January 2007 - Posts

• Evaluation version of Windows 2003

  All of you are probably aware that you can download MSDN Pre-Configured Virtual Machine Images and of configurations you can get with the VHD Test Drive. There is another option, though, if you want to evaluate a Windows 2003 R2 installation by itself on a virtual machine or as a host for Virtual Server 2005 R2. You can get a 180–day evaluation of Windows 2003 Server R2 at the trial software page over at Microsoft. This makes it easier to evaluate the performance of the server product, for virtualization, or for any other tasks that you may be considering it. Link: Windows Server 2003 R2: How to Get Trial Software Posted Jan 31 2007, 09:17 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization, Tools

• Installing Virtual Machine Additions on a Linux Guest

  The first step is to download the actual VM Additions. You can read more about the Linux VM Additions here. To download the additions, you need to log into Microsoft Connect, and the look in the available programs for the Virtual Machine Additions for Linux. Once you download and install the file VMAdditionsForLinux32Bit.MSI, you will have an additional ISO file under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Virtual Machine Additions\, called VMAdditionsForLinux.iso. This ISO file will appear on the Known image files on the virtual machine’s CD/DVD Drive properties: Once you mount the ISO, installing the additions is straightforward. You only need to change the directory to the CD-ROM drive from a terminal (in this case, /media/cdrom), and run the script vmadd-install.run. This script takes several parameters, depending on what part of the additions you wish to install. You can, for example, only install the SCSI driver, or the X11 driver, or any other component. I installed all of them using the command line ./vmadd-install.run all: You can also install the additions using the RPM packages, if your distro supports it. Once the additions were installed, the VM worked like a charm. The mouse integration works perfectly, and the performance increase is noticeable. Posted Jan 24 2007, 05:40 PM by Jaguilar with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Virtualization

• Moving a VMDK with Linux installed to a VHD

  As suggested in this post by Christian, I went ahead and downloaded the vmdk2vhd utility to convert virtual hard drives from VMWare’s VMDK format to Microsoft’s VHD format. To test it out, I also downloaded Red Hat Enterprise Linux trial virtual appliance from VMWare’s site, and ran the converter on it. These are my results. First, running the converter is pretty straightforward. You just launch the utility, and it presents you with a simple UI, where you select the vmdk you want to convert, and the path to the destination VHD. Once you select the vmdk and the vhd, press the convert button to start the conversion process: The tool shows you a dialog box when it completes the conversion: I created a new virtual machine in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 using this newly converted VHD,  and, not knowing what to expect, I started it. The redhat OS started the boot up process normally: After making some adjustments to the configuration, including the X Server configuration, I finally got the X Windows server to come up. I am currently playing with the OS, and will proceed to install the VM Additions … I will document the process in another post soon. As you can see, the process for converting a VMWare virtual hard disk to a Virtual Server VHd is very straightforward. This will work, ideally, in a migration scenario, but this also enables a scenario to try out the large amount of Virtual Appliances that you can download from VMWare’s website. Posted Jan 23 2007, 08:44 PM by Jaguilar with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Virtualization, Tools

• Getting started with Powershell

  This week I finally manage to sit down and start using the 1.0 release of PowerShell. So far I’m impressed with its capabilities and ease of use. Here are a couple of tips to get you started with PowerShell scripting: Get-Help The commands in PowerShell follow the format verb-noun. It is very easy to “guess” a command once you’ve been using PS for a little while. To get the processes on the system, for example, you use the command get-process. To get the contents of a file you use get-contents -path . An so on. So, guess what command is used to get help? Too easy, isn’t it? get-help is your greatest ally when working with PowerShell. If you are unsure of what a command does or how it works, you just need to invoke the get-help command, followed by the name of the command:  PS C:\> get-help get-process NAME     Get-Process SYNOPSIS     Gets the processes that are running on the local computer. … Also, get-help supports wildcards, so you can use it to search for commands (in case you’re not 100% positive on the exact command name). So, for example, you can do a: PS C:\> get-help get-* Name                                 Category                                Synopsis ----                                    --------                                -------- Get-Command                    Cmdlet                                  Gets basic information about cmdlets... Get-Help                             Cmdlet                                  Displays information about Windows P... Get-History                         Cmdlet                                  Gets a list of the commands entered ... … Script Security PowerShell scripts have the extension *.ps1. To execute scripts, you need to do two things: Enable script execution. This is achieved with the command Set-ExecutionPolicy. To learn more about this command, you can type: PS C:\> get-help set-executionPolicy Enter the path to the script. If it is in the local directory, enter .\.ps1. If not, enter the fully qualified path. Scripting in PowerShell is very easy – the syntax is very C#-like, and it has the power of both the .NET Framework AND COM objects at your disposal. Use .NET Data Types PowerShell is built on top of the .NET Framework. Because of that, you can use .NET Data Types freely in your scripts and in the command prompt. You can do things like: PS C:\> $date = new-object -typeName System.DateTime PS C:\> $date.get_Date() Monday, January 01, 0001 12:00:00 AM Further help Some great places to get you started with Powershell are: Windows PowerShell Team blog Technet’s PowerShell Scripting Center Just PowerShell it PowerShell For Fun Don’t forget to get the Windows PowerShell Help Tool, for free, from Sapien’s website. Posted Jan 04 2007, 11:39 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Tools

• Virtual PC 2007 Release Candidate

  Virtual PC 2007 has moved to the Release Candidate stage. You can download it from here. You can also check out the new features of this release on the Virtual PC Guy's WebLog . Posted Jan 03 2007, 03:13 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Virtualization Overview

  Over at IBM developerworks there is an overview of virtualization technologies, starting with the history of virtualization, virtualization methods, and some more information on the current status of virtualization in the IT industry. The article focuses on Linux Virtualization solutions, but the information it contains and the background it gives is worth a read. Link: Virtual Linux. Posted Jan 02 2007, 08:20 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Happy New Year!!

  A quick post to wish you all a happy new year! This is going to be an interesting year, with the release of Windows Vista, possibly Longhorn Server, and all the virtualization products on the pipeline from both Microsoft and the competition. I also think that this year 64-bit usage will increase significantly on the home and workstation front, given the release of Vista 64-bit and the fact that drivers are starting to show up. So, best wishes to you all, and hope you have a great 2007!! Posted Jan 01 2007, 02:15 AM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Random