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• Windows Azure VMs - New "Stopped" VM Options Provide Cost-effective Flexibility for On-Demand Workloads

  - by KeithMayer

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/KeithMayer/archive/2013/06/22/windows-azure-vms---new-stopped-vm-options-provide-cost-effective.aspxDidn’t make it to TechEd this year? Don’t worry!  This month, we’ll be releasing a new article series that highlights the Best of TechEd announcements and technical information for IT Pros.  Today’s article focuses on a new, much-heralded enhancement to Windows Azure Infrastructure Services to make it more cost-effective for spinning VMs up and down on-demand on the Windows Azure cloud platform. NEW! VMs that are shutdown from the Windows Azure Management Portal will no longer continue to accumulate compute charges while stopped! Previous to this enhancement being available, the Azure platform maintained fabric resource reservations for VMs, even in a shutdown state, to ensure consistent resource availability when starting those VMs in the future.  And, this meant that VMs had to be exported and completely deprovisioned when not in use to avoid compute charges. In this article, I'll provide more details on the scenarios that this enhancement best fits, and I'll also review the new options and considerations that we now have for performing safe shutdowns of Windows Azure VMs. Which scenarios does the new enhancement best fit? Being able to easily shutdown VMs from the Windows Azure Management Portal without continued compute charges is a great enhancement for certain cloud use cases, such as: On-demand dev/test/lab environments - Freely start and stop lab VMs so that they are only accumulating compute charges when being actively used.  "Bursting" load-balanced web applications - Provision a number of load-balanced VMs, but keep the minimum number of VMs running to support "normal" loads. Easily start-up the remaining VMs only when needed to support peak loads. Disaster Recovery - Start-up "cold" VMs when needed to recover from disaster scenarios. BUT ... there is a consideration to keep in mind when using the Windows Azure Management Portal to shutdown VMs: although performing a VM shutdown via the Windows Azure Management Portal causes that VM to no longer accumulate compute charges, it also deallocates the VM from fabric resources to which it was previously assigned.  These fabric resources include compute resources such as virtual CPU cores and memory, as well as network resources, such as IP addresses.  This means that when the VM is later started after being shutdown from the portal, the VM could be assigned a different IP address or placed on a different compute node within the fabric. In some cases, you may want to shutdown VMs using the old approach, where fabric resource assignments are maintained while the VM is in a shutdown state.  Specifically, you may wish to do this when temporarily shutting down or restarting a "7x24" VM as part of a maintenance activity.  Good news - you can still revert back to the old VM shutdown behavior when necessary by using the alternate VM shutdown approaches listed below.  Let's walk through each approach for performing a VM Shutdown action on Windows Azure so that we can understand the benefits and considerations of each... How many ways can I shutdown a VM? In Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, there's three general ways that can be used to safely shutdown VMs: Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM Stop VM via Windows PowerShell using Windows Azure PowerShell Module Although each of these options performs a safe shutdown of the guest operation system and the VM itself, each option handles the VM shutdown end state differently. Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal When clicking the Shutdown button at the bottom of the Virtual Machines page in the Windows Azure Management Portal, the VM is safely shutdown and "deallocated" from fabric resources.  Shutdown button on Virtual Machines page in Windows Azure Management Portal  When the shutdown process completes, the VM will be shown on the Virtual Machines page with a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status as shown in the figure below. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped (Deallocated)" Status "Deallocated" means that the VM configuration is no longer being actively associated with fabric resources, such as virtual CPUs, memory and networks. In this state, the VM will not continue to allocate compute charges, but since fabric resources are deallocated, the VM could receive a different internal IP address ( called "Dynamic IPs" or "DIPs" in Windows Azure ) the next time it is started.  TIP: If you are leveraging this shutdown option and consistency of DIPs is important to applications running inside your VMs, you should consider using virtual networks with your VMs.  Virtual networks permit you to assign a specific IP Address Space for use with VMs that are assigned to that virtual network.  As long as you start VMs in the same order in which they were originally provisioned, each VM should be reassigned the same DIP that it was previously using. What about consistency of External IP Addresses? Great question! External IP addresses ( called "Virtual IPs" or "VIPs" in Windows Azure ) are associated with the cloud service in which one or more Windows Azure VMs are running.  As long as at least 1 VM inside a cloud service remains in a "Running" state, the VIP assigned to a cloud service will be preserved.  If all VMs inside a cloud service are in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status, then the cloud service may receive a different VIP when VMs are next restarted. TIP: If consistency of VIPs is important for the cloud services in which you are running VMs, consider keeping one VM inside each cloud service in the alternate VM shutdown state listed below to preserve the VIP associated with the cloud service. Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM When performing a Guest OS shutdown or restart ( ie., a shutdown or restart operation initiated from the Guest OS running inside the VM ), the VM configuration will not be deallocated from fabric resources. In the figure below, the VM has been shutdown from within the Guest OS and is shown with a "Stopped" VM status rather than the "Stopped ( Deallocated )" VM status that was shown in the previous figure. Note that it may require a few minutes for the Windows Azure Management Portal to reflect that the VM is in a "Stopped" state in this scenario, because we are performing an OS shutdown inside the VM rather than through an Azure management endpoint. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped" Status VMs shown in a "Stopped" status will continue to accumulate compute charges, because fabric resources are still being reserved for these VMs.  However, this also means that DIPs and VIPs are preserved for VMs in this state, so you don't have to worry about VMs and cloud services getting different IP addresses when they are started in the future. Stop VM via Windows PowerShell In the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module, a new -StayProvisioned parameter has been added to the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet. This new parameter provides the flexibility to choose the VM configuration end result when stopping VMs using PowerShell: When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet without the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped and deallocated; that is, the VM will be left in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status just like the end result when a VM Shutdown operation is performed via the Windows Azure Management Portal.  When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet with the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped but fabric resource reservations will be preserved; that is the VM will be left in a "Stopped" status just like the end result when performing a Guest OS shutdown operation. So, with PowerShell, you can choose how Windows Azure should handle VM configuration and fabric resource reservations when stopping VMs on a case-by-case basis. TIP: It's important to note that the -StayProvisioned parameter is only available in the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module.  So, if you've previously downloaded this module, be sure to download and install the latest version to get this new functionality. Want to Learn More about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services? To learn more about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, be sure to check-out these additional FREE resources: Become our next "Early Expert"! Complete the Early Experts "Cloud Quest" and build a multi-VM lab network in the cloud for FREE!  Build some cool scenarios! Check out our list of over 20+ Step-by-Step Lab Guides based on key scenarios that IT Pros are implementing on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services TODAY!  Looking forward to seeing you in the Cloud! - Keith Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 Don’t Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines Want to Get Certified? Join our Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Study Group

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• Azure, don't give me multiple VMs, give me one elastic VM

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday, Microsoft revealed new major features for Windows Azure (see ScottGu's post). It all looks shiny and great, but after reading most of the material describing the new features, I still find the overall idea behind all of it flawed: why should I care on how much VMs my web app runs? Isn't that a problem to solve for the Windows Azure engineers / software? And what if I need the file system, why can't I simply get a virtual filesystem ? To illustrate my point, let's use a real example: a product website with a customer system/database and next to it a support site with accompanying database. Both are written in .NET, using ASP.NET and use a SQL Server database each. The product website offers files to download by customers, very simple. You have a couple of options to host these websites: Buy a server, place it in a rack at an ISP and run the sites on that server Use 'shared hosting' with an ISP, which means your sites' appdomains are running on the same machine, as well as the files stored, and the databases are hosted in the same server as the other shared databases. Hire a VM, install your OS of choice at an ISP, and host the sites on that VM, basically the same as the first option, except you don't have a physical server At some cloud-vendor, either host the sites 'shared' or in a VM. See above. With all of those options, scalability is a problem, even the cloud-based ones, though not due to the same reasons: The physical server solution has the obvious problem that if you need more power, you need to buy a bigger server or more servers which requires you to add replication and other overhead Shared hosting solutions are almost always capped on memory usage / traffic and database size: if your sites get too big, you have to move out of the shared hosting environment and start over with one of the other solutions The VM solution, be it a VM at an ISP or 'in the cloud' at e.g. Windows Azure or Amazon, in theory allows scaling out by simply instantiating more VMs, however that too introduces the same overhead problems as with the physical servers: suddenly more than 1 instance runs your sites. If a cloud vendor offers its services in the form of VMs, you won't gain much over having a VM at some ISP: the main problems you have to work around are still there: when you spin up more than one VM, your application must be completely stateless at any moment, including the DB sub system, because what's in memory in instance 1 might not be in memory in instance 2. This might sounds trivial but it's not. A lot of the websites out there started rather small: they were perfectly runnable on a single machine with normal memory and CPU power. After all, you don't need a big machine to run a website with even thousands of users a day. Moving these sites to a multi-VM environment will cause a problem: all the in-memory state they use, all the multi-page transitions they use while keeping state across the transition, they can't do that anymore like they did that on a single machine: state is something of the past, you have to store every byte of state in either a DB or in a viewstate or in a cookie somewhere so with the next request, all state information is available through the request, as nothing is kept in-memory. Our example uses a bunch of files in a file system. Using multiple VMs will require that these files move to a cloud storage system which is mounted in each VM so we don't have to store the files on each VM. This might require different file paths, but this change should be minor. What's perhaps less minor is the maintenance procedure in place on the new type of cloud storage used: instead of ftp-ing into a VM, you might have to update the files using different ways / tools. All in all this makes moving an existing website which was written for an environment that's based around a VM (namely .NET with its CLR) overly cumbersome and problematic: it forces you to refactor your website system to be able to be used 'in the cloud', which is caused by the limited way how e.g. Windows Azure offers its cloud services: in blocks of VMs. Offer a scalable, flexible VM which extends with my needs Instead, cloud vendors should offer simply one VM to me. On that VM I run the websites, store my DB and my files. As it's a virtual machine, how this machine is actually ran on physical hardware (e.g. partitioned), I don't care, as that's the problem for the cloud vendor to solve. If I need more resources, e.g. I have more traffic to my server, way more visitors per day, the VM stretches, like I bought a bigger box. This frees me from the problem which comes with multiple VMs: I don't have any refactoring to do at all: I can simply build my website as if it runs on my local hardware server, upload it to the VM offered by the cloud vendor, install it on the VM and I'm done. "But that might require changes to windows!" Yes, but Microsoft is Windows. Windows Azure is their service, they can make whatever change to what they offer to make it look like it's windows. Yet, they're stuck, like Amazon, in thinking in VMs, which forces developers to 'think ahead' and gamble whether they would need to migrate to a cloud with multiple VMs in the future or not. Which comes down to: gamble whether they should invest time in code / architecture which they might never need. (YAGNI anyone?) So the VM we're talking about, is that a low-level VM which runs a guest OS, or is that VM a different kind of VM? The flexible VM: .NET's CLR ? My example websites are ASP.NET based, which means they run inside a .NET appdomain, on the .NET CLR, which is a VM. The only physical OS resource the sites need is the file system, however this too is accessed through .NET. In short: all the websites see is what .NET allows the websites to see, the world as the websites know it is what .NET shows them and lets them access. How the .NET appdomain is run physically, that's the concern of .NET, not mine. This begs the question why Windows Azure doesn't offer virtual appdomains? Or better: .NET environments which look like one machine but could be physically multiple machines. In such an environment, no change has to be made to the websites to migrate them from a local machine or own server to the cloud to get proper scaling: the .NET VM will simply scale with the need: more memory needed, more CPU power needed, it stretches. What it offers to the application running inside the appdomain is simply increasing, but not fragmented: all resources are available to the application: this means that the problem of how to scale is back to where it should be: with the cloud vendor. "Yeah, great, but what about the databases?" The .NET application communicates with the database server through a .NET ADO.NET provider. Where the database is located is not a problem of the appdomain: the ADO.NET provider has to solve that. I.o.w.: we can host the databases in an environment which offers itself as a single resource and is accessible through one connection string without replication overhead on the outside, and use that environment inside the .NET VM as if it was a single DB. But what about memory replication and other problems? This environment isn't simple, at least not for the cloud vendor. But it is simple for the customer who wants to run his sites in that cloud: no work needed. No refactoring needed of existing code. Upload it, run it. Perhaps I'm dreaming and what I described above isn't possible. Yet, I think if cloud vendors don't move into that direction, what they're offering isn't interesting: it doesn't solve a problem at all, it simply offers a way to instantiate more VMs with the guest OS of choice at the cost of me needing to refactor my website code so it can run in the straight jacket form factor dictated by the cloud vendor. Let's not kid ourselves here: most of us developers will never build a website which needs a truck load of VMs to run it: almost all websites created by developers can run on just a few VMs at most. Yet, the most expensive change is right at the start: moving from one to two VMs. As soon as you have refactored your website code to run across multiple VMs, adding another one is just as easy as clicking a mouse button. But that first step, that's the problem here and as it's right there at the beginning of scaling the website, it's particularly strange that cloud vendors refuse to solve that problem and leave it to the developers to solve that. Which makes migrating 'to the cloud' particularly expensive.

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• What's a good public access terminal solution using old PCs and remote VMs?

  - by greenfingers

  Has anyone had experience using VMs as remote desktops for public access terminals (e.g. an internet cafe) In our case we don't want to charge money for access but I figure this solution has a few advantages, such as: can easily re-build VMs daily, erasing private data and clutter can use rickety old PCs for the 'dumb' terminals less IT support needed on site Can you suggest tools to help do this? Keeping the terminals up and running as much of the time as possible is the main priority, so they need to boot straight into full screen remote desktop and stay there.

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• VMWare Workstation 8, Sharing a VM without copying them to "Shared VMs location"

  - by Stebi

  I have a host computer (Win7-64) with three different harddrives. It runs several VMs which are distributed among those harddrives for a better performance. Now with VMWare Workstation 8 it is possible to "share" the VMs. I'd like to use this feature, but I have to convert the VMs to "Shared VMs". When I try this WMWare forces me to copy the VMs to one predefined folder, thus making my effort of distributing the VMs among the harddrives meaningless. Is there any possibility to keep the VMs where they are and share them anyway?

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• How can I copy a file from VMS to Windows and back again?

  - by Matt Joslin

  I am trying to copy C source files from a vms alpha to a windows machine to allow easier editing of the code. (VMS editor is just a text editor and it would be nice to have syntax highlighting etc) I can copy this across using Exceed FTP and this handles the issue of duplicate filenames with version suffix that vms has: File.c;1 File.c;2 Flle.c;3 But when I open a file I've transferred, all the line breaks have been lost and the entire file is just one line. Can anyone recommend a solution to this or offer any hints? Thanks in advance ps. I need to be able to copy the files back to vms and still maintain format.

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• XenServer VMs can't reach network

  - by toto

  I'm currently trying to setup a small cloud architecture , I'm using in the installation CloudStack 2.2.14 which need two node : a management server (as node1) to provision the cloud and a hyperviser XenServer 5.6 SP2 to host the VMs (as node2). I succeded to create both node1 and node2 into an ESXi 5 VMWare as VMs. So The ESXi 5 is hosting two VMs node1 + node2 , and node2 which is the XenServer will host also VMs (such as ubuntu or Centos). Both node1 and node2 can ping each other and can get the internet connection from Esxi5 ,but My problem is : that VMs into the node2(XenServer) can't reach the network (can't ping node1 or Esxi or get an internet connection but they can ping VMs IN the node2(XenServer). So I tried to: 1-Setup a DHCP server as node3 in ESXi5 and connect node2(Xenserver) to him , but always the VMs into to node2 can't reach the outer network. 2-Setup a DCHP server into node2 , but always the same problem. So , 1-is there any other configuration i'm missing in node2 (considering that I'm sure about DNS , GW , NETMASK configuration)?. 2-Is it the problem because i'm Creating VMs into node2(XenSever) which is a VM into ESXi 5 ?

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• Hyper-V VMs hanging 10 minutes after startup

  - by Ken George

  Hyper-V running under a fresh install of 2008 R2 DC 2 VMs both running 2008 R2 STD One VM has SQL 2008 Server w/ SP2 and Office 2007 Enterprise w/ SP2 Othe VMS only Office 2007 w/ SP2. Approximately 10 minutes after reboot the Hyuper-V host the VMs will hang Hang = answers pings, but no RDP connections and Hyper-V console session is non responsive Disabled Hyper-V and had no proble with 2008 R2 DC host. Started the three Hyper-V services and 10 minutes later was hung again. Hardware is HP DL380 G4 2 socket, 48 GB, Internal SAS controller 1.5TB C drive VMs .VHDs are on external SAS controller on a 1.5 TB RAID5 volume. Nothing in event log on either VMs or Hyper-V host. Ken

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• Finding the Right Solution to Source and Manage Your Contractors

  - by mark.rosenberg(at)oracle.com

  Many of our PeopleSoft Enterprise applications customers operate in service-based industries, and all of our customers have at least some internal service units, such as IT, marketing, and facilities. Employing the services of contractors, often referred to as "contingent labor," to deliver either or both internal and external services is common practice. As we've transitioned from an industrial age to a knowledge age, talent has become a primary competitive advantage for most organizations. Contingent labor offers talent on flexible terms; it offers the ability to scale up operations, close skill gaps, and manage risk in the process of delivering services. Talent comes from many sources and the rise in the contingent worker (contractor, consultant, temporary, part time) has increased significantly in the past decade and is expected to reach 40 percent in the next decade. Managing the total pool of talent in a seamless integrated fashion not only saves organizations money and increases efficiency, but creates a better place for workers of all kinds to work. Although the term "contingent labor" is frequently used to describe both contractors and employees who have flexible schedules and relationships with an organization, the remainder of this discussion focuses on contractors. The term "contingent labor" is used interchangeably with "contractor." Recognizing the importance of contingent labor, our PeopleSoft customers often ask our team, "What Oracle vendor management system (VMS) applications should I evaluate for managing contractors?" In response, I thought it would be useful to describe and compare the three most common Oracle-based options available to our customers. They are:   The enterprise licensed software model in which you implement and utilize the PeopleSoft Services Procurement (sPro) application and potentially other PeopleSoft applications;  The software-as-a-service model in which you gain access to a derivative of PeopleSoft sPro from an Oracle Business Process Outsourcing Partner; and  The managed service provider (MSP) model in which staffing industry professionals utilize either your enterprise licensed software or the software-as-a-service application to administer your contingent labor program. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "Why three options?" The answer is that since there is no "one size fits all" in terms of talent, there is also no "one size fits all" for effectively sourcing and managing contingent workers. Various factors influence how an organization thinks about and relates to its contractors, and each of the three Oracle-based options addresses an organization's needs and preferences differently. For the purposes of this discussion, I will describe the options with respect to (A) pricing and software provisioning models; (B) control and flexibility; (C) level of engagement with contractors; and (D) approach to sourcing, employment law, and financial settlement. Option 1:  Enterprise Licensed Software In this model, you purchase from Oracle the license and support for the applications you need. Typically, you license PeopleSoft sPro as your VMS tool for sourcing, monitoring, and paying your contract labor. In conjunction with sPro, you can also utilize PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) applications (if you do not already) to configure more advanced business processes for recruiting, training, and tracking your contractors. Many customers choose this enterprise license software model because of the functionality and natural integration of the PeopleSoft applications and because the cost for the PeopleSoft software is explicit. There is no fee per transaction to source each contractor under this model. Our customers that employ contractors to augment their permanent staff on billable client engagements often find this model appealing because there are no fees to affect their profit margins. With this model, you decide whether to have your own IT organization run the software or have the software hosted and managed by either Oracle or another application services provider. Your organization, perhaps with the assistance of consultants, configures, deploys, and operates the software for managing your contingent workforce. This model offers you the highest level of control and flexibility since your organization can configure the contractor process flow exactly to your business and security requirements and can extend the functionality with PeopleTools. This option has proven very valuable and applicable to our customers engaged in government contracting because their contingent labor management practices are subject to complex standards and regulations. Customers find a great deal of value in the application functionality and configurability the enterprise licensed software offers for managing contingent labor. Some examples of that functionality are... The ability to create a tiered network of preferred suppliers including competencies, pricing agreements, and elaborate candidate management capabilities. Configurable alerts and online collaboration for bid, resource requisition, timesheet, and deliverable entry, routing, and approval for both resource and deliverable-based services. The ability to manage contractors with the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects applications that are used to manage the permanent workforce. Because it allows you to utilize much of the same PeopleSoft HCM and Projects application functionality for contractors that you use for permanent employees, the enterprise licensed software model supports the deepest level of engagement with the contingent workforce. For example, you can: fill job openings with contingent labor; guide contingent workers through essential safety and compliance training with PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management; and source contingent workers directly to project-based assignments in PeopleSoft Resource Management and PeopleSoft Program Management. This option enables contingent workers to collaborate closely with your permanent staff on complex, knowledge-based efforts - R&D projects, billable client contracts, architecture and engineering projects spanning multiple years, and so on. With the enterprise licensed software model, your organization maintains responsibility for the sourcing, onboarding (including adherence to employment laws), and financial settlement processes. This means your organization maintains on staff or hires the expertise in these domains to utilize the software and interact with suppliers and contractors. Option 2:  Software as a Service (SaaS) The effort involved in setting up and operating VMS software to handle a contingent workforce leads many organizations to seek a system that can be activated and configured within a few days and for which they can pay based on usage. Oracle's Business Process Outsourcing partner, Provade, Inc., provides exactly this option to our customers. Provade offers its vendor management software as a service over the Internet and usually charges your organization a fee that is a percentage of your total contingent labor spending processed through the Provade software. (Percentage of spend is the predominant fee model, although not the only one.) In addition to lower implementation costs, the effort of configuring and maintaining the software is largely upon Provade, not your organization. This can be very appealing to IT organizations that are thinly stretched supporting other important information technology initiatives. Built upon PeopleSoft sPro, the Provade solution is tailored for simple and quick deployment and administration. Provade has added capabilities to clone users rapidly and has simplified business documents, like work orders and change orders, to facilitate enterprise-wide, self-service adoption with little to no training. Provade also leverages Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to provide integrated spend analytics and dashboards. Although pure customization is more limited than with the enterprise licensed software model, Provade offers a very effective option for organizations that are regularly on-boarding and off-boarding high volumes of contingent staff hired to perform discrete support tasks (for example, order fulfillment during the holiday season, hourly clerical work, desktop technology repairs, and so on) or project tasks. The software is very configurable and at the same time very intuitive to even the most computer-phobic users. The level of contingent worker engagement your organization can achieve with the Provade option is generally the same as with the enterprise licensed software model since Provade can automatically establish contingent labor resources in your PeopleSoft applications. Provade has pre-built integrations to Oracle's PeopleSoft and the Oracle E-Business Suite procurement, projects, payables, and HCM applications, so that you can evaluate, train, assign, and track contingent workers like your permanent employees. Similar to the enterprise licensed software model, your organization is responsible for the contingent worker sourcing, administration, and financial settlement processes. This means your organization needs to maintain the staff expertise in these domains. Option 3:  Managed Services Provider (MSP) Whether you are using the enterprise licensed model or the SaaS model, you may want to engage the services of sourcing, employment, payroll, and financial settlement professionals to administer your contingent workforce program. Firms that offer this expertise are often referred to as "MSPs," and they are typically staffing companies that also offer permanent and temporary hiring services. (In fact, many of the major MSPs are Oracle applications customers themselves, and they utilize the PeopleSoft Solution for the Staffing Industry to run their own business operations.) Usually, MSPs place their staff on-site at your facilities, and they can utilize either your enterprise licensed PeopleSoft sPro application or the Provade VMS SaaS software to administer the network of suppliers providing contingent workers. When you utilize an MSP, there is a separate fee for the MSP's service that is typically funded by the participating suppliers of the contingent labor. Also in this model, the suppliers of the contingent labor (not the MSP) usually pay the contingent labor force. With an MSP, you are intentionally turning over business process control for the advantages associated with having someone else manage the processes. The software option you choose will to a certain extent affect your process flexibility; however, the MSPs are often able to adapt their processes to the unique demands of your business. When you engage an MSP, you will want to give some thought to the level of engagement and "partnering" you need with your contingent workforce. Because the MSP acts as an intermediary, it can be very valuable in handling high volume, routine contracting for which there is a relatively low need for "partnering" with the contingent workforce. However, if your organization (or part of your organization) engages contingent workers for high-profile client projects that require diplomacy, intensive amounts of interaction, and personal trust, introducing an MSP into the process may prove less effective than handling the process with your own staff. In fact, in many organizations, it is common to enlist an MSP to handle contractors working on internal projects and to have permanent employees handle the contractor relationships that affect the portion of the services portfolio focused on customer-facing, billable projects. One of the key advantages of enlisting an MSP is that you do not have to maintain the expertise required for orchestrating the sourcing, hiring, and paying of contingent workers.  These are the domain of the MSPs. If your own staff members are not prepared to manage the essential "overhead" processes associated with contingent labor, working with an MSP can make solid business sense. Proper administration of a contingent workforce can make the difference between project success and failure, operating profit and loss, and legal compliance and fines. Concluding Thoughts There is little doubt that thoughtfully and purposefully constructing a service delivery strategy that leverages the strengths of contingent workers can lead to better projects, deliverables, and business results. What requires a bit more thinking is determining the platform (or platforms) that will enable each part of your organization to best deliver on its mission.

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• All my Ubuntu VMs have apt-get update problems

  - by kashani

  I'm running Virtualbox 4.1 on an x86_64 Windows 7 host. I've got a collection of 12.04 and 10.04 LTS VMs I use to create debs for work. In the last week I started noticing problems on the 12.04 VMs. Tried the usual apt-get clean bit which didn't help. I rolled a new 11.10 VM for testing a Worpress upgrade. This VM has never been able to run apt-get update without errors. The interesting errors look like this: Get: 8 http://security.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/main Translation-en_US [344 B] 14% [7 Sources 48686/877 kB 6%] [Waiting for headers]bzip2: (stdin) is not a bzip2 file. Hit http://security.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/multiverse Translation-en Hit http://security.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/restricted Translation-en Hit http://security.ubuntu.com oneiric-security/universe Translation-en 22% [7 Sources 127526/877 kB 15%] [Waiting for headers]/usr/bin/xz: (stdin): File format not recognized and ends with /usr/bin/xz: (stdin): File format not recognized Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/main Translation-en_US Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-updates/main Translation-en_US Fetched 18.5 MB in 47s (392 kB/s) W: GPG error: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric InRelease: File /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_InRelease doesn't start with a clearsigned message W: GPG error: http://security.ubuntu.com oneiric-security InRelease: File /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-security_InRelease doesn't start with a clearsigned message xv-utils, lzma, etc are all installed. I've reinstalled the VM from scratch three times and up at the same point.

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• Disaster Recovery - VMs

  - by Saresh

  Procedures for backing up and recovering VMs in case of a disaster The Exalytics admin guide is available here: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E41246_01/bi.1/e39709/toc.htm, but the chapters around backup and recovery are pretty thin. This whitepaper isnt specifically for Exalytics, but plenty of good stuff around OVM backup and recovery that should get the you going http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/ovm3-backup-recovery-1997244.pdf

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• Remotely managing Hyper-V VMs from Windows 8 Client

  - by Vazgen

  Currently, I have a core Hyper-V Server hosting VMs for a domain controller and several domain-joined VDI infrastructure servers. The VMs are connected in that domain environment, but the remote management of the physical Hyper-V Server is set up using the same WORKGROUP (as the Windows 8 client I'm managing from) This makes it cumbersome to manage the VMs hosted on the physical server from my remote management Windows 8 client because I can only connect to the physical Hyper-V server and not the individual VMs hosted inside. Can I make my set up more flexible by hosting a second domain controller in a VM hosted on my Windows 8 machine and switching my remote management set up to use the same domain through? Meaning ALL physical and virtual machines including the VDI infrastructure under the same domain? I'm new to this just looking for some suggestions.

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• Can SetMaxMemory parameter be set on Windows VMs at a Xen Host

  - by diegodias

  I am trying to instantiate VMs with maxmemory higher than the current memory. It works fine with Linux vms, but when I try to instantiate a windows VM, the VM always crash. Can I set this parameter for windows VMs?

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• Mutliple VMs for Tomcat cluster vs Multiple Tomcat instances on one physical box

  - by Greymeister

  I'm working on a project that will be implemented into production using a cluster of Apache Tomcat instances and I'm looking for the best Hardware/OS solutions and VMs have come up as one option. I have run ESXi/ESX instances before for development and testing, but I'm curious for a hosting environment if having multiple VMs is actually worse than just configuring a server to host multiple instances of Tomcat. These are my guesses: Pros for VMWare Easier Maintenance/Backup for individual VMs (VMWare makes this easy) Can remote login to individual VMs without having to give host access (security?) Easier way to re-purpose machine for OS/Hardware changes Pros for running on one Physical Machine Overhead of only one OS (also no VMWare footprint) Update OS/security changes once One less administrative layer (No VM expertise required) I'm curious if anyone has any other ideas about what the benefits would be for either option.

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• Hot: Pre-built Developer VMs from OTN

  - by Justin Kestelyn

  For those of you who haven't already played with it, Oracle VM VirtualBox is an awfully cool desktop virtualization tool. Even better, it's free. We OTN-ers like it even more than you will though because it allows us to freeze-dry entire software stacks into VM images. Developers can simply download a few files, assemble them with a script we provide, and then import and run the resulting pre-built VM in VirtualBox. Voila, instant (insert name here) stack. These VMs are particularly handy in support of in-person workshops, but there's no reason we can't make them available for everyone. Which we have done, in Java, database, and SOA/BPM flavors. (All "ingredients" are listed at the referenced link, and they are extensive.) Now that we have the kinks worked out, other flavors are sure to become available in 2011. Now go get 'em!

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• How can I relaunch juju daemons without stop/starting local LXC VMs

  - by vaab

  I'm using juju in local mode with LXC. I updated juju on the host with a classical: apt-get install juju And had a plentyful of python errors in juju debug-log probably because juju processes weren't restarted. In order to restart juju processes, I had to do a complete: juju destroy-environment juju bootstrap which deleted all contents in /var/lib/lxc. I was warned, and this was not an issue, but will be when I'll be in a production environment. Is there a way to relaunch juju daemons without stop/starting LXC local VMs ?

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• Sorting a REALLY BIG delimited text file in UNIX / VMS [closed]

  - by gunbuster363

  Hi everyone, I am going to sort a REALLY BIG delimited text file, say 250Mb (or a bunch of files of more or less than 250Mb) . It have 37 fields, and I need to sort it by 5 fields, for example 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th 7th fields. Under Unix / VMS, do I have a good option to do this FAST? I can write COBOL program. Now I am trying to sort them using the below command, but it already run for a long time and just not going to finished. Thank you. The command I used: time sort -t ',' -o sorted.txt +0 -1 +4 -5 +5 -6 +6 -7 +22 -23 *.DAT_gprscdr_ftpd

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• One of my VMs went boom using Virtual Box and how it got fixed

  - by Enrique Lima

  I am running an HP Envy 15, 16GB and 500GB (7200 RPM) Hard drive. Had a VM configured from another environment, created the virtual machine config file on Virtual Box, everything seemed ok. Fired it up, and it was  s   l   o   w, it took close to 10 minutes for it to load, and about 5 more to see Windows was in the process of loading before the BSOD.  Thought, maybe, just maybe it will not happen again … oh was I wrong. Frustration had already hit an all time high with this configuration and the number of issues I’ve had. How I did the troubleshooting … The best thing to do (IMO) is to step back, and gather your tools to debug this situation. Tools:  Virtual Box command line tools, Windows Debug. Virtual Box comes with a pretty good set of tools to examine, migrate and overall tasks to deal with VMs. The firs step:  use VBoxManage to prevent the VM from rebooting after the error to get enough time to really dig into the BSOD issue. Command used:   VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/PDM/HaltOnReset" 1 Once this was done, the error reported was an “Inaccessible boot device” coming from a “Stop – 7B” type of error on the BSOD. The issue I had with this, my VM was configured to use a virtual SATA controller, and thought Windows 2008 R2 would handle this fine … again wrong!  Because the integration tools from the other product where wanting to take effect that was throwing everything off. The fix The fix was almost handed to me, edited the configuration for the VM, removed the SATA controller from it, added the virtual hard drive under an IDE controller, boot up and voilà … it works! I was then able to install the Virtual Box guest tools and such, but have decided to favor “keep on working” over “let’s try SATA again”

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• OpenVZ vs KVM for Linux VMs

  - by Eliasdx

  Hardware: Intel® Core™ i7-920, 12 GB DDR3 RAM, 2 x 1500 GB SATA-II HDD (no SoftRaid because Proxmox developers don't support softraid and they are sure you'll run into problems) Software: Proxmox VE with KVM and OpenVZ support and debian everywhere I want to run multiple Linux VMs on this server. One for a firewall (I want to try pfSense), one for MySQL, one VM for nginx (my stuff) and ~2 VMs with nginx for other people's web sites. I don't think that pfSense will run in an OpenVZ environment but it should run in KVM. The question is if I should setup the other VMs using KVM or OpenVZ. In OpenVZ they should have less overhead for the OS itself but I don't know about the performance. I heard that KVM is more stable but needs more RAM and CPU. I found this diagram showing a OpenVZ setup on the same hardware I'm using. This guy uses an own VM for each and every website which is running on his server. I can't think of any advantage why he's using so many VMs.

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• Proxmox: VMs and different public IPs

  - by Raj

  I have a server which has two NICs and both are directly connected to internet. I have five different public IP addresses available for the VMs. The host machine (Proxmox) doesn't need to use any (it'll use a private IP and that's all) but will have internet connection. I've gone through the Proxmox documentation and I'm not able to understand the big picture to set up the right network configuration for my needs. In short, what I have is: One server (Proxmox, host machine) On that server, 5 VMs are created 5 public IP addresses available (one for each VM), let's say: 80.123.21.1, 80.123.21.2, 80.123.21.3, 80.123.21.4, 80.123.21.5 What I have now for the host is the following: auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet manual auto eth1 iface eth1 inet manual auto vmbr0 iface vmbr0 inet static address 192.168.1.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp off bridge_fd 0 auto vmbr1 iface vmbr1 inet manual It can be reached from the internal network, so that's OK. It has internet connection, which is also OK. vmbr1 is going to be used by the VMs. Each VM will have its own IP on his network interfaces configuration file. For some reason, VMs will not have internet and they won't be able to have public IP address. If I use NAT, it will work correctly, but they will not use the public allocated IP addresses for them. Am I missing something?

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• How to open existing VMs in VirtualBox?

  - by Alex R

  VirtualBox seems to lack the obvious "File - Open" menu option. Frustrating! More details... I recently got a new workstation and I moved my VirtualBox and VMWare Player VMs from the old PC to the new. The VMWare Player VMs are a snap... you go to "File - Open a Virtual Machine...", find the .vmx files from the old PC, and voila! It's up and running. All the required files apparently are in the same folder. With VirtualBox there just doesn't seem to be a way to do that. Looks like VMs are tied to the original host in some magical/invisible way like registry entries, etc.

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• Get cryptic error when trying to create a snapshot of any of my VMs

  - by Zolt

  I'm using Oracle VM VirtualBox. I have 6 VMs that I've imported. When I click on an individual VM, and then click the camera image (or Ctrl+Shift+S) to take a snapshot, the snapshot process fails and VirtualBox gives the following error: Failed to create a snapshot of the virtual machine vmName. Details: Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005) This happens not only for one of my VMs, but all of them, if I try to take a snapshot of each one separately, one at a time. My computer is a Windows 7 machine. I have 200 GB free on my hard drive, and I see no reason why the error should occur. I can import VMs, run them, and clone then without any problems. Can anyone tell me what to do to fix the issue?

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• Does shutdown idle VMs improve the performance?

  - by Samselvaprabu

  Often our team members are coming to me with a compliant that their VMs are slow. Our team members suggested to shutdown some of the VMs temporarily and try to access the VM. But most cases that would not help. Assume that i have assigned 4 GB for and 2 CPUs for my VM. So ideally it should not face performance issue. As our ESXi 4.1 server has multiple VM in the same server (we have overcommited memory and CPU). Does shut down other VM really helps to improve performance or not? [Note : We are using ESXi 4.1 and our hardware is R710 server. We have more number of VMs in single server so we have overcommited memory.]

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• windows vms unpredictibly require login

  - by marrrkus

  I have a cluster of vms on a number of cloned servers using libvirt/qemu. Occassionally the windows 7 vms randomly require a login screen, even though I've done everything I can think of and can google to turn off a login screen. I've used netplwiz to turn off requiring a password (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/auto-logon-windows-7.htm) manually changed the regsistry using the instructions here: http://superuser.com/a/28654 changed requiring a password in the power saving settings in the control panel if the screen goes to sleep told the screen to never go to sleep (in the control panel) Even with all of these things, some of the vms *still* randomly require a login. I have no idea what else to try. Any ideas??

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• Tying down a cloud by virtualizing everything and then locking VMs to real hardware as necessary

  - by tudor

  I'm looking for a cloud software solution that: Can run on both server and desktop machines; Virtualizes hardware and has the option of exposing each real machine to the cloud; Allows a VM to be "locked" to a set of real hardware capabilities and stay there until moved (e.g. a user's "real" desktop); Allows a VM to link to some types of devices elsewhere (e.g. USB/serial via ethernet); and Is geography-aware to control movement of VMs between real networks. I'm aware that this may be the holy grail of virtualization, and I've searched alot. Some solutions appear to meet some criteria but not others. Most cloud implementations appear to ignore real hardware, for example. I realise that this may be solved by using three different implementations in combination: A standard cloud server farm. A bare-metal network backup utility with PXEBoot. VNC and/or VDI. (VNC obviously would require the real hardware to be running.) This combination, however, has some serious drawbacks that I'd like to solve by treating it as one system. My explanation follows... I have a network of real servers and desktops in multiple locations. I've virtualized servers before using Virtualbox and that's worked quite well. I've even connected USB devices to VMs on servers. I would like to virtualize the desktops in all my offices to facilitate movement of desktops, remote access (e.g. VDI) and bare-metal backups. However, I know that there are problems with this. For example, some desktops have specific hardware (e.g. 3D graphics cards, USB devices, etc) that limit their mobility. Geographic constraints also limit movement in that VMs can be moved easily within offices, but transferring between offices is not always preferable. What I would like to find is a system that can virtualize everything from bare-metal easily by maintaining an abstraction layer on each client and server machine that exposes the hardware available and runs as a cloud. Then certain VMs would be "locked" to specific hardware (so that, e.g. the VM runs only on their own desktop.) This would be required for situations where speed is important (e.g. 3D graphics pass-through). In addition, abstracted low-speed devices (e.g. USB) could be piped from real hardware to a VM in the cloud. This is important since if a VM is taken down, another VM can connect to the real hardware for minimum downtime.

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• Disable File Copy between VMs

  - by shawnnny

  When I access multiple virtual desktops via VMware View 4, I'm able to copy files between VMs. The VMs are located in different isolated networks. This is a security concern in my organization and how can I disable this feature? I'm not able to find any related configuration in View Connection Server. Thanks!

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