Today I want to add an new hard disk to my study environment. I have a HP ProLiant DL380 G5 server with a 72GB hard drive and 16GB memory. On this server I’ve installed XenServer 6.0.
With the network I want to build I do not have enough disk space.
After I’ve placed the new disk 120GB disk in the server, and configured a logical drive in the SCSI controller, I log on to the server with a Putty client. With the commando xsconsole you get the screen bellow.
Author : Ingmar Verheij
Processors have the ability to save energy by entering a low-power mode. Each processor has serveral power modes called “C-states”. The C-states are introduced with the 486DX4 processor and are still present in the current processors. Over time more C-states are introduced to lower the power consumption and save energy.
Hypervisors (used to virtualize desktops or servers) like Citrix XenServers or Microsoft Hyper-V can have issues with C-states causing them to freeze, BSOD or slow down. This happens when C-state 3 “Sleep” or higher is enabled the BIOS.
Our partner Denamik has released a new version of Denamik LoadGen. The execution of massive load and stress tests is now easier than before. You can now record your own user action scripts from within LoadGen, and setup LoadBots to handle the execution of these scripts. LoadGen allows you to manage LoadBots to create remote sessions and evaluate your IT environment under stress. A built-in reporting facility will give you instant results.
What is new in LoadGen 2.3:
Feel free to check out Denamik LoadGen 2.3, it’s free up to 15 virtual users.
Author : Ingmar Verheij
Recently I wrote a PowerShell script that connects to the console of a virtual machine on a Citrix XenServer, without using XenCenter or the Web Self Service portal. This allowed me to offer a published application to my users so they can connect to the console session. But what if they want to connect via a Remote Desktop Connection (RDP)?
I’ve written a PowerShell script that looks up the IP address of the VM and connects via RDP.
Author: Ingmar Verheij
If you want to connect to the console of a virtual machine running on Citrix XenServer you either need XenCenter or the Web Self Service portal.
I created a PowerShell script that connects to the console of the virtual machine, without the use of both. This script can be used to offer a shortcut to a virtual machine without requiring the user to have XenCenter installed, or having a XenServer Enterprise or Platinum license (it works with the free license).
Author : Ingmar Verheij
WANem is (as the name implies) a WAN emulator that’s available for free and therefor ideal to use in a lab environment. WANem is built on the Knoppix distribution and supplied as a bootable ISO or a virtual appliance. Unfortunately the virtual appliance is only provided for the VMware hypervisor.
I’ve got a lab built on the Citrix XenServer hypervisor and should therefore use the ISO. Installing (or actually booting) WANem is no rocket science, using it is a bit more complex. A guy named José Luis Gómez Ferrer de Couto has written an easy to understand tutorial (in Spanish) how to use WANem in Citrix XenServer.
Unfortunately there is a small pitfall on my Citrix XenServer 5.6 machine, the network is unreachable.
Citrix XenServer 5.5.0 is installed on a HP Proliant DL380 G6 server. The customer complained that VM’s experienced unexpected shutdowns without finding the cause of the problem.
After spending some time troubleshooting on the virtual machines I couldn’t find the source of the problem. No BSOD on the VM’s, UPS showed no loss of power and there are no scheduled mechanismes that can cause the issue on the specified dates.
Eventually I found that the cause of the issue is a bad driver as part of the HP Insight Manager Agent.
I’ve installed Citrix XenServer 5.6 FP1 on a old server for testing. After booting the server after some down time I’ve received a message in the console that the system time and date have been chanced.
To troubleshoot this issue I’ve logged on in the Local Command Shell. I’ve entered the commando ‘date’, the response is:
Sat Feb 18 20:37:34 2006
To change the date you have to use the following input mask:
date mmddhhmmyyyy.ss
To enter the current date and time this would look like this:
date 040622012011.00
Now to sync the new set time with the hardware clock on the server:
hwclock –systohc
Everyone knows that more and more people are thinking about VDI, or at least they’re talking about VDI. And most of these people don’t really know what they’re talking about, what they really want and what they need. There are more usecases, solutions, alternatives which might be better for most of them.
In this article i’m talking about ‘hosted virtual desktops’, the way most people see VDI. The desktop is a virtual machine running on a hypervisor in the datacenter.
Yesterday I attended a presentation where VMware was talking about VMware View, there product for VDI implementations. In this presentation one of the key-features of VMware View was there ESX plaform, and all the ‘fancy’ features this hypervisor has. And with ‘fancy’ features I mean features like VMotion, High Availability, DRS and Fault Tolerance.
These are all great features and very usefull, in enterprise environments, for servers. In smaller environments these features aren’t necessary or even needed. In fact, in most enterprise environments not all features are really required, there used because “we can”.
Continue reading »
Loading ...