Hyper-V Lab (My Rig) – Part I

Well, I decided after reading through Andrew Connell’s post about his Hyper-V system build along with Bob Fox’s post about his build for Hyper-V, that I needed to just get on it and build up mine.  For my build, I am taking something of a hybrid approach of these two.

In this first part, I will discuss my planning (why I need the rig and requirements).  As an MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer), I need to stay on top of the latest technology, especially for those classes I teach.  This is currently Windows Server, Exchange, and Visual Studio courses, along with project management classes.  In the past, I have used MS Virtual Server, MS Virtual PC, and VMWare Workstation to support my lab machines.  I won’t even go into my early days of Ghosting machine images.

I decided I wanted to have a separate machine for my lab environment.  I was getting tired of the dual-boot situation, but booting from a VHD (virtual disk) on my Windows 7 machine was pretty cool.  I decided to look around for a system case that I may have had lying around and use that as the basis for my research.  I found a small micro ATX and a mini ITX case.  The mini ITX case was going to be way to small to support my CPU and memory requirements, so that left me with the micro ATX case.  The power supply was still intact, which is a feat all of its own, since I cannibalize my systems when building other computers.

Now that I had the case, time for some research around my requirements.  Since I would be running 3-4 VMs at a time, I wanted to set aside 1 core per VM.  This is not really required, but more of a practice I have taken on for lab environments.  I also knew that I would need 8-16GB of memory to support the VMs and host OS.  Guess I should mention that I am cheap too, so I had to watch what I was spending.

After much research and toggling between Gigabyte and ASUS micro ATX boards, I finally decided on the ASUS M3A78-CM.  This board sports  (6) SATA ports, support for 8GB of memory and supports AMD Phenom and Phenom II processors.  Why did I chose AMD over Intel? To be honest, it was a price decision.  Both comparable AMD and Intel processors support their own form of virtualization (AMD-V and Intel VT), which is required for the Hyper-V role.  I also went with the AMD Phenom X4 9750.  This is a quad-core processor running at 2.4 or 2.6GHz (I can’t remember exactly)

Anyway, I have decided to go with 4 sticks of 2GB DDR2 for this board to give me a total of 8GB and max it out.  I would have gone with a system board that supports 16GB or 32GB, but the 4GB sticks of memory are just a bit too pricey and by the time that price changes enough for me, I will be ready to upgrade the machine anyway.

I already have the 1TB SATA drive to hold my VMs, so I just need a smaller SATA drive for my OS and applications.  A 160-250GB drive should take care of that.  Next up is to procure the parts, build the system and start the install.  That will be in the next installment of this build.  Stay tuned.

Oracle Kills Virtual Iron (Another one bites the dust)

Saw this over on Slashdot. Seriously, Oracle needs to get a grip on their virtualization practice.Check this post Oracle Kills Virtual Iron from Slashdot:

rhathar writes in with news that Oracle is killing off the products of Virtual Iron, a month after purchasing the company. Reports say that all but 10 to 15 staff were let go. The Reg article speculates that Oracle bought VI for its technology and considers its customers and partners expendable. When the Sun purchase finalizes, Oracle will be in possession of three separate virtualization technologies all based on Xen. "In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it 'will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers.' One partner said, 'So basically, anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI... is now totally in the s–.'"

 

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows 7 Gadgets Stop Working

Earlier today I was installing some software on my machine, listening to XM Radio through a desktop gadget as I often do, when the music stopped.  I didn’t think much about it, since at times my music streams can be bandwidth challenged.  Well, after the install I went back out to my desktop and saw that all of my gadgets were gone.

I checked task manager, and sidebar.exe was not running.  Aha, there’s the problem. I fired up C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe. A little disk activity and sidebar.exe process lit up in Task Manager, then just as quickly disappeared.  A peek into event viewer game me this:

Faulting application name: sidebar.exe, version: 6.1.7100.0, time stamp: 0x49ee9780
Faulting module name: kernel32.dll, version: 6.1.7100.0, time stamp: 0x49eeaac7
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000003892
Faulting process id: 0x13b4
Faulting application start time: 0x01c9f11eac6dc107
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\kernel32.dll

What does that mean?!?!?! A quick Bing search did not really provide much insight, except that many people had this problem with UAC being turned off.  Not so much the case here.  Coincidentally, one of the reports I saw was written about the same time my problem first started today.  UAC checked out, reboots did not fix the problem, but this person was having the very same issue.

I can’t imagine it was the software being installed….just not feasible.  Freaky, if that was the case. I quickly turned focus to Windows Updates and using System Restore, I rolled back to a point prior to yesterday’s critical update.  After the reboot, my gadgets were back and everything is working perfect again.  I don’t know if there was something specific about the update that occurred, but the gadgets were there and working earlier in the day.

Microsoft's Browser Comparison Chart

Check this post Microsoft's Browser Comparison Chart from Google Blogoscoped:

 

Microsoft has a “Get the facts” page for Internet Explorer 8. As you can see, Internet Explorer has security, privacy, and ease of use, whereas Firefox and Chrome don’t have those. Gotta love some old-fashioned propaganda. [Via Reddit.]