Hosting the Desktop: VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop?
Posted on 08.Mar 2010 by Ray Heffer in Citrix, VDI, VMware, Virtualisation
Since VMware View was released in November 2009 and Citrix XenDesktop 4 in the same month, you could be mistaken that this is a game of tennis at Wimbledon with all the hype about each product. I first started working with desktop virtualisation in a VDI sense (not terminal server based) when VMware VDM 2.0 beta was released in 2007 (now VMware View), and for a moment VMware seemed to be ahead of the game. Prior to that, I had to put up with Citrix Desktop Broker which was made end-of-life a short while after its release. Then Citrix released XenDesktop 2.0, and with desktop provisioning making storage issues a thing of the past thanks to Citrix Provisioning Server (formerly an Ardence product), the ball seemed to be firmly back in Citrix’s court.
VMware ESX Error: Unable to connect to the MKS: vmx connection handshake failed for mks of…
Posted on 03.Mar 2010 by Ray Heffer in VMware, VirtualisationWhen you power on a virtual machine with VMware ESX VI3 or vSphere it may reach 95% progress in the tasks, but when you open the console you’ll notice the error: “Unable to connect to the MKS: vmx connection handshake failed for mks of /vmfs/volumes…”.
Finally received my VMware vSphere VCP certificate in the post today!
Posted on 20.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, VMware, Virtualisation
I passed my VCP4 back in December, and after many months of waiting I finally received my VCP certificate on vSphere 4 today!
I’m also working on some study material for those of you that are aiming for a VMware VCP certificate. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, you won’t miss out when it’s published!
VMware vSphere Virtual Machine Live Clones Across Datacenters
Posted on 17.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in VMware, Virtualisation
Prior to VMware ESX 4 (vSphere) it was not possible to clone a running virtual machine to another datacenter, or to a virtual machine data store that wasn’t available on the source host. Now with VMware vSphere it is possible to clone a running virtual machine to another datacenter, even if the destination data store is not presented to the source host.
Open Source vs COTS? Government strategy for 2010
Posted on 11.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & ITGovernment ICT strategy for 2010:
“Traditionally, the public sector has relied on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software or bespoke developments from global providers. This restricts the ability of the public sector to reuse solutions, reduces flexibility to manage assets efficiently and prevents government organisations from switching suppliers. The Open Source, Open Standards, Reuse Strategy provides government’s approach to open source alternatives that meet public sector requirements. Government already commits to using only open standards for documentation. The ICT Strategy will build capability within the public sector to increase the amount of open source code and software in use and to make it available for reuse elsewhere.”
How To Fix Host Not Responding Error with VMware ESX, vSphere in vCenter
Posted on 05.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in VMware, Virtualisation
Virtualcenter looses connectivity to an ESX or vSphere host, and all of the virtual machines that are running on the host show as ‘disconnected’. You will also see that the host has ‘not responding’ in brackets next to it’s name.
This one is very simple to fix, as it is usually caused by the host agent service (mgmt-vmware) failing due to a dead process.
Running Rings Around Virtualisation
Posted on 01.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in VMware, Virtualisation
In 1987 when I was just 11 years old, I used my first real PC, other than the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 (1984) of course… an Intel 80386 Personal Computer with a green screen CRT display. Bundled with it was a book called ‘80386 Programmer’s Reference Manual‘. Back then I was fascinated with computer programming and machine code, and although little of the book was understood at the time, much of it is still relevant today. The book was published in 1986, and one of the sections covered processor privilege levels.
Privilege levels determine what rights the procedure being executed has when issuing instructions, or accessing I/O ports and memory addresses. There are 4 privilege levels for x86 processor architecture, and these are called rings. The four rings (0 to 3) are designed to protect the hardware resources, keeping user applications at level 3 (the least privilege) and the operating system kernel at ring 0 (the most privileged).
SAN Storage For Disaster Recovery Solutions
Posted on 31.Jan 2010 by Ray Heffer in SAN Storage
It’s Monday morning and you arrive late at the office thanks to the trains being delayed yet again. At that particular moment in time as you grab your morning coffee, several hundred users have already logged in and started launching their email client, web applications, and a myriad of documents and spreadsheets. So far this sounds like any other morning, but what I didn’t mention was the fact that just 30 minutes before you arrived at the office, a water from a pipe in the ceiling started to leak into the rack containing your SAN’s disk array.
How to make a CAT5 crossover cable
Posted on 28.Jan 2010 by Ray Heffer in Tech TipsIf you are in need of a CAT5 crossover cable, but can’t find one then it’s very easy to make one providing you have the right tools.
This is what you need:
Length of CAT5 (or CAT5e / 6) cable
Wire cutters
RJ45 connectors
RJ45 crimper
Installing VMware tools on a Linux guest
Posted on 19.Jan 2010 by Ray Heffer in Linux, Scripts & Commands, VMware, VirtualisationStart the VMware Tools installation
Using the VMware VI Client, right click on the Linux guest and select Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.
Mounting the CD-ROM
You’ll need to mount the CD-ROM on the Linux guest.
# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
