Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tags 'Server' and 'ML350'

Windows Server 2008 RemoteApps is COOL

xperts64 — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Originally known as "TS Rail", the RemoteApps feature of Windows Server 2008 makes Terminal Servers an absolute essential on everyone's network. There is no way I won't have a TS running full time from here on out, and RemoteApps is the reason. So, what's so cool about it? Utter transparency. The application behaves just as if I were running it on my local machine, but I don't have to have it loaded there - just on the terminal server. And it's a great workaround for applications that are ONLY available on Server 2008, or for any direct management of Server 2008 from your desktop, since we all know that the new AdminPak still isn't available for Vista. So, what got me excited about it today? Getting around a major PITA with Hyper-V. Here's the scenario:

New Hyper-V server running Server Core (hp380-core-08, 192.168.51.8)
It's in the other office
It's not in the same domain as my desktop (it's in example.local)

There's no way to configure Hyper-V on the new server. I can't Remote Desktop to it (different domain, and it just doesn't like it.) Even if I could, the Hyper-V Management Console won't run on it because it's Server Core. So, what to do?

Remote Desktop in to the TS (hp350-ts-05, 192.168.51.5, running the x64 version of Windows Server 2008, build 17119, the public Hyper-V enabled version.)
Open ServerManager, add the Remote Administration feature, including the Hyper-V Tools
Open the Hyper-V Manager and connect to the HP380-core-08 server.
Open Administrative Tools ->Terminal Services -> TS RemoteApp Manager
Click on Add RemoteApp Programs in the Actions pane. Click Next.
Click Browse, navigate to Hyper-V folder, and change the File Name type to All Files (*.*).
Select virtmgmt and click Open. Repeat 6 and select vmconnect. Click Open.
Click Next and then click Finish.
Highlight the two files in the RemoteApps Programs section and click Create Windows Installer. Select the defaults for the wizard to create two .MSI files.

Now all you need to do is copy those MSI files to your local workstation, and install them like any other programs.

Once you've installed them, you can run the Hyper-V Manager, or the Hyper-V Connect application (the "VMRC" of Hyper-V) on your workstation. Even though Microsoft hasn't made either of these available for Windows Vista 64bit yet.

So, I used the Hyper-V Manager application to create a new VM (hp380-srv-03), and connected to it using the vmconnect application as shown here:

Now this is cool. And gives me the tools I need, on my desktop, transparently.

Charlie.

Acronis True Image Enterprise

xperts64 — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 05:00:00 GMT

As some of you know, I've been fighting to live with Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Virtual Server - without much success, I might add. I strongly suspect it's related to networking, but whatever the cause, it's been a disaster here. After losing two days last weekend, reinstalling Windows Server multiple times while I tried to figure out what the cause was, I finally got smart. I poked around and found my copy of the server version of Acronis True Image. After I got everything working as I wanted to, with the basic patches installed, all my apps on there (Gvim, Hypersnap, and PowerShell), I installed Acronis True Image on the host system and took a full image of the C:\ (system) drive of the server (an HP ML-350 G5) and stored it locally on the E: drive. So far so good. Then I set a task to do a differential backup every night. (I could have used an incremental backup if disk space had been in short supply, but opted for differential to provide the best possible fall back position.)

Well, sure enough, Friday night it started misbehaving, giving all the symptoms of last weekend. It was 10 o'clock at night so I left it and went to bed, Got up in the morning, still broken, so I fired off Acronis in the running Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 Enterprise Edition system. Click on Restore, walked through some prompts, told it to blow away the existing image and to restore the one from Wednesday morning. It rebooted the server, I went away to get a make coffee, and by the time I got back, I was looking at the Windows Server 2003 login prompt. For a moment I thought it hadn't run. Wrong - it had restored the image and booted back into Windows without any further intervention on my part. And with no muss, no fuss. Gotta love it. This is how things are supposed to work.

Charlie.

HP ProLiant ML350 G5 Server Experiences (part 3)

xperts64 — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

OK, I've been living with this HP server for about 3 months now. I'm still loving it - it's stable, quiet, and powerful. But I've finally decided I should have bumped up the processors a bit. I've got a pair of 5130 Xeon processors in here. They're dual core, and they are more than powerful enough for anything I'd normally do on this box if I had the "typical" 8GB of RAM. And they're a cost effective choice. But I spec'd this box with 16 GB of RAM, giving me the ability to load twice as many Virtual Machines as the 8GB would have given me. And when I get past about 12 GB worth of VMs loaded up, I start to feel the whole thing slow down a bit. Now some of that is disk access - even with 8x72 GB, 15k SAS drives in here that's a lot of disk activity - but it's also just a lot of processing being done. I've got at least 5 instances of Longhorn Server running, plus multiple clients. And when I get everything busy I can notice it a bit. Not enough to be an issue, but enough to notice. I'd have probably been smart to have gone with a pair of 5260 Xeons. Normally, I'm not a big fan of the current Intel implementation of quad-core. And given the memory limitations still present in the Xeon, it might still be an issue when this thing is loaded up, of course, but overall I suspect the extra cores would help.

If it sounds like I'm complaining - that is most definitely not the case. This is still a great little server and I'm really happy to have it! As a writer, working on multiple projects at once, it is a huge luxury to have a server of this quality. It makes everything so much easier. And I can't wait to load it up even more when we finally get a new build of Centro. At which point I will have to switch from Virtual Server to something else, most likely VMWare Workstation. I'm not looking forward to that, mostly because I've got a lot of configuration invested in Virtual Server. But I need 64bit guest support, and Microsoft's Windows Virtualization (Viridian) is just running too late to wait, sadly.

Charlie.

HP ProLiant ML350 G5 Server Experiences (part 2)

xperts64 — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Well, I spent most of yesterday working with the new server. I know, I know, I should have been doing some actual work. But all this really is necessary to get my environments up and functional.

The first step was to add a couple of instances of LH Server to the machine. For the moment, we're using the Virtual Server 2k5 R2 SP1 beta. I may have to install VMWare on the server at some point if a viable build of HyperVisor isn't available soon, since Virtual Server doesn't support x64 guests. And both Cougar and Centro are pure x64 only. But for the moment, I'm working with VS.

The first instance is the Domain Controller for the Example domain. Installing Enterprise Edition of the current CTP build of Longhorn, start to finish, was about 25 minutes. Not bad. Added the necessary roleds for it (DCHP, DNS, and then AD itself), and we're on our way.

Two more instances - one a Terminal Server instance with just under 4 GB of RAM available to it. Another an instance of Server Core.

Three full Longhorn server instances running, and this machine isn't even breaking a sweat. I'm loving it already.

So, after living with it for all of a day and a half, any new thoughts? Well, those 15,000 RPM drives may be fast, and each one is fairly quiet, but having 8 of the little guys whirring away is noticeable. I expected it, but that's just a price for the extra speed they give me.

The 5 1/4 inch front accessible drive bays could do a better job of noise control. In the desire to make them easy to use (which is well achieved), they can have a tendency to transmit vibration into the case where it gets amplified a bit. Some judicious silicon rubber would be useful here, IMHO.

Heat? Yeah, well what did you expect? The new generation Xeon processors aren't nearly as bad as the old ones, but the FBDIMM modules are real heat sources. And there are eight of them in there. HP has a special deflector that comes right off the fan to the top of the modules, and that keeps them from frying, but doesn't change the total heat put out. But what's important is that HP has designed this case well to handle the heat that it can generate and it's not having any issues at all. Which is pretty impressive, since I've loaded this thing with just about every possible heat source you can imagine. Just about the only thing I didn't do was opt for quad core processors. The 5130's I chose are relatively efficient and a good deal more cost effective. And I could upgrade to quad core if I find I need the horsepower. At which point, I could actually bump up the RAM to 32 Gb, since the quad core upgrade supports 4 GB RAM modules. If you can afford them!

Charlie.