Fortysomething Geek

VMware just released Fusion 7 Pro with some major changes and updates. The most obvious are support for Yosemite OSX 10.10, improve performance, GPU upgrades.

However, if you are Mac based developer who is involved with ESXi or vSphere, this is an absolute must-have upgrade. This version definitely gives weight to the "Pro" denomination. The remote server integration makes it well worth the 80ドル upgrade and 150ドル full price.

So what is new?

I'm not going to rehashed some press release or product page. You can read that directly on VMware's own product page here:http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion-pro/ . Improved performance. Check! Improved Retina support. Check!

The "what's big" is the vSphere, ESXi support. This is only in the Pro version and it definitely makes it a big differentiator between the regular Fusion 7.

For those Mac developers who tirelessly worked for years with ESXi, your normal modus operandi was to install a Windows VM and run vSphere Client in a Windows' Guest. Now, a majority of those functions are built right into Fusion Pro.

In the screenshot below, I can see my local VMs and in the preview pane and I can now see the inventory of my remote Virtual Machines. I even get general stats on usage of the remote server.


Yep. Now you can start, stop, modify remote Virtual Machines, and even deploy OVFs right inside Fusion Pro.

Impressive indeed!

You simply, connect and you have some basic control. This is simply a killer feature.





Another benefit to this is you can now run Virtual Machines remotely. I have 6 and 8-core AMD ESXi white box servers running in my basement. They have 16 and 32GB of RAM with 3 terabyte of data storage. I don't need to even run my development VMs on my Macbook. Rather, I can control and run them remotely. Sure, you can VNC or RDP in but that method is often laggy and unpleasant. Nor can you enable features of the guest via traditional remote desktop connectivity.

Here, you can run and enable device features remotely. For example, I run a proxy server and have a stand-by failover VM on another server. Both are running with the same IP. When one fails, I simply enable the networking on the standby unit to take over. The guest will utilize whatever CPU and GPU processing power your remote host hypervisor has.


So if you have VMs on a ESXi, vSphere or Windows Workstation, you can now run your VM on beefier, remote boxes. The whole start-up and control process feels and acts if you are running locally. I am very impressed. You won't get unity or shared folders on remote VMs. Thus, you'd still need to run those VMs locally for those guests that need those features. However, for most console OSes (Linux apps servers), you can simply run them remotely.

Pictured below is an example. I dragged a local LAMP stack from my Macbook onto my remote ESXi server box and voila. Instant provisioning.


You can also export and download as well.


I must say, these Pro features are impressive. It doesn't have all the features of the Windows ESXi client but it covers most of the stuff I need on a day to day basis. The OVF export takes the hassle of tweaking VMDK and thin provisioning.

Now, let me comment on some of the other features of Fusion 7.

You can select what GPU you want to use if your Mac has a hybrid graphics card set-up. Before, I had to use some hacks to disable the NVDIA card but now, you can set it in the VM guest.


This will save battery power considerably for Macbooks with dual GPUs. Console based OS and older operating systems will no longer start the GPU if you don't want them to. My macbook no longer whizzes the fan when I want to fire up an old copy of Windows XP or CentOS.


They've also improved Retina support. For non HiDPI operating systems, the rendering doesn't look so bad anymore. Pictured above is Windows XP and it now looks fairly good without the nasty dithering blockiness found in earlier versions.

User interface wise, it is an clean, streamlined new look that will fit right in with Yosemite.



Overall, I am very impressed. I am definitely giving this upgrade a big thumbs up.

I've been asked quite a bit on this blog, offline and via email about Mac Virtualization. Specifically, virtualizing old Mac OSX servers that previously ran on Apple's discontinued XServes. With VMware's ESXi, you can easily consolidate clusters of old Mac servers into fewer machines and easily provide failover and redundancy. For example if you had 4 Xserves, you can dedicate two as Hypervisors and virtualize all four older Mac Servers on a single machine. With two hypervisors, you would have duplicate and redundant standby failover new Mac servers.

Hopefully, this post will be a guide to help many of those who want to consolidate and virtualize their old Mac OSX 10.6 (and up servers). Think of this as a road-map, blueprint from this fortysome geek. This is my article on running ESXi on the Xserve and virtualizing old Mac servers.

First of all, you will need a few things.

• VMware's Free Hypervisor server, ESXi version 5.1.0
• VMware's Desktop Fusion. 
• an INTEL XEON Power Mac or XServe. My host is a XServe 3,1 which was the last one from 2009.

Read more »

I really didn't think this was possible - running a VM hosting another VM.

Yep. That is a few layers deep.

I was able to run VMware ESXi 5.0 Hypervisor server inside my Mac via VMware Fusion. Virtualized ESXi was able to host and run an Ubuntu LAMP server. I managed the ESXi server from a VM Windows XP. Under XP, I could easily load up and deploy my OVA provisioned guests in a virtual network.

Impressive.
If this is all greek to you, I am running a Virtual data-center off my Macbook. ESXi is an popular Hypervisor server that hosts VM (Virtual machines). I can do all my development on a Mac platform and test my provisioning virtually. The VM runs fairly responsive due to the fast SSD and Thunderbolt.

A few post back, I wrote about converting real physical Macintoshes into VM (Virtual Machine) guests. Today, I am going to blog about my first attempt of installing VMware ESXi 5 hypervisor Virtualization server on a 2009 Apple Xserve 3,1. This was the last Xserve before Apple discontinued the line.

The purpose of this exercise is to see if I can recycle some old Xserve to hosts and consolidate older Mac OSX servers running Quicktime and Indesign services.

Installation was a breeze. I had an ISO and hit the "c" key at boot and selected the CDROM. Installing ESXi 5 was no different than installing it on a Dell. I picked a 8GB USB stick and installed everything onto a bootable USB stick. Once prompted to reboot, I had to hit the option key to choose the USB stick which happened to be properly EFI made.



I then configured my IP and logged into the Xserve through the VMware view client. I couldn't format one of the disks from the Xserve's SAS bay. VMware recognizes and it probably has some baked Apple firmware on it. I'll try with a different disk later. However, I was able to mount iSCSI and NFS shares to test.



I was able to load up my Linux and Windows VMs with no hassle. Getting a OSX guest will take me some time to figure out. I converted a Fusion guest with the ovftool but was not able to install my guests. I will play with it more and report back.

Right now my Xserve only has 6GB of RAM so I'll need to max that out and try adding eSATA or SAS storage to the ESXi build. My Xserve has an internal 128GB boot SSD so I may try re-installing on that or create a datastore on it.

Well, it looks like I may be getting a new laptop so I'll need to retire my trusty less than one year old Sandy Bridge Thinkpad T420. And that retirement plan is re-purposing it to run as a mobile VMware ESXi 5 Virtualization server. Yep, running ESXi on a Thinkpad. How insane is that!


In fact, it may be one of the best laptops for running ESXi. Why? This particular T420 has
eSATAp, removable drive bay, and cheap 16GB RAM upgrade. RAM is the most important thing with a VM server and this has plenty to run half or so dozen LAMP stacks.

eSATAp uses USB and eSATA in a single connection. This means you can power external 2.5" SATA drives. Or, you can also use an eSATA dock but that defeats the portability factor.


Want more permanent storage? Well, you have three internal drives if you choose to replace the DVD drive with a HDD DriveBay module. You get the internal 2.5 HDD, the mSATA slot, and drivebay.


See, this is exactly what I mean:


What can I say. This Thinkpad will live on and continue to make an important contribution in this one geek's life. I already have a Fuji MX130 running as my home lab ESXi server but I can use the Thinkpad to shuttle VMFS data stores, and do live presentations.

I've started to notice a few twitter and blog posts about running VirtualBox headless as a VM server. In short, have a dedicated machine to host and run VM guests that can be managed via a web console.





Well, there is no such thing as a VirtualBox server. VirtualBox is a Type 2 Hypervisor that runs as an application in a hosted operating system.A true virtualization server would be a Type 1 variety like VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer. However, that hasn't stop many people from running VirtualBox headless with a web based front end management tool.

In fact, in certain instances, it is a great way to recycle old machines. Some Type 1 hypervisors have certain hardware requirements that exclude a large number of older machines. For example,VT-x and certain virtualization features of the CPU and chipset are absolute requirements. VirtualBox tends to be more forgiving. I have quite a few old Dell rack servers (1950,2850,2950s) that don't quite meet many of the VMware HCL (Hardware Compatibility List). In fact, depending on the generation, a few of them wont even install ESXi 3 or 4. Hence, despite what people say, you can run VirtualBox as a headless VM server.

There are plenty ways of setting up a VirtualBox server. The most likely way is to install a minimal footprint Linux distro like CentOS, Debian or Ubuntu and install PHPVirtualBox. PHPVirtualBox is a PHP-based web base front end that employs AJAX and PHP to manage VirtualBox.


Here are some relevant links:
https://code.google.com/p/phpvirtualbox/

A step by step how-to:
http://www.howtoforge.com/managing-a-headless-virtualbox-installation-with-phpvirtualbox-on-nginx-ubuntu-12.04

I have a few headless VirtualBox headless machines under Debian and they work quite good for their intended purposes. I run low-level, non mission critical things like Squid, Nagios, and other network/intrusion monitoring systems.

Benefits of VirtualBox headless over something like ESXi.

The key gain with VBOX (VirtualBox) is familiarity and cross platform. VBOX is free and works across platforms - Linux, OSX, Windows. You don't even have to run a Linux host. You can choose an old MacMini with OSX if you like. You can download images, build appliances and they pretty much work on any machine by copying the files. Most of the people I know who do desktop virtualization use VirtualBox because it is free and cross platform.

You get to test and stage your VM guests on your workstation or laptop. You can build your great web LAMP app on your laptop and easily deploy by copying via something simple as a USB stick. You can simply SSH into your VirtualBox host, mount the drive and copy your files and be ready in a few minutes. When you have 10-20GB VM disks, it is faster to sneakernet the files via USB than over the internet. ESXi does not recognize inserted USB devices so you have to remotely copy files over to your VMFS data-stores. This requires setting up NFS/iSCSI shares , SFTPing your files, or use the Windows application to upload your files. For a non-window user, this is a hassle. In short, I find it easier to get VMs loaded onto the VirtualBox.

Next, the front end is standard web interface and works on phones and tablets using any modern browser. The web app is amazingly well done. You can build VMs from scratch, clone guests, start and stop VMs. If you are familar with the VBoxManage terminal commands, you can SSH into to your host server and manage from the console quite easily. I teach junior developers and have a VBOX machine loaded with a bunch of turnkey LAMP iso. They get to learn to install/build lightweight Linux servers using the web browser interface to VirtualBox.

I also like the different networking options of Virtual Box (bridge,nat,host-only). Unlike ESXi, your guests can run under NAT mode; meaning they do not require a dedicated IP or actual access to a network interface. This is handy if you are running something like NAGIOS that doesn't need to be access by the outside world. Nagios works fine behind a NAT. Lastly, the biggest advantage is RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) console access. I don't need a dedicate app to access the desktop/console of my guest machine. I can use any RDP applications including those found on smartphone and tablets.

ESXi is not as easy to use as VirtualBox. Datastores reside on VMFS (VMWare File Systems). If the ESXi box dies, you can only access the contents of the disk from another ESXi machine that can read VMFS. You can do FUSE-VMFS but I won't go there. With VirtualBox, you simply pull the drives to another machine with similar OS or File-system access. Backups with VirtualBox can be easily automated by the host OS. I can use rsync to copy images to remote backups easily.I'm certain VMware has some nice enterprise features for cloning/migration/etc but my post is intended for those who want to consider using the free version of ESXi.

Another big negative is managing ESXi requires a Windows machine with a dedicated VMware View application. In fact,I manage my ESXi server via Windows 98 running inside VirtualBox. I rarely use Windows and prefer not to boot out of Linux/OSX into Windows 7 just to use one application.


Now for the advantages of ESXi over VirtualBox (headless).

ESXi is a Type 1 baremetal hypervisor. It runs its own small OS that can be booted off a small USB stick. The OS is minimal and its only job is to run Virtual Machines. You don't get the overhead layer of running a host operating system. It runs much much faster without that extra layer of complexity found in Type 2 hypervisors like VirtualBox. On average, my ESXi baremetal OS consumes like 40-80 MB of RAM. The rest of the RAM are dedicated to guests VM and some overhead to manage them. Did I mention it was a small footprint? The whole server can be installed on a flash card or USB stick. It takes a total of 10 minutes to install and get ESXi up and running. With VBOX headless, you have to install the host OS, harden it, install LAMP, set permissions and modify a bunch of config files.

Most importantly, ESXi is much faster than VBOX. There are countless benchmarks on the internet if you care to look.VT-D hardware access if your hardware supports it. You can dedicate physical hardware to guest OS. For example, you can install a Windows guest to access a physical GPU video card. In short, you can run a graphical OS like Windows with hardware acceleration to a large monitor from your "headless" server. All of my experiment with VBOX headless were for low volume material. I would not entrust running a high volume web server off VirtualBox. With ESXi, I would not hesitate to use it for production.

I wont go into the hundreds of reasons why ESXi is better than VirtualBox (e.g. setting resource pools,etc) but the key thing for me is the reporting and statistics. The reporting allows me to examine my guests performance and tailor and allocate resources for their consumption needs. Before, I was allocating 512MB, 1 GB or 2GB of RAM to various "lightweight vms" in VirtualBox and had to constantly log into their consoles to monitor their performance needs. With ESXi, I can graph and visualize their needs after a few benchmarks/testing. For example, with one particular VM guest, I found out all I needed was 384MB ram and 2 CPU vs 1024MB and 1 CPU based on extended analysis.


The screenshot shows a typical scenario on how I may benchmark and prep my guest VM. This particular one is a small web app that serves 5 users and generates PDFs. My test consisted on running several concurrent hits and measuring how long it would take to generate 1500 PDFs. I was able to see the effects of different CPU and RAM settings effected my performance. In this particular example, 768MB and 2 cores was the sweet spot ( vs 2 cores/2GB RAM or 4 core 512MB). You simply can't do this with VirtualBox.

There are also good 3rd party tool and apps with ESXi. The iPad is handy as well when used with the mobile access appliance. It is good for getting an overall picture of your host and guests. If I had the Vsphere license, I figure I could probably do a bit more.






There you have it. My thoughts on running VirtualBox headless as a VM server. I hope you enjoy the insight.

The Fujistsu MX130 small foot print server is getting a lot of love these days.
In fact, I love it so much I decided to get a second one when it went on sale again.


I just upgraded the memory to Mushkin Silverline 32GB for 122ドル when it went on sale at NewEgg.


Now, I have a great little ESXI 5 Hypervisor server for under 400ドル with 32GB of RAM.

140ドル Fuji Server
122ドル 32GB of RAM
120ドル 6-core AMD FX-6100 CPU
12ドル extra gigabit card
394ドル total




I can run 20-40 Virtual Machines (depending on size and payload). Average LAMP VM are 256-512MB so if I only wanted to host Linux VPS, I think I can probably go as high as 50 LAMP VM.

I'll build my second MX130 whenever deals and bargains arises for components.

Here is my weekend ghetto ESXi VM server. A 200ドル budget AMD laptop.


I have to convert a rather large physical server at home so I jury rig an unused laptop.

This laptop has no love whatsoever. It was a 200ドル special from Staples or Office depot that you find on Black Friday door buster sale. The household is pretty much a tablet household and we don't have much use for it and it has been sitting in the closet for well over a year.

The laptop is a HP DV6 Pavilion with an Athlon Turion P540 processor. I reckon it is a celeron speed based CPU. The thing it has going for it is 8GB RAM (ram is cheap) and an eSata port. Otherwise, it is a rather horrible (1366x768 resolution on a 15.4" screen, awful keyboard, and lousy trackpad).

I figure I can create a makeshift ESXI server to create a makeshift datastore that will eventually be migrated to a "real" server.

To my surprise, the laptop was perfect. I made a bootable ESXI usb stick that previously worked on another workstation and connected a SATA dock. To my surprise, everything works. With an ethernet crossover, I was able to make some backups and testing.






I was able to dock an undock drives easily. The drives then showed up on my production server automatically. I managed the whole session with my macbook and a cross-over cable.

In Conclusion, those cheap Walmart/Staple/Best Buy budget AMD laptops can come in handy when you need to improvise. I like the fact AMD doesn't gimp their virtualization features in their CPU. Unlike the cheap Intel Celerons/Atoms/I3s, some of the AMD offerings are quite nice.

Newegg recently had a sale on the Fujitsu MX130 S2 micro server for 140ドル so I decided to pick one up.

Now, I have to say this is a great little machine: AMD AM3+ motherboard, up to 16GB (some users have gone to 32GB) of ECC server dimm memory, 6 sata connectors, 4 drive bays in a small package. You can upgrade to various 95W class AMD cpus. It comes standard with a Sempron single core CPU, 250GB 7200 rpm drive, and 2GB of ram. That in itself is enough to run FreeNAS and you'll have yourself a great little file server. The build quality is very good. In short, this is a micro server class machine targeted to small businesses who needs something economical and green friendly.

I decided to take a little further and upgraded to a FX 6100 6 core bulldozer and added 16GB of ram to make it into a portable testing ESXi box so I can do some virtualization testing. I replaced the stock drive with a 32GB sata boot drive, 128GB SSD, and two 2GB Hitachi 7200 rpm drives.
With multiple cores, a few of drives hooked up, and 16GB of ram, I have myself a little staging lab on my desk. For another 12ドル and change, I am going to add a secondary gigabit card and an e-sata breakout panel.

I figure I can run 15-20 or so lightweight VM appliances on this thing. Things like a lightweight MYSQL replication, rsync server for backups, GIT/SVN ,etc.

ESXi 5 and XenServer 6 installed with no problems.




For 140ドル this is a great little box you can use to play around with. It is not going to win any speed tests but for my needs, it is just perfect. I only wish I got a second one.