Browsing Posts published in April, 2012

Reading Time: 3 minutes If you want to “play” with Windows 8 Consumer Preview or “Windows Server 8” Beta, then there are several installation options. Destinations Hard disk This the common solution, but mean the needs of a blank partition, or space to build a new partition, or the possibility to erase your disk. If you choose a dual boot configuration, of course, the bootloader must be modified to add the new entry. Physical installation permit to test most of the features and can give better performance (for example you cannot realize how fast is the boot procedure in […]

Reading Time: < 1 minute I’ve really proud to been invited by Nexenta to attend at the OpenStorage Summit EMEA 2012, a meeting hosted by Nexenta but open to the OpenStorage industry participating in panels, case studies and technical vendor presentations. This year the event is scheduled on 22nd — 24th May at the Hotel Mercure Amsterdam aan de Amstel in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). OpenStorage Summit EMEA 2012 will feature a myriad of top-class speakers who are the top minds in the OpenStorage / open-source software industry. For more information consult the meeting’s agenda. For registration form and main reason […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes As written in the previous posts, in the ESXi installation there are two copy of the system image located in two different partitions (see Partitions layout of system disk and More on partitions posts). The actual system image is located on the first 250 MB partition, formatted with plain old FAT16 filesystem, but using a special pseudo-filesystem on it (see VisorFS: A Special-purpose File System for Efficient Handling of System Images). The image itself, s.v00, is a 124 MB compressed file, which is decompressed on boot and contains the hypervisor operating system. Note that the […]

Reading Time: < 1 minute Some hours ago I have received an e-mail from VMware Technical Certification Team to my VCP5-DT certification in my official transcript:: The VMware education transcripts will now include your VMware technical certifications. Your online transcripts will reflect your VMware Certified Professional 5 – Desktop status as soon as you: – Confirm your shipping address – Consent to transcript release – Accept the VMware Certification Agreement

Reading Time: 2 minutes In a previous post I’ve described the partitions used by a ESXi installation (see ESXi – Partitions layout of system disk). Partitions are formatted with a FAT16 filesystem, but the ESXi files are stored into the banks partitions with a specific system that consist in some compressed archives containing the required files or more archives (as also described in the yesterday’s post about the reset of the root password). More details on the filesystem used is on the first number of the VMware Technical Journal, in the paper: VisorFS: A Special-purpose File System for Efficient […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes Reset the root password with ESX 3.x was quite simple, just because the service console was a partition writable a live CD… With ESX 4.x it was a little more complicated (the service console was basically a vmdk). But with ESXi things are more complicated, due to the partition layout, that ESXi works in RAM and that all configurations files are stored in the banks it special archive files. The file containing the password hashes is called “shadow” and it is is contained in  a nested structure of archives inside the state.tgz file.

Reading Time: 3 minutes As most people know, Intel adopt a Tick Tock model for processors development: a tick advances manufacturing technology, a tock delivers new microarchitecture. Usually this mean that a tick means processors with more frequency speed (sometimes also more cores and/or more cache) and a tock means usually new features (but not necessary more frequency speed and/or more cache/cores). But when a new generation (tick or tock) as been introduced, after some months, this usually means cheaper processors (or at similar price) compared to previous generation. Now a possible confusion could be generated by the Westmere […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes Microsoft has recently made some changed in certifications and also has introduced new paths, like the new MCSE: Private Cloud certification. The path has the following requirements: become a MCSA: Windows Server 2008 pass the Exam 247: Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 (Until January 31, 2013, Exam 70-659 may be taken in place of 70-247) pass the Exam 246: Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 Note The Private Cloud certification requires candidates to show continued ability to perform in this technology area by completing a recertification […]

Reading Time: 2 minutes Although the official confirmation has yet arrived via email, it seems that (also) this year I was confirmed as a vExpert. Or at least they appear on the list published on the site: Announcing vExpert 2012 title holders. Considering the changes in the vExpert program and that I’ve tried the “Evangelist” path (probably the most “wanted” or at least desired… and where there are some really great evangelists) I be enormously honored by this confirmation. It ‘s been less than a year since the last vExpert 2011, but I seems that were only few days.

Reading Time: 4 minutes As written in the previous post, the management web interface is build around at the load balancer features. But most terms and concepts are the same of other solutions and at least we have: Virtual Services (VS): a virtual IP or VIP (or a pair of IP and port) for a specific virtual service that will me managed by the load balancer Real Servers (RS): the servers (physical or virtual) that hosts the services Forwarding methods: how packets are delivered to the real servers. VLM support NAT or Direct Server Route (DSR) al L4 and […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes As written in the previous post, there are two vNIC in the VLM appliance, because there are two different scenarios of network topologies (well described in the LoadMaster Installation & Configuration Guide at pages 12-13): one-armed (similar to a bastion host firewall configuration) or two-armed (similar to a firewall dual-homed). Looking at those configurations, and comparing with Linux Virtual Server, seems that the forward methods (Direct Server Return and NAT) are bounded with the network topology. But for VLM there is no correlation and you can use the preferred forward methods (although DRS remain the […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes KEMP Virtual LoadMaster (VLM) is available in three format: one for Microsoft Hyper-V (just a zip with all the required files) and two for VMware (one for vSphere and one for Workstation format). All are quite small (less than 40MB), so really fast to download and deploy. I have tried the the vSphere version that is just a compressed file with a folder including an OFV and a VMDK file. Really simple to deploy as most of the virtual appliances (maybe a single file could be more simple). The Step 1 is get the software […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes KEMP’s LoadMaster family of affordable, yet feature rich application delivery controllers and server load balancer appliances automatically and intelligently manage user traffic and applications, to deliver website integrity for small-to-medium sized businesses (SMB) and managed service providers. KEMP LoadMaster is an hardened Linux appliance that provide several features: Server Load Balancing for TCP/UDP based protocols NAT-based forwarding or Direct Server Return (DSR) configurations Layers 4-7 Load Balancing Layer 7 Content Switching Server Persistence Windows Terminal Services load balancing and persistence with Session Directory integration SSL Termination/Offload/Acceleration Application Front-end (Caching, Compression and IPS security) Advanced, App-Transparent […]

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