Using VMware Workstation for learning Hyper-V

I'm working towards my MCITP, and have the MS 70-643 [Configuring Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure] test scheduled for the end of the month. I've got the self-paced study guide, and ran into an immediate problem when I read the introduction: Hyper-V is needed to complete the guide, and using VMware (Workstation or ESX Free) won't help because Hyper-V itself is a topic covered on the exam.

So the first thing I did was hunt around for a machine that would run Hyper-V, and the closest I came to finding one (that wasn't already in production for some other purpose) was my laptop (HP Elitebook 8460p): it had the full Core i5 CPU and chipset, along with 8GB RAM. Instead of messing with dual-boot, I pulled the system drive and installed an older HD I had lying around, and got to work on installing the OS.

While Windows Server 2008 R2 will run on the laptop, the network hardware wasn't on the base image, nor were a slew of other devices. No surprise, either, that there were no Server versions of the drivers from HP.

So I looked into using a spare server at the office; unfortunately, that was a bust, too: the spare servers wouldn't run Hyper-V because of hardware limitations.

A little help from Google, however, showed me that it's not just possible, but easy to go Inception and run Hyper-V as a guest on top of VMware Workstation 8.

Inception: Server 2008 R2 on a Hyper-V VM running on a Workstation VM

There is one gotcha, however: in addition to selecting the "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT" option for the Workstation guest vCPU config, you need to add a line to the guest's VMX file: hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"

Pass-thru hardware virtualization

Once you have that added to the guest config (which must be done when the VM is powered-down), Hyper-V will support its own nested guests.

One other thing you'll want to do: because Hyper-V uses the [CTRL]+[ALT] in all its mouse-release options, updating the VMware default hotkey sequence to include an additional (or different) sequence is necessary if you ever think you'll need the Hyper-V sequence.

If you leave the sequence alone in Workstation, then there's no way to send [CTRL]+[ALT]+[LEFT] down into the Hyper-V guest: Workstation captures the sequence before it can be sent.

UPDATE: There must be a bug in Workstation, both 5.02 and 5.04. In both environments, I've trashed my host system partition when booting one of the Hyper-V-hosted VMs. The first time it happened, I figured it was a fluke with the host's drive; luckily, I had a backup, although it was over 60 days old and I had to get some help from the company Domain Admins to get it back on the domain. The second time, I had a backup from that morning to restore, and the third time, I simply gave up on the whole thing after restoring from that morning's backup.

Making SkipRearm work for you

So, one of the nice parts about virtualizing a Windows 2003 or XP system (other than the small resource footprint, compared to newer OS versions) was the quick, tidy way of cloning and generalizing them: clone it, run NewSID to give it a new SID and NetBIOS name. Done.

We can't do that anymore with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 (nor Server 2008 and Vista): between licensing scheme changes and NewSID going the way of the dodo, there are only two ways to virtualize them: install from 'scratch', or clone/sysprep.

Microsoft has made huge strides in their install platform since it was introduced, and doing "from scratch" installs aren't that bad anymore; but if you've got a system that's set up just so, it's probably a lot more work to rebuild from scratch than to clone & generalize.

But that's what can cause problems: the default behavior of sysprep is to reset the product code and licensing activation state for the cloned machine. In and of itself, that's no great issue, but Microsoft built a hard limit into the number of times a system can be "rearmed" for licensing; if you reach that limit, there's no do-overs. You can't get sysprep to succeed.

There's a way to address this, too: Microsoft also recognized that there might be times when you need to leave the machine's licensing state alone, yet still generalize it. You can find articles around the 'net for the "SkipRearm" component of a sysprep answer file, and it does work. Mostly. If you do it correctly.

That's the point of this post: for every way that exists to do it correctly, there are probably 150 ways to do it incorrectly. I know: I spent several hours over the weekend trying to get it working.

I succeeded, but it wasn't quick. So what follows is the documentation for the method that worked for me...

To make shorter work of this, you'll need several things:

1. Microsoft WAIK (Windows Automated Install Kit). It's an ISO that includes the installer for SIM (System Image Manager). The key item is SIM.
2. Install image (WIM) from the OS you're trying to work with. It can be the base install.wim that comes on the distribution media, or an updated WIM that you used to create your "template" system.
3. A VM with a fully-licensed OS. You'll want to run this VM on a hypervisor that will allow you to take snapshots (Type I or Type II, doesn't make a difference--it's the snapshot facility that we're after to make faster work of this).
4. Text editor (Notepad is fine, but I like the highlighting in SciTE, the Scintilla Text Editor)

Assemble your toys, and take a snapshot of your VM so that you can roll it back to the state that exists prior to "messing" with it.

1. Launch SIM and open your install image:
   
   
2. Create or open an answer file:
   
   
3. Expand the Components folder, right-click the Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP component that is appropriate for your OS type, and select Add setting to Pass 3 generalize. Note: if you instead select the -SLC component, it will have a SkipRearm setting, but the program notes indicate that the setting has been deprecated. In practice, it means "this won't work on newer OSes."
   
   
   
   Additionally, if you're doing this preparation for a 32-bit OS (the screenshots are for Server 2008 R2, by definition a 64-bit OS), you will need to make sure you've selected the x86_ component, not the amd64_ as I've done in the examples. You will note that the Server 2008 R2 WIM doesn't include that option in the components list, but it is available in the 32-bit Windows 7 WIM.
4. In the settings window, change the value for SkipRearm to 1
   
   
5. Close the Windows image. This will remove any specific association to that image from your answer file.
6. Save your answer file. Exit SIM. Open your answer file in a text editor.
7. Note the details in the XML file entries. Those attributes of the component name are the piece that seem to be missing from all the other postings I've seen for this function. If you don't have them all—including that publicKeyToken attribute—your answer file will not work.
   
   
8. If you're not going to play with SIM and try to add additional functionality to your answer file, copy the contents to a file on your VM.
9. Sysprep can be found in c:\windows\system32\sysprep, which is not in the environment path, so you'll need to open a command shell and go to that directory to invoke it. Invoke it with the following command:
   sysprep /unattend:{answer file you created} /oobe /generalize /reboot
   Assuming your answer file was formatted and read correctly, sysprep will take care of generalizing the VM and rebooting. It will take a couple of reboot passes before it's ready for you to work on it, and the default "out of box experience" dialogs will request your attention; when that's complete, you should see that your VM:
1. is still licensed
2. has a new SID
3. has the same number of "Remaining rearm count" as the source VM
10. When you're through testing, revert your VM to the snapshot, delete the snapshot, then save the answer file to the base image.

Once you have an answer file saved to a base VM, it's trivial to clone, sysprep and be on your way with a minimum of effort.

Resize your Vista/Win7/Win08 desktop icons

If you're a clean desktop type, you've figured out by now that you can resize (in smallish increments) the icons that Microsoft puts on the user desktop (notably, the Recycle Bin, which is the only icon on a fresh desktop—unless the administrator has installed something else as well).

Hold down the CTRL key and scroll the mouse.

So if the default icon size looks a bit like this:

You can scroll and make them tiny (my preference):

And you can also increase their size in case you prefer to go that direction:

Unfortunately, there are times when you can't scroll, or scrolling doesn't get interpreted correctly. Working inside a virtual machine is one of those times; working by remote can be another. Luckily, the Windows API allows a programmer to "simulate" a scroll-wheel in code, bypassing the need for a physical scroll wheel.
The Jamie Morrison over at the ether published a small console program that can do just that: programmatic simulation of scroll-wheel events. See their Knowledgebase article for more information.

Update: In the event that the links above ever go dead, here's the version that was available on 12-June-2012

Windows print driver insanity

Windows print drivers are the bane of many admins and users. These bits of software live in the murky area between the OS kernel and user space, and decisions (and non-decisions) made by their developers can quickly turn a well-running system into complete garbage.

It's my opinion that much of the bad press that Windows gets (compared to Linux or OS X) is the result of poorly coded drivers (and I definitely include video driver in this indictment).

The real head-shaker I'm working on, however, isn't the bad behavior of the driver as much as the peripheral settings and installer that come with the driver.

I ran across a situation where the Lexmark "universal driver" was dropping some entries in the Registry that didn't cause issues in single-user environments, but wrought havoc on multiuser (eg, terminal server) environments.

Specifically, the driver saved a binary value that essentially contained an XML file. On the surface, that would be innocuous, but when the size of the blob is on the order of 500KB—and the same blob is duplicated in several values and keys throughout both the System and User hives—it becomes an issue.

Even when Windows has supposedly fixed the Registry memory restriction and allocation problems, starting in Windows 2003.

Not sure if you have a potential to be bitten by this little gem? Well, if you aren't using Lexmark printers, you should be fine. But if you are, open Regedit and do an exact search for the following value name: GDL

I had a terminal server user with over 50 of these entries in her user profile; when she was logged in, no other users could log on (not enough resources for the registry of the new login). We removed the values, and voila, users could login.

Insanity!

(Of course, I now want away to search for Registry entries by size: anything bigger than 100K needs to be flagged so I can complain to the vendor—even if it's Microsoft—about bloating my Registry.)

DR Recovery of a Hyper-V guest using Virtual Server 2005

Here's the scenario: You've convinced your managers to try out virtualization, and you've decided to buy a single server along with some shared storage, leveraging your current server as a second host for your environment. You've made the choice to try Microsoft Hyper-V (after all, it's included with Windows 2008 R2), and you get everything going on the new host. But when it comes to putting Hyper-V on the current server, it turns out that the CPUs, chipset and BIOS are incompatible. After some research, you learn that it will support Virtual Server 2005 (VS2005).

Microsoft is using the same virtual hard drive format (VHD) that they inherited from Connectix, so on the surface, one would hope that it would be possible to use a guest's VHD in either environment: simply create a new VM with the VHD as the primary disk and boot. You won't be able to use any of the really powerful features of virtualization like Live Migration, but at least you'll have an opportunity for short DR RTO/RPO if you could readily move the guest between hosts—even if it's a manual process.

Unfortunately, the two Microsoft hypervisors have very different VM (ie, virtual hardware) specifications (and limitations), and essentially share only the VHD format in common: attempting to boot a Hyper-V guest in VS2005 will fail miserably, and may do so without any indication of why it's failing: you get stuck at a black screen, and that's it. No BSOD, nothing.

Fortunately, there exists many references to porting Hyper-V guests into other environments that are just a Google search away. All those resources tell you that it's possible to run the guest in Virtual PC (the desktop hypervisor, not the server hypervisor) if you remove the integration tools. Some of them also add the step of performing a hal.dll swap. Of course, one thing is absolute: the version of the OS that you're trying to migrate must be a 32-bit OS: while Virtual Server 2005 itself may run fine on a 64-bit OS, it cannot support any 64-bit guest.

Fine. Caveat emptor. We didn't virtualize a 64-bit guest with Hyper-V, so this just might work...

Here's the first problem with the porting technique: if you could get the guest running on a recovery host in order to remove the integration tools, why would you fool around with doing anything else? It's running. Stop fooling with it and move on to get your production hypervisor working again!

Luckily, the real trick isn't related to removing the integration tools, it's getting the right HAL.DLL on the guest. So here's how that is done.

1. Prepare your Hyper-V guest
1. On your VS2005 host, create a VM running the same OS as the Hyper-V guest that you wish to recover. This is only temporary, as you're after one special file from the guest.
2. Get a copy of its hal.dll (%systemdrive%\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\hal.dll)
3. Put a renamed copy of the VS2005 HAL (eg, hal.dll.vs05)  on the production Hyper-V system drive, in the same folder as the original HAL.
2. Test your disaster
1. Copy the Hyper-V guest VHD to your recovery host. If you do it while your guest is running, it will reliably reproduce the "improper shutdown" that will occur if your Hyper-V host dies unexpectedly.
2. Mount the VHD as a local disk on your VS2005 host machine; if you're running the latest version, this capability is part of the package.
3. Rename the original hal.dll to something else (eg, hal.dll.hyperv) and rename your VS2005 HAL to hal.dll. By renaming—instead of replacing—you should be able to reverse the process when you have a production Hyper-V host available again.
4. Dismount the VHD
5. Create a new VS2005 guest, using the copied, modified VHD as the primary disk. Do not connect the network to the guest, or you'll have all sorts of problems, the least of which being errors about duplicate names on the network.
6. Boot the guest. If you get all the way to the logon prompt, you've succeeded.
3. Test recovery
1. Shut down your test VS2005 VM.
2. Mount the VHD as a local disk.
3. Reverse the hal.dll renaming operation completed in 2c.
4. Dismount the VHD
5. Move the VHD back to your Hyper-V host
6. Create a new Hyper-V guest using the VHD from the VS2005 system. Again do not connect the network to the guest, or problems will ensue.
7. Boot the guest. Again, if you get a logon prompt, you're golden.

What to do if this doesn't work: go back to management and get a second, new server. Your company's livelihood shouldn't rely on a "bailing wire & duck tape" solution like this. You've already got the shared storage; that's the most expensive part of a highly-available virtualization environment.

What to do if this does work: see above. Don't rely on this solution. This is, at best, a complete kludge, a pig in a prom dress. I'm not even sure that you'd get support from Microsoft if you had an issue, even if it was totally unrelated to the environment.

And in my (biased) opinion, use VMware instead of Hyper-V. While both products have Type-II hypervisor options if that's a requirement (you need a full Windows OS on the "bare metal" host), the VMware guest is a much more mature, portable virtual hardware platform (it really can be as easy as copying a file when you're ready to move to the latest versions of VMware); Microsoft (and all the competition, for that matter) are still working to reach the sophistication & reliability of what VMware introduced years ago.

concluding a chapter

Today marks my final day as Senior Technologist at CarterEnergy, and closes the chapter on my career with the company I've been with since July 11, 2001. Some highlights in my 10½ years with Carter:

• went from being the sole technical guy at the company to the co-leader of a 5-person IT team
• provided IT leadership in selecting, implementing and maintaining various business systems
• performed numerous system and desktop upgrades
• Windows NTà2000+ADà2003à2008
• Windows 95à98àXPàWindows 7
• troubleshot thousands of helpdesk requests
• built system interfaces to integrate disparate systems, both external/internal and internal/internal
• created automated systems to offload tasks from people to systems
• wrote software that was later incorporated into a commercial software suite
• implemented a virtual infrastructure for server consolidation
• architected and implemented a DR site

CarterEnergy has been a great place to work. The leadership of the company "gets" how technology can be used effectively to bring efficiencies in business operations: it's not just a "cost center" or other drain on resources. So why leave?

It's one of those final bullet points: virtual infrastructure.

Ever since VMware vMotion was demonstrated to me, I've been enthralled with virtualization and VMware's take on the technology. I've been a member of the local VMware User Group (VMUG) since 2005, and have served on the leadership team of the group since early 2007. I've been to VMworld  four times, and had the honor of helping staff the Self-paced Labs in 2009. I've received recognition for the work in the user group by being named vExpert every year since the award's inception. I even run a two-node VMware cluster in the basement of my home.

CarterEnergy uses virtualization to great effect. But it has always been a tool, never an end in and of itself. Whenever I had the opportunity to work in our environment, it was usually for the purpose of solving a distantly related problem: get it done, get out and go on with the next item on the punch list for solving the business problem.

So when an opportunity to join a Systems team for a VMware Partner with a vibrant virtualization practice came my way, I took it. On February 1, I start a new chapter in my career by joining Vital Support Systems as a System Engineer III. In the new role, I'll be able to make virtualization technologies my bread-and-butter activities as I serve a new customer base.

drobo's top-notch customer support

Although I'm a professional storage administrator, I really like the dead-simple maintenance that you get with the storage appliances from the folks at Drobo. It's true that they seem a bit pricey, and it's very true that their consumer-directed units are "performance-challenged," but when it comes to an easy way to create a huge, self-managing, readily growing storage pool for everything from home video and digital stills to a dumping-ground for backup images, it's really hard to beat.
I own four units:

• 2 "first gen" 4-spindle, USB-2
• 8-spindle DroboPro (USB-2, FireWire, iSCSI)
• 5-spindle Drobo FS (CIFS)

The reason for this posting is because of a problem I had today with my Pro: although it's presenting a 16TB volume to the connected host via Ethernet/iSCSI, it's filled with a mix of 1TB and 1.5TB SATA-2 drives. The usable capacity is in the neighborhood of 8TB, and I had it roughly 70% full with backups and staging files when it decided to die.

I pulled the power, then restarted it, and it started a boot cycle.

Nuts.

After checking online and finding a troubleshooting post from Drobo, I went through the steps to address the problem. No joy.

I'd purchased the unit in November, 2009, so it was clearly out of warranty, but I took a chance and sent a help request to Drobo Support. It didn't take long before Chad was answering back through their support system, and by giving him good, descriptive information about the problem, he quickly responded with "please call me at..." to get some final information on my symptoms.

Unfortunately, they see this happen enough that they've actually coined a name for it: the Yellow Brick Road.

Luckily, the folks at Drobo recognized some time ago that this particular boot-loop cannot be solved by the customer, and even when the device is out of warranty, they'll RMA the thing and get you back in business.

By any measure, that's awesome customer support.

"Nailed Up" SSH connection for Cisco devices

To all my fellow Cisco switch & router admins: have you ever been frustrated by the built-in, non-modifiable timeout for SSH support on the devices?

Well, there's a work-around that doesn't require tapping on the keyboard at least every 9:59...

The exec-timeout control for vty lines has no effect on SSH sessions; officially, you can't disable the timeout. Leave an SSH connection idle for 10:00 and it'll terminate from the remote (device) side. The alternative is to remote into your device using telnet; with that protocol, you can greatly extend or even disable the timeout.

But we don't like to use telnet, right? All data is sent in the clear, both keystrokes and screen paints, which includes authentication and logon credentials.

So how do we get the best of both worlds: secure, private connectivity of SSH with the extended, configurable (or disabled) timeout of telnet?

Answer: use both.

Seriously. Use both.

If you use SSH to remotely access a device, you'll get stuck with the 10:00 timer. But if you immediately telnet (or rlogin) back into the same device, you'll "mask" the SSH timeout with the telnet timeout (if one exists).

From the outside, this appears totally safe: all traffic going to and from the device is effectively encrypted by SSH. The telnet/rlogin session is happening "inside" the device where no man-in-the-middle or sniffer can see the traffic.

How does this work? Essentially, the timeout only measures idle time at an EXEC prompt; when you're using telnet (or SSH or rlogin, for that matter), the originating session is no longer in EXEC, it's running an operation.

One obvious negative to this is that you must keep telnet enabled as a valid transport for your device. A second negative is the practice of disabling timeouts on your vty lines. The fix for the first issue is to create a loopback interface for the express purpose of being a telnet endpoint; you then apply ACLs so that it is the only interface on your device that is permitted to accept connections on tcp/23. Assuming you build your ACLs so that telnet connections are only accepted when originated from the device itself, you will have effectively boxed in the insecure protocol inside the device. There's no real solution to the poor timeout choice, except making it long enough for most work without disabling it.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Microsoft

So back in July 2011, when VMware announced vSphere 5 to the world along with its controversial new licensing model, VMware's competition was quick to join the hue and cry from customers that felt VMware was taking away something that, until then, was free.

You can Google it yourself; just put "vTax" in your search bar and you can get lost in all the write-ups,  venom and FUD.

One of my favorites is a TechNet article from the Microsoft virtualization team that attempts a side-by-side cost analysis between vSphere 5 and Hyper-V, showing how the increasing RAM and core density of a single server causes rapidly-escalating prices for licensing. While the author presents reasonable math on the cost to migrate from low(er) density hosts to high(er) density hosts, I have yet to see real-world Hyper-V support the consolidation ratio of VMware. In my personal experience, I've been unable to start up three 2GB VMs on an 8GB Hyper-V system for a classroom environment, while I've run five 2GB VMs on an 8GB ESXi server. In both cases, the host was strained to the point that the running VMs (2 vs 5) were sluggish and slow to respond, but I use the example to suggest that at scale it could take 50% less VMware infrastructure compared to Hyper-V, making a 10-to-10 cluster comparison no more appropriate than comparing apples to oranges for Vitamin C nutrition. And while both products have a limited set of approved/supported platforms for hardware compatibility, the VMware set is much broader than Hyper-V, giving the purchaser more options for savings that can offset the raw costs of licensing.

And on top of all that, Microsoft marketing money also paid for a spoof of VMware with the "VMlimited" microsite.

But today, Microsoft exposed its hypocrisy by unveiling a new licensing model when they announced the next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2012.

In the same way that VMware is accused of "taking back" free features and benefits, Microsoft has done the same by eliminating the per-processor (socket) licensing option in favor of a per-core (physical thread of execution) model.

Like with VMware's old model, the old model for SQL Server allowed organizations to provision high(er)-density servers (in terms of both RAM and cores-per-socket) in place of low(er)-density servers without running into the need to acquire new licenses. The new model takes that away, and also puts the burden of reoccurring subscription expenses (Software Assurance, or "SA") into the mix in order to best-leverage the combination of SQL Server and virtualization.

Under the old model, an organization could pay $164,970 (USD, list) for six sockets of SQL Server Enterprise Edition; in a 6-socket VMware cluster, a DBA could then implement an unlimited number of SQL instances on up to 8 VMs per host. If the organization paid an additional $41,244/year for SA, the VMware cluster would be able to run unlimited instances on an unlimited number of VMs (subject to OS licensing limits—if any—and resource constraints of the virtual environment). Further, the old model had no limitations for the migration of SQL-hosting VMs from one server to another (i.e., vMotion). With modern, high-density servers that provide 512GB RAM and 24 cores of execution per 2-socket box, it's conceivable that dozens of multi-vCPU VMs could be hosted for costs in the neighborhood of $365,000 over a 5-year period.

Now compare that to the new model. At a (list) price of $6874 per core, that same six-socket, 12-core-per-socket cluster would cost $494,928 plus an additional 25% annually for SA, making the 5-year cost for the same hardware environment in excess of $1.1 million.

That's a 300% increase in costs for the new licensing model.

Hmmm.... Shall we now call per-core licensing the SQL Tax?

auto-elevate in win7

I've had to deal with a poorly-written application for quite a few years: it misbehaves by requiring Administrative rights when running. I've spent many hours pouring over the capture from (SysInternals) procmon without success: the application just won't reveal what trigger is needed to let it run in a low-security context.

Many sysadmins might question how this app ever got accepted into our environment with such a huge security flaw. The answer is simple: corporate policy didn't include running all desktops in limited-user mode. We still had a large selection of systems running on Windows 98 (for which "basic user" was not an option), and allowed users to run on Windows 2000 and Windows XP as local admins. We never caught the limitation during initial acceptance testing.

We were finally standardized on Windows XP when the policy change came that allowed us to switch end users from administrative to limited-user, but because the application was in limited distribution through our user base, it wasn't in the original test cases for switching to limited users. After the handful of users started submitting the same issue, we spent a while troubleshooting the app before we realized the common thread: it misbehaved only when running in the context of a limited user. While looking for a solution, we left the handful that required the app to continue to run their sessions in administrative mode. Remaining an administrative user was not an acceptable solution.

Luckily, Windows XP provides the "runas" utility, which permitted us to create a dedicated domain user that could have local admin rights as well as network access (a requirement of the application). With some limited, additional configuration, the special user account credentials could be used in an obfuscated batch file, and the primary user account could remain "limited". It worked beautifully.

Enter Windows 7.

Actually, the problem started with Windows Vista and the introduction of UAC (user account control), but because we never accepted Vista into the corporate environment, it wasn't an issue until Windows 7.
Being security conscious, we never considered disabling UAC for systems; however, that nicety became a burden on our use of our misbehaving application and the XP-type workaround: We could still use the alternate user, but UAC remained a barrier to the application, even when logged on as a local administrator.
So we experimented with ways to get an elevated session:

• We tried 3rd-party tools, but they didn't work unless you were already in an administrative session
• We tried "XP Mode", which was fine as long as we didn't try to access network resources; the standard user in the virtual environment is a local administrator for the system—something that should bother everyone using it.

After much trial-and-error, we discovered that a "nested" execution would work:

1. we use "runas" to create the execution environment for an administrative user
2. inside the session "bubble" that runas creates, we use the 3rd-party tool "NirCMD" to launch the pesky application in an elevated session.

The shortcut looks a bit like this:

runas /user:domain\special /savecred "c:\windows\system32\nircmd.exe elevate c:\progra~2\pesky\pesky.exe"

You can get nircmd.exe at nirsoft.net; they have a number of nice, free utilities that can make your life easier.

The solution isn't perfect—a basic UAC prompt is still displayed—but it requires no user to remember alternate credentials. There are also setup requirements for preparing the administrative user's local profile (for network printers) and saving the administrative user credentials (prompted at first run), but until we can retire the application, we now have a working solution.

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UPDATE: Changed link for NirSoft; the original post was incorrect.

iPhone Battery Drain, revisited

It happened again. I earlier blogged about the situation where my iPhone started eating the battery so fast that it was actually hot to the touch. Again, the issue was near-continuous network access to my home Exchange server (over ActiveSync), but this time I was able to resolve the issue by disabling calendar sync (which deleted all the calendar entries for that connection) instead of deleting the whole profile.
As soon as the calendar stopped being sync'd, the high network utilization went away; re-enabling the sync brought back the calendar items without causing the utilization problem.

iomega ix2-200 NAS non-cloud to cloud upgrade

UPDATE: DO NOT attempt to adapt this process to update an ix4 to the cloud-OS version!
If you do so, the upgrade will apparently attempt to update the BIOS of the ix4, and there appears to be a sufficient difference between the two products (cloud, non-cloud) that you will end up "bricking" your ix4. This happened to me (yes, I know I was taking a big chance) and someone else I know. Having a complete set of pristine, factory-reset drives will not give you the ability to revert to the non-cloud OS if you have a problem with the upgrade.
For the record, the system I started with had a sticker on the flash chip indicating that it was running the "V1.0.7" code.
The only known fix is a "low-level format" back at iomega support.

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Standing on the shoulders of others...

So you've got a "non-cloud" version of the iomega ix2-200, and you're miffed that iomega doesn't officially support an upgrade path to convert it to the newer "cloud" editions. Maybe you want some of those cloud features, or maybe you have a Mac with Lion, which apparently isn't supported on the non-cloud models.
The upgrade can be accomplished; however it is destructive. You will not be able to perform an in-place upgrade with this technique, although you will be able to "get back" to having the original equipment—if that's what you desire.

What follows is a recipe that worked for me; your mileage may vary.

Required Hardware:

• iomega ix2-200 (duh!)
• Blank, FAT32-formatted USB thumbdrive with a drive activity light, 2GB or larger.
• pin, toothpick or other small, stiff wire that can be used to press and hold the reset button on the ix2 for ~90 seconds.

Optional Hardware:

• New hard drives. This is a prime opportunity to upgrade a 1TB or 2TB (raw) model to a 4TB or 6TB unit; it also gives you a fallback position in the event you brick the thing while working with the new drives. If you go this route, however, do not try to improve performance by switching to 7200RPM drives: The heat output of those drives is too high for the tiny fan in the chassis to handle. Stick with "green", variable RPM drives, and you should be okay.
• USB-to-SATA adapter. This eliminates the need to crack the case of a desktop machine (for access to the SATA ports) to clear a drive that will be re-used for the conversion.

Required Software:

• Linux distribution with openssh, tar, md5sum, gunzip and the ability to mount files to a loopback device. Believe it or not, your ix2 itself will fit the bill if you don't otherwise have a linux distro handy; all you need is SSH access, and you're golden. This recipe assumes the use of the ix2.
• Latest/greatest upgrade of the ix2-200 "cloud edition" firmware from iomega. As of this writing, the most-current version was 3.1.14.995. The firmware comes in an encrypted tarball, but your linux distro will make short work of that little problem.

Preparation:

1. Prepare the ix2 for conversion: Copy all your data to another storage medium. If you brick your ix2, you don't want to be left hanging in the cold.
2. Create the conversion tarball.
1. Create a new share on the ix2. Copy the firmware image from iomega to the share.
2. Save the following code as a shell script in the same place:

   ifw=./ix2-200-3.1.14.995.tgz
   ofw=${ifw%.tgz}-decrypted.tar.gz
   ix2=${ifw%.tgz}-files
   
   mkdir -p $ix2/images
   mkdir -p $ix2/update
   mkdir -p $ix2/apps
   
   openssl enc -d -aes-128-cbc -in $ifw -k "EMCNTGSOHO" -out $ofw
   tar xzvf $ofw -C $ix2/update/
   
   imgs=$(find $ix2/update/)
   for img in ${imgs} ; do
     if [ -f $img.md5 ] ; then
       mv $img $ix2/images/
       mv $img.md5 $ix2/images/
     fi
   done
   
   mount -o loop,ro $ix2/images/apps $ix2/apps
   cp -p $ix2/apps/usr/local/cfg/config.gz $ix2/images/
   umount $ix2/apps
   gunzip $ix2/images/config.gz
   
   img=$ix2/images/config
   md5=$(md5sum $img)
   md5=${md5% *}
   md5=${md5% }
   echo "$md5" > $img.md5
   
   cd $ix2/images/
   tar czvf ../ix2-boot.tgz *
   

   You will need to edit the first line of the script to match the filename of the firmware tarball you placed in the folder with the script.
3. Log on to the ix2 using SSH. (the first part of this post will walk you through gaining SSH access to your ix2)
4. Verify you have an available loopback device to use as a mountpoint: losetup -f
• if losetup indicates that there are no free loop devices, you need to create the next one in sequence.
• Determine the next-needed loop device with: losetup -a
  The output will probably look a bit like this:

  root@ix2:/# losetup -a
  /dev/loop0: [0900]:15970 (/sysroot/boot/images/apps)
  /dev/loop1: [0900]:47905 (sysroot/boot/images/config)
  /dev/loop2: [0900]:15972 (/sysroot/boot/images/oem)
  

• As indicated above, the first 3 loops are in use (loop0 through loop2), so the next one needed is loop3.
• Use the following command to make loop3 (the 4th loop device):
  mknod -m 0600 /dev/loop3 b 7 3
5. Change to the directory of the share you created:

   cd /mnt/soho_storage/samba/shares/sharename

6. Make the script executable:

   chmod 700 scriptname

7. Execute the script:

   ./scriptname

   The script will take a while to run: the original tarball must be unpacked, several files get copied, a new tarball is built. It's time-consuming, especially on low-powered hardware like the ix2. But nothing you're doing is affecting the existing system; you're simply using a handy linux environment to get some work done.
8. The final result will be a new file in the *-files folder called ix2-boot.tgz. Back on your main workstation, copy this new tarball to your USB drive in the following directory tree:

   \emctools\ix2-200d_images\

9. Exit the SSH shell
3. The drives that will be targeted for the conversion must be clean/clear drives; preferably, they will be new drives that have never been used, with no existing partition table. If you're going to re-use the existing ix2 drives, or re-use drives that you've had in another system, you first need to wipe them out: delete any existing partitions. The conversion won't work if you have data on the drives. This is where your mettle as a gadget geek gets tested: do you throw caution to the wind and wipe the ix2 drives, or do you get new drives and "play it safe?"
4. Place the new/wiped drives into the ix2.
5. Plug in the USB drive to any of the three ports.
6. Press and continue to hold the reset button on the back of the unit while plugging in the power supply. The ix2 will automatically boot when power is applied, and if you don't keep the reset button depressed for the entire boot sequence, you will not activate the installation. Watch your USB activity light; although it will come on when the unit activates the drive, you need to keep the reset button depressed until regular activity (i.e., blinking) is observed. In my experience, this takes approximately 90 seconds from the moment you plug in the power supply.
7. Wait. The update will occur, and you'll see plenty of activity for the drive indicator on both the USB drive and the ix2. After less than 10 minutes, however, the ix2 will automatically power off.
8. Remove the USB drive. Reconnect the network. Power up the ix2.

If you successfully updated the image, the indicator lamps on the front of the unit will blink furiously for a few minutes. Once the main power indicator (bottom lamp) is solid, you should be able to reach the management console via browser (Hopefully, you have some way to tell what the IP address is; your router or other DHCP server should have a way to indicate the address—I use a DHCP reservation, so I always get the same address, regardless of configuration state for the unit).

If you don't get that far—the bottom lamp blinks, the drive lamp blinked a couple of times, but otherwise, no activity—don't despair: I've seen other postings that indicate success when performing the procedure twice; I never needed it (I've repeated the update three times so far). Worst-case: you pull the drives and replace your original ix2 drives. Nothing is stored locally on the device, so a clean drive swap is possible.

The second alert lamp will blink until data protection is complete (either because you switched to a "none" option or it finished setting up the mirror); you can expect the drive activity lamp to be lit solid during the data protection phase.

By default, the firmware wants the ix2 to be using mirrored protection. You can alter that through the setup, and with the cloud version, you have the option of using "linear" or "raid0" if you want to get optimal performance at the expense of data protection.

Once you have the device configured the way you prefer, recreate your shares and iscsi volumes and put your data back on the unit: you're now Cloud-Ready!

---

The science and tech fields have historically worked by advancing based on prior works; we don't reinvent the wheel, we take the various works of our predecessors and advance "the art" through mash-ups that fail more often than they succeed.


This is one of those mash-ups, and thanks go to the following...

• Christopher Kusek (@cxi), who's blog post helped expose SSH access for the ix2
• Scpnas, who's posting to nas-central.com documented the process for creating an initialization tarball for a USB drive from the encrypted firmware download from iomega
• Luciano Rocha, who gave me the clues needed to be able to mount the apps file to a loop device on the ix2, a required step in making the initialization tarball.

iomega px6-300d: first look

The iomega px6-300d is a storage appliance that can be provisioned with up to six SATA drives, both traditional rotating-disk and SSD. It is one of four NAS/SAN appliances in the "px" line from iomega, and is the largest-capacity "desktop" model.
Under the hood, it contains a dual-core Intel Atom processor (running at 1.8GHz) with 2GB RAM, sports a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, three USB ports (1 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0), and runs a customized version of Linux called "EMC LifeLine." The unit can be purchased with various pre-installed drive configurations (6, 12 & 18TB raw capacity); along with the px4 models, iomega has also (finally!) offered a "diskless" configuration.

Retail Box

I purchased a diskless unit ($750 from B&H) for use in my home lab, and independently acquired a matched set of six 2TB Hitachi 7200RPM SATA-III drives (HDS723020BLA642, $110 from NewEgg). This 12TB (raw) setup cost me less than $1500; in contrast, the list price for a pre-populated 12TB unit is $3,299.99.
The unit came in a nice retail box, and was well-padded and packed. In addition to the unit itself, the package contained the external power supply, power cord, CAT5e Ethernet cable, a "Quick Start Guide" and a "Solutions CD."

px6-300d front

px6-300d rear

The front of the unit provides drive access, power button, information display (and a pair of input buttons) and one USB port; the rear of the unit has a pair of 90mm fans, the power connection, reset button, Gigabit Ethernet ports and a pair of USB ports. The rear also sports (what appears to be) a surprising and undocumented x1 PCIe expansion slot.
The Quick Start Guide instructs the owner to install software from the Solutions CD, which will then assist in installing the array; having experience with the ix line, I simply created a DHCP reservation (the MAC address is documented with a sticker on the rear of the unit), connected it to Having purchased a diskless unit, I was curious to see how the system would behave when booted with no drives. True to form, this situation was handled gracefully.

front door open, showing drive trays

drive trays with 2.5", 3.5" drives

trays line up SATA connector

Up to six drives can be installed using supplied hot-swap trays, which support both 3.5" and 2.5" form-factor drives. In addition to the matched drives, I also had a 2.5" SSD available for testing, but the supplied screws didn't fit the drive properly; it was a bit of a struggle to find screws that would not only work with the drive, but also work with the sled: the smaller drives must be attached to the sled from the bottom, so care must be given to make sure the screws do not protrude too far from the bottom of the sled.
The unit I received was pre-installed with an out-of-date firmware (3.1.10; 3.1.14 most current as of this posting), which booted correctly even without any drives installed in the unit. This is a distinct departure from the "ix" line of NAS boxes, which require at least one functioning drive to store the firmware (which also explains why the older lines didn't support a diskless purchase option). The management interface will not allow you to do anything until at least one drive is installed, however, so that was the first order of business.

After installing the first drive, the management interface permitted me to add the unit to my Windows domain, and I also went through the exercise of downloading and updating the firmware. This is a very easy process, so novice users shouldn't be afraid of it.
The unit supports a wide variety of RAID levels, and the user can combine arbitrary combinations of drives into "storage pools" so that the unit can provide different levels of performance based on your needs, so I will be testing the various permutations with increasing spindle counts.

Drive Count	Storage Pool Protection Options
1	None
2	None, RAID0, RAID1
3	None, RAID0, RAID5
4	None, RAID0, RAID1/0, RAID5
5	None, RAID0, RAID5
6	None, RAID0, RAID1/0, RAID5, RAID6

Once you create a storage pool, you can create one or more NAS volume (for CIFS, NFS or other share-types) or iSCSI volumes in it. When creating a file-sharing volume, the unit can recognize space utilization on a file-by-file basis, and will display free/used space as one would expect. A volume used for iSCSI will appear to be 100% allocated as soon as it is created, even if no initiator has ever connected and accessed the LUN. Additionally, multiple shares can be created for a single file-sharing volume, but there's a one-to-one mapping between an iSCSI volume and a target. Security for either file shares or iSCSI is optional; the unit defaults to read/write permissions for everyone.
There are a number of nice features that I'll investigate further, but the first order of business is performance testing. With luck, I'll learn that the device can scale with each added spindle; it will also be interesting to see how much of a performance hit the device will take when using RAID6 instead of RAID5 in the 6-spindle configuration.

Time Zone support on iPhone

Okay, this is one place where the lovely "intuitiveness" of the iPhone falls right on its nose: time zone support.

I've had the pleasure of travelling from my normal haunts in the Central time zone to the Pacific time zone, but the displeasure of having all my appointments continue to show the appointment in Central time. For instance, an 8am meeting in Pacific time would still show up on the phone as being scheduled for 10am, which is the equivalent Central time (Pacific is UTC-8, Central is UTC-6).

The root cause of the problem is a setting I made in the "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" Settings page, not the "General" page--which is where the other time-related settings are done.

At the very bottom of the settings page (iOS 4), there's a section for adjusting calendar sync; it has a Time Zone Support submenu.

Setting Time Zone support on results in the phone "locking in" on the selected time zone--in my case, I set "Chicago" ages ago, when I first got my iPhone--and ignoring the "embedded" time in the calendars. There's an explanation on the submenu: Time Zone Support always shows event dates and times in the time zone selected for calendars. When off, events will display according to the time zone of your current location.


Huh?

I'm not the only one with the misunderstanding. Google the phrase "iphone time zone problem," and you'll find a bunch of folks with similar problems: appointments set in one time zone will result in them "sticking" to the old time zone instead of moving to the new time zone with you.

Here's where the setting becomes counter-intuitive: If the device supports time zones, it implies that it "recognizes" that there are different time zones: an appointment set for 8am PDT should show up as 8am when the phone is in the Pacific Time Zone, while showing 10am when in the Central Time Zone. The opposite should also be true: disabling Time Zone support should result in the phone ignoring all time zone metadata and displaying all times as input, regardless of the physical location of the phone.

I don't have a problem with the iPhone operating this way; my objection is the way the settings are presented to the user. My recommendation is that the equivalent settings be duplicated on the General Settings page (Date/Time), and that the setting itself be called "Time Zone Override".

VMworld 2011 Las Vegas: a vExpert's take

VMware's annual conference—VMworld—is in its 8th year in the US and is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada. On-site registrations and hands-on labs begin on Sunday, August 28; breakout sessions and opening keynote begins the next day.

This will be my 4th year to attend the conference, and each year I've taken away some incredible experiences, both technical and social. Although I don't have the attendance record of some folks (a friend from Omaha has been to all of them since the first back in 2004), I've learned a thing or two about the conference that are worth sharing for anyone who's never been—or hasn't been back recently.

• If you haven't booked your travel yet—or can change it—consider arriving on Saturday, Aug 27, and leaving on Friday, Sept 2. Seasoned travelers may not give a whit, but if you are normally a stay-home worker, setting aside the full day on either end of the trip means you'll be less rushed to get back-and-forth to the venue. Other benefits: 
• You may end up with some savings in both airfare and lodging because of the Saturday night stay. 
• You won't have to lug around your entire kit the last day of the conference because of check-out times.
• More and more activities (unofficial and official) are available on Sunday. In previous years, nothing but registration was available on Sunday. As the conference has matured and grown, there are now parties, meetings and other unofficial events on Sunday. And for the first time in memory, the Self-Paced Labs are open at the same time as Registration.
• No trips back to the office before the Labor Day Weekend!
• Don't spend a lot of money on a great room. It's more important that where you stay is close to the Sands Expo Center than having luxury. It's pretty simple: unless you're agoraphobic and can't stand crowds, you probably won't be spending much time in your room (Of course, if you're in that group, maybe you should reconsider the trip: you're going to be joined by 20,000 of your closest friends in virtualization). You don't want to go too cheap, however; pick a spot on the Strip, and you should (literally) be safe.
• Even if you have a room at the Palazzo or Venetian, you'll be doing lots of walking. If you didn't already buy comfy new shoes for the trip, it's probably too late: you'll never break them in before leaving, and the only thing worse than having bad shoes at VMworld is trying to break in a new pair of shoes.
• While you should always budget for evening meals (breakfast & lunch are provided in your conference fees—assuming you've got the stomach for it—along with light snack foods in the conference venues), if you end up having to buy anything for yourself to eat from Sunday evening through Thursday afternoon, you're either on a very strict diet or you're doing it wrong.
• First cozy up to your vendors; let them know you're going, and that you want to be informed of any events they have planned for the conference. Your regular salesperson isn't likely to be there—they'll be staying home trying to keep their commissions coming in!—but he/she should be able to get you on any lists for private events.
• Don't ignore the spam you receive from vendors doing a pre-conference marketing blitz. You might not want to purchase their products at this point, but listening to their pitch may be a small price to pay for a nice meal & drinks.
• Talk to your friends at other companies and folk you know through the local VMUG (you are a member, aren't you?) and trade invitations around.
• Some schedule highlights:
• Sunday: get registered—the lines will be huge, so plan to stand around a bit—and maybe hit the Self-Paced Labs. If you get in after registration, but before 7pm, consider going to the second annual "v0dgeball" tournament (register here). It's being held in the Sportscenter near the airport, so it might be easier to schlep directly over there on arrival rather than heading into the Strip and back after you check in. No word yet on whether there will be shuttle service, but if there is, you'll also save cab fare.
• Monday night, you'll drink & eat at the opening of the Solutions Exchange (vendor booths). This is the big first-night reception, and the vendors do a pretty good job of "pulling out the stops." This is the night when the best swag is given out, as well as a good opportunity to troll for entrance bracelets/bands for all the various parties being held on Tuesday night. This year, you can also add the CXIparty to your list of events; it's the party that's most congruent with the all-night feeling of Las Vegas.
• Tuesday night is Vendor Party Night. Nothing is explicitly scheduled for the conference, so most vendors do private parties that night. If you haven't received a half-dozen invitations to overlapping events, talk to your peers to get them. You can also use your time in the expo hall during the day to wheedle invitations. Don't worry about accepting multiple invitations; keep your options open and plan to migrate from party to party until you find one that serves the food you like or otherwise sits best with your temperament.
• Wednesday night is the big blow-out party for the conference, and this year The Killers will be performing. Dinner will be served. Keep an ear out for word-of-mouth invitations to after-parties. The Self Paced Labs guys have thrown a rave for the last several years—they actually have labs available during the party—and many other vendors do small-group events that you may have an opportunity to get swept up in.
• Drink lots of water. This can't be emphasized enough. Las Vegas is in the desert, and the venues you'll be in have the A/C set to remove almost every bit of humidity from the air. You'll lose lots of hydration just breathing, and if you consume any amount of alcohol, your body will need additional water to metabolize it. It's a joke that the biggest cause of a hangover is imbibing in the first place, but if you take that as a given, the second biggest cause is dehydration. I've learned to force myself to consume a bottle of water for every serving of alcohol I drink; yes, it makes you go to the head more often, but I've also never missed an 8am meeting the next morning because I was providing sacrifice to the local porcelain gods... Just don't drink a bunch of alcohol and try and offset it later with a bunch of water. Pace yourself and alternate from the very beginning, and your body will thank you later.
• Do bring a laptop with you. Don't bring it to the expo or breakouts unless you're a blogger with up-to-the-minute deadlines. If you're anything like me, you can get the most work done while working at your desktop, stay productive with an Internet-connected laptop, and love the portability of an iPad or smart phone. Keeping your laptop in your room will make it possible to answer those emergencies that inevitably require your expertise, yet leave you free to skip lugging it around with you. You will get a laptop bag as part of your conference registration, and it's best used for stuffing with give-aways.
• Other road-warrior tips:
• Pick up a $100 Apple Airport Express. These little gems transform a single, wired Internet connection in your hotel room into a whole-room wireless network that you can share among your various devices (laptop, iPad, smartphone) using a secure protocol like WPA2. You'll also end up with much better coverage than relying on hotel or conference-hall wireless.
• Instead of bringing multiple chargers for your devices, bring along a Tripp-Lite TRAVELER3USB. Not only can you share a single power outlet for charging several of your own devices, you may become a hero to your fellow travellers if you share a spare plug or two with them. Having the USB ports are a bonus, and unlike other mobile surge protectors, they have the 2A "oomph" to charge an iPad.
• An external battery pack can be a lifesaver when you're going to be away from your room all day and your smartphone doesn't go all day on a single charge. While you could always charge this stuff while in your room, these external packs are far more portable than a laptop, can be easily stuffed in a cargo pocket, and allow you to "top off" the battery on your phone while on the move.
• Pack a hoodie or other light jacket. Yes, it's the summer in the desert, but the conference venues are usually kept pretty cool to handle the heat-output of thousands of attendees; sitting in the breakout rooms can get uncomfortable if you don't have a layer you can add and remove as needed. Unless you're going to a high-profile meeting where you need to look your finest, there's nothing wrong with walking around the venues with a jacket tied around your waist (save the space in your backpack for the goodies!).

On the non-technical side...

Okay, the word is out. I can karaoke, and you don't have to get me drunk to do it.

I was at an industry conference for work, and the closing-night party was at a local micro-brewery. The bar had a nice selection of yummy beers, and they did a stand-up job in the kitchen. The half-dozen pool tables were busy with attendees, but the big draw for the private party, however, was the karaoke machine. While I was late to that part of the party—the weather outside was uncommonly nice for early August—I jumped right in to support the fun of the other attendees.

If you've never done karaoke, you should give it a try. If you have, you know that it's most fun when you get a whole group of folks—like a chorus—to perform songs that everyone will join in for.

But once you get warmed up, it's also energizing and exhilarating to find a song you know fairly well and can perform by yourself. I found She Caught the Katy by the Blues Brothers in the catalog, and did that one solo; I had a couple of dropped phrases—it's been a while since I listened to that song with any regularity—but on the whole, it was well-received.

And that kicked off a spate of other group songs where I was drafted to lead the chorus.

It was a lot of fun, and my previous theatre and voice training meant that I didn't lose my voice the next day even though most of the stuff we sang was a bit high for my natural range. I had my ego stroked a bit by all the compliments—which were very gratifying—but I also know that I'm gifted more with courage than musicality, so there won't be any "American Idol" auditions in the works.

VMware vSphere 5 Licensing—it's not all about vRAM

With the announcement of features and new licensing model for VMware vSphere 5 during a live+webcast presentation, much of the ensuing kerfuffle was aimed at the new licensing model, rather than excitement over the new features. I have to admit, I'm one of those folks who aren't happy with the licensing changes; to be fair, I haven't been happy with the licensing moves VMware has been making since the introduction of "Enterprise Plus."

I understand and can accept the rationale from VMware, including the way the vRAM pooling is supposed to work. I'm also the first to admit that I've got a bias in favor of VMware: I am one of the leaders of the Kansas City VMware User Group in addition to being a long-time customer.

No, my concern is the way VMware keeps tying specific "entitlements" (their term) to the various Editions of vSphere. In this case, I'm not just thinking of the vRAM entitlement—the piece that's generating all the outrage—but the features that are available accross editions.

VMware's licensing whitepaper gives a nice overview of the new model, as well as some examples of how the new model could work in practice, paying particular attention to the vRAM portion. My opinion is that VMware pays short shrift to the other, non-vRAM details that distinguish the different Editions of vSphere.
On the vRAM side: If you have a small cluster of 2-socket hosts with modest amounts of physical RAM (e.g., 96GB/host), you will be unimpacted by the new license model if you're already on Enterprise Plus (2 sockets x 48GB vRAM= 96GB); in this scenario—assuming you have current service-and-support contracts—you'll upgrade straight to the vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus licenses and be "off to the races." Your physical RAM won't ever exceed your entitlement, and if you're over-subscribing your guest memory, you're begging more problems than vRAM entitlements, because it also means you've not left yourself any wiggle-room for N+1 availability. In fact, if you're in that situation, you may have over bought from a vRAM perspective: A 5-host cluster with 10 sockets of Enterprise Plus has a pool of 480GB vRAM. If all those hosts have 96GB physical RAM, your N+1 memory allocation shouldn't exceed 384GB, so you wouldn't need a vRAM pool bigger than 384GB. You can't quite achieve that with 10 sockets of Enterprise (which has a 32-GB entitlement), but you can do it with 12 sockets, which is a tiny bit less expensive (list price) than 10 sockets of Enterprise Plus ($34,500 vs $34,950). Of course, that assumes you're pushing the limits of your physical hardware and not obeying the 80% rule. In that case, you could get away with 10 seats of Enterprise and save a pretty big chunk of cash.

My suggestion to VMware: consider two changes to the licensing model with respect to vRAM entitlements. 1) allow vRAM pooling across editions, rather than keeping it edition-specific. 2) create vRAM "adder licenses" so that organizations can add blocks of vRAM to their pools (without paying for all the additional features of a full processor license at any given edition). Doing both eliminates the need for different SKUs for editions as well as vRAM increments.

Back to the 5-host cluster example...

The problem with going the route of choosing Enterprise over Enterprise Plus just to manage the vRAM pool—and I'm certain that VMware has all this in mind—is that you must give up some pretty cool vSphere features (e.g., host profiles, dvSwitch) if you aren't on Enterprise Plus, including some new features in vSphere 5 (e.g., storage DRS). These features of vSphere make a lot of sense for smaller enterprises that have to watch every single dollar spent on IT, especially when shared storage (which, in my opinion, is the one thing that really makes virtualization sing) is probably the single most expensive item in a virtualization project.
In this case, I'd like to see VMware push some of these more interesting new features down the Edition stack. In general, anything that helps the business better utilize their (typically) very expensive storage investment makes sense. If VMware keeps the storage features at the most expensive end of the spectrum, organizations may be more inclined to consider alternatives for their perceived value rather than paying the premium for Enterprise Plus, especially now that there's the added burden of vRAM entitlements to consider.

iPhone Battery Life: use it or lose it?

I think most iPhone users have discovered that their little "magical" friend has a propensity for chewing through battery life like high-schoolers chew through Doritos. Tips and tricks for extending life abound, but all the ones I've read amount to disabling functionality of the phone or applications.

I accept that keeping the GPS receiver on at all times will be a big drain; there isn't a lot of value of keeping it on when I spend the majority of my day inside and away from windows that could allow reception.

No, the things I don't want to disable are important functions to me. Things like push messaging; that's why I have a smartphone in the first place: to stay in touch and have messages at my fingertips.

So I husband my battery use, and most days am lucky to get through it with at least 30% still showing in the indicator.

But over the holiday weekend, I noticed something: I was regularly staying above 50% by the end of the day. Curious. I wasn't using it any less; if anything, I was on it more, taking pictures, checking social media, etc. What was the big difference?

I think I found it, and you may find it a surprise...

I use Bluetooth (BT) for in-car hands-free and for my Sony-Ericson HBH-IS800 headset. I normally leave the BT radio enabled so the phone automatically connects with the car; the way Apple buried the BT controls in the Settings app is pretty annoying for quick or frequent BT enable and disable, so I take the lazy way and leave it on. And I normally leave the HBH turned off to retain battery life, so the normal state for the iPhone is Bluetooth On/Unpaired.

And that seems to be a huge battery drain; an even bigger drain than having a paired device connected to it.

Here's what happened: this weekend, I kept my phone in my pocket, but didn't keep the HBH with me; I left it plugged into its charger until time came that I might want to use it. I noticed at one point during the day that my phone was paired up with it, however; I didn't realize it could/would do that while charging. I also noticed that the phone wasn't chewing through the battery like usual. So I did a qualitative experiment: One day, I would keep the phone paired with my HBH at all times; the next day I'd keep it un-paired, as usual; and the final day, I'd actively enable and disable the BT radio whenever I actually needed it.

Again; this was qualitative, not quantitative: there are too many other variables at play to put real numbers to it. However, by the end of the experiment, I was convinced: If you want to extend battery life without turning off the BT radio (by far, the best choice), make sure it's paired.

As I understand it, it goes a bit like this: the preferred state for the device—when BT is enabled—is to be paired. With anything. If it's unpaired, the radio throws extra power into trying to see if one of its partners are "out there" trying to reach it. When it's paired—and able to readily "stay in touch" with the partner—the radio draws less power than when it's "seeking."

Rule of thumb: when it comes to BT power consumption, radio off < radio paired < radio seeking

VMware vExpert 2011

I'm not usually in to the chest-thumping thing, but I'm proud to have been selected as a VMware vExpert for the third year in a row (which also happens to be every year the award has been given).

While I like to think I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to VMware, the award is really a recognition of the work I've done to promote VMware—and virtualization in general—through my volunteer work on the leadership team of the Kansas City VMware User Group (kcvmug).

It's been great to be a part of the team that helped grow our VMUG from a couple dozen regular attendees to a group that regularly sees 80+ members at "regular" meetings and 400+ attendees at our annual all-day "regional" meeting.

My thanks go out to VMware for supporting the program, John Troyer for his "above and beyond" efforts to launch and add value to the program over the years, and his anonymous team of judges for giving me the nod. But most of all, I want to thank my fellow kcvmug leaders, past (Kevin Davidson, Ron Armstrong, Ryan Melton, Joe Adams) and present (Ben Clayton, Tony Lux); without you, the VMUG wouldn't be what it is today.

SQL Server Failover Cluster -- Add-a-node gotcha

This isn't the sort of thing someone does all the time, so you're bound to be surprised by one thing or another...

We run instances of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on hardware failover clusters (I'd love to run them all on VMware, but there are a number of reasons why we don't.). We had an occasion to replace the hardware for the nodes, and an associate & I were trying to get this accomplished.

Putting the 2 new nodes into the cluster was smooth as butter. That left me with a 5-node cluster (we were going to ultimately evict the older 3 nodes), and I set forth to add the new nodes to the first SQL instance on my list.

But I kept getting stopped by the "remote task will not start" error. I googled for a solution, and kept coming up with remote access issues: in essence, make sure you aren't using Remote Desktop to connect to the new passive node. I wasn't using RDP on any of the nodes, so I couldn't understand why it kept failing. Just about every combination of reboots and node selection was attempted. I made sure I was logged out from the new nodes. Still, no joy.

In final desperation, I logged out of all the nodes, not just the ones I was adding, then logged back in to the instance's active node and ran the setup from there. Voila! I was able to add a new node to the instance. For whatever strange reason, you cannot be logged into ANY of the nodes other than the one from which you're installing. Period. Not using RDP like they document, but also not using VNC or even the actual system console. NONE.