Technology

VMworld 2010: Impressions as a New-V

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on September 10, 2010
Posted in: Linux, Technology. Tagged: , , , , , .

Large Scale Geek Assault

Moscone Center wasn’t big enough for the whole conference this year. With a record 17,000+ attendees, the halls were crowded and the lines to sessions were quite long — especially the first couple of days. I think a larger venue is in order for years to come. Not sure where they can go, though.

I was unable to get in to a couple of sessions the first day, but managed to fill in some of that time with work in the labs (more no those later). Overall, though, I was able to cram in enough sessions to make it well worth the trip. My main problem was trying to narrow down my focus. This year, I tried to stick to sessions dealing with Troubleshooting and Best Practices.

In all, I took notes in 13 sessions and sat through 8 lab sessions. Not bad for a New-V?

Notes and Power Outlets

I made a good call and picked up a small netbook computer to take with me in lieu of my larger T61 ThinkPad. The longer battery life on the netbook (more info on it later) allowed me to skip the power outlets when racing to my next session. Still, I tried to conserve power by putting it into sleep or hibernate as much as possible during and between sessions. I uploaded my notes to my Dropbox account so I would have a backup.

Why was this a good call? Because there were a lot of people there with larger laptops suckling power from the outlets wherever they could be found. On the third day of the conference I found a small room on the second floor of Moscone West with a sign in front stating “VCP Lounge.” Assuming I would have to prove I held a VCP certification, I quickly pulled up my transcript on my Droid, then walked in. Turns out no one was checking, so I sat down, plugged in and caught up on some work e-mail whcih had accumulated over the first part of the week.

Food

The food provided at the conference was hit or miss. The breakfast area in Moscone West was huge and never seemed full when I was there (maybe it got busy later in the day?). They had croissants, muffins, danishes, bagels, fresh fruit, coffee and juices — everything you needed to fuel up for a morning of work in the lab which was in the same building.

I had a couple of cold boxed lunches. One was called Mediterranean Salad, which consisted of a main dish of mixed greens, veggies and a vinaigrette dressing, an apple and a sort of fruit brownie. I grabbed that box, headed over to the Yerba Buena Gardens to eat outdoors and escape the crowds. The other cold lunch was in a similar box also with a brownie bar, fruit and a sandwich. The only hot lunch I had was not very good, so I avoided the hot lunches from that point on. It consisted of overcooked fried chicken, cole slaw and a biscuit. Next year, I’ll stick to the cold lunches.

One day, I decided to escape the conference food and had a bowl of Seafood Udon at Shiki Japanese Restaurant which is across Third Street from the Moscone South building.

More to Come?

What have I missed in this first article? In the coming days I’m going to write up some articles with more detail on the following:

  • My impressions of the lab environment.
  • My netbook setup for the conference.
  • List of labs I took and any significant notable items.
  • List of sessions I attended and some of my notes from each.

VMUnderground 2010: WUPaaS (Warm-Up Party as a Service)

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on September 9, 2010
Posted in: Technology, Travels, Virualization. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

First off, my hat goes off to both Sean Clark and Theron Conrey for organizing an excellent gathering which mixed geeks, beer and munchies at the Thirsty Bear. I got to rub elbows with Scott Lowe, author of Mastering VMware vSphere 4, which was instrumental in my obtaining my VCP 4 certification this year. I resisted the urge to ask for a photo, but I did manage to get his business card.

Anyway, I think Theron and Sean will need a bigger venue next year. The place was packed with people, but just to capacity. I’m sure interest in this event will grow for next year so I hope they can find a suitable location. Maybe get a few kegs from the Thirsty Bear to keep the tradition going?

Hopefully I can make it again next year. I need to get better at introducing myself to people and socializing. Guess I’m just your average introverted Geek, but I’m working on it!

Quick and (Relatively) Easy SRCD/Clonezilla Hybrid USB Stick

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on August 23, 2010
Posted in: Linux, Technology. Tagged: , , , , , .

So you want one USB Flash stick to boot the latest versions of both System Rescue CD and Clonezilla-Live? So did I! Easy, I thought, just use UNetbootin to create each one in turn, copying the files between runs, then merge them together. Well, it wasn’t that easy.

First off, Clonezilla (1.2.5-35) installs just fine via UNetbootin, but the latest SRCD (1.5.8) does not. I noticed, however, that SRCD now includes an installer script called usb_inst.sh which essentially does the same thing UNetbootin does. Here are the steps I followed to get them both crammed on to one 1 GB USB flash stick (with about 608 MB spare space):

  1. Install SRCD to the USB stick using the usb_inst.sh script.
  2. Boot to the USB stick to verify it worked OK.
  3. Install Clonezilla to the same USB stick with UNetbootin. Be sure to NOT overwrite the files when it prompts you to do so.
  4. Boot to the USB stick to make sure it still works for SRCD. At this point, Clonezilla will NOT show up in the boot menus.
  5. Remove the first few lines from the top of /syslinux.cfg, stopping at the blank line before the first “label” line.
  6. Merge the /syslinux/syslinux.cfg and /syslinux.cfg files with cat /syslinux.cfg >> /syslinux/syslinux.cfg does the trick. Be sure to append /syslinux.cfg at the end of /syslinux/syslinux.cfg
  7. Boot to the USB stick several times and verify you can start up each of the menu items successfully.

Note that the only reason this works is that the SRCD install script uses that /syslinux subfolder for its boot menus, and that both are using similar boot techniques. If the SRCD and UNetbootin scripts continue to configure themselves like this, then this method should work for future version, too.

For my next challenge. . . cram BackTrack, SRCD and Clonezilla on a 4 GB USB Flash stick!

GTD: A simpler version

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on July 10, 2010
Posted in: Technology. Tagged: , , .

Everything requires time. Writing this article required time to think, time to write a draft, time to edit, etc. Sleeping requires time. Eating requires time. Planning requires time. You get the idea.

Therefore, a complex GTD system itself requires a significant amount of time to implement. Managing tickler files, to do lists and the like require time to implement and maintain. With complexity, these tasks become chores and most people try to avoid chores. This makes the barrier to entry quite high for these systems, and that makes turning them in to habit more difficult.

I say, start simple. You may decide later to build up to a more complex method, or you may find that you need go no further. My method revolves around my Calendar and Inbox. Quite simply, if it is worth spending the time to do, it should be on your calendar. Period.

Incoming tasks come from your Inbox and go to one of three places:

  • Complete the task immediately or respond if additional information is required. Move a copy to your Follow-up folder and add an alert so you can keep track later.
  • On the calendar to be completed at some point in the future.
  • In the Trash. Save what you need for long-term documentation in the appropriate location (folder, Wiki, project documentation system, etc.), then delete it.

Use your calendar to block off recurring appointments for handling e-mail, planning and scheduling, but also be flexible. If it is on your calendar, you can drag it to a different time to re-schedule. Keep it on your calendar, and it will get done. If you find that you are bumping a particular item on your calendar too much, then you should re-consider whether it should be on there at all — it obviously isn’t that important to you.

Excellent Animation Explains What the EFF is Fighting

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on July 10, 2010
Posted in: Technology. Tagged: , , .

This excellent animation by Nina Paley succinctly explains to anyone the dangers which the Electronic Freedom Foundation fights every day. If you ever encounter someone who just doesn’t understand why most EULAs and Three Strikes (or HADOPI) laws are evil, then this will help make your point clear.

And don’t forget to visit Nina Paley’s blog! There’s lots of good stuff there, too.

Here’s the video, but please visit the page for the full resolution version and more info!

Easiest Way to Create a VMware ESXi 4 Bootable USB Flash Drive

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on July 7, 2010
Posted in: Technology, Virualization. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Here’s a quick tip on how to create a bootable USB flash drive from which you can install ESXi.

  1. Download UNetbootin (available for Windows and Linux).
  2. Download the latest ESXi .iso file from VMware.
  3. Format your USB flash drive (1 to 2 GB should work, I used a 4 GB one) with a FAT32 file system.
  4. Fire up UNetbootin and select the option to use your own .iso file.
  5. Make sure you choose the RIGHT USB flash drive — Best Practice would be to have only your target drive connected while doing this!
  6. Click OK and let it cook. This may take a few minutes.
  7. Cancel the prompt at the end to reboot — you don’t want to reboot, really.
  8. Unmount your USB flash drive and test it on ESXi compatible hardware!

There are some limitations to this method:

  • Target system must support USB boot (very few don’t)
  • Won’t work with an EFI BIOS unless that BIOS supports booting a legacy mode BIOS. Even then, it still may not work.

And, yes, you can do this with the regular ESX .iso file, but you’ll need to purchase licensing for those installs eventually. You can register ESXi for free use!

IT Applications of Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Energy

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on September 29, 2009
Posted in: Technology, Writings. Tagged: , .

V. ENERGY
1. Sun Tzu said: The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.
2. Fighting with a large army under your command is nowise different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.

Energy can be considered another word for efficiency. When it becomes necessary to scale things up, there are two factors which will ensure you lose as little efficiency as possible.

The first factor is how you break the smaller scale model into separate tasks or functions. For example, you may have an application which currently utilizes one or two servers with each of those servers handling several roles. A common model is to have a Web/application server at the front with a database/storage server at the back. As you scale up this solution, you will need to split out the Web service, application (there may be sub-roles here), database and storage roles . As scale increases even more you will most likely end up with many load-balanced Web front end servers; a number of application servers to support the front end and any application sub-roles; and a database back end with query, engine and storage roles residing on separate hardware.

The second factor is how you co-ordinate the communications between the various servers involved. If you started with an optimized, efficient small scale model, then this is simply a matter of mimicking calls that used to be local as network calls to the correct processes on the remote servers. If, however, your small scale design was rife with inefficient calls, that will translate to great losses in efficiency when you try to send those calls across the wire to other servers.

Therefore, it is essential that you take time to maximize efficiency on your smaller scale implementations prior to attempting to scale them up. Make sure to design your application with modules that can be separated later. Pay close attention to the communications which take place between modules that could be split out to different servers later. With your application broken into logical, separate modules which transfer only a minimum amount of data to perform their tasks, scaling up will be much easier.

Fun with REGEX: linux-source-2.6.28 “If You Seek Amy” edition

Posted by Kenneth Ristau on September 25, 2009
Posted in: Linux, Technology, Writings. Tagged: , , .

Studying for LPI certification this evening, and I had a fit of whimsy whilst playing with regular expressions. Random thoughts passing through my head resulted in the following combination of “memes”:

  • Swear words in the linux kernel source code.
  • Britney Spears’ song, “If You Seek Amy.”

So I downloaded the source code (linux-source-2.6.28, Ubuntu), unzipped it and ran the following grep command against it:

grep -ri "<fuck me>" *

Amazingly, despite the prevalence of the just the swear word itself (33 variations including fuck, fucked, fucking, fucker, etc in 2.6.28) in the kernel, there was only one hit:

fs/binfmt_aout.c:               /* Fuck me plenty... */

So I guess a more apt title for this post is, “If you seek Amy Plenty.”