Archive for August 17th, 2006

Our Virtualization Project

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

The following is an email I had sent to a local technology coordinators listserv after someone asked about the free VMware Server. I’m sure I will go into more detail about our recent virtualization project on this blog in the future. Also, I have submitted for a session at the eTech Ohio Conference to discuss virtualization, how we’re using it, and what we learned from our project. I also plan to put together a desktop deployment session, since it seems to be a hot topic in other school districts. (more…)

Posted in Education, Information Technology, System Administration, Virtualization | No Comments »

End of Summer Stress

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

My Major Tasks to Complete:

  • Test, test, and retest mass account creation for staff and student accounts
  • Fix sound card issue on notebooks and verify it works (oops.)
  • Test and tweak student computer lockdown security
  • Install Read 180 Enterprse on server and create client package
  • Create as many software packages as possible before start of school, and keep going until they’re all done
  • Ensure Destiny install goes well. Upgrade SQL server to newest service pack.

All of this seems pretty easy and possible if I were able to focus on them exclusively. But, I can’t. I’m being pulled in many different directions so that I can’t stay focused on one task for more than an hour. It’s starting to get to stress me a little.

Update: I wrote this last week. This week has been quite a bit better. I think we’ll be okay, aside from all the software we still need to package. I just noticed the title of this post has 2 meaning depending how you read it!

Posted in Desktop Deployment, Education, Information Technology, Instructional Technology, System Administration | No Comments »

VMware Infrastructre 3, Templates, and Customization Specifications

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

Today I deployed my first virtual machine from template using a customization specification. I talked a little bit about them in a previous article.

To start, you need to install Sysprep deep inside VirtualCenter’s CommonAppData folder. I’m not sure why would you would need to download/install ALL of those sysprep version folders. There is one for Sysprep 1.1, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003. I only installed the Windows 2003 SP1 Sysprep tools (there’s a newer one than the CD edition on Microsoft’s website) to the Windows 2003 folder (look at the PDFs linked in the previous article for a specific path).

My template was already syspreped. I created a customization specification. My customization specification was very generic so it will work for almost all of my deployments. I had it ask me at deployment time for static IP, computer name, and such. One bug during the TCP/IP section, it forced me to include a default gateway and an alternate gateway. That seems pretty useless.

I deployed my template, it asked for all the information as I specified. And.. It worked just as I thought it would. It was already booted up by the time I got the console open. I chose not to join the VM to our domain right away in the customization specification, so I logged in and did that manually.

I’m not sure if having my template already syspreped mattered, I haven’t been able to find official instructions on how to make a Windows template and for use with customization specifications. I’ll have to try to deploy a template to a non-syspreped template and see how that works. I may have gotten lucky!

Posted in Information Technology, Virtualization | No Comments »

Issues Cloning a Disk in OS X and Not So Hidden Files

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

I just put a 160GB drive in my MacBook (pictured in the site header), what a hassle it was! I had to run to the hardware store to get the proper torx tool (T-8 in case you’re wondering).

First, I had issues creating an image (.DMG) of the 80GB drive. First I tried to create a image of the disk itself (disk0), not the volume (disk0s2). The resulting image wouldn’t mount. Not sure if it was just corrupted or if some other problem happened. I had problems formatting the external drive through the USB interface, the Firewire interface worked great.

What actually worked for me:

  1. Install OS X to my external HD (using Firewire!) using the least install options possible. I had to reformat the volume for no reason to let OS X install to it, no idea why.
  2. Update to newest OS X updates (They make changes/patches to Disk Utility that might help your imaging) to the external drive
  3. Run disk utility
  4. Create DMG of your VOLUME. It will look like “disk0s2,” not just “disk0.” Click File, New, Disk Image from disk0s2 (Yours may be different. So long as you click the correct volume in the left column of disk utility before going into this menu, it will show the correct volume).
  5. I’d use read/write format, but it’s up to you. Compressed seemed to be CPU limited and took longer.
  6. Start the process. I used Activity Monitor, disk activity tab to look at the transfer rate.
  7. Shutdown MacBook, install new disk.
  8. Boot up on external drive again
  9. Find your disk image, mount it.
  10. Partition new disk in disk utility
  11. Go to Restore tab
  12. Drag and drop the desktop icon of the volume to the source
  13. Drag and drop the new drive icon on the desktop to the destination
  14. Click restore
  15. Reboot from new disk
  16. Once you open your disk you’ll notice some new icons. Don’t delete them, they are important and should be hidden.
  17. To get rid of your new friends etc, var, usr go to this link: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301677
  18. Follow the directions (it’s just one command!)
  19. Enjoy.

It seems to be working so far. I wish I had the time to do a proper reinstall, maybe later! I probably should have used Carbon Copy Cloner.

Posted in Apple, Computing | No Comments »