr /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl
my $buildNr;
$buildNr = '3.5.0 build-143128';
return remove_whitespaces($buildNr);

Option 2:
# vmware-config-tools.pl -h
VMware Tools 3.5.0 build-143128 for Linux

Option 3:
# rpm -qa|grep VM
VMwareTools-7302-143128
Note: Only apply to RPM installed

Enjoy and I hope this is useful!

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1. Apply VMware vSphere 4 Update 1 Patches

“The following VMware kernel modules have been found on your system that were not installed by the VMware Installer. Please remove them then run this installer again.”

vmblock
vmhgfs
vmmemctl
vmxnet

Execution aborted.

Solutions are:

# rm /lib/modules/2.6.25.5-1.1-default/updates/vmblock.ko
# rm /lib/modules/2.6.25.5-1.1-default/updates/vmhgfs.ko
# rm /lib/modules/2.6.25.5-1.1-default/updates/vmmemctl.ko
# rm /lib/modules/2.6.25.5-1.1-default/updates/vmxnet.ko

Configure VMware Tools again!
# vmware-config-tools.pl

Probably you may refer to VMware tools for Linux for more about VMware Tools installations.

Related posts:

1. VCenter Installation Error 28038

If we analyze what happen to the IT spending on the financial and banking environment, you will not surprise to see that the amount of storage, servers, solution and unnecessary equipment been under utilized for every bank around the world. The IT department for financial sector had been comfort live for many years and is time now for them to review and revise their IT spending to ensure higher return from their investment.

Open source or reliable LINUX had not been really high utilize in financial sector are really due to the comfort living of their IT department. Personal point of view, why we have to run something else on the expensive IBM AIX, mainframe, HP UX, Microsoft, Oracle VS the reliable LINUX from x86 or x64 platform to perform the same result? The simple answer is really the mindset from the person.

If we compare the super computing for research and development, you will find that the top 5 fastest computing in the world are build from the x86 or x64 platform whihc you can common found from the market. If you are telling me that the x86 platform is under power, I will say is depend how you manage and deploy it. Looking at SAP, which is the biggest ERP solution around the world, and they even suggest to run on SUSE or Redhat Linux with the MaxDB and etc. My experience on that, it really perform as require and even outperform when we compare to the AIX machine that we previously have. We know the MAXDB are still far behind the Oracle, but at least from the operating system point of view, the LINUX always provide more reliable compare to Windows or proprited UNIX platform from HP and IBM.

Beside these, you may consider the operation maintenance cost, the open standard will provide more flexible and cost effective. Intel and AMD competition have also promise to increase from 6 cores to 12 cores in 2 years time. The processing power are always increasing from time to time.
I will not believe the x86 will not able to handle the load that require to run for any system in the world today, is really depend how we plan it and manage it. Some of the bank I know, they even run their critical machine on LINUX today, and I do not see the reason of others bank can’t. At the same time, Virtualization will provide the better utilization for every single dollar been invested by the business.

Moving forward to the current economy environment, to survive and sustain for IT department is challenge. Instead of sticking with old and expensive solution, it may end up the CEO will just fire the entire IT department and look for outsource vendor. I believe the IT department have to be more open and follow up with the open technology which are much more cost effective compare with those expensive solution. The more dollars for IT to save, that increase the percentage for the job security as well as business effective. Do not forget, IT is to assist the business to generate revenue higher and faster, you may not want to make IT as a cost and is not profitable when it show up in the entire financial summary to the boards. If that does happen, human will stop using IT and prefer to work on paper and pen again as traditional.

## Script START here

#!/bin/bash
#
# Get VM Guest Mac Address – getmacadd.sh
#
# The getmacadd.sh script must run as root on VMware ESX server.
#
# This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution
#
# Change Log:
# 15 Oct 2008 – version 0.1
#

export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin

id_check() {

if [ `id -u` -ne 0 ]
then
echo “You must be root to run this script!”
exit
fi
}

id_check

for COUNT in $(vmware-cmd -l); do
echo `echo $COUNT|awk -F’/’ ‘{print $6}’`
echo ” “`echo $COUNT`
echo ” “`cat $COUNT|grep “displayName”`
#MAC Address may refer to “Address” instead of “generatedAddress”
echo ” “`cat $COUNT|grep “generatedAddress”`
echo
done

## Script END here

Result Example:

KULVMSLES01.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/4827fff4-c35f1a3e-299c-002aa0288d45/KULVMSLES01/KULVMSLES01.vmx
displayName = “KULVMSLES01″
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:50:56:8a:54:c1″

KULVMWIN2K8.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/47da2ced-93f44308-e601-0025171a435a/KULVMWIN2K8/KULVMWIN2K8.vmx
displayName = “KULVMWIN2K8″
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:50:57:8a:6f:be”

Anyway, you can get Linux MAC Address by running command:
/sbin/ifconfig -a | grep “HWaddr” | cut -d ” ” -f 11

Example:
KULVMSLES01:# ifconfig -a | grep “HWaddr” | cut -d ” ” -f 11
00:1A:A0:2C:CA:C1

Please feel free to modify, share and comment to make it perfect.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.

I did a quick test and I would like to share my personal review about Citrix XenServer 5.0:

Personally I think network speed is fast compare to VMware ESX. I have a physical 1Gbps NIC network speed and I can get 2Gbps network speed after install XenTools on Windows 2008 server but require 2 times reboot(SuSE Linux require 1 reboot). Anyway VM guest shutdown and reboot process is faster than VMware ESX.

I was try to install SuSE Linux 10 using 4 ISO CD (both NFS or CIFS), the Citrix XenServer always give me an error “The VM rejected the attempt to detach the device xxxxx refusing to close” when switch ISO CD1 to ISO CD2. You have to extract 4 ISO CD into one single location to make it work or copy ISO to local storage(provider you have enough local disk space).

The enterprise product should not have similar issue and this is not make sense at all.

Anyway, you can try alternative way using “Install URL” instead of using ISO Image once you have extract ISO CD into single folder on your web server.

Install URL: http://xx.xx.xx.xx/inst/10/32/SP2/ALL
Advanced Boot OS Parameters:
console=ttyS0 xencons=ttyS hostip=xx.xx.xx.xx/24 gateway=xx.xx.xx.xx dnsserver=xx.xx.xx.xx

Please make sure your have correct IP, gateway and DNS setup properly else you will getting error during installation.

Add and remove any disk/storage on Window 2008 or SuSE Linux 10 no downtime or reboot required. The VM guest OS will detect automatically.

Convert to template and VM clone features which are another features behind VMware ESX.

Once you have converted to template, you won’t have another way to reverse back as VM guest machine. It’s one way operation which you will received a warning before convert to template as show below.

Right click VM guest, and click Copy VM will do VM cloning but require downtime. The Copy VM feature is disable during VM guest is power on.

Overall, I would said VMware ESX still my first choice.

Follow these steps:

• Create a new LUN and assign to the ESX Server Storage Group on SAN.
• Rescan Storage Adaptors on ESX Server Virtual Infrastructure Console.
• Add new Hard Disk into VM by Edit Setting.
• Open VM Console(SSH will work as well).
• Detect new disk command # rescan-scsi-bus.sh
• Find new disk command # cat /proc/partitions
• Create new partition on the disk command # fdisk /dev/sdx
• Format new disk partition # mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdx1
• Edit /etc/fstab to add in permanent mount point for new disk and partition.
• Mount new disk # mount -a

Now, you should have your new disk mounted on the SuSE Linux system without downtime.

Enjoy!

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1st, create two SuSE Linux(I’m running SLES 10 SP2) on VMware running on same network said cluster1(192.168.1.1) and cluster2(192.168.1.2).

2nd, add new hard disk on VMware infrastructure client. Please remember to choose ‘Use an existing virtual disk‘.

Click here for bigger image.

3rd, install and configure Linux cluster heartbeat.

Make sure you have heartbeat RPM install
cluster1:~ # rpm -qa|grep heartbeat
sles-heartbeat_en-10.1-0.20
heartbeat-pils-2.1.3-0.9
heartbeat-stonith-2.1.3-0.9
yast2-heartbeat-2.13.13-0.3
heartbeat-2.1.3-0.9

cluster2:~ # rpm -qa|grep heartbeat
sles-heartbeat_en-10.1-0.20
heartbeat-pils-2.1.3-0.9
heartbeat-stonith-2.1.3-0.9
yast2-heartbeat-2.13.13-0.3
heartbeat-2.1.3-0.9

Install Linux cluster heartbeat RPM package if you haven’t install
cluster1:~ # rpm -ivh heartbeat-xxxxxx
cluster1:~ # rpm -ivh heartbeat-stonith-xxxxxx
and etc

Edit Authentication file (same for cluster1 and cluster2)
cluster1:~ #vi /etc/ha.d/authkeys
auth 2
2 sha1 MVM_CLUS2!

Edit HA configuration file
cluster1
cluster1:~ #vi /etc/ha.d/ha.cf
logfile /var/log/ha-log
logfacility local0
node cluster1
node cluster2
keepalive 1
warntime 30
deadtime 60
initdead 120
udpport 694
ucast eth0 192.168.1.1
ucast eth0 192.168.1.2
auto_failback off
ping_group group1 192.168.1.254
respawn hacluster /usr/lib/heartbeat/ipfail
watchdog /dev/watchdog

cluster2
cluster2:~ #vi /etc/ha.d/ha.cf
logfile /var/log/ha-log
logfacility local0
node cluster2
node cluster1
keepalive 1
warntime 30
deadtime 60
initdead 120
udpport 694
ucast eth0 192.168.1.2
ucast eth0 192.168.1.1
auto_failback off
ping_group group1 192.168.1.254
respawn hacluster /usr/lib/heartbeat/ipfail
watchdog /dev/watchdog

Edit HA Resource file (same for cluster1 and cluster2)
cluster1:~ #vi /etc/ha.d/haresources
cluster1 192.168.1.100 \
Filesystem::/dev/sdb1::/db::ext3

Make sure you can see hard disk partition on both servers
cluster1:~ # cat /proc/partitions
8 17 20964793 sdb1
cluster2:~ # cat /proc/partitions
8 17 20964793 sdb1

Configure and format hard disk partition
cluster1:~ # fdisk /dev/sdb1
press n add a new partition
press p primary partition
press 1 partition number
First cylinder, press ENTER
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK, press ENTER
press p print the partition table
press w write table to disk and exit

cluster1:~ # mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

Create new folder on both servers
cluster1:~ # mkdir /db
cluster2:~ # mkdir /db

Startup heartbeat services
cluster1:~ # chkconfig heartbeat on
cluster1:~ # /etc/init.d/heartbeat start
cluster2:~ # chkconfig heartbeat on
cluster2:~ # /etc/init.d/heartbeat start

You should be able to see /db mounted and IP address 192.168.1.100 is up on cluster1(active). If you turn OFF cluster1 server and you should see cluster2 running on ACTIVE mode.

Congratulations! You’re done! Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. ESX Cluster through WAN with Netapp Metro Cluster

Said for example, I have a SuSE Linux VM template sitting on ESX 1 which is only using “VMNetwork1″ network setting. Whenever I clone or deploy this template to ESX 2 which is only using “VMNetwork2″ network setting, I’m sure you will getting annoying error when power on the virtual machine.

You can’t change using “Edit Settings”.

How to solve this problem?
- SSH into VMware ESX host

- Run vmware-cmd command to list down the VM configuration file

[root@myesx05 root]# vmware-cmd -l
/vmfs/volumes/231c7f90-cbf17123-d735-0015273a436a/
SLES10SP2/SLES10SP2.vmx

Note: Virtual machine configurations are stored as files with a .vmx extension.The VMX file is just a text file with specific fields that define the virtual machine’s configuration.

- Edit configuration file

[root@myesx05 root]# vi
/vmfs/volumes/231c7f90-cbf17123-d735-0015273a436a/
SLES10SP2/SLES10SP2.vmx

- Look for network setting
ethernet0.networkName = “VMNetwork1″

- Change “VMNetwork1″ to “VMNetwork2″ and save it

- Restart the VM machine and the network problem should be solve.

Enjoy!