Topic: VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2

[paulsnz]

I've have successfully installed and run Vmware 2.0 beta on my new install of 7.3 simply by following http://wiki.contribs.org/Vmware and substituting http://www.vmware.com/beta/server/index.html
After registering and getting a serial number ..
(http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-e.x.p-63231.i386.rpm)  for the 1.0.4 rpm.

all went smoothly apart from not needing the separate UI module (the VIX web based management/console (java I think)) is part of the main Vmware rpm.

this line contributed as part of "smeserver-vmware-server" is not required... other than that the ports used are the same as in the contrib.
(ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/e-smith-service /etc/rc7.d/S91httpd.vmware)

After the install i noticed top showing "vmware-vmx-debug" process was quite high, after a google search..
on the Vmware communities site

How to disable debug mode:

cd /usr/lib/vmware/bin
mv vmware-vmx-debug vmware-vmx-debug.old
ln -s vmware-vmx vmware-vmx-debug
mv vmware-remotemks-debug vmware-remotemks-debug.old
ln -s vmware-remotemks vmware-remotemks-debug

now everything is fine..

I did a 6.0 to 7.0 upgrade as documented here http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=35095.0
Thanks to RayMitchell
I have upgraded several of my sites from 6.01 to 7.3 without uninstalling some custom contribs and all have been successful.!

this server upgraded from the old server leaving the Vmware install alone "as it should" the Vmware appliance feature is tremendous! 

This is a production server! and is rock solid
2 x dual core 280 opterons, 8Gram, 2 x 1Tb Sata software raid1 with a couple of 10K scsi drives mapped as ibays for faster data and a separate drive for the Vm's to run from. The old 6.01 sme was a dual P3-500 with 1G ram! .

cheers

[kmac]

You state that you are using 8 gb of memory on your server.
I thought since SME 7.3 was a 32 bit OS it would only see a max of 4 gb of memory.
Are you able to see 8 gb of memory in your installation?

[Marco Hess]

In x86 mode Centos 4 handles up to 64G of memory and Centos 5 up to 16GB of memory (see http://www.centos.org/product.html).

The limitation of 4GB is on a per process/application basis, as within the process, only 32bits are used to address the application code and data space. So as long as individual virtual machines are less than 4GB it should be fine but in Centos 5 this limit is reduced to about 3GB per process as the x86 "Hugemem" kernel is not provided in CentOS 5.

Marco

[p-jones]

Paulnz

Thanks for sharing the info re VMWare Beta 2.0. For me, your comments are very helpful.

I am a little curious as to the hardware you are using to support 8Gb RAM also. Finding decent hardware suitable for an SOHO server that will support that amount of memory seems to be hard to find. Of those that I have looked at so far, MB's with 4 x DDR2 slots seem to be unhappy with the 2Gb RAM modules !!

I guessed most were directed towards the 32bit Windows platform with a 4Gb limit

Thanks
Peter (AK-land)

[paulsnz]

I brought 2 Tyan  servers from ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260210191325 for $420US each $1400NZ landed..  they were brand new or hardly used!
They are of older generation but have great thruput,  there are some great deals to be had..?. I prefer Opterons.?
then I got some more ram http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140215751383  $260Us $360NZ landed.

I retro-fitted 2 x 1Tb (32M)sata2 drives into the pci card area of the 2U case $NZ400each. I would use 750G for the other server as they are only $180each!

I installed  SME7.3 and used software raid..HW raid is avaliable but for portability between other hardware, software raid is for me.

only one issue    I have with the tyan board is that the on-board 10/100 intel pro is detected by SME but doesn't seem to want to work!
I was hoping to Bond the 2 Gigabit on board LANS and use the 10/100 as the gateway port, but for now use one gigabit for lan, one for wan!

The LAN hardware tested OK, as I installed winxpro64 initially and that was going to run SME as VM with VirtualBox or vmware.
Because of how long windowsxp64 takes to install and the fact that it needs a large (basically re-install) service pack 2 before its any good!
Made me realize that SME is by far away the best OS! ever! .

The Tyan MB is only sata1 but performance is great. (hdparm -t gives 70MB/sec on the sata's and  82MB/sec on the 10K SCSI drives.)
The tyan has 8 scsi bays so upgrading might happen when scsi drives become cheaper??..Although It looks as if manufactures are phasing out Parallel scsi in favor of SAS (sata scsi)

The SME is installed on the sata drives, I mapped some ibays to one scsi drive and put the vmware files on the other..
backups are on a couple of external usb drives, the usb are version 1.1 but data backup at night with rsync is not a big deal!

SME 7.3 supports 8Gram thru PAE in the kernel...I didn't have to tell SME that it was there?

I have server2003 running AD and terminal server at moment, Have allocated 2 Vcpus and 2g ram to it
need to put some load on it to see performance/reliability??
I have the koha library vm running as well

cheers for now

[paulsnz]

My standard SOHO servers I build use 2g ram modules no problems?  various motherboards...ALL AMD single/dual/3/4 core? not an issue!
As I said before basically if SME will install on a particular MB then with that MB I can install the hard drives out of another machine (software raid) and SME will then auto probe on startup leaving me only to select the appropriate LAN cards and I have a woking copy!.
 So far!?

cheers
Paul

[groutley]

Hi, I have installed VMware Server 2.0 beta also,  although using the slightly later release..
VMware-server-e.x.p-84186

All works great except for ONE thing...
I am running a w2k3 Server guest,  and it also works well.
but when I shutdown and reboot SME,
my VMware guest OS does not get the ethernet 'bridged' interface given to it automatically.

I have selected for this VM to start automatically and In the VM settings the 'Network Adapter' is ticked for 'Connect at Power on'
but every time I power on that VM (Auto or manually)  the Network adapter has an 'x' over it,
if I edit the interface and click the 'connect' button it works fine  until the next power up of the VM.

Hoping this might be something I have done wrong, or if anyone knows how to sort this one out ..

Thanks
  Glen