shawnbass.com - Virtualization blog

Default location for VM creation in Virtual PC 2007

shawn@shawnbass.com — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:15:18 GMT

A client of mine has standardized on Virtual PC 2007 for desktop virtual machine needs (not for their VDI or Server VMs, but just simple desktop VM needs). They recently created a transform for customizing the default install, but after deployment noticed that there was one major issue with the package. The issue is that VPC picks a subfolder of "My Documents" named "My Virtual Machines" as it's default store location when creating a new virtual machine. This would obviously be a very bad choice when using Group Policy enforced managed folder redirection (just imagine how slow the VMs would be if they were stored on the network!, not to mention issues around home drive quotas, etc). Anyway, the packaging team couldn't find an option in the app, nor a registry setting anywhere to change the default folder location for this. Also, since we're dealing with a network location, you can't get by with a subst command or junction point. While I didn't know the answer myself, I figured Google might. After a quick search I came across a blog entry from Mr. Virtual PC Ben Armstrong. Ben states that the solution is to create a system environment variable named MYVIRTUALMACHINES and set it to a path on local disk. So as an example you could create a path named C:\VMs and then set MYVIRTUALMACHINES to C:\VMs. Thanks Ben!

Process Monitor has been updated to support the latest SoftGrid / App-V Release Candidate

shawn@shawnbass.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:24:00 GMT

I recently came across this blog entry posted on the App-V blog stating that Process Monitor was recently updated to support the new App-V Release Candidate that was just released last week. You can get version 1.35 of Process Monitor here. Also, did you know that you can launch the SysInternals tools directly from the web by visiting live.sysinternals.com Check it out, it's pretty helpful.

TechEd video describing new features in SoftGrid / MAV 4.5

shawn@shawnbass.com — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:39:35 GMT

Justin Zarb recently blogged about a video he found from a TechEd session where John Sheehan gave an overview of the new features in SoftGrid / MAV 4.5. I'd love to give all sort of nice comments about the video, but I'm plagued by the Silverlight Download Error 4001 so I can't even watch the video. Anyway, I'm passing it along in case you haven't seen Justin's blog entry about it.

NEWSFLASH! Application Virtualization does not shield you from your own stupidity...

shawn@shawnbass.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:43:38 GMT

I'm at a client side right now working on a large SoftGrid implementation project. I'm going through the motions sequencing applications when I came across one application from Reuters named StockVal. While I initially figured that this would be a slam dunk sequencing process, I discovered that it was anything but that. You see it's become apparent to me that application virtualization doesn't actually save you from your own stupidity. What do I mean by this? I mean that one of the biggest challenges with traditional software packaging is that packagers do stupid things. What kind of stupid things? Well here's some that I've personally solved over the last year:

1) Packager snapshots MDAC 2.5 RTM version registry key (the Data Access version key) and distributes said package to over 3,000 desktops. Those desktops that attempt to install anything that requires MDAC 2.7+ fail as they are stating that the machine needs MDAC 2.7. Well XP doesn't come with MDAC 2.5, so you begin to realize that the packager just made a mistake by not properly auditing their package for a mistake like this.

2) Packager creates an application package for some line of business app that requires Oracle. When they created the package, they neglected to audit the contents of the package and found that it included the System Path environment variable. Upon deploying that to workstations and Citrix servers, every single Oracle app ceased to function since Ora bin directory was no longer in the path.

3) Packager creates an application package for a line of business app. Packager neglects to utilize merge module and instead captures oleaut32.dll into the package. When desktops with this application were upgraded to XP SP2, Internet Explorer randomly crashes while using other applications.

Now all three examples I listed above are situations where someone used snapshot-like technology for package authoring and is largely not a problem when following MSI best practices. However, the whole point of application virtualization is that you do not have to be as careful when creating your packages because this situation isn't going to break other applications on the machine. While this is generally true, the question is can you be competely carefree about what you're doing while creating a virtualized application. The answer, of course, is no.

Here's the scenario. While sequencing this StockVal application I launched the application during the monitoring phase. I typically do not do this, though other SoftGrid experts do advocate executing the application during the monitoring phase. Why don't I like to execute during the monitoring phase? Because I've seen way too many applications that create user preferences on first launch that I often to not want to get captured in the sequence. If you're good about auditing your packages, you'll usually find these things and correct them before they become an issue. However, back to this application. I DID execute it during the monitoring phase. This particular application runs mostly remote node off a UNC share and contains some DAT/IDX files on that share that it accesses when it starts up. During the monitoring phase all was well and the application ran as expected. I completed the sequence and copied it up to the SoftGrid VAS server and imported it for publishing. Now on to app owner testing...

The app fell flat on it's face with some bizarre error message about the database files being corrupt or some such nonsense. I followed the traditional troubleshooting steps of creating a debug OSD and invoking it under the user credentials and verified that I could in fact get to the UNC path where the application was run from and that I could read the database files (the DAT/IDX) files off the UNC path. Hmmmmm....what's wrong here? I fired up FileMon/RegMon to look for anything suspicious. Everything in the FileMon/RegMon looked the exact same as it would for a regular execution of the app in a non-virtual form. Finally I jumped back into the sequencer to take a peek at the project file. In looking at the Virtual File System tab, it became immediately clear what went wrong. If you remember what I said earlier, I ran the application once during the monitoring phase to make sure it was working. The SoftGrid sequencer captured the access to the database files on the App Server's UNC and decided to virtualize that file I/O. When I then in turn tried to run this in a virtual form I was getting a "virtual" copy of the real database file instead of the real database file on the app server. Now, there are people out there that think that the SoftGrid sequencer shouldn't be capturing these types of items as the possibilities for damage are high. Since the sequencer does capture file I/O from network shares, my only advice is don't assume that virtualization safeguards you against your own stupidity. You still need to check your work... :)

Al Solorzano's review of Citrix XenServer 4.01

shawn@shawnbass.com — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:36:11 GMT

Al has a very nice overview of Citrix XenServer 4.01 and areas that it compares/differs to VMWare ESX. It's a great read.

Rocking Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V for $800US

shawn@shawnbass.com — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:19:37 GMT

A few weeks ago I set out to get a test rig running for lab VMs running under Citrix Xen and Server 2008's Hyper-V. However, my lab (READ: basement) already has 4 rack servers, a Citrix Access Gateway, several routers, a 1.5TB NAS, and a 3000kva UPS. I was a bit concerned that bringing another rack server that sounds like a jet turbine into the basement might be a bit too much for the boss (READ: wife)

Since I wanted this rig to be used only for lab VM (my prod VMs run on the redundant rack servers), I decided that a simple white box system with a good proc and sufficient RAM should do the trick perfectly. The biggest concern that I had was I knew that both Citrix Xen and Server 2008 Hyper-V require that you use 64-bit CPUs (not a big deal today) and a BIOS that supports setting Intel-VT or AMD Pacifica to enabled (this is the setting that will often leave you with a whitebox system that won't run Windows virtualization).

So I decided to roll my own whitebox solution that would allow me to experiment with Citrix Xen and 2008 Server Hyper-V for a low cost. I also wanted to get a system that was small and quiet. I'm a huge fan of Shuttle XPC systems and I have several of them in my home operating as HTPC systems (yet another "hobby" of mine). Shuttle systems are very well constructed, they are sleek, small and very quiet. It seemed like the perfect system to host my new lab VM beastie. Aside from wanting the system to be small, I also had a few other requirements:

Quad-core proc (while CPU isn't the biggest limitation on a virtualization platform, it certainly doesn't hurt to have extra. Only the newest models of the Shuttle systems support quad-code procs, so my choices were a little limited.
4 GB of RAM. I know from previous experience that many Shuttle's max out at 2 GB of RAM. So again, I needed to ensure that the system I chose supported 4 GB of RAM. RAM is the biggest limitation on a VM platform.
SATA/300 with enough disk space for plenty of VMs - SATA/300 is about the fastest IDE disk you can get and you'll need plenty of disk space if you want to run lots of VMs.
64-bit CPU support and Intel-VT or AMD-Pacific BIOS support. As I mentioned before, many whitebox systems don't have a setting in the BIOS to enable the hypervisor, without it you won't be able to run Hyper-V and you won't be able to run any Windows VMs under Citrix XenServer.

With these constraints, I settled on the following:

Shuttle SG33G5B Barebones Case and Motherboard - $294.99 from Newegg.com

Intel Core2Quad 6600 2.4Ghz Socket 775 OEM CPU - $260.00 from Newegg.com

Mushkin 4 GB (2GB x 2) DDR2 800Mhz Dual Channel RAM - $122.99 from Newegg.com

Western Digital Caviar 320GB 7200rpm 16MB cache SATA 300 hard drive - $89.99 from Newegg.com

Sony Optiarc Dual Layer DVD Writer SATA - $28.99 from Newegg.com

Total price: $796.96 US - I realize there will be shipping, but there were also rebates on some products, so you're still under $800US.

I assembled the system in about 10-15 minutes, but I'm pretty good at assembling Shuttles, so perhaps it might take a person new to Shuttle's 30-60 minutes, but they are very easy to work with. It's basically remove the case, case fan and ICE heatsink, install CPU and a little dab of CPU compound (use sparingly). Then attach the ICE heatsink and reattach the case fan. Then install hard disk, DVD, RAM and slap the case back on.

I've installed both 2008 Server RC1 (with Hyper-V Beta) and XenServer 4.1 Beta on the system, however I found out that the Marvell Yukon GB Ethernic NIC onboard on this system is not supported under Citrix Xen. I happened to have a RealTek 3189 10/100 NIC laying around that I popped in which was detected and supported properly for Xen. Server 2008 RC1 detected the Marvell GB NIC out of the box without having to load drivers. Also, for Citrix Xen to see the onbound SATA controller properly you need to set the BIOS to use Legacy mode instead of AHCI. The legacy mode works fine for both Xen and 2008. I presume the AHCI mode works for 2008, but I didn't bother testing it since I wanted to use both OSs. Also, don't forget to ensure the Intel-VT (Virtualization) support is enabled in the BIOS, as it's required for 2008 Hyper-V and Xen (when running Windows VMs)

My ultimate plan for this system would be to configure it as a dual boot configuration with Xen and 2008 Server, but I'm not entirely sure how easy that would be since Xen insists on blowing away all partitions and the MBR on the disk and 2008 Server must be installed into the primary boot partition. However, I'm going to keep after it to see if there's a way to do it. Ultimately even if you can't, it's pretty easy to stand up another system exactly like this for $800. Granted, it's not nearly as redundant or well performing as a rack mount server from Dell or HP, but then again it's a fraction of the price. For simple lab VMs, it fits the need perfectly.

In case someone is wondering, VMWare ESX 3.5 and 3i doesn't appear to work on this rig. The first limitation appears to be the NIC (it didn't detect either NICs and I didn't happen to have a supported NIC to try to see if I could get past that, but I presume the SATA storage would be the next issue. I know that ESX 3.5/3i supports SATA storage, but I think you need specific controllers. I could be wrong on that. To be honest, with VMWare you probably want to stick with a system on the HCL as it's pretty picky when it comes to drivers. Xen is based on CentOS and has more drivers, and Windows 2008, well you can't get many more drivers than that...

Microsoft publishes guide on how to implement SoftGrid 4.5 Beta

shawn@shawnbass.com — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:43:52 GMT

From the SoftGrid Team Blog I learned that Microsoft recently published a guide that provides information on how to setup Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (formerly SoftGrid) and how to implement the different modes of Streaming/Virtualization that are available in 4.5. The guide can be found here.

VMware Infrastructure v3.5 is released

shawn@shawnbass.com — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:48:19 GMT

VMware has recently released version 3.5 of their Virtual Infrastructure suite. This release proves yet again that VMware is king in the virtualization space. I'm not going to go into details of all of the new features as it's already been well covered on other sites. Here are two great overviews of the new features from VMblog and Virtualization.info.

Aaron Parker's final thoughts on Adobe Acrobat and SoftGrid virtualization

shawn@shawnbass.com — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:21:14 GMT

Aaron Parker posted a follow up article to his initial work in trying to get Adobe Acrobat 8 as a virtualized package under SoftGrid. It seems as though Aaron has decided that it's just not going to be practical to deploy Acrobat via SoftGrid as there are a lot of technical issues that involve separation of the app and it's not practical for real world deployment. What's interesting about this is that Aaron was able to get Acrobat 8 working in Altiris SVS.

SoftGrid Operations Guides post on SoftGrid Team Blog

shawn@shawnbass.com — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:15:25 GMT

Brian Kelly has posted a two part series titled "SoftGrid Operations Guide" on the SoftGrid Team Blog. This two part guide covers some topics that would be useful to any SoftGrid admin such as moving a Softgrid datastore, publishing apps in Citrix, how to preload applications, etc. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.