So I have been wanting do some extra **training on a CAG. Unfortunatley I don’t have any spare CAG appliances to do so. I have a VMware Server 1.0.6 for Linux running on RedHat Enterprise Server 5. I searched and searched and found a couple of sites that do have instructions for CAG 4.2 on VMware Workstation. I tried that but I run into the issue of the express setup through VMWaregateway. There is no VMWaregateway for VMWare server for Linux!
After quite a bit of failures I finally got it and it is actually quite simple. Probably can use these same direction on VMWare Server for Windows.
Here we go!
Requirements:
VMWare Server 1.0.6
Citrix Access Gateway 4.5.6 CD or ISO (downloadable from mycitrix)
Serial port(DB9) on both the server and your client
Serial cable
40 GB hard drive space
512 MB of available memory
Installation Process:
1. Create new VM
2. Select “Custom”
3. “Guest Operating System” – Other & “Version” – Other
4. Name the VM anything you want (In this instance I’m going to name is CAG)
5. You decide whether you want it private
6. Again, decide how you want it to startup and shutdown
7. Select “One” for “Number of processors:”
8. As for memory I selected 512MB
9. Network connection doesn’t matter, just depends on what scenario you want. (I selected bridge)
10. Accept defaults for “I/O adapter types”
11. Now “Create a new virtual disk”
12. Select “IDE(Recommended)”
13. Disk Size is 40GB and “Allocate all disk space now.”
14. Name your “Disk File” – CAG.vmdk
15. Once that is done “Edit virtual machine settings”
16. Add a serial port – “Use physical serial port on the host”
17. Depending on your scenario Add what NICs and type you want
18. After that is done you need to edit the CAG.vmx or Other.vmx; add or replace these lines in the config:
ethernet0.virtualDev = e1000
ethernet1.virtualDev = e1000
19. Now you can boot to the CAG ISO or CD in your new VM
20. While that is running go ahead and connect your cable from client to server
21. Start your terminal emulation software (I used TeraTerm Pro):
9600-8-N-1 w/ no flow control
22. You should see the CAG Menu now.
23. Setup your IP and you are done!
Now these are the steps that I used that finally worked. You may be able to get different variations of settings to work for you.
**This is just for training. You cannot put this into production because you will violate Citrix EULA.
Have a Wonderful Day!
Citrix Access Gateway 4.5.6 on VMware Server, huh?
8:1 conversation ratio through virtualization using quad core processors
The virtualization vendors such as XenSource, VMWare, VirtualIron and Microsoft have touted some very high consolidation numbers. Intel has devoted a signifcant amount of time and effort to outline the new technology from a processor workload perspective, regardless of vendor virtualization platform, to outline how quad-core technology works to achieve the 8:1 ratios. Enclosed are some helpful links to explain the differences and benefits of the quad-core platform.
Intel: "Increase performance without increasing cost"
Intel: "Cost savings calculator"
Intel: "Expanding Value through Accelerated IT Refresh" - pdf
Sun: "Server Consolidation Using Quad-Core Processors" - pdf
Citrix XenServer Feature Comparisons
Citrix XenServer Exress Edition:
- Single server administration model
- Supports up to 4 Gb of memory
- Supports 2 CPU sockets
- Supports 4 Guest operating systems
- Supports up to 4 GB of RAM per VM
- No resource pooling
- No shared storage
- No XenMotion (the VMotion equivalent from VMWare)
- No VLAN capabilities
- No QoS
Citrix XenServer Standard Edition:
- Multi-server administration model
- Supports up to 128 Gb of memory
- Supports Unlimited CPU sockets
- Supports Unlimited Guest operating systems
- Supports up to 32 GB of RAM per VM
- No resource pooling
- No shared storage
- No XenMotion (the VMotion equivalent from VMWare)
- No VLAN capabilities
- No QoS
Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition:
- Multi-server administration model
- Supports up to 128 Gb of memory
- Supports Unlimited CPU sockets
- Supports Unlimited Guest operating systems
- Supports up to 32 GB of RAM per VM
- Supports resource pooling
- Supports shared storage
- Supports XenMotion (the VMotion equivalent from VMWare)
- Supports VLAN capabilities
- Supports QoS
CNS is now a VMware Professional Partner
Capital Network Solutions, Inc. is excited about our new partnership with VMware, over the next several months we will be setting up seminars and training for VMware Virtualization technology.
What does VMware do?
By consolidating servers, VMware customers have managed to cut IT costs by 50% and increase utilization, productivity and efficiency. And that’s just the beginning. As the leading provider of virtual infrastructure, VMware will transform you IT organization in many ways that may surprise you, including:
- Dramatically cutting costs – Of course, having 1/10th the number of physical servers will reduce your hardware and labor costs. You will also save associated power, cooling and space costs. It’s good for the environment and your budget.
- Reducing Deployment time – With VMware, manual configurations are a thing of the past. Deploy a new virtual machine in minutes – a 50 to 70% reduction on average. And only VMware has the powerful monitoring tools you need to keep it all running smoothly.
- Allocating resources in a few clicks – Automatically manage the dynamic distribution of resources, assign processor power as needed and live migrate virtual machines from one physical host to another with no downtime – all without the end-user ever realizing a thing has changed.
If you have any questions or would like the schedule a meeting give us a call at 916-366-6566, you can also visit www.vmware.com/go/getkit to more about VMware’s Virtualization technology; download your FREE VMware Virtualization Kit, including the IDC Analyst Report, "The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments."
USB with VMWare ESX Server
In a series of posts, I thought I would breakdown and summarize a number of key technology whitepapers related to VMWare's virtualization technologies. The first to review is one called "Using AnywhereUSB to Connect USB Devices". For many IT administrators, including myself, incorporating USB technology into the virtualization environment can be problematic (at best), such as attempting to map the USB device directly through the local hardware and the guest operating system using native drivers. A particular bane to my VMWare existence is the USB security dongle. I hate these things! For now, however, I'll leave the argument as to their necessity to others. In the mean time, they have to be dealt with. What I have often encountered is that the devices will sporadically and spontaneously disappear from the guest operating system, thereby disabling the program that the CEO is attempting to access at that very same moment. An angry phone call and twiddling with the USB dongle for 10 minutes later, the program is up and running for some random period of time. Additionally, if the connection is problematic, many servers only come with USB connectors in the back, which means many trips to the back of the server racks, or dealing with the connection issues possibly induced by a USB extension cable.
I was pleased to see the whitepaper which is co-authored by Digi International.
The whitepaper gives a brief overview of the technology with typical benefits and features pages, along with a quick installation guide, supported devices and known issues. The whitepaper is a mere seven pages long, making it a quick and focused read. The specific focus of the article is on "Point of sale" systems but the technology is naturally applicable and beneficial to other scenarios.
VMware Infrastructure Training
Capital Network Solutions, Inc. is hosting VMW-IC3: VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure, a VMWare authorized class, presented by Alternative Technology, a VMware Authorized Training Center.
VMW-IC3: VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure
When: December 11th -14th
Where: Capital Network Solutions, Inc.
Cost: $2,990.00
Duration: 4 Days
Description
This deep hands-on training course explores VMware Infrastructure 3, which consists of VMware ESX Server and VMware VirtualCenter. "VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure" is a prerequisite to taking the certification exam and becoming a VMware Certified Professional.
Course Objectives
At the end of the course, you will understand the functionality in VMware Infrastructure 3 and be able to:
- Install and configure virtual machines
- Deploy virtual machines from templates and allocate resources
- Migrate and manage virtual machines
- Ensure high availability of applications
- Troubleshoot typical ESX Server issues
Virtualization, "10 Minutes to Xen"
Virtualization took another step forward with Citrix's acquisition of XenSource. XenSource is a competitor to VMWare in a way that Microsoft Virtual Server is as well. XenSource is a fully matured virutalization product that installs quickly and offers similar access to SAN infrastructure and hardware clustering that VMWare ESX and Microsoft Virtual Server offer.
XenEnterprise supports IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, fiber based SANs, NFS NAS, iSCSI and boot to SAN for blades. Boot to SAN capability can dramatically cut down on the number of hard drives needed for an infrastructure by consolidating all storage needs into the SAN, rather than separate host OS disks which then facilitate access to the shared storage.
Hardware clustering is similar to the concept used in software clustering, however, managing the virtual environment is typically supported better by software vendors as the software does not have to function in failover modes required by services such as Microsoft Cluster Server.
For those interested in the open source community, the software is based on the industry standard Open Source Xen 3.1.
Maximum Return on Investment with VMWare
Return on Investment, (ROI) for short, is typically associated with financial benchmarks of capital investments within a business. ROI has also made inroads to describe the benefit or return an organization receives from technology expenditures, though efforts have often been tenuous in showing a true relation. So much frustration has surrounded ROI for IT projects and purchases that a number of books have been written to help describe the oft confusing term, such as "How to Measure Anything."
The purpose of this discussion is to peel open the curtains just a little, to shed light on the ROI of typical server purchases and how the ROI on core server equipment can be increased through the use of virtualization. Additionally, examples of how to go about judging return on investment will be described.
Return on investment for equipment purchases, specifically servers, can be viewed (simplistically) in one of two ways. The first way is to conclude 100% ROI when the server is purposed for a task, such as email. In this sense, because the server is dutifully doing its job of providing email to the organization, it has provided full return on investment. Calculating the ROI over time, might include subtracting any server downtime due to software or equipment failure or the server sitting in the closet waiting to be installed. The second option of calculating ROI comes from gathering measurements of system performance to conclude overall system utilization. Only with virtualization does the second method of measuring become truly evident.
The way these two philosophies differ is subtle. To be a bit cliche, I will illustrate with a car analogy. In one instance, I have the luxury of owning a Ferrari and take full gratification from owning the vehicle. I drive to and from work in my shiny, fast car and therefore, my ROI is 100%. Only if my Ferrari breaks down do I lose a return on my investment. In the other instance, I am the only person in the car, and I can only drive to work at 30 mph. Clearly, in the second case, owning the Ferrari doesn't make much sense. At the very least, if I were able to drive to work at 100 or 120 mph, it might be worth owning. If I can have another person or two in the car to share the cost of gas, I might really get some use out of it! However, because I commute in a crowded city, I will rarely, if ever have the chance to operate at those speeds.
Having a fast server, chugging away on corporate email, for many organizations is like having the Ferrari (high end server), but driving at 30 mph with one person in the car. In technical parlance, it's equivalent to using about 10% of server resources (hard drive space, CPU, memory). Does it make sense to have a server dedicated to a specific function when that function only utilizes such a small amount of available resources?
Where virtualization comes into play is that the technology allows organizations to find underutilized servers and add additional functions to them without compromising the integrity of those services. If there are two servers running at 20%, then more services can be added, like Sharepoint, anti-spam, anti-virus, backup or other needs, until the utilization rate hits 70-80%. Now at least, we're driving that Ferrari to work with two or more people at 80 mph.
Planning for VMWare
Virtualization has been around for some time now and is only becoming more popular. The economics make sense, especially when a number of specialized services are involved that do not play well together. As a whole, those services may use scant memory or CPU resources, but vendor compatibilities or other support concerns prevent the loading of multiple services on one system. Rather than bulk up on several dedicated servers for each application, a virtual cluster makes great sense. A VMWare ESX hardware cluster can utilize several hardware resources for the purpose of running virtual machines. What's even better is that should one of those hardware components fail, the virtual machines can continue to run off the available systems!
The problem with what has been seen in the field is that many organizations tend to view virtualization as a cure all. "Hey, I have 3 servers, and now I can have 6 or more on VM!", as if the hardware was suddenly able to defy laws of I/O, memory and CPU boundaries. So how can you be sure you're sizing the solution appropriately? As many of the white papers suggest, knowing your environment and objectives is a good start, however, understanding the usage fundamentals of the environment is key. Things like CPU utilization, disk I/O, memory use and other metrics are gathered through basic performance monitoring. While not a slick or new concept, properly gathering and analyzing performance data will help ensure you don't run into a bottleneck in your new VM environment. If you're lucky, you have an automated solution in place, if not, it's time to fire up the basic system tools, like perfmon, to gather than information.
Here's an example, lets say a company has 2 servers, but would like to add 2 more. Rather than purchase 2 new servers, they decide to opt for a VM solution on the two existing servers. What they don't realize, however, is that each server is already running at 70% CPU utilization on average and only has 256Mb of ram left on each. Adding two more servers with those resources is likely to result in poor performance. Additionally, disk I/O is well above the physical recommendations for the current drives and no new drives were specified.
If this were running in a test lab, it may be acceptable, but for production, the addition of two new servers would certainly result in unacceptable performance. In another post, I'll get into SANs (storage area networks) and how they can be properly sized for an environment, virtual or otherwise.
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