Archive for the 'Virtualisation' Category

Sony Vaio Z disabled (VT) Virtualization Technology

Published
by
Howard
on September 3rd 2008
in Hardware and Virtualisation
. 8 Comments

I love my Sony Vaio Z.  It’s a wonderful bit of kit - exactly the power/portability ratio I wanted.  It has enough grunt to play the odd game in “Speed” mode while giving 6 hours of battery life on wireless in stamina mode.  Not to mention to gorgeous 1600×900 LED screen and the built in 3G wireless.

I have one problem with it and it’s a failing of Sony’s decision making rather than any particular problem with the kit.  Sony disable the Intel Virtualization Technology in the Core 2 Duo on all their Vaio machines.  I’ve seen no valid rationale for this other than “We don’t support VT on the Vaio range.“  This is absurd since all the Core 2 Duo chips feature Intel Virtualization Technology and I can’t imagine how having it switched on would adversely affect Vista or XP (the two Operating Systems Sony officially supports).

If this were a consumer laptop I could understand - but it’s specifically targeted at business users.  In my business I make extensive use of both Microsoft and VMWare’s virtualisation systems - both of which run much faster on hardware that has the VT functionality enabled.  There are a good number of people on various forums spitting blood about this issue so I’m not the only one complaining.

There is light, of sorts, at the end of this tunnel.  Since Sony have done this before on other machiens in the Vaio series, people have managed to re-enable VT by using BIOS editing tools to flip the right register.  Unfortunately it requires intimate knowledge of the BIOS - knowledge that we won’t have until Sony release a BIOS update that can be reverse engineered.  If we’re very lucky Sony will make amends by releasing a BIOS update that allows us to enable VT in the BIOS interface proper.

The worst part of this is that we (Vaio Z owners) didn’t know that VT was disabled until after we bought the machines.  I know a number of people have returned their units and bought Toshiba or Dell machines that haven’t been crippled by the vendors.  Sony advertised a Core 2 Duo Mobile processor, they didn’t mention in any literature that they’d be disabling bits of the processor for no reason.

Sony, if you’re reading this - please give us control over the entire processor and let us enable VT.

VMRC Graphic Corruption

Published
by
Howard
on January 30th 2008
in Microsoft, Networking and Virtualisation
. 0 Comments

I’m looking for help here. 

The image (click to embiggen) you see here is a screen capture of one of my virtual machines suffering some form of graphic corruption.  It should look like this.  This happens often enough now that it is seriously irritating.  I can make it go away by closing VMRC and reconnecting to the server, but I’d rather not have to do so several times a day (sometimes multiple times an hour).

I’m running Virtual Server 1.1.603.0 EE R2 SP1, and all my VMs have Virtual Addition version 13.813 installed.  The VMRC client which came with R2 SP1 is version 1.1.603.0.

The same corruption is visible from machines with ATI and NVidia graphics cards, running XP SP2, Vista or Server 2003.

So - why is this happening, and how can I stop it?

Anyone?

Virtual Server: Guest can’t see External Network

Published
by
Howard
on July 26th 2007
in Software and Virtualisation
. 1 Comment

This was a weird one.   I’ve just built the new x64-based VM server, and moved a number of my VMs onto it for testing.  A few of those VMs run under a local (to the host) service account so they can be automagically started by the server.  For some reason, the VMs which had been set up like this couldn’t see the External network.  I reinstalled the VM Additions, removed and reinstalled the NIC in the Guest and generally scratched my head because this same setup worked just fine when it was a 32-bit box and it was exactly the same… wasn’t it?

Well no, actually, it wasn’t.  Turns out the user I’d created for launching the VMs on the x64 box wasn’t exactly the same as the user on the old box.  It wasn’t a member of the Administrators group.  So note to self: if you want them to be able to access the NIC, start your VMs in a user context that has Admin rights.   I’m sure with a bit of testing I could find the URAs that would lock this down with a little more granularity, but the Administrator right blanket fits for now!

VHD Size

Published
by
Howard
on July 23rd 2007
in Future Howard and Virtualisation
. 0 Comments

Again, a techy post more for my future self’s benefit (so little space in my memory for anything useful, it being full of StarTrek trivia and the like). A trick to optimise a VHD (Microsoft’s Virtual Harddrive format - used in Virtual PC and Virtual Server). Turn of the system file checker. Not always advisable, but if you’ve created a machine where you think you don’t need it, try this.
To turn off SFC, open a command prompt and run

sfc /cachesize=0
sfc /purgecache

Then perform the standard compaction routine in Virtual PC/Virtual Server. For even more benefit, see also the Invirtus Optimizer which is outstanding, taking a 4.2GB VHD down to 1.4 by removing the cruft it didn’t need.

VMWare to Virtual Server

Published
by
Howard
on January 23rd 2007
in Virtualisation
. 1 Comment

Just what I was looking for: a tool to convert existing VMWare drive images to Microsoft Virtual Server (or Virtual PC) format. Now I’m a Microsoftie (by virtue of my contract, anyway) it’s good to be able to use Microsoft’s tool instead of VMWare!  The same site has a VHD expander tool (think Virtual Partition Magic).  Very, very handy.

Philosophy majors shouldn’t write technology editorials

Published
by
Howard
on April 19th 2006
in Apple, Games, Hardware, Internet, Microsoft, Software and Virtualisation
. 0 Comments

Richard sent me an email yesterday with a link to this article along with the message “You’ll love this one…”  If you’ve followed the Windows on Mac saga recently go and read it now, if you’re anything like me and Richard you’ll have plenty to say on the subject once you’ve finished reading.

I couldn’t believe that any publication would bother to publish something like that, even as an “opinion” piece in a student paper and even only on their website.  The author, who may be a veritable genius when it comes to philosophy, clearly has no idea what he (she?) is talking about when it comes to technology.  They don’t seem to understand the difference between emulation, virtualisation and dual booting, and have apparently very little grasp of hardware specifics…

When a Mac starts to emulate a Windows platform completely, the computer must provide additional voltage to provide the computing power.

Ignoring the author’s misconception that the Mac is emulating Windows (it is running Windows natively on an X86 chip remember…) what’s this about additional voltage?!  What?!  The intel chip in my MacBook - when running XP - is pulling the same power as when it runs OS X, or the same as the identical chip that runs Windows XP in the latest HP notebook.  Windows XP playing games such as UT2004 on the MacBook causes it to generate as much heat as OS X playing the Universal Binary of UT2004.  It’s hot (really hot), granted, but the idea that Windows is magically making the processor run hotter than OS X will ever allow is false.  It just gets as hot only quicker.

getting a Mac to run PC games will result in heartache - this I can guarantee

The author doesn’t specify exactly what heartache it will result in… My MacBook runs Half Life 2, CountStrike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Rise of Nations in some cases significantly faster/smoother than my Dell.  What heartache?  Heat-ache maybe, but no worse than OS X causes!

For reiteration, Macs cannot run Windows like PCs can.

Urm, yes.  Yes they can.  That’s rather what all the fuss was about when Apple put Intel chips inside.  INTEL.  x86 chips.  The same instruction set that nearly every PC on the planet uses to run, oh, for example, Windows!  Do you think the author understands the difference between a PPC and an Intel chip, and the reason why a Mac can now run exactly like a PC?

I can’t bring myself to refute the fifth paragraph (”My third point references to the industry.”) as it is so full of misunderstandings of the technology, the businesses involved and the computer industry’s recent history that it’s just not worth it.

Boot Camp crashes and burns?  Hardly.  It’s beta software.  It came with a warning.  Anyone who chose to ignore that warning and install it on a production machine deserves any hassle they get.  That said, my installation of Boot Camp was utterly without problems and I’ve heard lots of other positive reports on various forums.  I’m grateful to Apple for providing Boot Camp and the driver suite - I’d just like some of my minor niggles addressed!

Why my primary Windows XP machine is still a Dell

Published
by
Howard
on April 12th 2006
in Apple, Games, Hardware, Microsoft, Software and Virtualisation
. 1 Comment

MacBook ProThe MacBook Pro is great running XP; but has several flaws which mean it probably won’t become my primary machine just yet…

 

  • No Audio Routing
    If you plug headphones into the headphone socket audio continues to come out of the speakers. This is known (and documented by Apple) but is still irritating. If I’m in the office I quite often listen to mp3s/the radio on headphones. Also, when I play games I nearly always do so with headphones on for the immersive experience…
  • Limited Bluetooth Support
    I use my phone’s Bluetooth headset as a headset in games that support it (UT2004, CounterStrike) and for Skype calls. Either the driver in the MacBook doesn’t support the headset profile, or the hardware doesn’t support it. Either way, it’s an annoying limitation.
  • Heat
    This is the real killer. The MacBook Pro runs hot… Even in OS X - when you push the CPU - it gets very hot. Running in XP though, without the advanced power management, it gets hot quickly. So hot in fact that the grill to the left of the keyboard becomes painful to touch. That’s no good for prolonged periods of typing!
  • The Trackpad
    In OS X there is a tickbox for trackpad settings that “ignored unintended input” - so if you knock it with your wrist while typing it knows to disregard it. Not so for XP. Try typing for any length of time and you find the cursor jumping all over the place as you accidentally click all over your document. Grrr!

I imagine that further updates to the beta will fix some of these niggles, but for now I’m still using the Dell for day to day work and games.

One thing I did manage to do with the MacBook Pro was remap the keyboard. Now \ is in the correct place (next to left shift) as is the back tick (next to the 1 key) and I’ve given myself a right-alt key (the right command key) and a del key (next to the left cursor). So I can hit ctrl-alt-del and I have a right-alt to control MS Virtual Server properly now!

It’s a fantastic games machine; HalfLife 2, UT2004 and RoN all perform flawlessly… I just worry about the heat. I hope Apple issue a BootCamp driver update for APM.

m0n0wall and Microsoft Virtual Server

Published
by
Howard
on March 4th 2006
in Hardware, Infrastructure, Internet, Microsoft, Networking, Software, Tech Support and Virtualisation
. 1 Comment

We recently had the need to simulate a routed environment with low bandwidth/high latency links between remote sites.  To achieve this I used m0n0wall - a free software router - running inside Microsoft Virtual Server on multiple virtual NICs.  Here’s how to get it up and running… Continue reading ‘m0n0wall and Microsoft Virtual Server’

Things I Have Learned This Week

Published
by
Howard
on February 17th 2006
in Hardware, Infrastructure, Internet, Microsoft, Networking, Software, Virtualisation and Work
. 0 Comments

Thing the first:
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 does not support teamed NICs on the host.

This bit us on the arse earlier this week when we teamed the NICs on the hosts of our virtual environment. As a result, although we could RDP to the host desktop, all our guest machines dropped off the network. A colleague is sure that with a bit of tweaking we could get Virtual Server to play nice with the (HP provided) teaming drivers, but we didn’t really have time to mess about with NIC configuration when there was an environment to build and documentation to write!

Thing the second:
m0n0wall is even better than when I last used it (several years ago). Its packet-shaping feature set is very useful if you want to simulate, for arguments sake, a low bandwidth lossy link between two networks. More on this and how to set it up in a virtual environment later.

Thing the third:
Turning off DHCP Client and Computer Browser on a Windows 2003 Server in an AD domain will break more than you might think. Specifically: the ability to register itself in DNS.

net start dhcp
net start browser

Thing the, aw hell, enough counting… Vodafone’s MobileConnect card will hang onto a 3G connection far longer and with far greater success if you configure it so that it’s *not allowed* to fall back to GPRS.

And finally, the commute from Winchester to Bristol is actually pretty reasonable - as long as you have a comfortable car!

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