Virtually Prepared

Parallels Desktop for Mac – first impressions

dawoo — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:35:41 +0000

I see an advert or reference to Parallels Desktop for Mac in my monthly subscription of Mac Format magazine. At least once a year there’s a review of VMware Fusion in this magazine with references to the Parallels offering and how close they always seem to be in terms of performance.

Of those of you that know me will remember that I’m a huge fan of VMware products since my introduction to them in 2005 so to begin to even think of using something else is huge wrench from my bubble of safety. Even after this pull from utopia I can say I’m no worse off, have been pleasantly surprised and am enjoying life ‘on the other side’.

Over the past week I’ve been using my spare time to run up a few virtual machines, compare the ‘to the eye’ performance and see how the user experience feels. I’m using nothing more than a Macbook 13″, 2ghz CPU, 2GB RAM, 250gb 7200k RPM disk running OSX Snow Leopard with the latest patches.

This post is by no means an in depth review but just my observations from curiosity.

The Mission

I set about testing 2 operating system installs, Windows XP (still the choice for performant VMs on a desktop) and the resource hungry / desktop killer that is Windows 7.

I completed a virtual to virtual migration from Fusion to Parallels.

Used Parallels in favour of Fusion for a few days to better grasp the features.

Install of Windows 7

Using a TechNet x64 ISO on an external USB drive I rattled off an install of the operating system in 15 minutes with Parallels compared to 20 minutes in Fusion. Ok, be clear about this, no stopwatch was ticking and I was responding to the installation prompts manually. Rest assured I was still diligent on the responses without dragging out the screen input times.

This doesn’t make for much benefit given the amount of times you install a bare OS, we’re not talking a VDI deployment but still, a noticeable difference.

Interestingly the recurring comment within the Mac Format review states Windows 7 runs quicker in a virtual machine under Parallels over Fusion but I have to say using the bare operating system it performed the same. Admittedly I didn’t install and run applications but from a starting point both were on a level par.

Install of Windows XP

Using a TechNet x86 ISO on an external USB drive I completed a working installation in 30 minutes. Fusion delivered the same working installation in the same time.

Virtual to Virtual migration

I imported 2 virtual machines from Fusion. Windows 7 and Windows XP. Both transitioned across successfully with excellent guidance throughout their wizard.

In summary…

The creation and migration of a virtual machine is more than just a wizard prompted process. Post build screen tips draw your attention to features in the guise of Apple Widget style applets. For the new user there’s no excuse not understand and explore the new features without having to even look at a manual.

Using Parallels

Aesthetics

There’s no competition as to which product looks and feels better. The Parallels user interface, transitions, menus and attention to detail leave Fusion in the locker room in the aesthetics running race (yet to be officially recognised in the 2012 Olympics). It’s arguable it shouldn’t be judged by it’s appearance but for an end user this makes the product more desirable and enjoyable to use.

One of the interesting attentions to detail is the insertion of a virtual machine ‘thumbnail preview’ in the Parallels icon when you switch between applications using ‘Apple’ + ‘Tab’. You can preview your operating system without switching to the host application. That’s nice.

There are no bells and whistles with VMware’s Fusion during the navigation of the user interface or while configuring a virtual machine. Ultimately this increases the interaction time although I found it was no quicker than revealing the similar configuration screens.

Considering the user

The configuration of a the virtual machine covers the core concepts you’d expect. Where Parallels add value is to the Mac user experience. The layout and options have been well thought out and applied as to how the user will make the most of the virtualisation application as a useful tool rather than an ‘another’ application.

As an example, I’m using the View feature Modality as I type. I only have a single screen and don’t want to keep switching back and forth to see how my virtual machine is building. I look to my top left to see a faint blended in version of the virtual machine, fully active, above. Excellent.

Virtual machine feature highlights

I found some interesting features that personally contribute to my experience and how I use my desktop virtualisation solution. A few screen grabs below that took my eye upon first use.

Virtualisation Tools

Optimal performance within a guest operating system is achieved by installing the virtualisation tools. I really like the countdown timer feature on the Parallels Tools install. You instigate the installer but forget to click through the wizard? Well the buttons accept for you after 10 seconds elapse. Easy.

VMware – take note.

Time Machine

Backup time is important as is the data you store.

Time Machine Include / Exclude

Rather than excluding directories manually with Time Machine, this takes the pain out of it. Ideal if you back up all your working virtual machines but don’t want quick development / test ones captured.

Optimise the virtual machine AND your host

Balancing the resources your virtual machine demands is very important. Choke your host and the virtualised experience is ruined.

Optimisation for the host (click for a full image)

The option to Tune Windows and balance the utilisation between host and virtual machine offers greater control of the desktop experience.

Pause an idle virtual machine

I couldn’t resist to enable this feature, this is really a ‘nerd knob’ but still it has a use.

Pause an idle VM (click for a full image)

This works, well sort of. I had my Windows XP VM running a Newsgroup tool downloading files in full screen mode. When I minimised the application to the tray (an application feature) the VM paused. Hmm.

Desktop convergence

I mentioned earlier in this post about the view feature ‘Modality’ and how I was using it. Here’s a quick view of the blended view (you may want to choose the larger screen grab).

Modality, VM building in background (click for a full image)

Tuning the combined Mac desktop and guest Windows desktop is also an option.

Appearance tuning (click for a full image)

Upping the Video RAM

Easy slider scale to increase the video RAM.

Video Configuration (click for a full image)

No need to edit the virtual machine configuration file here – VMware take note.

Secure the Virtual Machine

I can see in a small office supported by a ‘light’ IT presence the Isolation, Exit Full screen and importantly Manage Snapshots could be a big win.

Security Options (click for a full image)

Conclusion

In the past 7 days (I have 7 days remaining on my trial) I’ve throughly enjoyed my Parallels experience. It’s a great application, slower to initially load than Fusion but far quicker to close. The virtual machine operations (standby, snapshot, etc…) appear to perform better than Fusion for the machines I’ve used.

I’m sold on the screen transitions, the virtual machine configuration options and still by far the most useful is feature for a single screen is Modality.

I notice there’s an option on the Parallels website to upgrade to their software for VMware Fusion users too, there’s a link at the bottom of this page.

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/whyswitch/switchfromvmware/

vCenter Roles & Permissions Export / Import scripts

dawoo — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:18:18 +0000

A recent request came through to assist with the post build procedures of a large ESX and vCenter rollout. One task was to remove the manual effort to create and assign the Roles and Permissions within vCenter.

After sifting through my pile of scripts I took to the web and headed straight for Alan Renouf’s website http://www.virtu-al.net/ . As you would expect there was an example originally instigated from a community discussion, the exact page is here, http://www.virtu-al.net/2009/06/15/vsphere-permissions-export-import-part-1/

I extracted the code but couldn’t actually get it going due a syntax error message which I didn’t understand (I admit I’m a novice at scripting). Not wanting to be beaten I took to the web again and posted within the VMware PowerCLI forum, original post here http://communities.vmware.com/thread/280803?tstart=15 . Another scripting guru leapt to save the day, Luc Dekens (his website http://www.lucd.info/ is packed full of useful information too).

Luc’s explanation (in the forum thread) and minor amendment brought the script to life.

I take no credit for the work here but I find the scripts incredibly useful.

Files can be downloaded here: EXPORT IMPORT

(Updated) - Menu selection

Here’s an additional import script that displays a list of options to allow for imports in a multi-vCenter mixed environment.

Import Options

File can be downloaded here IMPORT2

VMware Twitter accounts

dawoo — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:32:04 +0000

To keep up to speed with all things VMware using your Twitter account start following these accounts:

Information and Events

@vmware
@vmwareblogs
@vmwarecares
@vmwarekb
@vmwarecareers
@vmwareevents
@vmworld
@planetv12n
@vmware_partners

Products and Solutions

@vcloud
@vmwarevsphere
@vmwareview
@vmw_workstation
@vmwarefusion
@springsource
@zimbra
@vmwarearmy
@vmwarelabs
@vmwarevroom

Now get adding.

VMware HA does not replace MSCS

dawoo — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:50:47 +0000

There seems to be a mis-conception that the VMware HA (High Availability) component gives application level available near-zero downtime. In a recent document review I found a reference touting it to be better than Microsoft Cluster Services and could replace the MSCS offering. Err, let’s have a look at the differences.

Why VMware HA isn't MSCS

I could go on but the point I’m making here is that VMware HA IS NOT application aware. VMware HA caters for ESX host loss from the network and can, if enabled, check if a virtual machine is still running by checking VMware Tools (heartbeating).

Microsoft Cluster Services IS application aware. It’s aimed at the high end / high service availability applications such as MS Exchange or MS SQL.

If you can’t suffer application downtime choose the MSCS and stick it in VMware although I would highly recommend reading the VMware and MSCS documentation first – there are caveats.

VMware KB Article 1004617 aligns the support statements of VMware ESX versions to Microsoft Cluster Services

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004617

(steps down off soap box)

VMware Health Analyzer 3 – hotfixes

dawoo — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:52:48 +0000

One of my colleagues recently undertook a VMware HA review and stumbled upon a couple issues after collecting the information and preparing the scorecard. So, if you’re like me and have this installed ready on your laptop you’d be advised to apply these patches.

[Note :- this is only applicable to VMware authorised Partners]

Patch 1 : http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/rlspsrl/patches/vha30-base562-hotfix1

This happens when the vSphere environment contains a vNetwork Distributed Switch with distributed portgroup enabled for either FT or VMotion or management functionality. This configuration results in failure of one of the rules that determines the portgroup sub type (whether the portgroup is FT or VMotion or Management), due to null pointer exception.
Note: If the vDS contains only VM portgroups or VMKernel portgroup but not enabled for FT or VMotion or Management, then analysis will go through fine.

Patch 2: http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/rlspsrl/patches/vha30-base562-hotfix2

Known issue reported from the field and we are in the process of making an official patch soon. This happens when the vCenter server machine has all VMware products installed on non default install locations. This means vCenter and as well as VMware Tools are not installed under “C:\Program Files\VMware”. This results in vCenter not generating a diagnostic file (when ‘export diagnostics’ command is issued), which results in VHA analysis error. We created a hotfix to handle this issue that lets VHA go ahead with analysis bypassing the missing diagnostic file.

To apply a hotfix follow,

Download the hotfix file.
Start the HA interface via your web browser.
Select Admin then Patch.
Restart the HA Appliance (if you don’t the patch will not take effect).

That’s it.

vCenter 4.5 referenced in ESXi 4.1 script

dawoo — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:19:32 +0000

While troubleshooting this little gem…

ESXi 4.1 vCenter agent reaches 90% then fails

(The KB article referred to isn’t a fix to this exact issue and I’m still investigating)

…I stumbled upon an interesting entry in the BASH script /opt/vmware/VMware-vxpa-uninstall.sh

This entry can be seen in /opt/vmware/VMware-vxpa-uninstall.sh

vCenter 4.5 eh?

When, where, soon? Oooh.

Snapshot failure with mixed block size datastores

dawoo — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:59:51 +0000

The default action with VMware ESX(i) when applying a snapshot is to create the relevant snapshot files in the working directory of the virtual machine. In an environment using VMFS datastores with a single block size across all LUNs this works fine however; where datastores exist for specific applications requiring large VMDK files an issue can occur.

Scenario

datastore-1 formatted with 1mb block size for VMDKs < 256gb hosting a virtual machine ‘C:’ drive, circa 40gb.

datastore-2 formatted with 2mb block size for VMDKs > 256gb & < 512gb hosting a virtual machine ‘E:’ drive, circa 350gb.

VMware VCB or an administrator (in this case Mr Snappy) issues a snapshot.

Mr Snappy with the VMware Admin handbook

The snapshot will fail to apply and return an error to the VI client console or to VCB.

The resolution

A new datastore will need to be created and formatted with a block size equal to the datastore where the large VMDK file resides. Power down the guest operating system / virtual machine then add an additional line to the virtual machine VMX file, this being:

workingDir=”/vmfs/datastore-name/”

Finally, the virtual machine will require re-registering. Either remove it from the inventory then browse the datastore to add it back in or use the vmware-cmd -s at the command line. Whichever way you feel more comfortable with. If you’re not using the vMA but need the command line for ESXi see this article to get an SSH console.

Further reading can be found within VMware KB article 1002929.

VMware VCAP outline in 3 pages.

dawoo — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:08:27 +0000

There’s a lot of discussion in the community regarding the new VCAP Beta exam. If you’re not sure what this VCP potential step up is here’s a 3 page headline review.

JPEGS or PDF at the bottom.

VCAP Page 1 of 3

VCAP Page 2 of 3

VCAP Page 3 of 3

PDF version HERE

VCB fails due to System Recovery Partition

dawoo — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:09:48 +0000

The 100mb Windows 7 and Windows 2008 System Recovery Partition typically sits as the first partition on a disk which is enough to confuse VCB and cause it to fail, so it needs to moved (not removed) and here’s how.

Before running this in the live environment the virtual machine should be powered off AND backed up, of course I know you’d do that anyway.

Steps to follow:

Power on the virtual machine and log in with an administrative account.
Open a Command Prompt.
Type diskpart and press ENTER.
Type select vol c and press ENTER.
Type shrink desired=100 and press ENTER.
Type list vol to verify that volume C is still selected and press ENTER.
Type Create Part Primary and press ENTER.
Type List vol to verify that the new 100mb volume is selected and press ENTER.
Type Format fs=ntfs quick and press ENTER.
Type Assign letter r and press ENTER.
Type Select vol 1 (1 is typically the existing boot partition

How to SSH and SCP on ESXi

dawoo — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:03:12 +0000

VMware’s ESXi offers a lightweight, powerful and securely tightened hypervisor which quite frankly comes from the school of “It just works”. However there are times when you need quick access to the console rather than firing up an iLO session to simply SCP a file from one DC to another at host level.

Anyway, whatever the reason here’s how to get PuTTY access to an ESXi host and enable SCP.

At the ESXi console (local or via iLo) perform the following:

Press ALT + F1, (the screen will clear)
Type “unsupported” and press ENTER (without the quotes), note – the text will not locally echo
Provide the ‘root‘ password and press ENTER
cd /etc and press ENTER
Use ‘vi‘ to edit inetd.conf
Remove the ‘#” from the beginning of the SSH lines
Save and quit
Type services.sh restart and press ENTER
Type? ps aux | grep inetd to get the Process ID
Type kill -HUP Process ID

Done.

Remember to edit the /etc/inetd.conf file after you’ve finished to return it to the default state.