VMWare Fusion wins out over Parallels. It’s by no means perfect, but I am able to get Solaris Nevada (B77) installed – which is a big start. I’m really hungry to start playing with the in-kernel SMB server, as Mac OS X doesn’t yet support iSCSI natively. I’m really looking forward to a day that I can build out a physical server with plenty of drives to host all my files and store time machine backups, but I know it’s going to be awhile. Probably going to have to wait until I’m back in a house again – there’s just not enough room in an apartment for the kind of goofing off I want to do with it.

But I digress. VMWare Fusion has got some problems. I’ve got some issues when using one of Apple’s new slimline keyboards in that the F-keys stutter and repeat a lot if you’ve got the keys working as their function equivalents (Sound, Dashboard, Expose instead of F1, F2 etc). Further, the “mkfile -n” trick fails pretty miserably with ZFS, yielding an un-mountable ZFS pool – which I assume is due to the fact that I’m using the self-expanding virtual disks, and something’s just gotten munged.

The other thing that prompted my decision – Ubuntu Server just works. No need to replace the kernel, it just works. And works well. That’s about the end of it.

So, I’ve been taking some time off posting to this site, as I’ve been a little busy with personal life stuff, and I’ve been trying to figure out the best route to take this project. Getting a little tired, honestly, with Parallels Desktop, as it seems to be geared towards people who want to run Windows and play games. I’m not looking for that. I want something more along the lines of VMWare’s simply amazing ESX Server – which is designed to host multiple independent OS’s in a server environment. Further, if I’m reading my notes correctly, I can migrate Fusion images directly to the free VMWare Server, which I’m going to install on the Shuttle I have at home.

So, I’ve put Parallels on hold for now, and have a 30 day trial of VMWare Fusion setup at home. Maybe it will even allow me to install the server kernel for ubuntu? I’ll find out soon, and try to get back to making headway on this soon. On the positive side, I’ve already been able to install Solaris Nevada (Build 77) on VMWare – which Parallels was complaining about.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Installing a copy of Ubuntu Linux on Parallels. It’s all going smooth – 520 MB of RAM assigned to it, selected the LAMP and DNS package sets to install. Seems to be a slick and effiecent setup, other than the fact that it “figured out” where I live by the language I speak and the keyboard layout I use, and it won’t let me pick Asia/Dubai as a time zone. Errgh.

Apart from that, the install is going well. I’ve got my FakeThumper setup, and after I get DNS straightened out, I’m going to setup NFS shares for everything. Going to try to have as little as possible on the virtual HD of the Ubuntu install – instead have it on a snapshotting ZFS volume. This should be… interesting.

UPDATE: This will help make it all work when installing ubuntu-server on Parallels.

I’m working on setting up a virtual data center in my apartment. Starting with Parallels, VMWare and free OS’s, I’m going to try to replicate everything needed for core services, as well as storage virtualization before I move into managed clients. My ultimate goal is to have a working setup providing:

• DHCP
• DNS
• LDAP
• Shared Storage
• LAMP
• Mail
• Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam
• Log monitoring

The first part of this is my Fake Thumper project, inspired by a blog posting I sadly can’t find. However, Ben Rockwood covers the finer points for me.

My real interest in ZFS and Solaris is, in essence, to create a shared storage server, running NFS and iSCSI, so I can do further setup and testing – and get free snapshots out of it. Looking into this, I can see why NetApp and Sun are fighting now. I’m a big fan of NetApp storage arrays, but I can’t afford one for testing and development, so I’m going to have to use the tools I have. Of course, I may ditch the whole thing and move over to the Nexenta Systems Storage Appliance VM

I’ll update in a couple of days with a log server setup.

Back home, safe and sound. Comments and pics soon. Took over 7 GB of photographs.

Well, we’ve wound up in Pattaya again – long story I’ll save for later – but we’re here for a day or two, and having a ball. So – the pics I’m posting this week are actually somewhat relevant, as we are here now.

And we’re off!

We’re headed to Thailand tonight for a much needed vacation – we’ll be there early tomorrow morning. All cares, worries and concerns are going away! The next 8 days of photographs are a retrospective of the last trip I took to Thailand, in July 2004. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride!