Tag Archives: Cloud Computing and Virtualization

Creating Debian Squeeze Xen image for Cloudmin

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4 days since this article was written, Debian Squeeze was officially released (as current STABLE). And one of the things I was excited about was the full support of Xen 4. Upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze was easy as 1,2,3 but after I configured my newly “fresh installed” Squeeze Xen server I was bit surprised that there were no (based on several hours of googling?) “free” downloadable Xen images for Squeeze though I found this site that exactly offers the same images but its not free (thought it was always an OpenSource eih?). So I decided to make my own.

Cloudmin GPL is really awesome! (and of course my all-time favorite Webmin), it saves me a lot of time creating and managing Xen guest servers because I’m not really a hardcore Unix guy you know (btw I ‘m a Windows Sysadmin and .NET developer right?) that is why I stick to GUI as much as possible. Anyway here is the trick to make an instant Squeeze Xen image.

1. You must find a way to get a fresh and clean Squeeze environment to be use as your base image. There were lot of ways to do this, in my case I used my VMware Workstation 7 to setup and make Debian Squeeze (using the debian-6.0.0-xxx-netinst iso file downloaded from debian website).

2. After successfully setup a fresh OS turn it off (be sure to Power Off, do not suspend).

3. Get the VMware Virtual Disk drive file of the Squeeze you created in VMware (just find it in your computer -> or check it in your VMware settings).

4. Copy the file to your Xen/Cloudmin server (in my case the file is Debian Squeeze.vmdk).

5. You must convert the file first to xen compatible format. To do this You will need the qemu-img disk image manipulation tool. You can install using-> apt-get install qemu

6. After successfully installing the tool, run -> qemu-img convert -f vmdk vmware_image.vmdk -O raw xen_image.img

7.  Then rest of it will be in the cloudmin.

8. Login to your Cloudmin using the root account (unless you made a user that has enough privileged to create new images its fine).

9. Go to Cloudmin Settings -> New System Images.

10. Click the Create Image for Xen link at the lower right part just above the Download Selected Images

11.  In the details form, select whole disk as Image file format then Debian Linux in Operating System. Specify the location of the converted image file you made before in the Image Source textbox. You have the option also to put the processed image to the Cloudmin storage location after, but in my case I didn’t selected it cause it gets me trouble looking the file after. Please put the unique ID of the image you wanna create and also DO NOT USE SPACE! You can only do that on the description box below. I highly recommend to compress the file to save disk space.

12.  After reviewing the settings, Click Create button below. It will start processing so be patient.

13. When it successfully finished You can now start creating your new Xen “Squeeze” guest systems. Congrats!

Microsoft RemoteFX VMware and Virtualbox issue

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Yesterday I was really excited when I got the RC release of Service Pack 1 of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to test the new feature they added which will be a promising technology called RemoteFX. This new technology will impact those users who always or frequently uses Remote  Desktop to access their system. One of my(and others for sure) current problem with Remote Desktop is the way it communicates with the system being remotely accessed. I won’t explain technically how it works but the thing is with todays technology applications tends to be more and more complex in a way on how it presents its user interface (UI). Example of this is applications built with Windows Presentation Foundation or WPF. Since most of the UI layers built are Double Buffered, when you view the application inside Remote Desktop it shows significant performance degradation because the way it renders comparing the same application when you run it physically on the system it was installed. RemoteFX will eliminate that issue and improved UI responsiveness. In fact, you can play those high graphics games now via Remote Desktop.

The Bad news is… You can’t do RemoteFX on VMware and VirtualBox- FOR SURE!. Answer: RemoteFX needs Windows Virtualization technology called Hyper-V as as its pre-requisite in order for you to install and use it. Since you’re Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 was running already as “Virtualized”  on top of your existing Host Operating System. Hypervisor could not be passed from to the Host OS to the Guest OS. Put simply, you can’t virtualized another system if you are on top of already virtualized OS.

Well, I know some of people think it was stupid to use RemoteFX in already had “remote desktop” virtual software. But all I can say is how Virtualbox sucks on graphics which is poorer than VMware(I know Virtualbox is faster in terms of CPU,Memory Access and IO Operations but can it run Aero desktop support?I don’t think so). VMware can support Aero graphics but really not as good as it is. Yeah I know VMware uses same protocol as RDP and Virtualbox uses VNC protocol for theirs but don’t you think its time for them to step forward and do something “seriously” about Graphics Virtualization. Not until Intel and AMD release their CPU support for it. By the way, RemoteFX utilizes GPU  power for rendering and not CPU as opposed to the current Remote Desktop. I forgot how great VMware and Virtualbox graphics adapter!

My point is, people who has capable of running multiple virtualized desktop OS for different purposes like for “Testing” could not use this upcoming technology. I can blame both Microsoft and those Virtualization companies for my failure. Why Microsoft depends Hypre-V for the RemoteFX (I know there was technical reasons for it) and why virtualization companies couldn’t improve graphics. We were almost a year or so before using 22 nanometer silicon technology why software was still in a hundreds until now?

Virtualbox RemoteFX

Virtualbox RemoteFX Failed

VMware RemoteFX

VMware RemoteFX Failed

Goodbye, Ubuntu.

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After almost 3 years of serving me non-stop 24/7. Reliability you can count on. My most beloved and favorite ubuntu server was now decommisioned. There were times I got frustrated with your slappy shell prompt typing limitless commands. Mouse is unknown to you. No fancy GUI or anything just your favorite black background screen. But you were powerful. You were above from the CentOS family for me. Your speed and flexibility and not to mention your renouned ‘idiot-proof’ property makes me proud of you.

I will miss our daily apt-get update and apt-get upgrade.

We will meet up soon again.

Goodbye!