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The News Of The New Windows 2008 Kernel

Posted by whatavm on May 31, 2008

Find out what coming up with the new kernel of Windows Server 2008 by reading below:

* To begin with, WS2008 is the last version of windows that will supports 32 bits. The R2 version of Windows Server 2008 will only be compatible with 64-bit hardware, so get ready!!!! So this is the first time for Microsoft, where it forces the transition to a new architecture abandoning the older one.

* Second the technology of HotPlug PCI Express adopted in the new kernel will allow the addition and replacement of hot swap graphics card, memory and processor while the system is up and running.

* WHEA (Windows Hardware Error Architecture) is the new reporting system error standardized equipment, WS2008 implemented it in order for MS to spend more hours to find out who is involved in a crash of the machine in cases of hardware problems.

* The big novelty of Windows 2008 is the hypervisor Hyper-V. A hypervisor is a system that allows virtualization to host multiple virtual operating systems per host. You may be familiar with VMWare ESX, and the difference is that Microsoft Hyper-V contains no driver, trying to make it more secure, more stable…

* Without going into too much technical detail in Windows Server 2003, the distribution of quantums time for threads was very poorly managed, in WS2008, the time calculations are made more with the time switch threads but over CPU time. This improvement will be present in WS2008 and Windows Vista SP1.

* Another large improvement, is the level of control for users quotas. Now, administrators can set quotas for resources for each user, for example, a quota for CPU utilization. Attention, quotas are not well documented by Microsoft.
* In order to avoid the sudden reboots of servers, Microsoft has implemented a background service who performs an audit of hard disk (command chdsk) when a file or folder is reported as corrupt. It will run auto-repair for that NTFS partitions.

* The protocol SMB (Server Message Block) undergoes a small face-lift on Vista SP1 and WS2008 and released as SMB2. On the menu of news, the possibility of creating symbolic links NTFS client side, then the exchange of packets between the client and server is now a lot better to reduce the number of going back. Finally, it is also possible to enlarge the size of the buffer which was predetermined before.

* Windows 2008 New Kernel introduces a new random core addressing system (ASLR Address Space Load Randomization), which no longer allows to have the DLLs to the same addresses remembered for all computers which can reduce the risk of viruses or worms that use it addresses Fixed to load the computer malware that could spread throughout a network.

* KTM (Kernel Transaction Manager) allows transactional access to the registry and other resources of the machine. This avoids the corruption of a part of the registry during a program crash. This is the same transaction system on databases like SQL Server.

There are still plenty of news that we can not discuss here because of its complexity for this article.

A trial version of Windows Server 2008 is available on the Microsoft site. So try it out your self.

How-To: mount Windows Share under VMware ESX Service Console

Posted by mrvirtualization on May 23, 2008

Hi,

Ever wanted to mount windows share under VMware ESX. Do you believe it would make it easier for you to move files and packages you want to install into your service console if you have your windows shares accessible by your service console. Ever wanted to copy your ISOs images from your Windows machine to a volume or a mount on VMware ESX. This all can be eased out by mapping your windows share in the ESX console service. To move any file to your mount all you have to do is put it in your share in windows then copy it in the service console. OK, now you are wondering how to map the windows share under the VMware ESX service console. Below is the step by step on how to do so:

1. Login as root to the ESX service Console
2. The ESX internal firewall must be configured to allow the smbClient by running the following command at the service console: "esxcfg-firewall-enableService smbClient"
3. Create a local mountpoint using: “mkdir /mnt/myshare”
4. The windows shares mapped to the local mountpoint using the following command:      ”mount -t smbfs -o username=<user>/<domain-name>,password=<password> //<server-name>/<share> /mnt/myshare”     
5. After you are done you can disconnect the mapping using the following command: “umount /mnt/myshare”
6. To delete the local map point after you had unmapped the share you can use the following command: “rmdir /mnt/myshare”

I hope this was helpfull to everyone.

Enjoy,

Mrvirtualizaiton.

VMware ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 Update 1 released

Posted by mrvirtualization on May 23, 2008

Hi VMware lovers,

If you are like me, you would have been waiting VMware 3.5 Update 1 release patiently, I am glad to inform you its finally here.

yes, yes, yes, it has fixed the MS Cluster support problem that many of us were suprised of it in  VMware ESX 3.5 before Update 1.

Many Many Many other good enhancement as well were included few examples below:

The above four were the most looked for additions, but many others and more information can be found at the details below:

=================================================

 The VMware newly (re) built ESX and Virtual Center 3.5 Update 1 can be downloaded at

Download VMware ESX & Virtual Center 3.5 Update1 …

VMware ESX 3.5 Update 1

From a Citrix Session Broker for Hyper-V

Posted by whatavm on May 22, 2008

To date, Microsoft has its own Session Broker, but it has an agreement for close cooperation on this front (as on many others) with Citrix.

Yesterday Citrix has released XenDesktop v2.0 (do not be mislead by the numbers: you have not lost anything it is the first version), which offers one Session Broker able to use as a server virtualization XenServer, VMWare ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V (once available).

XenDesktop can be installed on Windows Server 2003 and will supports virtual desktops Windows XP and Windows Vista.

An interesting aspect of the product is its complete integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. XenDesktop is made up of several elements that combined in different ways building the different packages available:

     * Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC or, in beta called Desktop Server)
     * XenServer as backend virtualization
     * Provisioning for the streaming servers
     * XenApp for applications virtualization 
     * AccessGateway which work as SSL VPN gateway
     * The suite of control EdgeSight
     * The QoS engine WANScaler
     * The remote operator GoToAssist
     * The VoIP Gateway EasyCall

These elements combine to give the following different editions:

• Standard Edition: contains XenServer, Desktop Delivery Controller, Access Gateway
• Advanced Edition: everything in the Standard Edition plus the Provisioning Server
• Enterprise Edition: everything the Advanced Edition plus XenApp
• Platinum Edition: everything in the Enterprise Edition plus EdgeSight, WANScaler, GoToAssist, and EasyCall

Also there’s an Express version, which is free. Its equal in functionality to the Standard edition, but limited to 10 concurrent users. You can also download the trial version of the other Editions.

Install SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 & Component Integration for Linux on Hyper-V

Posted by whatavm on May 20, 2008

In this article, I am planning to cover how to Install SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 on Hyper-V, but what make it different than other articles that I will try to cover how to install the Hyper-V Component Integration for Linux as well Inject the Xen Hyper-Visor into the SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 which is running as a guest OS to try to show how to unleash the claimed performance of Linux on Hyper-V. The reason behind me writing this article is that I came across many articles who show you how to install Hyper-V. Then many others which show how to install Linux as a guest OS on hyper-V, but I have not seen any that show you how to do the full install of Linux on hyper-V to include the Linux Component Integration for Hyper-V and Xen Hypervisor. In addition, I have came across many other articles which mention that being not easy such as Fedore Core 8 on Hyper-V not so easy as it seems and MS Hyper-V vs VMware VI3 , but they still have not mention how to do it to let us figure out how hard its. So I decided to try it out and post my experience and try to prove the opposite if possible, but If you want to head to the last few lines to find out the conclusion before going over the full article “yes, its not as easy as I thought Microsoft product would run.” At start I decided to install SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 in a child partition of Hyper-V Beta1 (found in RC1 of Windows Server 2008) and then to try Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (Beta1) - now IC. Then try to inject Xen kernel trying to meet the planned MS installation path for acceptable performance of a Linux Virtual machine on Hyper-V. For this excersize I decided to use a small server that my company had at its lab (shhhhhhh!!!):

· Intel Xeon 2 Core

· 4GB RAM

· HD 1TB

· Ethernet 2X1GB network cards

This seemed to be a good testing to install Windows Server 2008 RC1 with Hyper-V and try to run some virtual machines on it. For my testing I had to suffer with the x64 version of SUSE as that the only DVD I had, and did not have the time neither the bandwidth needed to get the 32-bit version of SUSE (Though most of the steps illustrated held the same for 32-bit version of SUSE). In Hyper-V manager, I created a virtual machine with 512 MB RAM, 1 CPU with the only special setting is that I used a network adapter type emulated (Legacy Network Adapter) and not to assign SCSI controller. I have assigned the ISO of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 to the DVD virtual and initiated the virtual machine. The installation was spun smooth: the installation program has correctly recognized the network card emulated (DEC 21140), the graphics card emulated (S3 Trio 64) and the rest of the hardware. I only had to move the switch linux vga = 0×314 “auitare” during Setup to set the proper video mode (this is a preventive technique). After that I had available a SUSE server fully functional, capable of accessing the network and also with its beautiful graphical user interface: although GNOME is Not brilliant when it come to performance, it still acceptable. And here I had felt the first signs of satisfaction. At this point I have moved to install the IC (downloadable from here) to have greater integration between the Linux machine and Hyper-V and to verify the improvement of performance. The IC mainly provide two things: · Support for synthetic devices and in particular for network cards and SCSI controller. In this way Hyper-V can exploit the vmbus for dialogue with the parent partition and thus increase performance · Hypercall adapter. This is a thin layer software that position “under” the Xen amended kernel that translates Xen Virtualization calls to functions that understandable to Hyper-V (hypercall) Warning: Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V At the current versions only support the following Linux verisons:

· SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 (x86)

· SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 (x64)

The support is provided only through this newsgroup: microsoft.bet.windowsserver.hyper-v.linux Before installing the IC for Linux we exported (special menu item in Hyper-V Manager) VM in order to have a “rescue copy” in case something goes wrong and also to have two virtual machines that diverge “only” the presence or absence of IC.

(Menu Export in Hyper-V Manager)

The first step of the IC is to … read the attached document (Integration Components for Linux Read Me.docx) that contains a description of all the steps to be done. I know, I know … most systems administrators prefers starting by inserting the CD directly - virtual or not - and see how everything crashes, but I decided to save my self the headache and read : the first read me. I assure you that in this case a prior reading of readme helps …

Choosing the X64 version operating system has been proven to be the most problematic: In fact, the Xen Kernel included in x64-based version of SUSE LE 10 SP1 does not start after the installation of the hypercall adapter x2v (the component that translates Xen calls into into Hyper-V calls).

Then you must run patching for the kernel. The special patches are available on the ISO containing the IC.

The seceret behind the Xen kernel with hyper-V is that one of the main objectives of Hyper-V is to be a virtualization platform that is “open” as much as possible, and able to perform at best for the different operating systems.

You can run Linux on Hyper-V without any modification (the list of versions of Linux supported by Microsoft in production will be made public with the RTM of Hyper-V). This will however use the device emulated (basically the same as Virtual Server 2005 R2) and performances are not particularly bright. This method is what unfortunetly most documented on the web for being so easy and most administrators being not aware of the required modification to boast the performance which is the aim of this article. To improve the performance of virtual machines run in Linux partitions child of Hyper-V, Microsoft and XenSource (now Citrix) are working together to develop device drivers synthetic the vmbus and a hypercall adapter for use with Linux kernel Xen-enabled (child) . In particular hypercall adapter is a thin layer of software that arises under the Xen kernel (child) and translates calls to Xen virtualization subsystem into calls understandable by Hyper-V.

(Architecture of Integration Component for Linux with Hypercall Adapter)

Let me briefly cover the procedure that I followed to install the IC in SUSE LE 10 SP1 x64 (For full descriptions look at the documentation included with the IC):

1. Copying the contents of the ISO file with the IC for Linux into a directory on your system. Using Hyper-V Manager assign the ISO file to a virtual DVD. Then run the following on your SUSE virtual machine to mount the virtual DVD to SUSE (eg: mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom). Copy at this point the content of ISO file in the /opt/linux_ic (which you have to create)

$ mkdir /opt/linux_ic
$cp /mnt/cdrom/* /opt/linux_ic –R

2. Find the development tools and kernel sources in your SUSE packages which have the rpm format and then you can install these development tools and kernel sources using the command rpm or if you prefer Yast2

3. To Instal the Xen kernel using command line. For the x64 platform use the following command (assuming that the ISO for your SUSE is mounted in /mnt/cdrom):

$ rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/suse/x86_64/kernel-xen-2.6.16.46-0.12.x86_64.rpm

4. To apply the required patches to the Xen kernel which for Xen X64 are present in the IC ISO and at this point we already had copied to the file system of SUSE. Run the following commands.
$ cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.16.46-0.12
$ cp /opt/linux_ic/patch/x2v-x64-sles.patch .
$ patch -l -p1 < x2v-x64-sles.patch

5. Rebuilding the Xen kernel and “install” it in place of the existing kernel
$ cp /boot/config-2.6.16.46-0.12-xen ./.config
$ make oldconfig
$ make vmlinuz

6. Install the hypercall adapter
At this point, you can install the hypercall adapter with the following commands
$ cd /opt/linux_ic
$ perl setup.pl x2v /boot/grub/menu.lst
It is necessary at this point to restart the virtual machine and SUSE will load the amended Xen kernel

7. Installing the device driver synthetic (VSC) and the vmbus
The last operation is the installation of synthetic device drivers (VSC):

During the installation of VSC I received three warnings and two errors in the script startup vmbus(/etc/init.d/vmbus). You can safely ignore both the warning and the errors showing on the startup of vmbus which are the “problems of youth” script (it’s still a Beta1), but not in any way it jeopardize the success of the installation. A final restart to the SUSE VM close the phase of the IC Installation.

(Warning and error messages)

I believe error messages caused by vmbus are linked to the fact that the startup script is written for RedHat and not for SUSE.
Indeed in the script the row /etc/init.d/functions for SUSE should be /etc/rc.status. Similarly, instead of calling success, as fixed in RedHat, should be called, SUSE, rc_status -v.
If someone wants to try to make these changes to the script before you run it and put in a comment to this post the results, that would be grateful.

8. Reconfiguration of Graphics:
The installation of IC causes the loss of Server X configuration that can be restored by running SaX2.
At this point we shut down the virtual machine SUSE, and then from the Hyper-V Manager:

I removed the VM network adapter emulated (Legacy Network Adapter) from the hardware configuration and we added a network card-type synthetic (Network Adapter) instead of it
As well, I added a SCSI controller and connected it to the virtual hard disk
Re-starting the virtual machine with SUSE we found the new hardware (based on synthetic devices) to be fully functional.

(Output of ifconfig: seth0 is the card which based on device synthetic)

(SCSI Devices summary: Note the vendor MSFT)

The configuration of the Integration Component for Linux is “all here,” and remember that we are only at Beta.

After the test we had run few load stress tests on both virtual machines the one with IC & Xen Kernel installed & the unmodified VM. The Performance of the one with IC & Xen Kernel seemed to perform 25 - 35% better than the non modified one. Its a great improvement. Though the stress tool that we had are too basic to conclude the result. Though you really can feel the difference. If hyper-V end up to be your choice it worth considering IC & Xen Kernel injection if you are using Linux VMs.

Yes As I said in the begining getting IC & Xen Kernel correctly working inside the Virtual Machines on Hyper-V is not as easy as I expected. Though if Hyper-V is going to be your virtualization platform & you plan for Linux VMs you better be ready to put up with it.

I hope this article was helpfull for everyone and people will leave comment on things I missed or things they would like to add to it. Share the knowledge!!!!!!!!

WhataVM,

Highly inspired by Giorgio e Article

Time Synchronization & NTP on ESX Server

Posted by mrvirtualization on May 11, 2008

How can you configure the NTP setting on the Service Console

Time and virtual machines are not always a good marriage. The time in a virtual machine (VM) can fall behind, because the CPU cycles are divided over the VMs running on an ESX server.

You may have several ways to ensure that the time within a VM keeps running pretty well: using the VMware tools, or using a different timing mechanism. This article is about the first option: timing using the VMware tools.

If you use VMware tools timing, it is important that the time in the Service Console is accurate. This can be achieved by configuring NTP. Additionally, you have to ensure the timing option within the VMware tools is set to on (Checked). As well, it is important to only have one synchronization mechanism per VM to configure, more on this shortly.

Setting timing within the Service Console (+ VMs) consists of five steps:

1. Configure the correct time zone within the Service Console
2. Configure NTP daemon
3. Firewall disabling (Only ESX3)
4. Start NTP daemon
5. Time synchronization for the VMs

These five steps will be described in detail below:

Step 1: Configure the correct time zone within the Service Console

If you have setup the timezone correctly when setting up your VMware ESX then you can safely skip this step. If you are not sure you can confirm by checking the content of /etc/sysconfig/clock and make sure it contains the following lines with your correct zone:

Zone=”Europe/Amsterdam”

UTC=true

ARC=false

If that mach then you can safely skip this step else you have to proceed with it.

Setting the time zone is as follows:

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam /etc/localtime

This ensures that the correct time zone is set.

After that make sure the contents of /etc/sysconfig/clock contains the following lines:

Zone=”Europe/Amsterdam”

UTC=true

ARC=false

Note: This assumed that the hardware clock UTC used, if this is not the case then use UTC = false. As well It assumes that Amsterdam is the desired time Zone.

Step 2: NTP daemon configure

Please note in the following configuration we assummed your Time servers are as follow. Please replace these where ever founded with your NTP Server IPs or name (in many cases its the same as of your domain controllers):

0.pool.ntp.org
1.pool.ntp.org
2.pool.ntp.org

The NTP daemon can be configured as follows:

Ensure the contents of /etc/ntp.conf should contain the following lines:

restrict default kod nomodify notrap
restrict 127.0.0.1
server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift

The following images show an image of the ntp.conf file after the lines inserted in it. Please note the inserted lines in red.

The contents of /etc/ntp/step-tickers should look like this:

0.pool.ntp.org
1.pool.ntp.org
2.pool.ntp.org

This step-tickers file is used by the program ntpdate. This synchronizes the time for the first time as the ntpd is started or restarted.

Also for NTP servers fill your own choosing.

Step 3: Firewall disabling (ESX 3.x)

Open the NTP Port through the firewall, so the NTP server can be reached:

esxcfg-firewall –e ntpClient

By default, the outgoing port for ntp is blocked. You may also open this port through the graphical interface.

Step 4: NTP daemon start

The NTP daemon can be started now, in addition we should also establish that the NTP daemon will be started automaticly after reboots:

Start NTP daemon:

service ntpd start

Ensure that the next time the server boot up the NTP service will start automatically:

chkconfig –-level 345 ntpd on

If the clock in the Service Consile not synchronized with a time server. Now the Service console clock can be synchronized with the hardwareclock:

hwclock –-systohc

The time on the ESX server runs now!
If all is well, the time on the ESX server is correctly running and aswell the time is adjusted.
In addition, its a good idea that you check the time and get it to sync with the command “ntpq -p” and “ntpdate -q ntpserver.org” after you have been done.

Step 5: Synchronise time on the VMs

The timing of the VMs can be controller by putting the check for timing within VMware tools on. Plus, you must ensure that there is only one synchronisation mechanism active per VM! This means windows machines time service should be stopped if you are going to use VMware tools timing.

In the case of a Domain Controller time service can not be stopped, you would for the next option to choose:
It is possible to use third-party software to synchronize with an external source outside of a forest, and still use W32Time to securely distribute time within the forest. You can do this by disabling synchronization while leaving W32Time active on the server. To do this, stop W32Time and install the third-party software on the PDC emulator in the forest root. Then disable the third-party software’s ability to serve time by setting the value for the Type entry to “NoSync” in the registry, and then restart W32Time. (HKEY LOCAL MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesW32TimeParametersType) The domain will be securely synchronized to the PDC emulator’s clock, while the PDC emulator’s clock will be using the third-party software to synchronize with an accurate source outside of the forest. .
(Source: microsoft.com)

This way you can make a successful DC sync with VMware Tools. If you prefer for member servers to automatically synchronize with these DCs.

Enjoy the correct timing on your VMs :).

Please leave me comments on here if you need any further help, or if you have something to add.

Fedore Core 8 on Hyper-V not so easy as it seems.

Posted by mrvirtualization on May 10, 2008

As I have been going all over the web just as many of you are and trying to discover how to install Linux on Hyper-V, I have came up across zillions of posts which talk about it, but none who gave a full details of how to really fully implement it. I like how Virtual_PC_Guy have simpilized the installation of Fedore 8 on hyper-v in his article at installation of Fedore Core 8 on hyper-v .

He had made the installation of Fedore  8 on Hyper-v look so simple. Although its all the way true that you can install Fedore 8 on Hyper-V quite easily, to get the expected and claimed performance out of it is the hard part. To get paravirtualization in action and get the real performance out of it, you will have to install

1- Linux Integration components for Hyper-V

2- Paravirtualization Kernel

Doing the two above steps is not the easiest thing to do as the second one require a quite good Linux knowledge to compile the new kernel. Though unless you carry the above two step the performance of Linux hosts on Hyper-V will be so depressing and not much better than what you will get on MS Virtual Server 2005 R2.

I will be trying to document how to do the above two steps in a coming article after trying it. So keep looking.

Though if all you desire is just to get a look at installing Linux on Hyper-V and performance is not your main concern then the articled linked to at the beginning of my blog is all you need.

Welcome Aboard

Posted by admin on May 3, 2008

Hi,

Our Team would love to welcome all of you aboard and thank you for visiting our Blog. Our blog has been lunched to the public on 01/04/2008 and we hoping it will be helpfull to as many people as possible.

Hope you enjoy & share the knowledge.

Best Regards,

ITComparison Team

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