Mind Circus

I was just reading “Cisco’s Billion-Dollar Server Guy Has Left“, over at Business Insider, and it explains Virtualisation as:

“virtualization software tricks applications into thinking they are on their own servers, even though they are sharing one with many others”

Which is an interesting take; although I think the use of “tricks” makes it sound a lot more hacky/dodgy than it really is.

As a Virtualisation enthusiast, explaining Virtualisation to a non-technical audience has always been an interesting conundrum for me.

How do you explain Virtualisation “in a nutshell” to non-techies?

I’ve spent the last few months playing with RemoteFX, including a fair amount of educated guesswork and hardware hacking to get a functioning system as – at the time – Microsoft’s documentation was a bit sporadic, and supported systems were just way too expensive for an exploration project. Mind you, even now they’re pricey; but RemoteFX isn’t aimed at the mainstream just yet.

It’s being retired now, so I figured I’d take a farewell photo of the AMD FirePro V5800 I managed to squeeze into a Dell R710 server.

Good luck RemoteFX – with some performance tweaks and a version 2.0, you’ll be awesome for VDI

Yet another “not entirely obvious” VMware thing

If you want to use the VMware vCenter Converter from within the vSphere Client you need to:

1. Install vCenter Converter on the vSphere vCenter Server (It’s an option on the vSphere vCenter installer)
   
2. Now log onto your vSphere Client and go to:
   1. Plugins > Manage Plugins > Install vCenter Converter Client
3. Once installed, right click on any ESX host, or ESX Cluster and choose “Import Machine…” from the bottom of the context menu.
   
4. That’s it. The vCenter Converter wizard will then pop up

Note: This is tested and working on VMware vSphere 4.1. Let us know how you get on with other versions of vSphere!

In this post, we’re going to run through patching/upgrading the firmware on a Dell PowerEdge 1950 III Server running VMware ESX 3.5.

The procedure should also apply to most recent Dell Servers running ESX 3.5, but your mileage may vary

Get your hands on the Software Update Utility DVD ISO and Burn it.

In terms of time, this is pretty much half the job, believe it or not. You’ll need to goto support.dell.com, find your Dell Server, and get the Dell Updates DVD ISO. For the PowerVault 1950 III, go here and then look under Systems Management for “Dell – DVD iso Images” “applies to: DVD ISO – Dell Server Updates”.

Patching the Dell Server

1. Be sure to VMotion off any Guest OSs that you need to keep running. Shut down everything else, and then put the target server into Maintenance Mode.
2. Insert the Updates DVD into the Server
3. Bring up a command prompt, as root, on the Server and run the following to mount the CD-ROM: mount /mnt/cdrom
4. Now navigate to the CD-ROM: cd /mnt/cdrom
5. Check what’s upgradeable on your system: sh suu -c
6. If you’re happy, then run the upgrade: sh suu -u
7. That’s it, you’re done

If you find you can’t Power On a virtual machine on ESX 3.5, and you’re seeing this in your error logs:

Message from esxserver.yourdomain.com: This product has expired. Be sure that your host machine’s date and time are set correctly. There is a more recent version available at the VMware Web site: “http://www.vmware.com/info?id=4″.

Then you can find the solution at this blog.

Thanks Todd, you just saved me from pulling an all-nighter. I thought I was going crazy!

Update: The first signs of this problem occuring are that, when you try to Power On a virtual machine, you get the error message: “A General System error occurred: Internal error”. After checking the Events log, you’ll see the more verbose error message earlier on in the post.