VCP course.. Woah!

Just got back from my vsphere 4 vcp course..

wow. fantastic course, and i had to dust away the cob webs in regards to switching etc due to the component about vswitches and port groups.

all in all, vsphere 4 is a great product and now that i know how esx 4 works, i can see why hyper-v will never be able to compete in terms of performance while its unlaying system is 2008 server - its just too big of a kernel.

not trying to start a vmware vs microsoft thread here.. just saying i can see the difference and benefits of both now.

anyway, im going to go off and start studying for the exam now.. o_0

the source of the redhat error - update

so it seems under further research that after a P2V of any linux machine, a rescue cd and repair install (excuse my windowish) needs to be done on the O/S to avoid that painful "kernel panic" error.

here's the catch for where i work - they dont have the media for RHEL 4 o_0


that means no rescue disk. they also have no login to the red-hat site to re d/l the file. anyone out there on the big wide net able to point me in the right direction here? should i call up redhat, or is there an alternative?

i've also tried an old fedora 2 cd - no dice. couldnt find the redhat operating system. any ideas?

edit: so, what do you do if you do get a rescue cd?

• Get an emergency boot CD ISO for your flavor of Linux and boot the new virtual machine from it. Often you can just boot from the installation image and then enter a rescue mode. For example for Redhat, you can type “linux rescue” at the boot prompt and get into recovery mode.
• It will search for Linux partitions and should find any you’ve restored to the machine. You’ll have the option to mount these. Do so.
• Now, use the chroot command to change the root of the file system to the root partition. Mount any of the other partitions that you need (e.g. /boot).
• Run kudzu to find any new devices and get rid of old ones.
• Use mkinitrd to create a new init RAM disk. This command should work:

  /sbin/mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-2.2.12-20.img 2.2.12-20
  

  Of course, you’ll have to substitute the right initrdname (look in /boot) and use the right version (look in/lib/modules).

Wow: Cataclysm

Yes, im a dirty filthy wow player, but i love it. :)


this week i paid for the blizzcon direct stream (online) and it was quite good - you basically got all the blizzcon panels filmed and if you missed something you could go back and watch it again with no problems.

overall, a very painless experience that i would willingly pay $50 again for. it was fair priced, there was a in-game pet insentive as well.

Ozzy performed as well - new guitarist and potentially new drummer as well. they sounded pretty tight, and ozzy looked a lot better than he has since the osbournes, during which he was on medication for a brain disorder(!)

oh yeah.. and there was a minor wow expansion announced. i joke. the amount of content they are fitting the game with is essentially retooling the game and re-releasing it. quite a risky move on an already successful formula, but this is blizzard we are talking about. they havent released a bad game since the lost vikings.

personally, i look forward to /y'ing chuck norris jokes between the newly-split-by-a-giant-earthquake-and-lava barrens.

PS3: fat princess micro review

in short...

it rocks. quite simply.

$25, online with little lag and a fun interesting game. its a nice change from WoW!

Vmware Fusion + RHEL = :(

Hey all,

Just spent all day wednesday converting across our physical servers over to vmware vsphere - everything went really well, apart from the linux boxes, but more on that later.

Win2k8 Dc's/dns have also been rolled out across the domain - this was because as we all know, dc's do NOT make good candidates for p2v'ed servers - as a result, new virtuals were created and AD roles migrated across to these servers. a good note here is that if you are doing such a thing, to keep in mind that there arent 3 roles you need to migrate, there are 5 - the two that trick you from the regular 3 found in the ADDS mmc are:

Domain Name Master

Schema Master

DNM can be taken from Domain names and trusts

Schema needs to be taken from the schema mmc plugin, which has to be installed by running schmmgmt.dll from the server you are moving the role from. then goto into mmc & add the "schema" plugin. then right click on the server, move roll.

Please give it at least two full replications before depromoting the old servers - this isnt a service you want to lose in any form.

Anyway, back onto the linux physical servers being converted - what the frell is with the linux support on Vsphere? i attempted to convert RHEL 4 server (no updates.. just vanilla RHEL) - the cold start CD found the operating system and i received a 100% completed job.

Apon starting the new virtual, kernel panics all over the shop. A simple google reveals that you need to run a linux rescue cd and tweek a few things. unfortunately, i couldnt do this as the rescue cd i tried to use (fedora 7, Fedora 2) were unable to find a red hat installation as a result unable to mount /mnt/sysimage.

so i'm still stuck on that server. im thinking that maybe i need the RHEL 4 rescue cd specifically, or disk 1 of the install - any insight into this would be appreciated.

it should also be noted that vsphere does support RHEL 4, and it also warns to use LSI as a SCSI controller rather than the Buslogic coontroller, as the Buslogic requires further drivers with a base O/S of RHEL 4 update 4 installed.

what a week!

it should be noted that next week im also doing the version 4 (vsphere) VCP course - hopefully i can pass on some good tips