Lost!

Now that I have a full blown server at home, I needed a way to use it for several purposes. There where two options:

Install Everything, including the kitchen sink, on one OS and deal.
Install a Virtual Machine Server to allow me to use multiple computers.

Between those two options, I’ve done the first, not fun. The second was the only way to go. The hard part about that option was, which software to install.

There has been 1 major vendor for the VM market for several years, but several have come out recently that are making headway - mainly, Microsoft’s Virtual Server. I chose to go with Virtual Server because I get the Enterprise Edition with my MSDN subscription and VMWare’s 64bit environment, from what I’ve read, is a software hack that happens to work right. VMWare can also cost a lot more than I was willing to spend for my little po-dunk test server.

Install
Installation of the software is so simple, your typical teenager could do it. The hard part is getting it to actually fire up. The reason I say that is because I installed it on Server 2008. If you’ve never messed with Server 2008, I strongly suggest you start learning ASAP, because things are much different. Server 2003 allowed you to select various components of IIS to install in Add/Remove Programs - 2008 takes it a step further by allowing all kinds of weird options inside of IIS to be added and removed individually. On top of that, IIS 7 threw me through a loop too.

Long story short, I installed the software, went to the configuration screen (which happens to be a web page) and nothing happened. All I got was a blank page. The standard “Welcome to IIS 7″ page wasn’t displaying either. To fix this, I had to do all of the following:

Activate CGI Access (IIS)
Activate .Net (IIS)
Activate Simple Auth (IIS)
Activate Static Content (IIS)
Add the localhost name to the trusted zone (IE)
Check “Always Prompt” for username/password (IE)

After that was all done, things worked and the fun got worse. I accidently downloaded and installed the 32 bit version - oops. I had to uninstall and reinstall the software, which went very quick and things where back to normal again.

VM Setup
I ran into more problems here, and those problems may turn people off from this software. I honestly got a little upset when I found out that, even if you are running a 64 bit OS, with a 64 bit install of MSFT-VMS, you can ony run 32 bit Virtual Machines. Aparently, the 64 bit VM capability will be added in the next major release, which is slated for…awhile. This problem caused me to re-download a lot of the OS’ and software that I needed as well as rethink my plans for later. This is also the reason that I was forced to install Exchange 2003 since 2008 is only 64bit. MSSQL 2005 was installed because 2008 wasn’t officially out of Beta at the time and I needed to brush up on it before moving to 2008. I’ll be installing Exchange and MSSQL 2008 when the VM software supports the 64 bit environment.

Other than that, setup went ok. There are some issues I have with the software, however.

• CPU Utilization is a little clunky. I can only evenly split up the CPU states. If I barely use Exchange, but would like to push more resources towards IIS, I have to assign a “Weight” to the process, making things a little odd to understand.
  
  

  CPU Utilization and Weighting

• When remoting in, you are given an itty-bitty 640×480 (approx) box to use via webpage. This is, unless you decide to use Remote Desktop to remote into each machine. I’ve turned this on, because things just don’t size well using the internal web (ActiveX) Viewer. And yes, there is an RDP client for the Mac… Click the picture below for a full size view of the internal Remote screen.
  
• Only 32bit OS’ are currently supported. This means a max of 4GB of memory per machine. If I wanted to allocate more memory to my MSSQL server and just shut off Exchange, I have wasted memory since I can’t force more than 4GB on it. This also starts to cause problems on what you can and cannot install - ie: Exchange 2003 vs 2008.
• For some reason, I don’t know if it’s caused by Windows or the VM Client, but when mounting ISO’s to the machine, the ISO is cached until you switch the ISO option to the physical disk then back to a new ISO file. This causes problems when you’re attempting to install something with multiple disks.
• I haven’t put much effort into it, but due to the way the VM Environment is setup, certain flavors of Linux have problems with it. It is not setup like VMWare that emulates full on hardware.

HyperV
Some of you slick people out there may be shaking their heads wondering why I’m running Server 2008 and Virtual Server instead of HyperV. Well, first, go and read this. It’s a copy of a Blog post by the original author (that post now 404’s on the authors website). Secondly, Microsoft’s own website lists an oddly worded explanation between the VM Server Product and HyperV:

Q. What are the differences between Hyper-V and Virtual Server?
A. Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is the current server virtualization solution from Microsoft and is based on a hosted virtualization platform. Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008, is a hypervisor-based virtualization platform that will enable customers to not only consolidate a vast array of workloads but also enable moving toward a dynamic IT environment. Core feature set differences include support for 64 guest virtual machines, SMP support, performance improvements, and other key features in Hyper-V.

Well, there you have it - it has a few things that I want, but after reading that blog post, it needs to mature a little more than I care to even think about. At least right now, I can literally copy and paste a machine to a secondary dir and have a full-on backup. When I started this exercise, I built one machine up and copied it to other files, fired those machines up, renamed a few things and *poof*, things just worked.

In the end, I’m satisfied with the VM Product from Microsoft, but not wowed like I was when I first saw VMWare. I would love to get ahold of a 2008 copy at some point as well. Oddly, I have a feeling that MSFT will try to sway the market by changing 2008 to the point where people like myself are forced to use HyperV. Maybe one of these days, I’ll be brave enough to touch it.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: What’s Next For Alfresco?:
After a long hiatus from blogging, I’m starting to get back into the ECM scene and I’m trying by doing a blog post daily for this entire week… But, since I’ve been so down on Alfresco for so long, I figured I’d take an in-depth look at them. Again, I’m not anti-Alfresco. I truly and honestly would love to see Alfresco take a good sized chunk of the ECM market away from other companies - and remember, there isn’t just Sharepoint out there as a competitor…

I’ve been a solid Windows user since ver. 3 (yes, that clunky windows version that everyone laughs at). Before then, I was a solid, hard core, DOS user. Over the years, I’ve used FreeBSD, Digital Unix, several Flavors of Linux, and all the Apple OS’ from 7.1 to X… This month, I made a major decision to completely switch to Mac, even though I do .Net dabbling, SharePoint work and all that Windows based stuff.

No, contrary to what my wife believes, I have not lost my mind. In fact, I’m fed up with the Windows world. At this point, I’ll be using a Macbook Pro for my work. I’ll be dumping my 17 inch Toshiba gaming rig because it’s too heavy, too big, too loud, and doesn’t have enough battery life to do anything but barely watch a DVD. Thats right folks, I “downgraded” to something faster, better looking, much less heavier and has about….oh, 3 or so hours more of battery life.

Over the last month, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with Vista. I’m tired of the weird tweaks you have to perform out of the box, like turning off the Optional Driver updates that seem to fry anything thats updated. Or the fact that half the programs that run inside Windows need Admin permissions (so - do we blame this on the devs or MSFT???) or else they either don’t work, freak out or crash everything. Even Visual Studio is recommended to be run as Admin for gods sake. So, due to that and the whole disliking the overly huge chunk of a laptop I have, I decided to look for something better. At first, I was gunning for a Voodoo Envy, but found out that it completely lacked the horsepower that I needed (I all-out require 4+ gigs of memory) and I’d have to deal with Windows or some flavor of Linux that I hoped I could find drivers for. Then, I rememberd my good friend, FreeBSD and the stars aligned. Mac OS X is based off FreeBSD…

In the past, I shied away from Macs due to their pricing and their OS. When OS 9 came out, things got interesting. OS X (10) came out and things where much better, but the first few versions really needed some ironing out. Then, once it became a solid OS, there wasn’t any way to really run Windows on it. Then things finally ironed themselves out when Apple announced that they’d switch to Intel based CPUs. That made it even easier to switch. Finally, over the last 2 or so years, everything came to a head. Now, Parallels and VMWare Fusion are two rock-solid platforms to run windows in full Virtual Machine mode. I could have partitioned windows on the mac, but know of several heat issues that Windows Causes and my mind works too fast to wait for a restart into Windows…

With that said, I’ve had my mac for 48 hours now and I’m loving it. The keyboard is nice, the screen is great and it boots up faster than anything I’ve seen in a very long time. Try getting into Windows and being fully usable in 20 seconds… Ain’t gonna happen, no matter how hard you try. The other thing is, I’ll be switching my home Dev and Research environment to XP or Vista (I haven’t officially decided) inside VMWare Fusion since I can doc IE and Visual Studio to work on things when I want. It’s nice not to need to get into Windows just to check some code or goof off a little. Yes, I know this means running the machine a lot, but thats fine. My other option is to keep my old laptop just for dev work, but for now, that isn’t going to happen unless I find something horribly wrong with the whole .Net on a Mac…

So far, the only weird thing I’ve found is that I have a DNS issue to iron out. Aparently Vista has fixed this for me, but my Mac has issues resolving my internal web server address even though it can see it in Finder (Think Explorer on Windows). Oddly, SharePoint looks perfectly fine in Safari ;-)

Preview of the Next Blog Post: MSFT Virtual Server 2005:
Now that I have a full blown server at home, I needed a way to use it for several purposes. There where two options:

Between those two options, I’ve done the first, not fun. The second was the only way to go. The hard part about that option was, which software to install.

Some people, like myself, test many CMS and ECM packages on a normal basis. There are, however, many people that may need to test these types of packages in a cheaper environment than on an enterprise class server that costs tens of thousands of dollars - whether they’re part of a small business, startup or even a large business with someone “testing” at home. On top of the CMS and ECM packages, I wanted something to help me test Enterprise class software (read: learn) for future use and I think I accomplished more than what I wanted.

Requirements
My requirements are completely over the top for someone testing an average CMS package like Drupal, Plone or even Joomla. My server is specifically setup for Enterprise class application testing.

I basically wanted something that would allow me to test SharePoint, Alfresco, and a whole host of other packages at once. I also wanted something to allow me to use Virtual Machines instead of just one OS. This allows me to physically turn machines on and off without even needing to be at the box. This will allows me to use products, side by side, in their own environments testing how memory and CPU resources effect the packages - I don’t need them trying to fight with each other on the same box.

My underlining OS is Windows 2008 Enterprise Server, 64bit. The reason I went with this instead of Linux and such, was because I needed to really need to sit down with 2008 and learn about how it works. I’ve also finally learned that businesses really prefer to pay for everything - especially on the government side of the line. (There was also an OS issue that I ultimately caused - it helped “guide” me to 2008 Server as well.)

Anyway - I am running another package that I’m learning about (running something you’re learning on is normally a very insecure thing - be careful during your planning) - Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise. That will allow me to use 1 server for many. I decided on 3 base images of the OS I’m installing so I can power them up once a month, run updates and shut them down. If I need an image for something - cut’n'paste it and I’m pretty much fresh. (Note: There are some things that I’ve found that I don’t like about the MSFT VM Package - that story soon.) For machines, I decided on the following:

1. Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise Server: Not the “newest”, but the standard in most environments now. Right now, this is the only thing installed due to time constraints on my end.
2. Windows 2008 Server - Console Install: I was going to initially install this as the primary OS, but I didn’t want to pull my hair out trying to make everything work right while learning. For those that are unaware, MSFT has taken pointers from Linux on making servers headless for less overhead. Start this machine and all you get is a blinking curser, no GUI to log into.
3. Cent OS - This was planned as a Linux testbed for several applications, but there are weird issues that sprouted up. Ultimately, I have not had time to play with any Linux/Unix distros. This will happen soon though.

Now, that lists 3 servers - there are more. The extra servers are mirrors of their counterparts, just setup as separate Database Servers, Exchange Server or Images that are turned on once in awhile and updated. Right now, only the Windows side of things is setup. I’ve currently got IIS7, Exchange 2003 and MSSQL 2005 installed on 3 different machines. Yes, there is a reason for the older versions of Exchange and MSSQL… Thats for the VM Story later.

Now, the real question was - can I “cheaply” run all of those Virtual Machines on top of the physically installed OS? “Cheap” is a relative term. Over the course of the summer, “cheap” went from less than $1,000 to $2,500 to more than that. Now, this initial cost is just the hardware, it’s not counting the MSDN Premium package I purchased. In total, my budget was $5,000.

In terms of technical specifications, I required the following:

• Quad Core Server AMD or Intel - I didn’t care which. I’m not in the mood to compare Oranges and Tangerines.
• 4 2500GB+ Hard Drives in a RAID 10 array. Originally, I was going to use one 500GB drive for this exercise, but after thinking about it - it’s a Bad Idea©. The read/write on that one drive, with all machines turned on will be pretty bad, thus causing a higher likelihood of failure. RAID 10 was chosen over RAID 5 for performance reasons.
• 2 Onboard NICs. Mostly standard these days, but I needed to list it anyway.
• Memory - Ultimately, I got what I can afford. My requirements where a minimum of 8GB, but I wanted to see 16GB or more.
• Case, power, etc - Best option was a cheaper Barebones Upright case - I tore down my rack months ago.
• Graphics, for once, onboard VGA please.

Originally, I was going to put together this server for around $600, but have several physical machines. It can be done, if needed, but my requirements have changed and I actually got a job during researching the parts (which is why I don’t have time to write…) so things have changed. If you’re interested in this route, research Quad Core capable Shuttles. Low power, and small enough to get multiple machines in a tight area. Only downside - RAID will be hard to implement due to the space requirements.

The Server
My home server, otherwise known as the “TV” just wasn’t up to the task. While it has more Hard Drive space than any normal home computer should, it was designed specifically for what it does, a home PVR. There really isn’t a heck of a lot of processing power and memory to allow for more services, especially your average ECM package but when it comes to drive space, 2.5TB is overkill for a ECM test server as well. (TV for military in Europe is usually a season behind and a whole lot of re-runs, this’ll go to 5+ TB when we go back to the US.)

The first thing I did was hop onto eBay to check out the 1u and 2u servers offered. While there are thousands of servers out there, the “affordable” ones are either older or missing Memory and/or the CPU nearly all had no hard drives. In Enterprise class hardware, the drives (usually iSCSI) are really expensive, adding to the cost. On top of this, a lot of people flat out refuse to deal with APO based customers (Read: Military overseas) even though we have US based addresses - something that still really pisses me off. Anyway, after some soul searching, I ditched my hopes of finding a cheap, up-to-date, 1u Server. I decided to start searching for hardware built by smaller and larger shops - Dell, HP, IBM and even several shops listed in LinuxJournal - all too expensive. I couldn’t spend $5,000 on a test server that’s supposed to sit next to my desk, that was my full budget.

After some searching, I realized that no computer shop was going to be able to compete with a home-built server cost. While I won’t get support for broken parts, the warranty will cover that issue for the first few months - which is typically when things die. As for the hard drives, they die all the time. So, after thinking, I hopped back on NewEgg. Use what you will, but they’re the fasted and cheapest thing that I can get at my current location.

It turns out, NewEgg offers some very nice Asus servers. Here’s my hardware rundown:

• The Barebones Server: ASUS TS500-E4/PA4 Pedestal.
• Memory: 12GB FB-DIMM (6×2gb), brand doesn’t matter. Would have gone for 16+gb, but the cost($800) far outweighed the gains.
• Hard Drives: 2×80GB drives in RAID1 Array for main OS. 4×250GB drives in RAID10 Array (built in controller). All drives are standard SATA 3GB/s.

Drive trays: Since the main OS drives are in a RAID 1 array, I figured it would be best to have them cooled and removable. These ICY Dock trays show me the drive temps, have adjustable fan speeds, drive alarms and are decently cheap. Oddly, both docks had no problems compared to the reviews listed for it.

RAID 1 Array: This is the one thing I skimped on that I wish I wouldn’t have…that’s the reason for the “Almost” in the title. I’m running a Promise PCI RAID 1 card. The card runs perfectly fine, no problems. The problem comes from the fact that this is considered a Fake RAID card. It’s a hardware based, software RAID solution, very similar to what is on motherboards. If I had to do it all over, I would buy a full RAID1 card with battery backup, but it’s far too late for that unless this stinker comes crashing down.

Kicking The Tires
I must say, I’m very pleasantly surprised on how well this machine performs, even with the fake raid card in it.

When I first fired it up, it gave me a scare due to how long it takes for the POST to happen. Normally, I don’t worry about such things with large amounts of memory (if you’ve never dealt with a server, it is not to be thought of as a Ferrari, but more like a Mack truck…), but the screen remained blank for a bit longer than I anticipated.

Other than the startup time, which is a good 2.5 minutes, it runs Windows Server 2008 like a champ.

The Good
This thing runs strong. So far, I have no complaints about the hardware, cost or anything related to the physical machine other than minor details.

The OS side of things was a little iffy, so I’ll list that in the Bad section. But, I will say that Windows 2008 runs like a champ on this thing - no problems whatsoever.

On the noise front, this machine is quiet. It’s just a tad louder than the fan for my laptop cooling plate.

Here’s my Full NewEgg Review that’s listed on their product page:

Pros: Nicely built, very solid, no buzzing, etc. It’s great that it comes with a memory cooling unit as well. Cables already routed for you, clean inside.
Cons: -The 5 1/4 bays are just a tad cramped (.5mm or so), so certain things can be a bear to get in or get out if needed. For me, the middle bay, under the DVD drive was just a tad too small for a removable drive bay - had to play with it to get it in.

-No front fan and no easy way to mount one.

-Case intrusion switch can be a pain to reset. Remove battery, bridge reset pins and hold reset button for 15 seconds otherwise it’ll be a huge frustration for you. You can also just bridge the intrusion pins on the MB to not use the “feature”

-Not really a con, but the processors sit very close to the drive cage. Was pretty tight trying to get the fans on.
Other Thoughts: -Some may consider it loud, but if they’ve been in a Data Center, this noise is standard. It’s actually less noisy than it’s Dell counterparts after spin-up.

-Uses FB-DIMMs instead of normal ECC type.

-Does POST/Mem Check with no screen during fan spin-up, so don’t freak out when you first turn it on, give it a minute.

-Had one SATA cable that was bad.

Running Dual Quad XEONs E5410 2.33GHz, 12GB memory, RAID 10 on the drive cage plus RAID 1 off a Promise PCI card. Runs nicely as a VM server for web dev.

The Bad
While it’s more of my fault, due to budget constraints, I really wish that I could have gone with more than 12Gb of memory. Right now, If I turn on each machine with the max memory allowed for each, I can get a total of 4 machines running at once, but it freaks everything out since I’m using 100% of memory. If you do this, you’ll have to play with memory allocation till you get things running smoothly. The main problem here is that FBDIMMs are REALLY expensive.

Operating systems on this machine just didn’t want to play well. I attempted to load several flavors of Linux on this machine and it was just Not Fun. FreeBSD didn’t like the FakeRaid card (my fault) and complained about it from the beginning, OpenSUSE crashed hard within a day of installation, Ubuntu installed, rebooted and lost itself, etc. I gave up on the Linux/Unix stuff due to the issues related to the FakeRaid card. On the Windows side of things, I installed Windows 2008 Enterprise and it works like a champ - no problems, no complaints, no nothin’. Again, this whole paragraph was my fault.

Benchmarks
I know a lot of people just live for benchmarks. Originally, I was planning on listing them, but I don’t have time to run and rerun benchmarks on it with VMs running, not running, stress testing, etc. I found a few tools for testing IIS, but don’t have time to play around with them. I’ll probably update this post in the next week or so (hopefully) with at least an IIS Stress Test.

Note: MSDN licenses are a cheap way to setup a development lab since you can get tens of thousands of dollars in software for a hugely steep discount, but…you cannot use this software for a production environment. Also, MSDN Educational licenses are even less money, but you cannot use programs associated with them to actually sell anything you create. Some people have found out the hard way that Visual Studio actually marks your files to which license was used to create the program.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: Switching to a Mac:
I’ve been a solid Windows user since ver. 3 (yes, that clunky windows version that everyone laughs at). Before then, I was a solid, hard core, DOS user. Over the years, I’ve used FreeBSD, Digital Unix, several Flavors of Linux, and all the Apple OS’ from 7.1 to X… This month, I made a major decision to completely switch to Mac, even though I do .Net dabbling, SharePoint work and all that Windows based stuff.

I’m only 10 days late on this due to a new job (YEA!), but I’ve talked about Krugle before (here and here), but this is one company that I really enjoy talking about for various reasons. This time, they’ve managed to nail one of the biggest software companies in the world, Microsoft.

Although MSDN branded, the MSDN Code Search Preview is hosted at Krugle. (Official Krugle Screenshot)

Microsoft has decided to deploy Krugle on the MSDN Code Gallery, but they are doing so in a new way. Unlike a lot of other customers that Krugle has, Microsoft chose to “…utilize a public-facing deployment of Krugle Enterprise Appliance. This will enhance the search process by allowing both internal and external members of the MSDN community to search code snippets and examples from the MSDN Library.” (Source: Official Krugle Blog post)

Krugle maintains the code search “preview” page here. Again, just a preview. Currently, Microsoft maintains the About Page, which maintains the following opening paragraph:

The MSDN Code Search Preview lets you search for code on MSDN. MSDN Code Search is a “preview” at this time because it only includes code snippets and examples from the MSDN Library and doesn’t yet include code from MSDN Forums, MSDN Code Gallery, or Codeplex (to be included at a later date).Source

So, one of a few things is happening here:

• MSFT is testing Krugle to see how the Search waters work for them and if it’s worth further relations.
• MSFT is slowly allowing Krugle to crawl the code (which should be happening anyway), but taking the relationship slow.
• MSFT is “testing” the technology for their own search needs.
• MSFT is “testing” the relationship to see if corporate attitudes jive.

While I have email addresses of several people at Krugle as you’ve seen in past stories, I’m not going to email them for comment. Anyone worth anything in corporate won’t comment on the above bullets and I have more respect for Krugle than most companies…

Looking at the MSDN Search Forums, coders are less than happy about Live Search on the MSDN site. Unfortnately, it appeared that no one had released the Krugle site on the Forum to all the people complaining - so I did…

So, will Krugle’s involvment in the MSDN search help? Um, yes. Being a part-time coder myself, I’ve used Krugle’s engine on several occasions and I’m starting to use it more and more. The fact that they’re now crawling the MSDN side of things, I’ll be using it daily at work.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: The (Almost) Perfect Home ECM Test Server:
Some people, like myself, test many CMS and ECM packages on a normal basis. There are, however, many people that may need to test these types of packages in a cheaper environment than on an enterprise class server that costs tens of thousands of dollars - whether they’re part of a small business, startup or even a large business with someone “testing” at home. On top of the CMS and ECM packages, I wanted something to help me test Enterprise class software (read: learn) for future use and I think I accomplished more than what I wanted.

I’ve been away for a long time, but have slowly been posting again. This wasn’t the typical abandonment of a blog though. Long story short, I had a job, lost said job but stayed with the same company, went TDY (Temporary Duty) to Sicily twice in 2 weeks (Ever had a 3 day turn around time then planned an international trip 2 hours before your flight leaves? Not fun…) then picked up a new job with the same company. After anticipating having most of the summer off, it didn’t happen.

Over the summer, however, some plans did worked out. I managed to get permission from the wife (a large task that took 2 months of talking - ok begging, planning, ordering, building and installing) to setup a new Enterprise Class server in my office. I am now sitting in a very cold office (due to the AC that I have to run year-round) almost on top of a server. Over the next few stories, I’ll talk about the server and options you have if you want to build something similar.

While doing this, I decided that I might as well take advantage of the situation and provide the installation process for SharePoint and Alfresco as well as some other odds and ends. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing updates of installations of various packages - call them walk throughs so you can compare Tangerines, Oranges and Apples right from the beginning. I’m also going to extend my coverage on those packages by getting detailed quotes of the full price for my server, if I where an IT dept, along with the Connection Licenses (CALs) for a user base of 1,000 people using said system. You did know that you have to buy CALs for Sharepoint, right? This will give anyone thinking about installing SharePoint, Alfresco and others, an itemized, price tag of most of what I install.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: Krugle Nails Major Code Search Customer:
I’m only 10 days late on this due to a new job (YEA!), but I’ve talked about Krugle before (here and here), but this is one company that I really enjoy talking about for various reasons. This time, they’ve managed to nail one of the biggest software companies in the world…