· vSphere Edition

o Primary node concept – The primary/secondary node mechanism has been completely removed to lift all limitations (maximum of 5 primary nodes with vSphere4.1 and before) associated with it.

o Ability to set slot size for “Host failures tolerated” through the vSphere Web Client.

o Ability to retrieve a list of the virtual machines that span multiple slots

o vSphere 5.1 added new functionality around identifying virtual machines which span multiple slots

· vCenter server version

o When sizing vCenter take into account the number of clusters and virtual machines

· Memory or CPU reservations, if configured.

o With vSphere 4.0, VMware introduced the ability to specify a percentage next to a number of host failures and a designated failover host. This was a single value for CPU and memory. With vSphere 5.0, this was changed which allows you to select different percentages for CPU and memory.

oHost monitoring and VM monitoring status

o VM/App Monitoring responds to a single virtual machine or application failure as opposed to HA which responds to a host failure

o Admission Control Status, if “Enabled” provide admission control Policy.

o Using reservations on a per virtual machine basis can lead to very conservative consolidation ratios. However, with vSphere 5.1, this is something that is configurable through the Web Client. If you have just one virtual machine with a really high reservation, you can set an explicit slot size by going to “Edit Cluster Services” and specifying them under the Admission Control Policy

· VMWARE HA – Advanced Runtime info.

o Advanced Runtime Info will show the specifics the slot size and more useful details such as the number of slots available

o

o

The usefulness of making use of a Smartphone for enterprise is that the worker can see and handle nearly every thing on an Android as long as the property or office personal computer is logged in and the companion application has been mounted. Once these two apps are downloaded on the respective gadgets, workers can, entry characteristics these kinds of as Adobe Photoshop to present a client a logo or brochure design and style or even make edits to a Word doc via the cellphone. And, the rewards don’t quit there. In addition to having endless whenever, wherever obtain to a Computer or Mac an Android Smartphone can:

&bull Obtain an whole computer with full movie and audio support

&bull Use a favored Web browser with Flash and all saved bookmarks

&bull Observe motion pictures or enjoy Computer game titles

&bull Hook up to several pcs with the same app

&bull Interact with laptop apps employing intuitive touch controls

Mobility without the Fret

With the proliferation of new knowledge and finish-person packaged companies and devices these kinds of as virtualization, cloud and remote entry, there is, understandably, worry about protection. Support providers providing cloud, virtualization, and remote access technologies are under improved strain to make certain that they have community architecture, programs and robust policies in area to safeguard towards hacking, breaches, and malware. Regardless of whether end users accessibility remotely through their Android Smartphone, LAN or organization wi-fi network, the obstacle is the same: guarantee protection. Firms offering distant access applications realize that they should not only handle productiveness, but also safeguard the apps even though enabling safe access. For that reason, mobile phone applications for distant access have attributes that handle stability SSL (TLS) and assist Network Stage Authentication.

The Smartphone has some extra advantages when using distant desktop. Knowledge security is greater because the knowledge resides on the cloud and not the true Smartphone, lessening the threat of shedding or compromising knowledge. Also, in a remote or cloud placing, the stop server does the work, which permits the employee to have mobile phone apps that would have been also burdensome for the Smartphone’s CPU. Distant workers can also use their desired business processes with no overhauling the existing programs, generating enterprise vacation faster and less complicated.

With the expanding change of using portable gadgets as the principal gadget in organization computing, finish-end users will demand from customers far more apps that permit distant obtain from their mobile devices, especially their phones. To assistance this expanding development, firms are adding attributes to phones that enhance individuals on PCs, options this kind of as local file storage, server address textbooks, and protected password features, RDP data compression and caching to help save bandwidth, on-screen keyboard, and RDP functionality tuning for network relationship pace.

1. Take a snapshot of another running VM
2. Attach that snap to the backup VM
3. Read that drive, back up to the configured storage
4. detach and delete the snap

Result is a buildup of undeleted snapshot files, taking up storage space on your SR.  One way to confirm if this is happening is to execute the following line on the XenServer console:

xe vdi-list is-a-snapshot=true | grep name-label | sort

If you don’t expect to see any snapshots, seeing them listed here is an issue.

These shouldn’t be here.

Citrix offers a command line tool to address this, outlined in Knowledgebase document CTX123400. This is called an Offline Coalesce, and is formatted as

xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=<UUID of the pool master Host> plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=<uuid of the VM you want to coalesce>

Earlier this week, I was using the above in hopes to address the large discrepancies in my SR used vs allocated values from the not deleted, but not seen in XenCenter snapshots seen above:

Problem is, it didn’t work.  Tailing /var/log/SMlog, the standout clue was “no space to coalesce”.  So great… a bug in snapshots takes up all your space, and when you try to use the tool to fix it, it can’t because there’s no space.

A day later, this became quite concerning.  I don’t know what Xen will do when an SR hits 100% capacity, but I doubt I’ll enjoy it.

I decided to take a gamble and see what happens if I move a disk to a different SR.  Lacking Storage XenMotion, I shut down a non-critical VM- the Windev2 machine listed above, detached the C: drive, and asked Xen to move it to a different SR.  It took much longer than expected (about 30 minutes for 48 gigs), but in the end, I regained much more than 48 gigs of storage on my SR:

557.6- 281.9= 275 gigs of wasted snapshot space due to XenServer bugs, restored by moving the disk to a different SR.  My nightly PHDVirtual backups were now able to take a snapshot last night and perform a proper backup.

Lessons learned:

• When leaf-coalesece fails, moving a disk to different storage can clean up the wasted storage space
• If I had to do it all over, I think I’d go VMWare. XenServer has had problems with snapshot management for a long time, and they still haven’t figured it out.

Being a vSphere-centric kind of guy, my first thoughts about the VRTX were that it could replace the commonly deployed “3-2-1″ vSphere install (3 hosts + 2 iSCSI switches + 1 EqualLogic array) for SMB and ROBO scenarios. If you had up to 4 blades, integrated networking and storage, in a whisper quiet (and it is VERY quiet while running) box with integrated remote management and monitoring, why wouldn’t deploy a VRTX instead of 6 pieces of hardware?

After several inquiries relating to the shared PCIe slots and storage, I came up with the following answers from the Dell engineers onsite:

Networking: While there are only 4 onboard GigE ports per blade, you can easily add a 10Gig, FC, or CNA into the PCIe slots and map the card directly to a blade. Add 4 x dual port CNAs, map them to the blades, attach to an external switch, and carve up your network as needed.

Storage: This became a challenge. Apparently all 25 disks on the SPERC can be either directly mapped to individual blades, joined into RAID groups, and have virtual disks carved out of the RAID groups, which could also be mapped to one or multiple blades. In practice, it is similar to carving up storage in a MD1200 shelf. Where is became challenging was when I asked if there was a way to provide a shared disk for a vSphere installation. I asked several (more than 10) Dell engineers onsite at the #DellEF, and never got a definitive answer on that. Apparently nobody thought to qualify the VRTX as a vSphere platform. The answer provided was that the SPERC could create a shared disk, and present it to multiple blades via a common SCSI bus. Not FC, Not iSCSI, not NFS. The simple question of “Can you install a vSphere cluster on the VRTX” was answered with “I would imagine it would be possible.”

In conclusion, I was very impressed with Dell’s new converged infrastructure foray, the VRTX. The ability to put 4 servers, networking, and storage into a single 5U box will shake up the industry, especially if the price point is as competitive as Dell traditionally leads with. However, the storage subsystem is not much more than a DAS shelf for the blades. I think it was a great first move, but I would have loved to see an integrated MD3200 or EqualLogic controller to give the storage a little bit of intelligence. There are small form factor EqualLogic controllers currently in use on the PS-M4110 array. As far as installing vSphere on the VRTX, I’m not sure if it will work right out of the box. However, with the use of a VSA such as Nexenta to control the storage and make it available to all blades, this could be a huge success in the SMB/ROBO virtualization market. Well played, Dell. Well played indeed.

For more information on the Dell VRTX, head to the Dell TechCenter Blog, where Peter Tsai has aggregated the latest information.

Lucky enough, the system is running on ZFS ! Too bad this filesystem is so confidential, as I permit to do some “black magic”. Part is documented here,  part is VMware, part is solaris history …

First, on the system, create a zfs snapshot of the system

1. Share space on an NFS server. Can we linux, another solaris or even my new friend the MobaXterm (16MB of concentrated Unix technology, worth the test)
2. Mount that space to make it available on phys:

   phys# mount nfsserver:/backup /mnt

3. Create a recursive snapshot of the root pool. Recursive works after 2008 release, but not here so …
4. We prepare all snaps

   phys# zfs list |  awk '{print "zfs snapshot "$1"@fred"}'
   zfs snapshot rpool@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/ROOT@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/ROOT/s10@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/dump@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/export@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/export/home@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/export/home/admin@fred
   zfs snapshot rpool/swap@fred

5. We cut and paste the lines and check creation

   phys# zfs list
   NAME                           USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
   rpool                         17.6G   116G    67K  /rpool
   rpool@fred                        0      -    67K  -
   rpool/ROOT                    5.43G   116G    21K  legacy
   rpool/ROOT@fred                   0      -    21K  -
   rpool/ROOT/s10             5.43G   116G  4.68G  /
   rpool/ROOT/s10@fred         290K      -  4.68G  -
   rpool/dump                    4.00G   116G  4.00G  -
   rpool/dump@fred                   0      -  4.00G  -
   rpool/export                  69.5K   116G    23K  /export
   rpool/export@fred                 0      -    23K  -
   rpool/export/home             46.5K   116G    23K  /export/home
   rpool/export/home@fred            0      -    23K  -
   rpool/export/home/admin       23.5K   116G  23.5K  /export/home/admin
   rpool/export/home/admin@fred      0      -  23.5K  -
   rpool/swap                    8.20G   124G  15.2M  -
   rpool/swap@fred                   0      -  15.2M  -

6. We cut and paste the lines and check creation. We can prepare the backup of file systems

   phys# zfs list |  awk '{print "zfs send "$1"@fred > /mnt/"$1}' > run.sh
   phys# vi run.sh

   but we need to replace / by _ in the file before running (don’t zip it, solaris minimal setup will not be able to restore it)

   zfs send rpool@fred > /mnt/rpool
   zfs send rpool/ROOT@fred>  /mnt/rpool_ROOT
   zfs send rpool/ROOT/s10@fred > /mnt/rpool_ROOT_s10
   zfs send rpool/export@fred > /mnt/rpool_export
   zfs send rpool/export/home@fred > /mnt/rpool_export_home
   zfs send rpool/export/home/admin@fred > /mnt/rpool_export_home_admin

   And need to remove useless filesystem :

   zfs send rpool/dump@fred > /mnt/rpool/dump@fred
   zfs send rpool/swap@fred > /mnt/rpool_swap@fred

7. We make the script runnable and … run it

   phys# chmod 755 run.sh
   phys# ./run.sh

8. We can also prepare the restore to come

   phys# zfs list |  awk '{print "cat  /mnt/"$1" |  zfs receive "$1}' > restore.sh
   phys# vi restore.sh
   cat /mnt/rpool|zfs receive -F rpool
   cat /mnt/rpool_ROOT|zfs receive rpool/ROOT
   cat /mnt/rpool_ROOT_s10|zfs receive rpool/ROOT/s10
   cat /mnt/rpool_export|zfs receive rpool/export
   cat /mnt/rpool_export_home|zfs receive rpool/export/home
   cat /mnt/rpool_export_home_admin |zfs receive rpool/export/home/admin

   Make it executable and store it with the backup

   phys# chmod 755 restore.sh
   phys# mv restore.sh /tmp

9. To simplify we complete restore.sh with
   1. Recreate the root pool. For example: (before the zfs receive)

      # zpool create -f -o failmode=continue -R /a -m legacy rpool c1t0d0s0

   2. Install grub ( after zfs receive)

      # installgrub /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s0

   3. Let the bootfs property on the root pool BE.

      # zpool set bootfs=rpool/ROOT/s10 rpool

   4. Recreate the dump device.

      # zfs create -V 2G rpool/dump

   5. Recreate the swap device.

      # zfs create -V 2G -b 4k rpool/swap

10. We are done so we can clean the snapshots

    phys# zfs list |  awk '{print "zfs destroy "$1"@fred"}'
    zfs destroy rpool@fredzfs destroy rpool/ROOT@fred
    zfs destroy rpool/ROOT/s10@fred
    zfs destroy rpool/dump@fred
    zfs destroy rpool/export@fred
    zfs destroy rpool/export/home@fred
    zfs destroy rpool/export/home/admin@fred
    zfs destroy rpool/swap@fred

    Ok after a cut/paste, we can now prepare the virtual version

11. Connect to vCenter (Workstation, VirtualBox… choose it) and create a new Solaris 10 VM
    with the same version of solaris CD
    or be ready to patch the system,
    or get zpool version to create it at proper version
    1. During boot, use option 6 to boot CD to single user
       Once on the shell, first restore the delete key ( system is in US keyboard be careful… if it is not your native keyboard, you will soon understand why I prepare the restore script)

       stty erase ^H (press delete)

    2. Then allow / to be modified

       mount -o rw,remount /

    3. Now connect to network

       ifconfig -a plumb
       ifconfig e1000g0 10.0.0.3/24 up

    4. and connect to nfsserver (10.0.0.2 in our example)

       mount -F 10.0.0.2:/backups /mnt

    5. We now need to  create a Solaris fdisk partition that can be used for booting by selecting 1=SOLARIS2. You can create a Solaris partition by using the fdisk -B option that creates one Solaris partition that uses the whole disk. Beware that the following command uses the whole disk.

       # fdisk -B /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0p0

    6. Display the newly created Solaris partition. For example:

       Total disk size is 8924 cylinders
                    Cylinder size is 16065 (512 byte) blocks
       
                                                      Cylinders
             Partition   Status    Type          Start   End   Length    %
             =========   ======    ============  =====   ===   ======   ===
                 1       Active    Solaris2          1  8923    8923    100
       .
       .
       .
       Enter Selection: 6

    7. Create a slice in the Solaris partition for the root pool. Creating a slice on x86 and SPARC system is similar except that an x86 system has a slice 8. In the example below, a slice 0 is created and the disk space is allocated to slice 0 on an x86 system. For a SPARC system, just ignore the slice 8 input.

       # format
       Specify disk (enter its number): 1
       selecting c1t0d0
       [disk formatted]
       FORMAT MENU:
               disk       - select a disk
               type       - select (define) a disk type
               partition  - select (define) a partition table
               current    - describe the current disk
               format     - format and analyze the disk
               fdisk      - run the fdisk program
       .
       .
       .
       format> p
       PARTITION MENU:
               0      - change `0' partition
               1      - change `1' partition
               2      - change `2' partition
               3      - change `3' partition
               4      - change `4' partition
               5      - change `5' partition
               6      - change `6' partition
               7      - change `7' partition
               select - select a predefined table
               modify - modify a predefined partition table
               name   - name the current table
               print  - display the current table
               label  - write partition map and label to the disk
               !<cmd> - execute <cmd>, then return
               quit
       partition> p
       Current partition table (original):
       Total disk cylinders available: 8921 + 2 (reserved cylinders)
       
       Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders        Size            Blocks
         0 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         1 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         2     backup    wu       0 - 8920       68.34GB    (8921/0/0) 143315865
         3 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         4 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         5 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         6 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         7 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         8       boot    wu       0 -    0        7.84MB    (1/0/0)        16065
         9 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
       partition> modify
       Select partitioning base:
               0. Current partition table (original)
               1. All Free Hog
       Choose base (enter number) [0]? 1
       
       Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders        Size            Blocks
         0       root    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         1       swap    wu       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         2     backup    wu       0 - 8920       68.34GB    (8921/0/0) 143315865
         3 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         4 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         5 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         6        usr    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         7 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         8       boot    wu       0 -    0        7.84MB    (1/0/0)        16065
         9 alternates    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
       
       Do you wish to continue creating a new partition
       table based on above table[yes]? 
       Free Hog partition[6]? 0
       Enter size of partition '1' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 
       Enter size of partition '3' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 
       Enter size of partition '4' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 
       Enter size of partition '5' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 
       Enter size of partition '6' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 
       Enter size of partition '7' [0b, 0c, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 
       
       Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders        Size            Blocks
         0       root    wm       1 - 8920       68.33GB    (8920/0/0) 143299800
         1       swap    wu       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         2     backup    wu       0 - 8920       68.34GB    (8921/0/0) 143315865
         3 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         4 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         5 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         6        usr    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         7 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
         8       boot    wu       0 -    0        7.84MB    (1/0/0)        16065
         9 alternates    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
       
       Okay to make this the current partition table[yes]? 
       Enter table name (remember quotes): "disk1"
       
       Ready to label disk, continue? yes
       partition> q
       format> q

    8. disk is ready ! we can go to nfs server

cd /mnt
./restore.sh

After a while we can reboot the system AFTER changing to another VLAN than the physical server.

# init 6

After the reboot, you will be in maintenance mode. You need to edit the /etc/path_to_inst file to remove e1000g0 reference if your server was running with it. Don’t try vi yet

grep -v e1000 /etc/path_to_inst > backup 
cp /etc/path_to_inst /etc/path_to_inst.bak
cp backup /etc/path_to_inst

also run

devfsadm -Cv

to update all devices address

After a final reboot, if your system was not a minimal install, you will be able to install vmware-tools or equivalent and do a last rebootLast ? help yourself, make a vm snapshot,  upgrade system to latest maintenance  release of solaris 10 (if you still have access to solaris support page) and upgrade zpool and zfs to latest version.

Maybe you feel it was too risky on physical but NOW you have NO MORE EXCUSES

Enjoy it! And thanks for reading.

My current project is to expand my home network to include a pair of remote access solutions, Citrix Xenapp 6.5 and Remote Desktop Services (RDS) 2012. The end game is that my home network looks as above, but there is a substantial amount of work to get to that point. This article and its followup will deal with the security elements of the solution, adding two DMZ’s and the firewalls filtering access to and from these zones. My network currently has one zone, two if you count vlans 0 and 1 which connect my internet landing subnets to the rest of the network. I’m proposing to extend that, adding a pair of DMZ’s (above in yellow) separated from the network with a pair of pfSense firewalls (as below). My intention is to put a citrix secure gateway appliance in DMZ1 while DMZ2 will host a RDS2012 gateway and potentially a second citrix secure gateway.

The Virtual

Adding the new DMZ networks to the virtual infrastructure is fairly easy, in my case I’ve recently converted my standard switches (vSS) to distributed switches (vDS) so the dialogue boxes may look slightly different on your home environment, but the core concepts translate across the technologies. Open the vCenter networking configuration page, Home -> Inventory -> Networking and you should see a tree view as below, obviously with your own naming convention.

Right click on the virtual switch, ‘CAN-dvSwitch01′ in my case, and the screenshot above. Select ‘New Port Group’ from the dialogue. Enter the values specific to your setup, the name, the number of ports (feel free to leave this as default), the VLAN type (VLAN) and the VLAN ID, i chose 160 for this, matching the 172.16.0.0/24 of my DMZ ip scheme.

Click ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’ to complete the process and then repeat the process for any other DMZ’s you will be adding. In my case i’m adding a second one with a VLAN ID of 161, again matching the subnet of 172.16.1.0/24. Once complete you should end  with two additional port groups, in my case as below :-

The last thing to check is that your new distributed port groups are configured to use the appropriate uplinks on your vDS, right-click on the group, select edit settings and navigate to the ‘teaming and failover’ item in the tree view.

In my design, I leaving all up-links as active to ensure to distribution of traffic across my physical links. That’s all there is to the virtual configuration, next we need to apply some changes to the physical infrastructure.

The Physical

To support the changes on the virtual side of my network I need to make some changes, firstly I need to create the VLAN’s on my physical switching, and then apply the VLAN’s tot he ports the VMWare hosts are connected to. My network is multi vendor, the core/L3 functionality is provided by a Cisco SG300-10, the distribution and edge layer (L2) by a HP 2510G-28 port switch. As i don’t intend to provide any physical routing between VLANS, I dont need to define them on the Cisco, if anything it improves the security of the network. Defining the new VLANS on the HP is also fairly simple :-

From the switch, select Configuration -> VLAN configuration and click the ‘ADD/REMOVE VLANS’ button at the bottom of the screen to navigate to the VLAN submenu as shown above. Enter a VLAN name (this doesn’t have to match any of the VMWare configuration done earlier – but should be similar to aid understanding) and a VLAN ID, this needs to match that defined within the distributed port group (in my case 160 & 161). Once entered, click ‘Add VLAN’ to create, and repeat for any other DMZ’s.

The final step is to add the VLAN’s to the physical switch ports. All my VMWare hosts are connected to ports 25-36, and they are all TRUNKS so I need to configure the vlans as TAGGED on those ports. Go to configuration -> VLAN configuration and click the ‘Modify’ button next to the VLAN.

Multiple select the ports, 25-36 in my case, change the MODE drop down to ‘Tagged’ and click Apply and the process  for any other VLANS. N.b this switch has a GUI bug, if you repeat the process directly it WONT apply the VLAN configurations the second time, as a workaround, between each assignment refresh, or click Configuration -> VLAN configuration.

Once complete, you should see the ports in the ‘Tagged Ports’ Column as below.

Summary

That’s it, so what did you do ? :-

• You created new distributed port groups within VMware with type ‘VLAN’ and a unique VLAN ID.
• You checked the groups were active on the dvUplink ports that connected to your physical switching.
• You created VLAN’s on your physical switches
• You assgined those VLANS to the same ports connected to the dvUplink ports, set as TAGGED (if your ports are TRUNKS – physical switch side)

Whats Next ?

Up next, we need to provide some connectivity and filtering between the DMZ and internal networks. In my next post I’ll take you through installing pfSense, adding interfaces and configuring filtering and internal routing to allow traffic to cross VLAN boundaries as appropriate.

Any questions, please give me a shout via email, social networking, or via comments below.

Can you imagine playing an iPhone game like Supercell’s Clash of Clans on your TV? That day may be arriving this fall.

BlueStacks is going to do what Apple has failed to bring consumers. Using a technology called Looking Glass, BlueStacks is going to enable iOS games to run on televisions. It is doing so through a virtualization technology, taking the Apple games and modifying them so they can run on the Android-based GamePop console that is going on sale this fall.

It will be a remarkable test in the market to see if consumers prefer to play free or 99-cent iPad games on their televisions, rather than pay $400 or so for a game console and $60 per game. Campbell, Calif.-based BlueStacks will make its GamePop service available on its own Android game console arriving this fall. The service could be disruptive to the console market, breaking down walls between the console market and the mobile game market.

“There will always be popular titles which are iOS-only, like Clash of Clans,” said BlueStacks chief technology officer Suman Saraf. “Looking Glass enables these titles to be brought into the living room. Some of the retina iPad games, for example, look spectacular on TV.”

BlueStacks is offering a subscription service and a $130 console with one game controller coming sometime this winter.

“We think gaming is fundamentally changing,” said Rosen Sharma, chief executive of BlueStacks, in an interview with GamesBeat.

The technology doesn’t require any partnership with Apple. BlueStacks can simply go to iOS developers and have them make minor modifications to their games so they can run on the GamePop service, which will be come with a subscription fee of $7 a month. For that price, players will gain access to 500 top mobile games. BlueStacks plans to offer about $200 worth of paid games included for free with GamePop’s console. Since the technology does not use straight emulation, the games run at a good speed.

Among the gamemakers who will try out GamePop is Subatomic, the designer of the popular Fieldrunners tower defense games.

“The capability to bring iOS games to TV is unprecedented,” said Jamie Gotch, the CEO of Subatomic. “At the same time, this is a natural evolution. Mobile games are providing richer graphics and gameplay and heading towards the living room fast.”

The GamePop service could also be available through other devices, not just the GamePop console. BlueStacks is in talks with carriers, TV manufacturers and cable companies to offer its service.

BlueStacks has already upset the Apple cart with its Layercake technology, which takes Android apps and allows them to run on Windows PCs. Layercake has been downloaded more than 10 million times, and it has won distribution at major brands such as Lenovo, MSI, AMD, and Intel.

BlueStacks was launched in 2009 and it received $15 million in funding from Andreessen-Horowitz, Radar Partners, Redpoint, Ignition Partners and Qualcomm. Sharma said he has been working on virtualization technology since 1998. You can preorder the GamePop box at www.gamepop.tv. BlueStacks made the announcement just before the E3 2013 game trade show, but it will not be demoing its box there.

Sharma said that the company virtualizes the platforms on the applications programming interface level. If an app makes a call to a menu item within Apple’s platform, then it goes to an iOS library in order to draw the appropriate menu. Bluestacks intercepts the call and draws the menu instead.

This is possible, Sharma, said because the basic functions on iOS and Android have moved closer together. Both use the Open GL graphics protocol and both ARM-based processors.

The console can be connected via a wired HDMI cable to a TV. It can display games in high-definition resolution, Sharma said.

“For the first time, we now have mobile devices in our hands that have a higher resolution than our TVs,” he said.

The tougher challenge is to get touchscreen games to work properly on the TV. BlueStacks decided that a touch-based controller wouldn’t work as well as an ordinary game console controller. So it is doing the work to convert titles to run on a TV with a controller. That work isn’t too bad, and Sharma said that the top 100 titles on iOS should have no problem running on TVs on BlueStacks’ GamePop.

Another difference is that GamePop games are sold as part of a monthly subscription. If a game has in-app purchases on Apple, then the game has to be modified on the GamePop service so that it uses the proper non-Apple payment system. If Apple had any say in this matter, it would not allow it, as Apple gets its 30 percent cut through the payment systems. However, Sharma pointed out that the games are not actually resident in the Apple iTunes App Store. They are actually residing on the GamePop service, and are thus not subject to Apple’s oversight.

GamePop will not only compete with the PS4 and the Xbox One, it will also compete with Ouya and other Android solutions that bring mobile games to TVs. BlueStacks has 30 employees.

The company was particularly inspired by Japanese carrier KDDI’s subscription mobile app service Au Smart Pass, which gives customers access to hundreds of popular paid apps for just a few bucks a month. In just one year, that service managed to bring in $250 million in revenue for KDDI. GamePop does not plan to sell games on an a la carte basis. That may not be popular with some consumers, but Sharma said his company believes that is the best model.

In case you hadn’t heard: BlueStacks, the company with around 10M+ using its technology that brings Android games to PC and Mac, has recently been working on a new dedicated Android gaming console that aims to compete with OUYA and others in the space. It’s yet to launch, and up until today its big differentiator has been its $6.99/per month subscription model, but today it becomes the first to bring iOS games to the TV.

We spoke to John Gargiulo from BlueStacks who told us a little more about the announcement and how the company will bring iPhone and iPad games to the GamePop platform using its ‘Looking Glass’ technology. It’s also announcing its first major partner from the iOS developer world, and it happens to be creators of the hugely popular Fieldrunners series, Subatomic Studios.

As for what developers will have to do before submitting their apps, John tells us it’s as simple as changing in-app payments to use Google or Amazon like the rest of the content on GamePop. The rest of the magic is handled by BlueStacks’ API-level virtualization technology dubbed Looking Glass. It’s what will allow just about any iOS game with next to no tweaks to run on the TV through GamePop. John notes it’s similar to how BlueStacks’ “Layercake tech does a ton of heavy lifting to make Android apps work on PC and Mac.” It will also take care of mapping controls for each app to the various controllers planned for the device including iPhone and Android apps and a physical controller that will sell with the GamePop console.

Bluestacks doesn’t seem to be too concerned about what Apple might think of its new venture, explaining that its Looking Glass technology allows devs to simply easily port their IP from iOS to another platform and, in this case, the TV. GamePop will not be advertising the games as iOS games, however, but instead “GamePop” games that will add to the around 500 Android titles it has ready to go for launch. Apple of course is yet to bring its iOS app ecosystem to the TV, but its much rumored revamping of Apple TV is largely expected to include a new developer platform for bringing iOS apps to the living room.

Many have referred to GamePop as a “Netflix of gaming” in comparison to its competitors like the Kickstarter funded OUYA console due to its subscription model. However, the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean-powered GamePop will actually run games locally on the console. Specs haven’t been announced yet, but the company tells us “the chipset is plenty fast enough to run even graphically intense games.” It also made a point of noting in today’s press release that its investors include “Qualcomm, Intel and Austin’s AMD: makers of the chipsets for both the upcoming XBOX One and PS4 consoles.”

GamePop is currently being offered for free through the end of June for those that sign up to preorder the $6.99/month subscription, but after that the console will sell for $129. For that subscription you’ll get free access to all games (minus in-app purchases), including the just announced Fieldrunners titles and presumably many more iOS games by the time the console launches. As Gargiulo put it, the competitors are “charging up to 5X the price of what the apps cost on Google Play, we’re including them all for free.”

 “The ability to bring iOS games to TV is unprecedented,” said Jamie Gotch, CEO of Subatomic.“At the same time, this is a natural evolution. Mobile games are providing richer graphics and gameplay and heading towards the living room fast.”

The company also seems to have plans to bring the platform outside of just the GamePop console, noting that it has had discussions “with everyone from TV manufacturers to cable companies to carriers.”

Bluestacks will be giving devs revenue from in-app purchases on top of “a very healthy cut of subscription” revenue when the console launches this winter. iOS developers can begin submitting their apps through GamePop.tv starting today.

Beacon probing is a network failover detection mechanism that sends out and listens for beacon probes on all NICs in the team and uses this information along with link status to determine link failure. Beacon probing detects failures, such as cable pulls and physical switch power failures on the immediate physical switch and also on the downstream switches.

How does beacon probing work?

ESX/ESXi periodically broadcasts beacon packets from all uplinks in a team. The physical switch is expected to forward all packets to other ports on the same broadcast domain. Therefore, a team member is expected to see beacon packets from other team members. If an uplink fails to receive three consecutive beacon packets, it is marked as bad. The failure can be due to the immediate link or a downstream link.

Beaconing is most useful with three or more uplinks in a team because ESX/ESXi can detect failures of a single uplink. When there are only two NICs in service and one of them loses connectivity, it is unclear which NIC needs to be taken out of service because both do not receive beacons and as a result all packets sent to both uplinks. Using at least three NICs in such a team allows for n-2 failures where n is the number of NICs in the team before reaching an ambiguous situation. These uplink NICs should be in an active/active or active/standby configuration because the NICs in an Unused state do not participate in the beacon probing process.

When should you enable beacon probing?

You must enable beacon probing when downstream link failures may impact availability and there is no Link State Tracking on the physical switch.

How to Enable beacon probing setting in networking setting.

How to enable beacon probing on one vSphere host and on a specific vSwitch using PowerCLI

Get-NicTeamingPolicy -VirtualSwitch (Get-VirtualSwitch -VMHost (Get-VMHost $vmHost) -Name “$vSwitch”) | `

Set-NicteamingPolicy -NetworkFailoverDetectionPolicy BeaconProbing

Enable-BeaconProbing esx1.ict-freak.local vSwitch0

the following output will be generated:

How to disable beacon probing on one vSphere host and on a specific vSwitch using PowerCLI

Get-NicTeamingPolicy -VirtualSwitch (Get-VirtualSwitch -VMHost (Get-VMHost $vmHost) -Name "$vSwitch") | `
Set-NicteamingPolicy -NetworkFailoverDetectionPolicy LinkStatus
Enable-LinkStatus esx1.ict-freak.local vSwitch0

output:

Beacon probing uplink failover for Vmware Vsphere high availability

In order to correctly use beacon fail-over probing for Vmware vSphere server network connectivity you need:

• 2 physical uplink switches in failover set-up;
• 3 physical uplinks in team per each vSwitch with beacon probing enabled;
• 2 of the uplinks (each going into different uplink switch) must be active and the third physical uplink should be set-up as a Standby adapter.

Beacon probing also works if you are using Vlan trunks. The only difference is that in case of any uplink failure beacon probes will be sent to all vSwitch VLANs increasing traffic a little.

Keep in mind:

· You cannot advertise one MAC address to different uplink physical switches or Network flapping may occur.

· Do not use Beacon probing Network failover detection if you are using IP Hash Load balancing.

· Use IP Hash load balancing only with Ether channel.

Note: All physical switch ports in the same team must be in the same Layer broadcast domain.

Load Balancing

Load balancing allows you to spread network traffic from virtual machines on a virtual switch across two or more physical Ethernet adapters, giving higher throughput than a single physical adapter could provide. When you set NIC teaming policies, you have the following options for load balancing:

· Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID

Choose an uplink based on the virtual port where the traffic entered the virtual switch. This is the default configuration and the one most commonly deployed. When you use this setting, traffic from a given virtual Ethernet adapter is consistently sent to the same physical adapter unless there is a failover to another adapter in the NIC team. Replies are received on the same physical adapter as the physical switch learns the port association. This setting provides an even distribution of traffic if the number of virtual Ethernet adapters is greater than the number of physical adapters. A given virtual machine cannot use more than one physical Ethernet adapter at any given time unless it has multiple virtual adapters. This setting places slightly less load on the ESX Server host than the MAC hash setting.

Note: If you select either srcPortID or srcMAC hash, you should not configure the physical switch ports as any type of team or bonded group.

Pros: Chooses an up link based on the virtual port where the traffic entered the virtual switch. The virtual machine outbound traffic is mapped to a specific physical NIC based on the ID of the virtual port to which this virtual machine is connected. This method is simple and fast, and does not require the VMkernel to examine the frame for necessary information.

Cons: When the load is distributed in the NIC team using the port-based method, no virtual machine single-NIC will ever get more bandwidth than can be provided by a single physical adapter.

· Route based on source MAC hash

Choose an uplink based on a hash of the source Ethernet MAC address. When you use this setting, traffic from a given virtual Ethernet adapter is consistently sent to the same physical adapter unless there is a failover to another adapter in the NIC team. Replies are received on the same physical adapter as the physical switch learns the port association. This setting provides an even distribution of traffic if the number of virtual Ethernet adapters is greater than the number of physical adapters. A given virtual machine cannot use more than one physical Ethernet adapter at any given time unless it uses multiple source MAC addresses for traffic it sends.

Pros: Chooses an uplink based on a hash of the source Ethernet. This method is compatible with all physical switches. The virtual machine outbound traffic is mapped to a specific physical NIC based on the virtual NIC’s MAC address.

Cons: This method has low overhead, and might not spread traffic evenly across the physical NICs.

When the load is distributed in the NIC team using the MAC-based method, no virtual machine single-NIC will ever get more bandwidth than can be provided by a single physical adapter.

After having created a set of virtual machines required for a particular application, we will require them to be connected to each other and be able to reach each other via definite IP adderesses, as we require our virtual machines hosted in an on-premise environment to be connected to each other.

So lets go ahead and explore the step by step process of creating a Virtual network in Windows Azure that allows us to :

1. Create Virtual Networks and assign IP address range to the network

2. Create Subnets within a Virtual Network and assign the subnet ID to each subnet within a Virtual Network.

3. Allows us to extend the connectivity of a virtual network hosted in Windows Azure to specific clients/servers in our on-premise environment (Client to Site Connectivity)

4. Allows us to extend the connectivity of a virtual network hosted in Windows Azure to our entire on-premise Site enableing secure communications between the two sites using an IPSec enabled VPN tunnel.

We will explore capabilities #1 and #2 in the list above in this post.

Step 1:

1. Log in to
http://manage.windowsazure.com
with your live credentials that has access to your Windows Azure subscription.

2. Switch to the Networks tab in the management console. You will see 0 networks created as shown:

3. Click “Create a Virtual Network”. The following Wizard will appear:

Specify the Name, Region and Affinity Group Details as shown above and click on the Arrow pointing to the right at the bottom right of the window to move to the next step.

4. On the “DNS Servers and VPN Connectvity Page” specify the address of the DNS Server (if you have hosted any on Windows Azure), else leave it blank. The 2 checkboxes on the right provide you with options to extend this network to on-premise. We will explore these capabilities in future posts. At this point, just click on the arrow pointing to the right at the bottom right to proceed to the next step.

5. On the “Virtual Network Address Spaces” page, you will need to configure the IPv4 address range for yout virtual network and all the subnets that you would want to be part of that virtual network.

Note that:

• By default, Windows Azure allows you to configure and address space in the ranges of 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0 and 192.168.0.0
• 
• It allows you to choose a subnet mask based on the no. of host addresses required or based on the CIDR notation. You may switch between the 2 formats from the button in the top right as shown:
• 
• After selecting an address range for your virtual network , you may create multiple subnets in the network as shown:
•   

6. Just click in the circle showning the Tick mark at the bottom right to complete the waizard. The virtual network creation starts and the created Virtual Network appears in the management console:

7. You may click the virtual network name to reach the Dashboard and see the virtual machines connected to this Virtual Network:

8. You may click on the “Configure” tab to add/change the DNS configuration, Point to Site connectivity or subnets to this virtual network post its creation:

Happy Virtual networking on Windows Azure!!

Today, I reverted back to my baseline snapshot and suddenly could not log in to the server using Remote Desktop. The Widows 7 Remote Desktop client was less than helpful about what the cause could be.

Checking the Event Log on the server only added to the mystery. The server recorded event ID 4625 for a logon failure. According to the log the username and password was not correct but, I know that was not true.

The clue that revealed the actual cause of the problem came from Windows 8! When trying to connect to the server using Remote Desktop on Windows 8 the error was much more specific:

True enough, when I looked down at the time the date and time was way off. The server running in the virtual machine appeared to be using the date of the snapshot’s creation. Being a member of an Active Directory domain I expected the date to be set to the date and time of the domain controller.

Fortunately, you can run DOS command to set the time to the correct time provided by the network time server. The following command resets the time and instructs the server to seek out the network time server:

Surprisingly, the ancient “net time” command still works and gives you instant feedback:

The lesson learned here was to make sure to reset the date and time when going back to a previous snapshot in VM Ware.

1. Uninstall VMtools from VM

2. Attache OVS-3.1.1-524.iso to the VM.

3. Boot VM from CD

4. Enter p2v

.

5. Press ENTER.

6. Select Skip.

7. Enter the ip address of the VM or obtain address from DHCP.

8. Select the disk(s) to include in the image. You will select all the disks.

9. Use space bar to select the disk(s) and select OK

10. Enter the VM name, Memory and CPUs . Console Password “Password123”

Note that you will have to edit the vm.cfg file after the import and delete the line containing vncpasswd = ‘Password123′.

If you do not remove the line you will be asked to provide a VNC Authenticate password.

11. Select OK

12. On the Transition VM Connect to web server using IE or Firefox.

https://172.29.62.5

13. Save System-sda.img and vm.cfg into a folder (VM Name) on the transition VM.

If you have more than one disk you will see more than one System-sda.img.

14. Control-C to restart the VM.

15. Copy the files to their management server and create a TAR ball of the System-sda.img and vm.cfg files.

16. Import the TAR file to the OVM Manager as a template.

17. Clone the template as a VM.

And your are ready to go

Regards,

Francisco

An Introduction to Microsoft Virtualization and the Private Cloud with System Center 2012 and Hyper-V

The event will be held on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM (ADT)

WHERE:

Nova Scotia Community College Institute of IT Campus
5685 Leeds Street,
Room D309
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 2T3
Canada
View Map

Attend Event  Yes No Maybe

Share this event:

Spend an evening with Mitch Garvis, Virtual Technology Evangelist with Microsoft Canada, getting to know the Microsoft server virtualization story.  Learn not only about Hyper-V, but also the management and Private Cloud scenarios that System Center 2012 SP1 brings to the table,  Learn how to build your cloud, and also how Microsoft sets itself apart from (and ahead of) the competition in the world of virtualization, Private Cloud, and Datacenter Management.

We hope you can make it!

I have been talking to you about it for several months, and am thrilled to tell you that it is now available… RTM for the Cisco Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V was announced at Microsoft TechEd North America today.  Here is the complete announcement from the Cisco Nexus 1000V Product Management Team –M

Cisco Cloud Networking and Services Platform team is excited to announce the availability of Cisco Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V as a part of our hypervisor-agnostic cloud networking strategy. This represents a major milestone for the Nexus 1000V platform which already has more than 7000 customers.  

We are also shipping Virtual Services Gateway (VSG) and Virtual Network Management Center ( VNMC)  for Hyper-V. With this introduction, enterprise and cloud provider customers will be able to extend Nexus experience to Hyper-V virtual environments. Learn More

Industry Award

Cisco Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V Solution Highlights

Features and Functionality

Note: Nexus 1000V feature-set will be consistent across all hypervisors

Pricing and Orderability

Nexus1000V pricing is consistent across hypervisors. Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V is available in two editions:

· Essential edition is available at no-cost

· Advanced edition (includes VSG for Hyper-V) is available at $695/CPU

Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V sales qualify for Q4, 2013 Nexus 1000V Sales Incentive Program For ordering assistance, please refer to Cisco Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V Ordering Guide

More Information

We are also planning for a joint Cisco/Microsoft webinar during the week of June 17^th. Please look out for the calendar invites.

Resources

· Cisco Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V internal field portal: 

http://savtg.cisco.com/go/1000vhyper-v/

· Cisco Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V external cisco.com page: 

http://www.cisco.com/go/1000v/hyper-v/

· Cisco Nexus 1000V Public Community: 

https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/datacenter/nexus1000v/

· Cisco-Microsoft partnership page: 

http://www.cisco.com/go/microsoft/

As with any hard drive partitioning, make sure you back up any critical data. Since this is a vm and I’m running VDR, I can run a quick backup and begin. Also, remove any snapshots if you have them.

Power down the VM. Add space to the hard disk under Edit Settings.

Power the VM back up  and  run a  # df -h  to see the current disk usage.

Run  # ls -al /dev/sda* to view all the disks

fdisk /dev/sda

:n (new disk)

:p (create primary partition)

:3 (the partition number)

: first cylinder  (keep the defaults)

: p (print the partition table and review the new partition on /dev/sda#)

:w (write the table to disk and exit)

# reboot the server or run  # partprobe . If partprobe throws an error, just reboot. This is to make sure the partition table is actually written.

Run  # vgdisplay to view the volume group. In the FREE PE / Size section, you will see that there isn’t any free space yet. Take note of the proper name of the volume group.

Run a  #vgextend vg_insertyourvghere /dev/sda#

Do another #vgdisplay to confirm the free space on the volume group.

It shows you there is now 4GB free space that can be added to the volume group.  Now we extend the logical volume into that free space

Do an #lvdisplay to get the proper name of the logical volume you’re going to extend.

Now, time to extend the logical volume group.

#  lvextend -L +4G /dev/vg_kimathegreat/lv_root

I reduced the size slightly to avoid the error about  “Insufficient free space”.

Now to resize the file system. If this is a partition that can be unmounted, run a # umount before running resize2fs.

#resize2fs /dev/vg_kimathegreat/lv_root

Run df -h to see the new size of the partition and the increased free space.

Now, there are a few caveats I’ve run across. Mainly when running fdisk /dev/sda. I will allow me to make a partition, but depending on where the sectors start and end, I won’t be able to run a pvextend.

If that happens, run # cfdisk and see where the partitions are and if you have any free space. If you do, that is where you create your partition.  You can make your corrections, between both fdisk and cfdisk , by deleting the small partition and creating a new one with the larger chunk of free space.  Just be careful and don’t delete anything critical.

As you can see, I’m missing sda3. That was because the 1st fdisk /dev/sda created a partition using only a few megs of space. I didn’t note the sector count and created the primary partition in the smaller block of free space. I used fdisk  (d) to delete that partition and then created a new one.

During Microsoft’s TechEd 2013 conference taking place this week in New Orleans, Texas-based NEC Corporation of America (NEC) plans to unveil a version of NEC ProgrammableFlow Network Suite that’s optimized to integrate with Microsoft’s System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.

According to NEC, this new integrated solution will “transform” network management for Windows Server 2012 customers, delivering automated server and network orchestration for virtualized data centers. NEC and Microsoft are already open to early adopter customers now, with general availability of the technology expected this fall.

“NEC’s planned SDN solution will help customers of Windows Server 2013 and Hyper-V automate the time-consuming and disruptive task of configuring their networks as they support the dynamic movement of virtual machines,” the company said on Thursday. “It further enhances the flexibility provided with complete network virtualization, introduced with the NEC OpenFlow-based vSwitch for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and available since January 2013.”

Working in conjunction with System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager, NEC’s new ProgrammableFlow vSwitch for Windows Server Hyper-V environments, called the PF1000, and the ProgrammableFlow SDN Controller can manage network flows, controlling both the source and destination virtual machines. And thanks to the new integrated solution, customers now have new levels of virtual machine mobility, visibility and control as they monitor end-to-end network flows from one virtual machine to another.

“Expanding our integration with Windows Server 2012 through System Center Virtual Machine Manager is the natural progression of NEC’s SDN solution development,” said Mike Mitsch, VP of Enterprise Technology, NEC Corporation of America. “Customers using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and ProgrammableFlow networking now have the ability to be more responsive to their lines of business while delivering reduced operational costs with new levels of total system agility.”

ProgrammableFlow Network Suite was originally launched in 2011, and was the first commercially available SDN solution to leverage the OpenFlow protocol, enabling complete network virtualization and secure multi-tenant networks. Customers in production today can easily deploy, control, monitor, and manage multi-tenant network infrastructure thanks to this SDN solution, the company said.

For those attending TechEd 2013, NEC will be demonstrating today, June 4th the new integrated “orchestration” in a session entitled “How to Design and Configure Networking in Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Hyper-V,” which begins at 3:15 p.m. Meanwhile, for more information about this new integrated solution, NEC updated its blog to talk about delivering the first Windows 2012 extensible vSwitch for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

(Source: Toms Hardware)