There are some major differences though that would persuade a recommendation of one over the other.

VMware Workstation

VMware Workstation is a straightforward and easy to use program. Upon opening it you’re greeted with the main window that asks if you want to create a new virtual machine, a team of virtual machines for a LAN, or start up one of your current operating systems (Figure 1.1). The sidebar on the left is a helpful tool in viewing your installed virtual PC’s at a glance, with quick access to Suspend, Shut Down and Resume.

Figure 1: VMware Workstation

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate as a virtual machine and it went through without a hitch. Once inside the virtual machine you’re able to view in full-screen, fit in the current window, or run in unity (meaning you can run all the applications without the virtual desktop open).

A nice feature in Workstation is the toolbar at the top of the virtual machine when running in full-screen. It allows you quick access to shut down, suspend, etc., as well as view and tools, something lacking in Parallels desktop.

Overall the virtual machine in Workstation ran fast with little to no lag. The virtual machine also used my actual laptop’s Internet connection without any setting adjustments. VMware also has the added benefit of creating virtual machine teams which are advantageous to small businesses and helpful in virtual network training. The Workstation experience is user-friendly and affords many benefits.

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop downloaded quickly from their website (a 117MB file as opposed to VMware’s 550MB). After this rapid download and installation process I was fully expecting to install a virtual machine with minimal hassle. This was not the case.

I attempted to install the same version of Windows 7 Ultimate into Parallels. The set up process was fairly simple until it came time to begin the Windows 7 installation. I was given the following error message, “Unable to Start Windows 7.” This somehow did not affect the installation of Windows 7 through VMware Workstation. After much chagrin, I found the setting (pressing F12 during the startup process) and enabled hardware assisted virtualization. Once enabled, the rest of the installation went through and I was up and running.

The Parallels user interface is very similar to that of VMware Workstation. Toolbar on top, sidebar with installed virtual machines, and any current virtual machine running on the right (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2: Parallels Desktop

You can run the virtual machine in full-screen, single window or unity just as in Workstation. What I instantly noticed was the unintuitive control of the cursor. In VMware you can click on the virtual machine and use the cursor as normal. When you need the cursor to manipulate things on your physical computer, just move the cursor out of the window and click. Parallels locks your cursor into the virtual machine and requires the key command “CTRL + ALT” to release it.

Also, in full-screen mode, there is no toolbar at the top, so exiting the virtual machine requires you to press “CTRL+ALT+ENTER” (Figure 1.3). There is a small command prompt at the bottom left of the Parallels UI that warns you of this, but disappears in fullscreen mode. If you don’t know these commands and you enter full-screen mode, it can be quite frustrating.

Figure 1.3: Parallels Desktop

Internet connectivity was also a hassle within Parallels. It would not recognize the internet connection from my physical computer and I had to change a setting in the virtual machine to act as a separate computer on the network. Not a huge inconvenience, but it can be confusing at first.

Generally, Parallels will allow you to run whatever platform you need, but lacks certain features like Teams, tabbed browsing of machines, and there were a number of annoyances during the installation process and in the virtual UI.

VMware Workstation costs $189 while Parallels can be bought for $79. While Parallels may seem like the good value here, the various hassles and lack of features make it a hard sell. If you need to run multiple operating systems and will be utilizing all the features a virtualization tool has to offer, VMware is in my opinion the solid choice and worth the money.

There is a lot of confusion on what “The Cloud” is and some people are calling things “The Cloud ” that are not the cloud. In this blog post, I am going to try really hard to demystify “The Cloud.”

What is “The Cloud?”

To understand “The Cloud”, you have to think of pizza. It’s Monday night football and a bunch of your buddies are coming over. You want food quickly. You do not want to prepare the dough, spread the sauce, add the cheese, pepperoni and cook the pizza. You simply pick up your phone and dial a number. You place an order and your pizza is delivered.

In this scenario, the phone is the web portal and inside this portal are applications. On your pizza you may have picked extra cheese, pepperoni, onions, peppers and/or anchovies. On the portal, you may want Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Skype, and/or Google Chrome or Firefox. Instead of having to cook the pizza yourself or install Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Firefox and Skype, you just choose your selections and they are delivered to you desktop much like picking your pizza and toppings are delivered to your home.

Let’s take this a step further now. Where I live, there are roughly a dozen pizza providers. They all offer different types of services. One pizza provider may specialize in Sicilian pizza while another pizza provider may specialize in pizza delivered fast. A third might offer very inexpensive pizza but edible.

In the IT world, there are many cloud providers popping up that want to offer you services. Examples include iLand, Amazon, Azure, Skytap and cloud providers supporting VMware. All of these providers want a piece of your business. They want you to dial them for service.

Just as pizzas come with different toppings and flavors, cloud providers do the same. You have the following flavors:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

This type of service provides hosted applications via a web portal or browser.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

This type of service provides a platform to deploy applications. It doesn’t care about hardware of software layers. Basically it is a service where developers can write web apps or “On demand” apps.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

This type of service allows you to expand your Data Center to the cloud via virtual machines. An example is using Amazon EC2  Elastic Compute Cloud to spin up a virtual machine to the cloud with a specific OS environment. A scenario may include that you are SaaS company with a specific product. In your data center, you currently have deployed 45 web servers that are hardware load balanced. Several times throughout the day you have bottlenecks but you don’t want to purchase more expensive equipment which in turn may have to increase AC and other operational costs. What if you could during high periods of stress on your web servers, spin up web servers in the cloud to handle the extra load. All you pay for is the cycle and CPU time and then the virtual web servers destroy themselves when the stressed load period ends. Using the cloud,you can build a dynamic data center. Simply defined, IaaS is a model where you as an organization outsources equipment used to support your operation such as servers or storage. They are responsible for maintaining the equipment and you typically pay on a per CPU use basis.

Using the Cloud to Your Advantage

The point I am trying to make is that you can use “The Cloud” to your advantage. I am so excited about this change in the IT world as are the top vendors. They see how big this is going to be and don’t want to let this opportunity pass. Why in the world would you spend thousands and thousand of dollars on equipment and licensing when you can simply run your Data Center in “The Cloud.” Take the burden of hardware, bandwidth and man power out of the equation by leveraging technologies that handle this for you cheaper and more effectively.

Over the next few months, I am going to begin to write about these cloud services and what they offer. Let’s use the comments forum to ask questions and get dialogue started. As we take this journey, we can demystify “The Cloud” together.

There are two ways to build a bootable Flash key with an OS. You can do it via command line or with the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool.

Let’s go over both methods and you can decide which one you prefer.

Creating a Bootable Flash Key via Command Line

I created a detailed how-to on this in a previous articles which was posted on TechRepublic. You can take a look at how to create an installation flash drive for Windows 7 and try it yourself.

Creating a Flash Key via Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Now let’s move on to the method that I prefer. Begin by downloading Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. Once installed Click the Start | Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool. The following tool opens, as shown below:

Next, click Browse and select your ISO image as shown in the screenshot below. Most downloads of software today are ISO images that allow you to burn DVD’s or run in virtual machines.

You have the option of choosing to create a USB or DVD media. For the purposes of this blog post, we will choose USB Device as shown below.

Finally, click Begin Copying.  A message appears with the following information: “You have selected to erase all of the contents from the selected USB device (drive letter). All contents on this device will be lost. Are you sure you want to do this?” Click Yes, as shown below, and your bootable device is created.

Once completed, the USB device is ready to load the installation media. For example, I chose Windows 7 ISO image and 5 minutes later I had a flash key ready to load Windows.

Which of the two methods do you prefer? In my mind, it is a no brainer.

This service leverages disk images of virtual and physical machines (created by Acronis) and restores them into Iland’s Internet Solution Continuity Cloud as standby virtual machines. In the event of a disaster, It Admins can quickly restore these machines in the cloud via an Acronis Management Console.

This solution is currently available through iland and Acronis and leverages Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition. For more information, please see the press release.

This partnership is a great fit. Backup and DR solutions are typically very expensive. In this scenario, Acronis leverages the cloud via iland and iland leverages Acronis Backup and Restore functionality. As the cloud continues to gain a foothold, we will see more and more marriages between cloud providers and services.

What do you think of the car? I wonder how much an alternator cost to replace. Yikes!

Have you ever wondered what the anatomy of a virtual machine (VM) is?

If so, this session shows you what files make up a virtual machine. I have several sessions to attend this AM but I wanted to drop by and sit in on some of Eric Siebert’s session on How Stuff Works in Virtualization.

Eric Siebert in action at VMworld 2010

Anatomy of a Virtual Machine

In one of my previous posts at TechRepublic, I covered the anatomy of a virtual machine, VMware Workstation to be precise. I thought this would be a good refresher for anyone interested in learning how stuff works in virtualization. You can take a look at that article here:

Anatomy of a VMware Workstation virtual machine (VM).

Driving the development of cloud computing, ironically is the mobile phone market. With services like Gmail, Dropbox and Apple’s MobileMe, cloud services are readily accessible to consumers and growing in popularity.

Have you ever seen a status update saying, “I lost my phone, send me your number!” That’s because all of their contacts were saved locally on the phone and couldn’t be accessed otherwise. Any Android phone (now the #1 selling smart-phone in the U.S.) actually requires you to set up a cloud service; a Google account. The consumer may not realize this, but every time a contact or calendar event is added, this data is synced with their Google account automatically.

While this doesn’t effect daily use, the magic comes in when that consumer drops or breaks their phone and is given a replacement. They sign into their Google account on the Android device and suddenly all their contacts, calendar events and emails “magically” appear. This is the beauty of cloud computing.

The “cloud” is actually a company’s server farm where your information is stored to be accessed from any Internet enabled device. For example, uploading a file to Apple’s MobileMe service means it can be accessed from any computer by going to me.com and logging in. Some benefits of the cloud are, the ability to access your files from any computer, using it as a backup service, and the ability for multiple people in various locations to collaborate on a single project.

Cloud computing varies in depth, from contact and calendar syncing, to a full virtual computer accessed through a web browser. There are lots of cloud services available to consumers as well. Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) is a cloud service specializing in backing up your computer data. Sign up for an account, install a desktop helper application and all of the content on your hard drive is synced to the cloud. If the hard drive of a computer crashes, just sign into Carbonite, download the helper application, and all of your data is restored just as you left it.

Another form of cloud computing has become popularized by Netflix. Rather than purchasing a movie through iTunes or other services, and having to wait for it download, Netflix will begin streaming a movie to your TV or computer immediately. The benefit here is little to no wait time to begin watching a movie, and you don’t have a 1.5 GB file taking up precious space on your hard drive. Streaming media has gained momentum with Amazon, Hulu and possibly Apple beginning to offer movies and TV shows with a subscription, rather than paying per episode/movie. All this is possible because these videos are in the cloud and you can access them from many Internet capable Blu-ray Players, TVs, computers, and dedicated streaming boxes like the Roku.

Now we can see how Steve Ballmer’s “three screens and a cloud” come into play. Let’s say you have a Netflix subscription, which allows you to view as many streaming videos as you want. You can view the same content on your TV, as you can on your computer or laptop, and also on your iPad or iPhone. All of this for just $9 a month. Without the cloud, you would have to download a movie to your computer($14), buy a DVD for your television ($20), and maybe sync it to your phone which will take up a good amount of memory.

One of the more full-featured cloud services available is called iCloud (www.iCloud.com). You can sign up for a free trial on their website and upgrade to 100GB of storage for $39.99. iCloud is basically a virtual computer you access through a web browser. After signing up for the service, log in to your account and you’re greeted to a desktop with folders, start menu, shortcut icons, and more. It resembles a Windows 7 desktop with a “start” icon that opens a menu with an “Applications” tab, “Files” tab, “Account,” etc.

Through the web browser interface, you can upload files from your physical hard drive to the cloud and organize them as you would on a real computer. iCloud assigns you an email address which you can access through the cloud and there are even applications that can be “installed” on this virtual machine. A Microsoft compatible word processor is available to completely create a document in the cloud and share it with others. Available within iCloud is a calendar, contact manager, To Do list, music player called “iPlay,” photo browser, video player and even internet radio. There is also an internet browser within iCloud, which doesn’t make much sense considering you have to access iCloud through a web browser like Firefox.

You can also use WebDav to mount your iCloud on a Mac OS computer or iPhone (inside a third-party app). There is also a download for PC’s that will give you access to your iCloud files without logging into a web browser. For all intensive purposes, you can use iCloud as a full computer system that is accessible from anywhere.

To be perfectly honest, iCloud is little over the top. The service certainly doesn’t lack features, but many seem superfluous. If you don’t own a computer and have a spare $40 a year, this may be a great service. This way you can organize a desktop, save photos and music, compose documents, etc., and it will be the same experience on every computer you use. Most people own a desktop or laptop though, and really have no need for an additional virtual computer. Using iCloud as a file manager works fine, especially when mounting it as a server. But 100GB of online storage can be found for the same price with many more features.

For those just starting into cloud-based services, don’t make iCloud your first experience. It’s complicated, expensive, and not very practical for daily use. Services like a Google account are great, most of all because it’s free, but also it gives you great mail, contact and calendar management, access to Google docs (an online word processor), and compatibility with most mobile devices. Cloud computing has many advantages, and there are lots of cloud services to choose from. Take advantage of some of the free trials from Dropbox, MobileMe or Gmail and try cloud computing for yourself.

An example of VMware vCloud Director is shown below:

VMware vCloud Director

For more information on the vCloud Director read the following: VMware vCloud Director Technical White Paper.

While on the plane and not connected to a network, you’re able to work with a local virtualized OS and make changes to your documents and presentations. When you arrive in San Francisco for your big meeting, simply connect up to the network and your new changes are uploaded to the OS in the cloud.

This is just one of the new features  mentioned at  VMworld 2010 that VMware View 4.5 has to offer. Other features include:

• Full Windows 7 Support
• View Client for Mac OS

For more information on VMware View 4.5,  please see the annnouncement.

VMware wants to provide us with the ability to export a virtual machine (VM) to a removable disk with VMware Workstation. Basically, the idea is that you can plugin any USB device and have a standalone vm boot. All storage and networking are handled on the USB device; it would allow you to always run around with a vm in you pocket. Simply plug it in to any device and you are off running. It still in infancy but I think this feature would be outstanding. With USB 3.0 around the corner and SSD flash drives, performance of USB virtual machines sounds promising.

As as the future of VMware Workstation and the cloud is concerned. VMware would like you to have the ability to run local clouds on your local computer for testing before you deploy them and have to pay cloud computing providers for you DEV/QA time.

A welcomed enhancement is the ability to run an ESX machine in VMware Workstation and manage its resources. In the demo, they added the IP address of an ESX server, entered credentials, and connected to it and ran a virtual machine.

They took it a step further by showing us how you can take a local virtual machine and simply drag-and-drop it to an ESX machine. In VMware Workstation, you can develop a vm and then when you are ready to deploy or get the performance enhancements, simply drag it to the applicable ESX server and an upload progress bar appears and the vm is now available as an enterprise level vm.

The last feature they showed us is the ability of vCenter to manage your virtual machines from within Workstation. Basically, the theme is how can we move beyond just the local virtual box using Workstation.

What do you think of these features? Do any of them sound good to you?

I’ll check in later; I am off to lunch.

It looks like this session is going to sell out (lol). We are now standing room only. There are over 15000 people at VMworld this week. If you are attending, I recommend you get to your sessions early.

Let’s begin.

What is VMware?

VMware started as a grad school project in its infancy. Many servers were under utilized so Project Disco was born. Yes, VMware was originally called Project Disco (Travolta lives). If fact both GOOGLE and Project Disco started out together as grad projects.

As we fast forward to the future, VMware is now the largest virtualization provider with the following:

• 2 Billion dollars in revenue,
• 190k customers,
• 84% of virtualized applications are VMware customers
• and 48,000 certified professionals.

According to VMware virtualization is defined as the following:

“Today’s x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single OS and a single application leaving most machines vastly underutilized. Virtualization lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, with each virtual machine sharing the resources of that one physical computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating sytems and multiple applications on the same physical computer. Something only VMware can do well ”

In 2001 VMware introduced VMware GSX which installed as an application and ran on the host OS. Resource management was dependent on the OS.

In 2003 VMware ESX was introduced; It installed a bare metal hypervisor and relied on Linux OS to running agents and scripting.

In 2007 VMware introduced VMware ESXi. It is also a bare metal hypervisor Management tasks are moved outside of the hypervisor.

For beginners, who are looking to virtualize their Data Centers in the future, you should begin by downloading VMware’s free vSphere hypevisor. Installation is a breeze; simply download to a USB key or SD card and insert into server and turn on. You can also load via a CD or ISO image. It is available for download at vmware.com.

I am off to my next session called, “The Future of VMware Workstation and Cloud Development.”

Apple’s OS X has become very popular for video producers, graphic artists, and web designers. In addition, there are several quality builds of Linux, including Ubuntu and OpenSuse.

With multiple platforms, virtualization has become a huge asset. Allowing one computer to run several operating systems at a time affords many benefits, including the ability to run any OS-specific software, create multiple workflows  and virtual networks.

VMware Workstation vs. Fusion

Probably the most notable virtualization software is VMware, available for both Mac and PC.

While VMware provides the same service for both Mac and PC, there are notable differences to explore.

Today I’ll be comparing VMware Fusion 3.1 (Mac) to VMware Workstation 7.1 (Windows).

The computers I’ll be using are a MacBook Pro, 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB Ram running Snow Leopard, and a Dell Inspiron, 2 GHz Intel with 2 GB Ram running Windows XP.

I will install  Windows 7 Ultimate edition on each  machine and report on what I find.

See what the capabilities and advantages of both VMware Fusion and Workstation are.

One of the major concerns with virtualization is the speed of the virtual OS running on top of the native machine. In this comparison, the Macbook Pro is significantly faster than the Dell, so comparing Fusion to Workstation with these two PC’s would be unfair.

I will say that Fusion on the Mac runs without a hitch. No freezes or hiccups, and when you run it in fullscreen, you would never know you’re on a Mac. I could play a fairly demanding 3D game and rarely, if ever experience lag. Pretty impressive.

The benefits of VMware Fusion on a Mac are immediately apparent. Before ever installing an OS, I know that I can install any Linux or Windows build on my Mac, while Workstation on a PC will never run Mac OS X. This is mainly due to Apple not opening it’s operating system to other vendors, and is not necessarily a VMware issue, but it’s worth noting that the only way to run OS X is on a Mac or using some crazy hack for Windows.

Windows 7 in VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion

The installation process of Windows 7 is straightforward and simple. Whether installing from a disc, .ISO disc image file, or other means, Fusion makes it easy. Once your virtual machines are installed, you’ll be greeted with the “Library” every time you open Fusion (Figure 1).

You’re provided with a list of your virtual machines and a “Play” button next to each. You can start one up by clicking “Play” or double clicking it. On this screen you also see a Delete and Pause option to remove or suspend a virtual machine, respectively.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Inside the virtual machine it’s as though you’re running a Windows 7 PC (Figure 2). The only difference is the additional menu bar at the top (Figure 3) that gives you options such as Fullscreen or Single Window view, take a snapshot of the machine to restore, and USB/Disc Drive options.

Two more benefits of Fusion are the drag and drop support and Migrate PC option. Any file from your Mac can be dragged right into the virtual machine, and vice versa. This makes sharing files between your hard drive and virtual machine extremely user friendly. The migrate PC option is a nice touch as well for those making the switch to a Mac but would like to keep all their current PC files.

Figure 3

Fusion for Mac really excels in simplicity, elegance and ease of use. Meanwhile, Workstation for Windows offers some powerful features unavailable to Fusion. Installation of Windows 7 in Workstation was just as straightforward as in Fusion. Installing from a disc or .ISO file is still just as easy. Upon opening Workstation, you come to the home screen with a sidebar view of your virtual machines and a toolbar with a few more options than Fusion (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Upon starting Workstation, I immediately loved the tabbed browsing of virtual machines (Figure 5). Fusion on the other hand, opens a whole new window for each OS you start up. That’s a window for your library, and a window for each additional OS. It can clutter a desktop fast. Workstation organizes everything neatly in one window, with access to all your virtual machines on the left and tabs on top.

Figure 5

You can start, suspend or shut down a virtual machine with the Play/Pause/Stop button in the upper right hand corner. If you view it in fullscreen you’ll also get a toolbar, much like the one in Fusion with similar options.

There is another advantage to Workstation though, and that’s creating a “Team” of virtual machines with LAN segments. With virtualization taking a larger role in businesses, and more people using it to train for networking, this Team option becomes invaluable. While it is possible to network virtual machines in Fusion, it’s a much more arduous task, and Workstation makes it simple.

Both Fusion and Workstation are fairly similar, with a few key features differentiating them.

Sophistication and ease-of-use in Fusion is a welcome benefit, while Teams in Workstation are great for businesses and network trainees. Either way, if you’re in a position where you have to use multiple operating systems on your machine, VMware is a solid choice.

You can try both Fusion and Workstation as well as many other virtualization products from Vmware for free at vmware.com/products.

For example, if you configure a clustered environment, you can call the team Windows Cluster and add all the virtual machines associated with the cluster.

Today we’ll take a look at what makes a team different from a regular VM, how to create a team and add VMs to the team, what are the different team settings and how to use them to your advantage, and how to work with the team console.

Figure 1 below shows you an example of a team in the VMware Control Center (click on the image to see a full view).

Figure 1: A team in the VMware Control Center

Team vs VM

What makes a team different from a regular virtual machine is the team’s ability to communicate within a private network called a LAN segment.

LAN segments are invisible to the host computer’s network. With LAN segments you can create a DMZ or proxy server to bridge the team members to the outside network, allow specific requirements and settings to certain virtual machines within the newly configured team, and control the traffic between the host and team virtual machines.

Figure 2 shows an example of a LAN segment.

Figure 2: Example of a LAN Segment

Now that we have given you a brief overview, let’s proceed with how to create a Team and add virtual machines to the team.

How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

Creating a team in VMware Workstation can be done by opening VMware Workstation from the Start menu. You can create a new team by going to the Home Tab in the VMware Control Center and choosing the New Team button or by right-clicking on the Favorites window and choosing New | Team, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

After you choose to create a new team, the New Team wizard window appears to walk you through the creation of a new team. On the Name the Team window (see Figure 4), enter the team name and location of a new team. You can browse to a location or type the location.

Figure 4: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

The Add Virtual Machines to the Team window (see Figure 5) allows you to add virtual machines you have already created to the team, or you can choose to add virtual machines later if you have not created them yet. For purposes of this exercise, we will choose to add virtual machines. The next window (see Figure 6) allows you to add a new or existing virtual machine in addition to a new clone of a virtual machine.

Figure 5: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

Figure 6: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

The Add LAN Segments to the Team window (see Figure 7) allows you to add a LAN segment now or at a later time. Let’s add a LAN segment now by choosing Yes. Click Add to add the number of LAN segments that are applicable to the individual needs of your team, as shown in Figure 8. The final phase of the wizard allows you to review your options. Click Finish to create your new team.  The new team is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 7: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

Figure 8: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

Figure 9: How to Create a Team in VMware Workstation

Working with the Team Settings

Once you have a team created, you can edit the team setting by highlighting your team and clicking the Edit Team Settings link in the VMware Control Center. A Team Settings window appears with the following four tabs:

• Connections
• Virtual Machines
• LAN Segments
• Options

Working with the Team Settings: Connections

The Connections tab (see Figure 10) allows you to view and add a network adapter to any virtual machine within your team. This is helpful for any custom network configuration you might make.

Figure 10: Working with the Team Settings

Working with the Team Settings: Virtual Machines

The Virtual Machines tab (see Figure 11) allows you to add a new virtual machine, an existing virtual machine, or a clone of a virtual machine to your team. When you click Add | New virtual machine, the Welcome to the New Virtual Machine wizard appears. When you click Add | Existing virtual machine, you can browse to an existing virtual machine and add it to your team.  Finally, Add | New clone of virtual machine allows you to create a linked or full clone of an existing virtual machine on your network.

Figure 11: Working with the Team Settings

Also important  is the Startup Details feature, which allows you to configure the delay before each virtual machine in the team powers on. You can specify the number of seconds before each virtual machine starts.

Additionally, you can specify  the order in which the team virtual machines will start. For example, you might have a domain controller that needs to be running prior to other virtual machines starting. Using the up and down arrows, you  make sure the domain controller is at the top of the virtual machine list. The order and delay time is very helpful when you have multitier applications that have many dependencies.

Working with the Team Settings: LAN Segments

The LAN Segments tab (see Figure 12) allows you to configure a LAN segment and specify bandwidth and packet loss. This can be very helpful when you are trying to simulate certain environments. You have the ability to configure the following settings:

• Name: Enter the name of the LAN segment you are creating. For example, if you are creating a client LAN segment with a dialup modem, call it Modem or Client Modem.
• Bandwidth: You can choose the appropriate bandwidth from the drop-down menu as shown in Figure 10.18.
• KBPS: You can determine the numeric throughput limit on this field. When you choose the applicable bandwidth, it populates the KPBS, which you can modify.
• Packet Loss: This field allows you to specify any percentage of packet loss for testing. You can modify this field as applicable to your specific testing scenario.

Figure 12: Working with the Team Settings

Working with the Team Settings: Options

The Options tab allows you to change the name of the team you created.

VMware Workstation Team Console

The Team Console (see Figure 13) consists of three main areas:

• Favorites window,
• inactive virtual machines area,
• and active virtual machines area.

Additionally, you have a grab bar that allows you to further size your active/inactive windows.  When working with teams, you do not see the team console until you power on the team. Once a team is powered on, you can toggle between the VMware Control Center and the team console by selecting View | Current View.

Figure 13: VMware Workstation Team Console

VMware Workstation Team Console: Active Virtual Machine

The active virtual machine is the largest machine in the team console. This virtual machine is located at the bottom of the window and is the only virtual machine that you can work with.

VMware Workstation Team Console: Inactive Virtual Machines

The inactive virtual machines are the row of machines in the team console that appear at the top. To change which virtual machine is active, simply click on one of the smaller inactive virtual machines to make it become active. You can also use the Team | Switch to (virtual machine) to perform the same functionality.

You now have all the information necessary to take off running with teams. You can reinforce these skills by creating many multitier environments and simulating different types of bandwidth and packet loss.

My favorite feature is creating a VHD and then backing up your computer using a disk imaging tool such as Acronis to that specific VHD. I also like performing Physical to Virtual conversions (P2V). This allows me to bring my desktop with me during my travels as a virtual machine.

Creating a VHD in Windows 7

Let’s begin by opening the “Disk Management” console. Click “Start,” “My Computer,” and right-click and choose “Manage.” Select “Disk Management” and your disk configuration loads. Select “Action” from the toolbar and choose “Create VHD (Figure 1)”.

Figure 1.

Next, specify the location of your VHD and the size. You have the ability to create a fixed size VHD or one that expands as necessary until you run out of available space (Figure 2). Click “OK.”

Figure 2.

The new disk is created and you must initialize the disk by right-clicking on it and choosing “Initialize Disk (Figure 3).”

Figure 3

Select the Disk or Disks you want to initialize by ticking the appropriate box, as shown in Figure 4, and click “OK.” Please leave the default value of “MBR” unless you are using an Itanium based computer. For the purposes of this tutorial that would be one GIANT VHD. Basically, do not choose “GPT.”

Figure 4.

Now that both of your disks are initialized (Figure 5), you are ready to create your disk volumes.

Figure 5

Right-click on each Disk (Figure 6) you created and choose “New Simple Volume…” The wizard walks through assigning a drive letter, setting the size and formatting the drive for use. Repeat this process for all VHD’s created.

Figure 6

Your VHD virtual drives are now ready for use and show up as drives in “My Computer” (Figure7). You can drag and drop files or save documents, spreadsheets and videos as if they were physical drives.

Figure 7

Now that you can create a VHD, you also have the ability to detach and attach a VHD. Open the Disk Management console and right-click on the VHD disk and choose “Detach VHD (Figure 8 and 9).”

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

Note: If you want to permanently delete the VHD, choose “Delete the virtual hard disk file after removing the disk.” Click “OK” and the disk is removed from the disk configuration. Click “Action,” “Attach VHD” and specify the location (Figure 10) of your VHD and click “OK.” This reattaches your VHD.

Figure 10

As you can see, Windows native support for VHD creation is powerful. The line is getting blurred with each release as to what is physical and what is virtual. I suspect at some point, we won’t be able to tell the difference.

A great way to practice implementing different security tactics, especially if you’re considering certification, is to create virtual machine configurations and load various security tools to become more proficient in using them.

With virtual machines, you can create complex networking configurations to mimic your current network and then you can experiment with different security tools to see which ones work best in which situations, which in turn will help you develop sound security policies that will keep your live network secure.

A good list of security tools that every network admin should know is available at TechRepublic in my article Would you hire a hacker to help protect your network?.

Take a look at some of the tools and try them in your own virtual environment.

While the hardware side of networking can only be learned with real equipment, the software portion, which arguably has a longer learning curve, can be learned in the comfort of one’s own home using a single computer.

While it does not fully translate into real-world experience, virtualization allows the average person to work with an entire network of computers including application servers, database servers, front-end client machines and many others, on a single PC. Provided the computer has more than enough RAM, a fast processor and plenty of disk space, the possibilities of combinations are endless. Cheap memory and 64 bit computing have also helped in allowing virtualization to become popular.

Utilizing Virtualization to Prepare for Certification Exams

Using virtualization in self-training is a great way to pursue certifications and credentials in the IT field.

Cisco has one of, if not the most reputable certifications in the industry. Their certifications range from Entry Level Networking Technician (CCENT) to the expert level of Certified Architect. Taking a look at the exam topics for the CCENT certification, we see that virtualization can assist greatly in preparing for this test.

Exam topics include:

1. Assign and verify valid IP addresses to hosts, servers, and networking devices in a LAN environment,
2. Enable NAT for a small network with a single ISP and connection using SDM and verify operation using CLI and ping
3. Implement static and dynamic addressing services for hosts in a LAN environment.

All of the aforementioned tasks can be learned in a virtual environment with a virtual server and client PC’s. Even the more advanced certifications that Cisco offers, such as CCNA (Network Associate) can be worked on using virtual environments.

Microsoft actually provides virtual environments through their website in order to train for their certifications. These self-titled “Virtual Labs” are provided free of charge and require no software download to your computer. Although, they do require a PC with Internet Explorer, ActiveX and Silverlight plug-ins. The topics available for your perusal are substantial, from SQL Servers, IIS, and Windows Business Server to Microsoft Exchange (see Figure 1.1).

Each subject lab brings you into an environment with a sidebar that contains all the step-by-step instructions needed to complete that specific task (See Figure 1.2, 1.3).

Resources like these make network training much more accessible and much less expensive.

Key Advantages to Using Virtualization for Study

While virtualization may not replace real-world experience, there are many advantages to working with virtual PC’s and servers rather than physical ones.

For starters, in your experimentation with multiple virtual machines, if you by chance crash one, infect one with a virus or have no idea how to get it back to baseline, you can simply delete and re-create it. A physical computer may need to be brought in for repairs or could be rendered unusable by lack of knowledge.

Instead of being one computer down in your network, just create another virtual machine and you’re back up and running. You can take more risks and have more freedom knowing you’re not destroying a physical computer. Virtual machines also have snapshots so if you destroy a machine, you can simply snap it back to a usable state in seconds.

Virtualization is an invaluable tool in information technology. Many small businesses are now migrating to virtual networks to cut costs and also require their IT professionals to have in-depth knowledge of VMware and other virtualization software. Even the military is using VMware and virtualization to provide their soldiers experience with the equipment before they get into the field and to decrease the number of physical servers across the country.

Virtual machines are a cheap and effective way to gain experience and training in the IT field.

According to Roelof Botha, GP at Sequoia Capital, “Cloud computing is a game changing market opportunity and Nimbula is uniquely positioned to capitalize on it,”

What is Nimbula?

Simply defined, Nimbula like Amazon EC2 is an automated cloud management system that delivers services behind a firewall.

With Nimbula, you can extend or re-purpose your existing infrastructure and build a computing cloud in a trusted environment. By using a common API, you can access on and off premise cloud services.

How Does Nimbula Work?

As I understand it, Nimbula Director (cloud OS) allows you to manage both on-site and off-site cloud IT resources behind a firewall.(See Figure 1).

The Nimbula API provides an interface to manage your virtual data center. You have the ability to manage resources via a command line interface (CLI) as well as a web control panel built on top of the API (Figure 2 – 4).

Figure 2: Nimbula Login Page

Figure 3: Nimbula Web Console

Beneath the virtual data center sits a physical layer of storage (EMC, NETAPP), networking hardware ( Cisco, Juniper), compute hardware (DELL, HP, etc) all managed by a multilayer control software. Nimbula integrates a hypervisor with node management to achieve automated deployment and configuration.

Joubert Steyn, Managing Director of Information Technology, Metropolitan Health Group, “Nimbula Director is appealing because it promises to enable organizations to use existing infrastructure to rapidly build a highly scalable and flexible cloud in the trusted environment of their own data centers.”

“As we explore ways to implement cloud computing, we’ve evaluated several private cloud solutions and Nimbula is the best one we’ve tried,” said Steyn. “The underlying technology is solid and it performs well. In addition, we’ve received great support from the Nimbula team. Our engineers really like the technology and the company.”

Figure 4: Nimbula Reporting

Nimbula Infrastructure

Nimbula runs on a single or multi-cluster site intermingled with 32 or 64 bit computers. The computers must meet the following software and hardware standards below:

After reading through some use cases, I like what they have to offer. For example, let’s say you are a CGI Animation studio and your movie rendering farm has roughly 5000 CPU’s which is enough to handle your load on average but at peak use is insufficient. Now let’s add that your studio is owned by a larger studio that has a movie rendering farm also and has enough capacity to handle your movie rendering at peak times. Nimbula Director provides you with the ability to burst into the parent companies movie rendering at peak use keeping all your information inside the company by leveraging a internal enterprise cloud. You could take this a step further now and when total peak capacity is met (both companies), burst out to the Internet Cloud and spin up instances via Amazon EC2 to handle additional movie rendering loads.

For more information on what Nimbula has to offer, see nimbula.com.

One of the drawbacks of using an Apple computer (i.e. Macbook Pro, iMac, etc) are the numerous applications available only to Windows machines. VMware Fusion is the answer for those who want to use an Apple computer but need access to Windows based software.

Fusion is an application that allows you to install any version of Windows, Linux, etc., onto your Mac and run it as an application. Upon opening Fusion you can install Windows as you would on any normal PC and create a “virtual computer” that runs on top of the Mac OS.

In this virtual machine you can install software, run applications and use it as you would a regular Windows machine, all inside your Mac. It is the ideal solution for corporate employees who need a Windows environment for networking or to run native Windows applications, like full Microsoft Office.

Fusion is also useful for the average consumer who would like to purchase Windows-only software, like a CD label maker. VMware Fusion is available through VMware.com and costs $79.99.

Installation Requirements

Before installing Windows 7 you will need to have VMware 3.0 or higher installed on your computer. I will be running VMware Fusion 3.1 on a Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. The full system requirements are as follows:

• Any Intel® Mac
• Minimum 1GB of RAM (2GB RAM recommended)
• 700MB free disk space for VMware Fusion and at least 5GB for each virtual machine
• Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later; Mac OS X 10.6 or later
• Operating system installation media (disk or disk image) for virtual machines

If you are running Fusion 2.0, you can purchase a downloadable update or the full version here: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/. You will also need a licensed full-version disc of Windows 7, not an upgrade disc.

Installing Windows 7 in VMware Fusion

When VMware Fusion 3.0 is first opened you will be greeted with the following screen (Figure 1.1) containing three options. Choose “Install Windows or another operating system (OS) in a new virtual machine (VM).”

Figure 1.1

A new window will pop up and ask you to insert your Windows disc, which you may do now and press “continue.” I will be installing Windows 7 with an .iso file and selecting “Continue without disc.” If you choose this method you will see the following options (Figure 1.2). Choose “Use operating system installation disc image file,” browse to the folder where you have placed the .iso image, select it and press “continue.”

Figure 1.2

On the next screen, choose “Operating System: Microsoft Windows and Version: Windows 7,” as seen in Figure 1.3, and press continue.You’ll now be given the option to choose Windows Easy Install by checking the “Use Easy Install” box. Using Easy Install will bypass the Windows setup screens that help you create a user account, password, etc and complete those steps right now. I suggest keeping this box checked to make things easier as the setup continues. For this tutorial we will keep the box checked as we proceed

Figure 1.3

Enter the password you will use for the administrator account on this virtual machine as well as the Product Key that came with your Windows 7 software. You will also need to specify the Windows Version that you will be installing: Home, Professional, Ultimate and press continue.

The last step before installation is choosing the level of integration your virtual machine will have with your Mac. The “More Seamless” option will allow your virtual machine complete access to any file on your Mac that Windows can open. While this makes using Windows applications to edit your current files easy, it increases the risk for Windows viruses to cross over to your Mac files (Figure 1.4, 1.5). Choosing “More Isolated” will require you to drag and drop files into the virtual machine in order to edit them. Using the isolated option, you will still be able to create a shared folder between your Virtual Machine and your Mac to exchange files. I prefer the more Isolated choice and will continue with that bubble selected.

Figure 1.4

Figure 1.5

You will now be able to review the specifications and memory allowances for this virtual machine. The “Customize Settings” button will allow you to choose where on your computer the Virtual Machine will be saved. I have created a folder in My Documents where I will save all Virtual Machines. When you are ready to begin installation, press “Finish.”

The Windows Virtual Machine will now start up automatically and begin the installation process. During installation the Virtual Machine will restart itself several times. Once completed, you will be brought to the sign-in screen. Your password is what you entered during the setup process (see Figure 1.6). After signing in, VMware will begin to install Vmware tools which is required for everything to work properly. The virtual machine will then restart once more and bring you to the sign-in screen.

Figure 1.6

After signing in again, your virtual machine is ready to use. You may have noticed that the screen resolution during installation was incorrect. Ctrl-click on the virtual desktop and click “Screen Resolution.” A window will pop up and you may select your resolution. All of your trackpad gestures should also be working, including two-fingered scroll, secondary tap, etc.

Inside the virtual machine you can choose to view in “Full Screen,” which will expand the Windows desktop and make it seem as though you’re strictly using Windows. You can return to the single window view by placing the mouse in the top center area of the desktop to bring up the following menu (Figure 1.7). Selecting “Unity” will hide the Windows desktop but allow you run any application within the virtual machine as though it is native to your Mac (Figure 1.8). You can run an application though the VMware icon in the menu bar as well as return to Single Window view, suspend the Virtual Machine, shut down, etc.

Figure 1.7

Figure 1.8

When you’re finished with the Virtual Machine you can suspend it, which saves its current state and allows you to return to it by pressing “Resume.” Or you can Shut it Down completely by pressing the VMware icon in the menu bar or Virtual Machine > Shut Down. Quitting Fusion will also ask you to Shut Down the virtual machine.

The next time you start up Fusion, you will either be greeted with your Windows 7 virtual  machine in a suspended state or the “Virtual Machine Library” which can also be accessed from the menu bar by clicking Window > Virtual Machine Library. A list of your virtual machines will be displayed in the left hand column with their status on the right. Clicking the play button in the left hand column or the round “Start Up” button will both open your Windows 7 virtual machine and begin the start up process. Pressing the “Settings” button will allow you to customize the permissions of the virtual machine: CPU power, Folder Sharing, USB Devices, etc. In the event you wish to delete the selected virtual machine, just press the delete button on the bottom right hand corner.

When you’re ready to install another virtual machine, you can do so by pressing the Home button in the left hand column and repeating the process for a Windows or Linux machine.

What if you could choose a free alternative instead? Enter Sun VirtualBox.

Sun VirtualBox is free and open-source and runs on 32 and 64-bit systems. What’s more, it supports Windows, Linux, and MAC OS X and has a great community behind it.

Before you spend the money on VMware Workstation, give Sun VirtualBox a shot.

Take a look at Veronica Henry’s article on how to install Sun VirtualBox and Widows 7 in Ubuntu and my TechRepublic article on how Sun VirtualBox functions in a Windows environment.

With application virtualization, you can abstract the OS resources and present them to the application as a virtual resource. Once configured, you have 1 executable that contains the application and user settings all contained in one file. This file can be copied to a network drive, shared, and/or even placed on a thumb drive to be carried around; it is independent of the OS or OS agnostic.

Introducing ThinApp

ThinApp is an application designed by VMware to help separate your applications from your OS.  In order to use ThinApp, you must create a clean virtual machine using VMware Workstation as your base. Once that is configured and completed, you would install VMware ThinApp within the virtual machine.

Next, perform a snapshot on the virtual machine. This is necessary to be able to ThinApp an application and then revert back to a clean OS again to ThinApp an additional application.

For example, once you performed the above tasks, you would install your software, virtualize it, revert the OS back to its base, install new software, virtualize it, etc.

ThinApp 4.5: Support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

Recently, VMware released their latest version of VMware ThinApp; it fully supports Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (32 & 64 bit).  ThinApp support for Windows 7 will help move the adoption of Windows 7 as you rollout the new version and still support legacy applications using application virtualization. Since the applications are removed from the OS barrier, it is a much easier process to move from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Thinapp in Action

Now that you have some background information on ThinApp, let’s take it for a spin.

Open ThinApp from the Start menu and run “Setup Capture.” ThinApp performs a “Prescan” of the registry prior to loading your new software. Once the “Prescan” is complete, minimize the application and load your software.

After your software is installed, click “Next” to perform a “Postscan” of your registry.  Now you are ready to highlight the executable you are virtualizing and build the project and specify the default directory.

Once the project is complete, you can browse to the isolated applications executable and run the application virtually. Additionally, you can take it a step further and explore the advanced features ThinApp has to offer.

ThinApp can be downloaded and evaluated 60 days for free. After 60 days, you can purchase the entire ThinApp suite for $5,000.00 and it is also bundled in the Premier version for $250.00 per concurrent user.

Virtualize an App with VMware ThinApp in under 5 minutes

If you’re ready to give ThinApp a try, take a look at the video below from David Davis on how to virtualize an app with VMware ThinApp in less than 5 minutes.