The generation gap: Windows on multicore

I found an interesting article to read on my QuadCore Vista x64 installation..

 

Windows on multicore

 

excerpt from webpage:

Windows 7 also scales similarly to Vista when moving from dual- to quad-core. Our database workload showed a whopping 571 percent improvement with the addition of two more cores (Vista showed a 492 percent gain), while our workflow workload experienced a less compelling 15 percent speed-up (Vista gained 58 percent on this test). This latter discrepancy may have more to do with limitations in the MAPI subsystem’s scalability (Windows 7 was already 44 percent faster than Vista on dual-core for this particular workload) than any real limitation in Windows 7.

 

 

The fun action starts with way more than 16 cores.. I only have four. Should I go back to Windows XP x64 ?? I wonder 🙂

 

 

Vmware – Beaconing problems

http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2008/12/using-beaconing-to-detect-link-failures-or-beaconing-demystified.html

Ive had this "untraceable" problems, looks like theres a solution for it.

Vmware goes View

I was catching up with View and trying to get hold of the new licenses that we need when we are upgrading from VDI 2.1 to View 3.0
This isnt done in 15 minutes 😦

Ill get back when I succeeded.

Meanwhile enjoy Brians excellent blogspost with pros and cons about the product..

Well now its time for a meeting with Wyse. Lets see what they have up their sleeve..

Cool tool for vmware _ RV tools

Found a nifty tool to do some good inventory (no nice graphs, thats what you have piecharts and excel) mmm Pie..

For those of you that doesnt know if youre forgot to disconnect the cdrom or like me have way to many servers to look at.

Take a good long look at Robs tool RVtools and use it for reporting and a quick look

http://robware.net/

Found at an excellent blogg : http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/11/12/cool-tool-update-rvtools-21/

EVC between different CPU versions

This is an interesting example of what the future will bring us.

So far my direct problems causes none of these issues, but Ill eventually move in to that complex area. For a normal user this will not be a problem stick with the same instruction sets and look it up before you add ESX hosts.

Vmware moving from FC to NFS ?

NFS has come as  a strong alternative to FC when it comes to Vmware infrastructure thoughts.
Most of the hardware is in place in our serverroom, were only missing a few 10GB interfaces to start a small test.
This and Netapp would do wonders for our disaster recovery plans.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1078

Windows 2008R2 will be x64 ONLY

Reading a small post over at briand maddens site showed that in the near future (when we have all moved to Windows 2008), the releases will be aimed at x64

Good or bad ?

Depends on who you are talking to. Im working in an Healthcare env. where we have som applications from the stoneage that we have tricked to run on Windows XP x86, the move to x64 will put things in a different light for us. Hopefully  will the applicaion pool be virtualized by then. With the use of Thinapp or similar 🙂 No softgrid is not an option with the hefty licensing fees.

Understanding in what way to use vmware support and to look or typical errors

By reading other peoples blogs I recently stumbled upon this man Duncan Epping who runs http://www.yellow-bricks.com

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/11/13/common-vmware-issues/

And he pointed med to Vmware Wolfs blog as well..

http://www.vmwarewolf.com/common-system-management-issues-in-vmware-infrastructure/
http://www.vmwarewolf.com/common-network-issues-in-vmware-infrastructure/
http://www.vmwarewolf.com/common-licensing-issues-in-vmware-infrastructure/

A nifty way to keep track of normal problems.

Vmware installation error 25011

 

Problems with vmware

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tool was wrong the real path is

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools  (yes, see the added ‘s’ makes the difference)

 

Excerpt from the vminst.log

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 — CA exec: VMStartMsde

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 Getting Property CustomActionData = MSDE_VC

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 Inst_StartService: Attempting to start service: MSSQL$MSDE_VC

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 Inst_StartService: Service Manager successfully opened

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 Inst_StartService: Service successfully opened

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 Inst_StartService: Service is already running

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:01 End Logging

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:02 Begin Logging

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:02 — CA exec: VMCreateDb

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:02 Getting Property CustomActionData = VCDB;SYSKALVM01;MSDE_VC;C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:02 Did not find file/directory: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tool\Binn\osql.exe"

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:02 File "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tool\Binn\osql.exe" doesn’t exist

vc-build-32042: 12/14/06 16:16:02 Posting error message 25011

 

The correct Registry values. Save to a regfile and import

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\ClientSetup]

"SQLPath"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft SQL Server\\80\\Tools"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\ClientSetup\CurrentVersion]

"CurrentVersion"="8.00.194"

Restart RIS server

This is a small script .cmd to restart the RIS server part on the Ris server, stopping 2 services and removing the PNF files, and later Starting the RIS services.

 

 

net stop "Single Instance Storage Groveler"

net stop "Remote Installation"

del D:\RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\Xwinbartpe\i386\*.pnf

del D:\RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\WINXPSP2\i386\*.pnf

net start "Remote Installation"

net start "Single Instance Storage Groveler"