h0bbel.p0ggel.org

VMware has announced the availability of a new version of VirtualCenter, specifically designed to manage VMware Server. This enables SMB customers to manage several instances of Virtual Server from one single console, and set up alerts based on CPU utilization etc. These features were only available for the enterprise VI3 customers until now.

VMware VirtualCenter for VMware Server is designed and licensed for use exclusively with VMware Server. The new virtualization management bundle, which includes one VirtualCenter management server for VMware Server with three agents and enterprise-class support including unlimited 30-day support from VMware, has a VMware list price of $1,500 and is expected to be available this week from VMware and VMware resellers. Additional agents can be purchased for a VMware list price of $400 per physical server managed.

Read the details in the Press Release

Live View is a Java-based graphical forensics tool that creates a VMware virtual machine out of a raw (dd-style) disk image or physical disk.

LiveView, which is still in it's beta cycles, lets you boot an image or physical disk inside a virtualized VMware Server session, but without tampering with the image or disk. It writes changes to a scratch file, and to be 100% sure that changes are made it can even boot a write protected image.

Very interesting, and an extremely good idea and if used correctly it'll end up as an excellent P2V tool as well.

Christian Hammond, one of the VMware Server developers, has posted a blog entry about the recently announced Gallery Appliance. I really liked this section:

I think this is awesome and I hope it works out well for them and for the users. I’d love to see more projects go this route, and with any luck, Gallery will have set a precedent in the web services world. And for the developers creating these appliances, please feel free to let us know what VMware could do to make your lives easier

And as for ESX support, we haven't tried it either. I will though, as soon as the new ESX servers are ready at work.

Anyway, thanks Christian, we appreciate the comments and kind words. Any feedback we might have, we'll be sure to send it your way.

Read his blog entry here.

During my setup of VMware server on a clients server I ran across a problem I've never seen before. After successfully installing VMware Server and setting up a quick VM for test purposes, time had come to demo the new setup to the client.

I installed the VMware Server Remote Console on his desktop computer, and tried to connect to the server. I managed to connect, but no matter what I tried I got hit by "There was a problem connecting: Login (username/password) incorrect". I knew that wasn't the case, after all I had just installed the new server using the same administrator username and password VMware server was rejecting. The exact same error was presented if I tried to logon via the web interface too.

After I while I managed to figure out what the problem was. The administrator password contained some characters from The Extended Character Set (namely norwegian characters). For some reason VMware Remote Console refused to accept the password as long as one or more of these characters were present in the password. The same might apply with usernames as well, but I haven't verified or tested that at all. The administrator password was changed, and everything went smoothly from there on.

When I came back home I figured I should have a look at the VMware site and see if someone else had reported similar issues, to verify that VMware was aware of it, and if not submit it as a bug. Amazingly enough I could not manage to figure out how to view submitted bug reports, nor instructions on how to submit one. Even the site search engine (attempt #1, attempt #2) was unable to enlighten me on how I should proceed.

I might very well be a bit pampered with openess regarding outstanding bugs and bug reports from my experience with open source software like Gallery, but there should at least be some way for me as a user to submit a bug to the VMWare team?

I know that people at http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/blog/ reads this site, as they have linked to it a couple of times. Hopefully they'll notice this one too.

So, this is my bug report:

1. Extended characters in passwords (Windows Server 2003 SP1 Domain) returns a "(username/password) incorrect" error, even if the password is correct. This behaviour has been experienced in VMware Server 1.0, Build 28343, and applies to both VMware Remote Console and the VMware Server Web Interface. It does not apply when using the VMware Console locally when authenticated by Windows locally.


2.Please make it possible, or if it indeed is possible make it easier, to submit bug reports from the VMware site. I could not find a way for me to submit this bug to you directly.

I just stumbled upon a rather interesting article on InfoWorld Virtualization Report that outlines a method of using free software to provide virtualized desktops to end users.

2X, a thin client computing software manufacturer, has published a whitepaper (pdf) outlining such a scenario. Basically it describes how you can use VMware Server and 2X ThinClientServer PXES edition to re-use old hardware and centrally manage RDP or NX terminal servers client settings enterprise wide. The free edition does not provide Citrix ICA access or support, thats left for the commercial edition.

All in all it looks very appealing, but you will need to run a pretty powerfull server, or even servers, if you want to virtualize dozens of desktop machines on it. I wish 2X had given some kind of indication on what hardware they envision this solution running on, and not just "Hardware specification, will depend on the number of virtual machines you intend to run.". I'm sure they could have given a baseline for Windows XP with Office 2003 and a few other fairly standard office applications. The best thing here is that license costs of the solution is down to the base client OS licenses and any applications that might be needed inside the virtualized desktops, as you could run the VMware Server and the 2X ThinClientServer solution on Linux.

I'll definately need to setup a test lab for this real soon.