Switch Port Settings for VMWare

After much time searching Google for some answers on why I couldn't get my VM's to connect to the network I finally got it to work. Let me explain. The VMWare Server install was easy. The first VM was easy. The problem came when I wanted to add another VM. I couldn't get the new VM to communicate with the network. I tried adding it to another virtual network and using the second NIC on my Dell 1750 but that only worked for one more guest VM.

The Solution?

If you have a managed switch (you probably do) you have to change the switch port that your server is connected to a TRUNK port. On my Cisco 3560G switch that meant selecting the "SmartPort" type of "Switch". All is well now. I can't wait to see how many I can host on this machine. I don't want to put any mission critical on this machine because it isn't RAID and I don't have a SAN. Hopefully that will change once I can prove that system is reliable.

My First VM!

It is official. I have our first production system up on a virtual server! The system that I described a few posts ago is working out well (Dell 1750 w/ 4GB Ram). I moved our legacy ACS system with the P to V tool from VM ware and it worked well. As many have said in the past, the VM runs faster than the original! I'm working on creating a Server 2003 Base image now to speed up server setup in the future.

The next system to virtualize will be our current ACS system to aid in testing for patches. Ideally, I will have our production ACS virtualized so that I can create a clone of our running system and apply the patches to it to see what the effects would be to our actual system. I'll post how that goes when we get to it.

Power Outage

Last night we had our first winter "Storm" that consisted of some snow that then turned to freezing rain. I didn't get any email alerts so I figured all was well with our sites. I came in this morning before our first service and thought I would check the servers. The first one I logged into said it had recovered from and outage. That got me thinking, we must have lost power for a prolonged time but why didn't I get an alert? After checking the Exchange server I found out that it didn't come up fully (probably from not shutting down properly, a story for another time :-( ). I rebooted the Exchange server and it came up fine.

I knew we had a run time issue with our current UPS solution and I am in the process of getting another one. The question that I was trying to answer was how much run time do I need? To survive this latest outage I would have to have at least an hour or a generator. So, does anyone have any thoughts?