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Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.

Offline william_syd

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #30 on: January 30, 2008, 01:34:52 PM »
Conclusion: Vmware server on this host and this operating system supports Windows 32 bit systems but not Linux 32 bit systems. Not specificly related to SME 7.3 (The processor or the operating system ??)

Next step: Try to install Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit host system instead.

Comparision until now: All points to SME 7.3 virtual host system, zero points to Ubuntu.  :D

Host
william@william-ubuntu:~$ uname -a
Linux william-ubuntu 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 05:28:27 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux


Guest
[root@ubuntu-sme ~]# uname -a
Linux ubuntu-sme 2.6.9-67.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Dec 19 16:01:12 EST 2007 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


Host Specs

william@william-ubuntu:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 15
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600  @ 2.40GHz
stepping        : 11
cpu MHz         : 1596.000
cache size      : 4096 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 4
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 4


william@william-ubuntu:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:03.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express MEI Controller (rev 02)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IH (ICH9DH) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE6101 single-port PATA133 interface (rev b1)
06:02.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05)
06:02.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port] (rev 05)
06:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
william@william-ubuntu:~$


william@william-ubuntu:/proc$ cat ./meminfo
MemTotal:      3977380 kB
MemFree:         29160 kB
Buffers:         10644 kB
Cached:        3187820 kB
SwapCached:        492 kB
Active:        2261308 kB
Inactive:      1351236 kB
SwapTotal:    11647084 kB
SwapFree:     11608568 kB
Dirty:          105664 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
AnonPages:      413648 kB
Mapped:         359892 kB
Slab:           120244 kB
SReclaimable:    94080 kB
SUnreclaim:      26164 kB
PageTables:      15868 kB
NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
Bounce:              0 kB
CommitLimit:  13635772 kB
Committed_AS:   945488 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:     46100 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359691771 kB
william@william-ubuntu:/proc$
« Last Edit: January 30, 2008, 01:38:47 PM by william_syd »
Regards,
William

IF I give advise.. It's only if it was me....

Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #31 on: January 30, 2008, 03:31:27 PM »
OK, we give a few points back to Ubuntu, because it can obviously work  :D

What I belive is/might be the reason why it does not work here is the first generation Sempron 64 processor. (I think I have seen mentioned in the documantation of Vmware, somewhere that the Sempron processor, is not fully supported.)

Will give this PC a new try with the 32 bit Ubuntu.

Thanks a lot for that information. (I have some ideas to try with a little bit newer AMD Athlon dual core a little bit later on, and I would expect this to work.)

One other thing .. when doing virtualization on Ubuntu 64 is there things that runns qualitative different from what can be expected from doing the same virtualization using the SME server as host operating system ? Is a SME server running as a virtual installation on a 64 bit platform superior to a ordinary 32 bit native installation ? (32 bit on 64 bit processor and operating system sounds like something like "allmost a 64 bits SME server.) (Actually I will expect the difference is not to big, but I haven't tried yet.) 
« Last Edit: January 30, 2008, 04:02:04 PM by arne »
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Offline imcintyre

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #32 on: January 30, 2008, 03:44:06 PM »
Arne;

I have a question about a remark you made re not seeing practical application of sme server-gateway inside vmware. On reading one the other threads, I inferred that this setup was ideal because you could clone your server, experiment and test the new set up. If it works good, if not you just revert back to the old set up. If you got a setup that was the "best" you could clone it onto another machine.

Now I know that the other thread did not specify a server-gateway set up but it seems to be the most useful. I am curious if someone has it working. Any thoughts?

Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #33 on: January 30, 2008, 04:32:45 PM »
The virtual server-gateway inside the real server-gateway did start up for me, and I was able to access it from the internal virtual hub, but I was not able to make it communicate to lan or to internet, but yes it can be used for som kind of testing. (Other users might have obtained more functionality from the virtual server-gateway than me.)

Personally I think that the SME server-gateway is quite well suited to act as a host system, while the server-only variant is the best one to be running as a guest operating system, bridged over to the lan adapter.) (Becuse this is compatible with the SME firewall and it can give access to and from lan and internet like any lan server or client.)

From the Vmware documentation I can see that Vmware on Windows has some fine greined network configuration tools that is not on the Linux variant. If I should try to build up an environment for testing virtual gateways, etc I think I would have used Windows XP for this.

The virtual sme server-only is a very good alternative for testing (allmost) all kind of new contribs and to add on new functionality without messing up or affecting the host operating system in any way.

I am rather new to this stuff and other users might have an different opinoin.

I think that the sme server-gateway and the sme server-only is both good platforms for virtualization, but that the server-only connected via a bridge is the usable virtual installation.

I might see it different later on. 
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Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #34 on: January 30, 2008, 10:34:07 PM »
*****************

The first Ubuntu 64 installation with vmware server crashed when running a 32 bit Linux kernel, so I installed Ubuntu 32 with vmware and made some testing running SME server under Ubuntu 32/Vmserver 1.0.3.

After this testing I made a new attemt to use Ubuntu 64 again, but when starting a virtual 32 bit Linux kernel it crashed again with the message of incompability with my hardware (Sempron 64, S754)

My general conclusion is this:

Qualitative there is no difference if you run Vmware on a SME gateway or at a dedicated Ubuntu server. The avalable functions and the way you can use the virtualizaion is exately and identically the same. (Exept for performace). (And the functions you have available via the Vmware console are the same.)

Is there enybody on this forum that think that this conclusion is not correct ? It would be interssitng to know what the differences are, if there are any at all.
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Offline william_syd

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #35 on: January 30, 2008, 10:51:42 PM »
If I should try to build up an environment for testing virtual gateways, etc I think I would have used Windows XP for this.

Last time I looked vmware-server in not supported on WinXP as a host. It does work however.

fine greined network configuration tools that is not on the Linux variant.

Such as? Reference please.


I think that the sme server-gateway and the sme server-only is both good platforms for virtualization, but that the server-only connected via a bridge is the usable virtual installation.


I ocasionaly run a server-gateway sme guest on a server-only sme host for testing. Guest wan bridged to host lan. Guest lan to custom vmnet switch. An additional XP guest is also connected to the custom vmnet switch. All guest machines have internet connectivity.
Regards,
William

IF I give advise.. It's only if it was me....

Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #36 on: January 30, 2008, 11:34:44 PM »
About XP and Vmware server: I'm using 2 or 3 Vmware server installations at the moment, one at the sme gateway, one at a test server with different operating systems and one at my XP Workstation.

About fine grained control: I can see that there is something on the vindows wariant that is not in the Linux variant, but I have not fully tested it. I have seen som descriptions of these differences in the Vmware documentation, I wonder if it was not page 162 in the Virtual Machine Guide and further on.

About a virtual gateway: I was thinking about something like your description, and I tried to test it out on the real gateway, but for reasons I do not fully understand the virtual gateway lost internet connection, when natted in the one end and connected to the virtual hub in the other end. It was not a problem to connect to the virtual gateway from a virtual client on the virtual hub, but no internet connection via the nat connection.

Next: Will try to do some tests woth Centos 5.1 as houst, but I'm afraid my testserver is to poor (for the 64 bit things). Will the try to set up a dedicated Windows test host server to figure out differences between Linux and Windows, as host systems.
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Offline kruhm

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #37 on: January 31, 2008, 06:26:14 AM »
Real quick, have you tried XEN?

Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #38 on: January 31, 2008, 12:02:37 PM »
I belive I innstalled it by acceident when testing Vmware at Centos 5.1 (by selecting support for virtualization), but I have not testet it. Do you know some intersting info ?
« Last Edit: January 31, 2008, 12:04:40 PM by arne »
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Offline imcintyre

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #39 on: January 31, 2008, 01:41:43 PM »
I was looking at their site trying to figure it out and I had a hell of a time. My interest was related to another posting re "Openbravo".

If your interested, don't spend too much time here; http://www.citrixxenserver.com/Pages/default.aspx

I got a bit further here; http://xen.org/  But the manual, for me, wasn't exactly a model of clarity. Especially the "prerequisites", not exactly a how to for the linux challenged. At that point I bailed.

The wikipedia article claims that quite a few linux OS ship with support already, I'm tempted to look again.

Anyways if you know something more or I missed something in the above, let us know. Maybe start another post so this doesn't get tooo far off track.

Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #40 on: January 31, 2008, 03:25:54 PM »
Thanks for the info about and link to xen. I found their manual here: http://tx.downloads.xensource.com/downloads/docs/user/

It does not look like xen has a admin console or the wab based console like that the one of Vmware. (Is the Xen alternative a shell based console ?)

It would be instresting to test later on but firts impression is that this is a "newer" and not so developed produckt like Vmware when it comes to userfriendliness.

This information video from Xen is very informative, about Xen an about virtualization in general:
http://xen.org/media/xen/player.html

Some more info on xen on Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Xen

By the way, managed in the end to come up with Vmware running on a 64 bit operating system on the Sempron 2800 while using Centos 5.1 ..
« Last Edit: January 31, 2008, 05:58:33 PM by arne »
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Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #41 on: January 31, 2008, 04:06:18 PM »
Temporary conclusion after testing Vmware server on SME 7.3, Ubuntu 7.10 32 bit and Centos 5.1, 64 Bit, on relatively low end hardware (Athlon 4600 dual core, 4 Gig and Sempron 2800, 1 Gig).

1. SME server is far the most easy platform to get started with server virtualization due to the Vmware contrib.

2. Server virtualization works fine for the SME server when running as server-gateway and as server-only. For server virtualization it should be used bridge mode as the only comunication alternative. (The other alternatives is more confusing than usable.)

3. There is qualitatively no diffrence at all when it comes to how a Vmware virtualization works on a SME 7.3, a Ubuntu 7.10 or a Centos 5.1 Via the Vmware console you will have access to the identicaly same functions and "touch and feel" is idetically the same.

4. For low end hardware there is no difference in performance.

5. When doing the bridge mode comunication the virtual installations are 100 % compatible with the existing SME firewall and forwarding mechanism, so that the virtual installation will behave like any other lan server or client.

6. Virtualization will as a general rule be less effective than running the actual server process natively in the host operating system. Virtualization will consume more memory and (some) more cpu cycles than doing the same process natively. On the orther hand virtualization gives a bether "modularity" where it is possible to perform task that is different from the rest of the system (like a Windows client) and to do testing (of contribs) with little or no impact on the host operating system.

7. Virtualization makes it very easy to do a backup, as you can just make a copy of the complete virtual installation. (Like the Astlinux that fills only 68 Mb)

8. The implementation of Asterisk and iptelephony on the SME server can also be done via virtualization. For the Astlinux there is a prebuildt Vmware image that works perfectly. (The VM alternative.)

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170462&package_id=194573

9. Virtualization with Vmware server on SME server fits very well with the underlaying SME server philosophy as it will increase the ability to keep the host operating system simple and easy to manage, while new and customized functions (like a buildt in Windows client) is implemented via virtualization.

10. There is reasons and arguments to believe that virtualization via Vmware on SME 7.3 could also work well in a production enviroment.

11. My opinion: Vmware nat and Vmware private network should be deselected during installation/configuration. Bridging should be selected as the only alternative for network connection. Vmware web interface should not be installed. Reason: To keep changes and impact to the host operating system down to a minimum.


Am I right ? I'm courious if there is other testers/users/learners that have other ideas about this :)
(Just trying to learn and to understand.)
« Last Edit: January 31, 2008, 04:46:52 PM by arne »
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Offline arne

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #42 on: February 01, 2008, 01:37:39 AM »
I used some test and tries to get the Vmware installed on the 64 Bit Centos 5.1.

After I finished, I found a quite easy guide on the net that summs up what I actually did to make it working:

Step 1: Download VMWare Server
wget VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm

Step 2: Install vmware server
rpm -ivh VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm

Step 3: Install required files / libraries
yum install libXtst-devel libXrender-devel xinetd

Step #4: Configure VMWARE server
vmware-config.pl

Correction: The rpm that can be downloaded from the Vmware page has a slightly different revision.

If anyone like to try out SME 7.3 running on Centos 5.1, I guess this procedure will work.

http://www.jeremycole.com/blog/2007/07/26/installing-vmware-server-on-centos-5-64-bit/
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guest22

Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #43 on: February 01, 2008, 07:41:00 AM »
Step 2: Install vmware server
rpm -ivh VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm

Sure you don't want to use yum localinstall instead of rpm -Ivh?

Offline william_syd

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Re: Vmware - SME Windows virtual client - best practice.
« Reply #44 on: February 01, 2008, 10:03:37 AM »

Correction: The rpm that can be downloaded from the Vmware page has a slightly different revision.


All revisions are still available.

wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpm
wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm
wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.2-39867.i386.rpm
wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.1-29996.i386.rpm
wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.0-28343.i386.rpm


Some people have found this helpful when installing on other Linux versions.

Update Any

Quote from: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=2900261#post2900261
The vmware-any-any-update is an update for VMWare 3,4,5 or 6 workstation or player and for VMWare-server so they work with the latest version of the OS.

Regards,
William

IF I give advise.. It's only if it was me....