July 2007 - Posts

• VHDMount and TrueImage - Be Careful when formatting drives

  Today I was helping a colleage to restore an image that was created with TrueImage to an empty VHD.  The process can be narrowed down to the following steps: Create the image using TrueImage Create two VHDs on the target VM (one to store the image, and the other to restote the image to) Mount the VHD that will hold the TrueImage image using vhdmount and format it Copy the Image from step 1 onto the VHD Unmmount the image and commit changes Boot into drive image and restore the image Sounds easy?  Well, usually it is - but today I faced a problem with step 3 above.   When I mounted the VHD and formatted it, everything seemed fine, but when TrueImage tried to read the VHDs, it barfed and said that it was "unsupported".  This was very weird since I mounted the VHDs time and time again without problems and the contents were inside.   The VHDs were formatted as NTFS,  so there really was no reason for the "unsupported" file format. We tested and decided to format the partitions from within TrueImage using the new hardware wizard.   After formatting them, I mounted the one that would hold the TrueImage image, copied the file and then tried to restore the image once again. To my surprise, this time around TrueImage read both drives and the image contained on the VHD that I just copied.  After that, it was just a matter of specifying the source and target and the P2V migration was underway. Bottom line, if you are planning on using empty VHDs with TrueImage (the bootable CD), make sure that you format the VHD with the utility itself and not within Windows using vhdmount.  Why?  Dunno, but if someone would like to shed some light on this issue, please be my guest! Posted Jul 26 2007, 10:59 AM by Csaborio with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Need to send large files? Use SendSpace!

  There are many possibilities today when you would like to send a big file to a user.  IMHO, sending big files over e-mail is a big waste of bandwidth; think about it.  You send the file to the mail server, which sends it over to the recipients mail server, which is then transferred over to the recipients machine.  The file travels a lot! It is best to send links to files you would like to download (unless you are sending small files).  For the last year I had been using streamload, but lately things have changed and it has just been awful. I searched for a way to send big files and stumbled upon SendSpace, which lets you send files without any problems.  They offer a client for uploading files for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.   Furthermore, they offer some features such as notification when the file you have posted has been downloaded.  Here is snapshot of the client, make sure you check it out: Posted Jul 16 2007, 07:30 PM by Csaborio with 2 comment(s)

• Virtual Server and VMWare Server

  During the last month, due to some testing we had to carry out with a software project, I needed to work with 64-bit virtual machines.   Virtual Server does not support 64-bit virtual machines, so I downloaded a copy of VMWare's free server solution and decided to give it a try.  After playing around with VMWare Server, I've had my ups and downs which I will try to contrast with my previous experiences with Virtual Server.  Price Both are free, no contest there.  VMWare requires a registration process to obtain the product key for the server, which can be a bit of a hassle.  Virtual Server requires a registration process as well but no product key is needed. 64-bit Support VMWare's server runs as a 32-bit process on 64-bit hosts and offers support for 64-bit VMs (read again, slowly and it will make sense).  Virtual Server runs as a 64-bit process on 64-bit hosts and does not offer support for 32-bit VMs. Types of Virtual Hard Drives VMWare offers virtual drives that expand as they become bigger or ones that are of fixed size.  It does not offer what is known as Difference Disks in Virtual Server.  These disks are amazing when working with lab environments or for multiple restore points, and is one feature I cannot believe is in some way or another on VMWare. Undo Disks VMware and Virtual Server both have this option.  The restore process under VMWare is easier to carry out than on Virtual Server. Cross Compatibility VMWare Virtual Server imports Virtual Servers vhds seamlessly.  It does, however, convert them to a big mess of chunks that is hard to maintain.  Although Virtual Server does not import any other type of virtual hard drive from another reseller, there are tools out there that will do the job for you. GUI Even though there are some clear advantages of having a web interface for Virtual Server, there should have been a binary to administer it.  There are some new alternatives out there that might work for Virtual Server, but the bottom line is that the 32-bit client for controlling VMWare's server blows any web application out of the water. Overall, both are excellent products and the fact that they are free is amazing.  I have grown so used to Virtual Server that I will continue to use it unless I have the specific need for a 64-bit VM, and when that time comes, I will hopefully be able to use Longhorn Virtualization. Posted Jul 16 2007, 05:35 PM by Csaborio with no comments Filed under: Virtualization