How-To Tutorials - Virtualization

Getting Started with Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6 Virtualize your application infrastructure efficiently using Microsoft App-V Publish, deploy, and manage your virtual applications with App-V Understand how Microsoft App-V can fit into your company. Guidelines for planning and designing an App-V environment. Step-by-step explanations to plan and implement the virtualization of your application infrastructure Installing the App-V Sequencer After reviewing the requirements and recommendations you can see that the App-V Sequencer installation is pretty straightforward. The procedure is as follows: Once you run the installation file, you should get the notification for missing requirement, in this case Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86). Click on Install. On the first wizard page, click on Next. Accept the License Terms and click on Next. Select the installation path for the App-V Sequencer binaries. Click on Next. Click on Install and the installation process will start. After the installation completes, you can automatically launch the application where you can see the new and refreshing interface. Installing the App-V Client The installation of the App-V Client component is also very simple and intuitive. The only consideration before starting the installation is that should already have the proper cache size defined. Once you start the installation, a few prerequisites will be installed. On the first page of the wizard click on Next. Accept the License Terms and click on Next. Select Custom setup type and click on Next. Accept or modify the installation path for the App-V Desktop Client. Verify that the data locations used by the App-V Desktop Client, including the drive letter that will be used, are the same as the ones selected for the App-V Sequencer. Click on Next. Now you can select the cache size used by the client to store the loaded applications.The default is the maximum size of 6 GB (6144 MB) or you can use the Use free disk space threshold option, where you can set the value for minimum hard disk space available. Click on Next. On this page you can set the behavior of the Runtime Package. The only recommended option to change from the default selection is marking the On Publishing Refresh on Automatically Load Application. The Application Source Root option, here left blank (default), is used when you want to override the streaming location of the .sft files (this location is set in the .osd of the App-V package). If you set a path in the Application Source Root, the applications will look for the SFT in that location instead of the one they are receiving in the OSD. This option is another alternative when you are using slow links to avoid transmitting large amounts of data. Also take note that you can use the auto-load options. In this example Automatically load previously used applications has been selected. On the next page you can configure the server you are receiving the packages from and the communication method used. In this case, the server's name is appv-server and the type of communication is Application Virtualization Server, using the RTSP 554 protocol. Click on Next. On the last page, just click on Install. After the wizard completes, you can use the App-V Client Management Console to verify the Publishing Servers options.

In this article by Alfonso V. Romero, author of VirtualBox 3.1: Beginner's Guide, you shall learn what the Guest Additions are and how to install them on Windows, Linux, and Open Solaris virtual machines. Introducing Guest Additions Ok, you have been playing with a couple of virtual machines by now, and I know it feels great to be capable of running two different operating systems on the same machine, but as I said at the beginning of this article, what's the use if you can't share information between your host and guest systems, or if you can't maximize your guest screen? Well, that's what Guest Additions are for. With the Guest Additions installed in a virtual machine, you'll be able to enjoy all of these: Full keyboard and mouse integration between your host and your guest operating systems: This means you won't need to use the capture/uncapture feature anymore! Enhanced video support in your guest virtual machine: You will be able to use 3D and 2D video acceleration features, and if you resize your virtual machine's screen, its video resolution will adjust automatically. Say hello to full screen! Better time synchronization between host and guest: A virtual machine doesn't know it's running inside another computer, so it expects to have 100% of the CPU and all the other resources without any interference. Since the host computer needs to use those resources too, sometimes it can get messy, especially if both host and guest are running several applications at the same time, as would be the case in most situations. But don't worry about it! Guest Additions re-synchronize your virtual machine's time regularly to avoid any serious problems. Shared folders: This is one of my favorite Guest Addition features! You can designate one or more folders to share files easily between your host and your guest, as if they were network shares. Seamless windows: This is another amazing feature that lets you use any application in your guest as if you were running it directly from your host PC. For example, if you have a Linux host and a Windows virtual machine, you'll be able to use MS Word or MS Excel as if you were running it directly from your Linux machine! Shared clipboard: This is a feature I couldn't live without because it lets you copy and paste information between your host and guest applications seamlessly. Automated Windows guest logons: The Guest Additions for Windows provide modules to automate the logon process in a Windows virtual machine. Now that I've shown you that life isn't worth living without the Guest Additions installed in your virtual machines, let's see how to install them on Windows, Linux, and Solaris hosts. Installing Guest Additions for Windows "Hmmm… I still can't see how you plan to get everyone in this office using VirtualBox… you can't even use that darned virtual machine in full screen!" your boss says with a mocking tone of voice. "Well boss, if you stick with me during these article's exercises, you'll get your two cents worth!" you respond back to him, feeling like the new kid in town… Time for action – installing Guest Additions on a Windows XP virtual machine In this exercise, I'll show you how to install Guest Additions on your Windows XP virtual machine so that your boss can stop whining about not being able to use the Windows VM as a real PC... Open VirtualBox, and start your WinXP virtual machine. Press F8 when Windows XP is booting to enter the Windows Advanced Options Menu, select the Safe Mode option, and press Enter to continue: Wait for Windows XP to boot, and then login with your administrator account. The Windows is running in safe mode dialog will show up. Click on Yes to continue, and wait for Windows to finish booting up. Then select the Devices option from VirtualBox's menu bar, and click on the Install Guest Additions option: VirtualBox will mount the Guest Additions ISO file on your virtual machine's CD/DVD-ROM drive, and the Guest Additions installer will start automatically: Click on Next to continue. The License Agreement dialog will appear next. Click on the I Agree button to accept the agreement and continue. Leave the default destination folder on the Choose Install Location dialog, and click on Next to continue. The Choose Components dialog will appear next. Select the Direct 3D Support option to enable it, and click on Install to continue: Guest Additions will begin to install in your virtual machine. The next dialog will inform you that the Guest Additions setup program replaced some Windows system files, and if you receive a warning dialog from the Windows File Protection mechanism, you need to click on the Cancel button of that warning dialog to avoid restoring the original files. Click on OK to continue. The setup program will ask if you want to reboot your virtual machine to complete the installation process. Make sure the Reboot now option is enabled, and click on Finish to continue. Your WinXP virtual machine will reboot automatically, and once it has finished booting up, a VirtualBox - Information dialog will appear, to tell you that your guest operating system now supports mouse pointer integration. Enable the Do not show this message again, and click on the OK button to continue. Now you'll be able to move your mouse freely between your virtual machine's area and your host machine's area! You'll also be able to resize your virtual machine's screen, and it will adjust automatically! What just happened? Hey, it was pretty simple and neat, huh? Now you can start to get the real juice out of your Windows virtual machines! And your boss will never complain again about your wonderful idea of virtualizing your office environment with VirtualBox! The Guest Additions installation process on Windows virtual machines is a little bit more complicated than its Linux or OpenSolaris counterparts due to the fact that Windows has a file protection mechanism that interferes with some system files VirtualBox needs to replace. By using 'Safe Mode', VirtualBox can override the file protection mechanism, and the Guest Additions software can be installed successfully. But if you don't want or need 3D guest support, you can install Guest Additions in Windows, normal mode.

Packt are due to launch a new Open Source brand, into which future VirtualBox titles will be published. For more information on that launch, look here. In this two-part article by Alfonso V. Romero, author of VirtualBox 3.1: Beginner's Guide, you shall: Create your first virtual machine in VirtualBox, using Ubuntu Linux Learn about your virtual machine's basic configuration Download and install Ubuntu Linux on your virtual machine Learn how to start and stop your virtual machine So let's get on with it... Getting started In this article, you'll need to download the Ubuntu Linux Desktop Live CD. It's a pretty big download (700 MB approximately), so I'd recommend you to start downloading it as soon as possible. With a 4 Mbps Internet connection, you'd need approximately 1 hour to download a copy of Ubuntu Linux Desktop. That's why I decided to change the order of some sections in this article. After all, action is what we're looking for, right? Downloading the Ubuntu Linux Live CD After finishing the exercise in this section, you can jump straight ahead into the next section while waiting for your Ubuntu Live CD to download. That way, you'll have to wait for less time, and your virtual machine will be ready for some action! Time for action – downloading the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD In the following exercise I'll show you how to download the Ubuntu Linux Desktop Edition from the official Ubuntu website. Open your web browser, and type http://www.ubuntu.com in the address bar. The Ubuntu Home Page will appear. Click on the Ubuntu Desktop Download link to continue: The Download Ubuntu page will show up next. Ubuntu's most recent version will be selected by default (Ubuntu Desktop 9.10, at the time of this writing). Select a location near you, and click on the Begin download button to continue. The Ubuntu Download page lets you download the 32-bit version automatically. If you want the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 9.10, you'll need to click on the Alternative download options link below the Download locations list box. The exercises in this article use the 32-bit version. You'll be taken to the download page. After a few seconds, your download will start automatically. Select the Save File option in your browser, and click on OK to continue. Now you just have to wait until the download process finishes. What just happened? I think the exercise pretty much explains itself, so I just want to add that you can also order a free Ubuntu CD or buy one from Ubuntu's website. Just click on the Get Ubuntu link at the front page and follow the instructions. I ordered mine when writing this article to see how long it takes to arrive at my front door. I hope it arrives before I finish the book! Have a go hero – doing more with the thing You can try downloading other Ubuntu versions, like Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy Heron. Just click on the Alternative download options link below the Download locations list box, and explore the other options available for download. Creating your Ubuntu Linux VM Now that you installed VirtualBox, it's time to learn how to work with it. I've used other virtualization products such as VMware besides VirtualBox, and in my humble opinion, the user interface in VirtualBox is a delight to work with. Time for action – creating a virtual machine At last you have the chance to use Windows and Linux side by side! This is one of the best features VirtualBox has to offer when you want the best of both worlds! Open VirtualBox, and click on the New button (or press Ctrl+N) to create a new virtual machine: The Welcome to the New Virtual Machine Wizard! dialog will show up. Click on Next to continue. Type UbuntuVB in the Name field, select Linux as the Operating System and Ubuntu as the Version in the VM Name and OS Type dialog. Click on Next to continue. You can leave the default 384 MB value in the Memory dialog box or choose a greater amount of RAM, depending on your hardware resources. Click on Next to continue. Leave the default values in the Virtual Hard Disk dialog, and click on Next twice to enter the Create New Virtual Disk wizard. Leave the default Dynamically Expanding Storage option in the Hard Disk Storage Type dialog, and click on Next to continue. Leave the default values chosen by VirtualBox for your Ubuntu Linux machine in the Virtual Disk Location and Size dialog (UbuntuVB and 8.00 GB), and click on Next to continue. A Summary dialog will appear, showing all the parameters you chose for your new virtual hard disk. Click on Finish to exit the Create New Virtual Hard Disk wizard. Now another Summary dialog will appear to show the parameters you chose for your new virtual machine. Click on Finish to exit the wizard and return to the VirtualBox main window: Your new UbuntuVB virtual machine will appear on the VirtualBox main screen, showing all its parameters in the Details tab. What just happened? Now your Ubuntu Linux virtual machine is ready to run! In this exercise, you created a virtual machine with all the parameters required for a typical Ubuntu Linux distribution. The first parameter to configure was the base memory or RAM. As you saw in step 3, the recommended size for a typical Ubuntu Linux installation is 384 MB. Exercise caution when selecting the RAM size for your virtual machine. The golden rule of thumb dictates that, if you have less than 1 GB of RAM, you can't assign more than one half of your physical RAM to a virtual machine because you'll get into trouble! Your host PC (the one that runs VirtualBox) will start to behave erratically and could crash! With 2 GB, for example, you can easily assign 1 GB to your virtual machine and 1 GB to your physical PC without any problems. Or you could even have three virtual machines with 512 MB of RAM each and leave 512 MB for your host PC. The best way to find out the best combination of RAM is to do some experimenting yourself and to know the minimum RAM requirements for your host and guest operating systems. Don't assume that assigning lots of RAM to your virtual machine will increase its performance. If, for example, you have 2 GB of RAM on your host and you assign 1 GB to an Ubuntu virtual machine, it's very unlikely there will be a bigger performance increase than if you were assigning only 512 MB to the same Ubuntu virtual machine. On the contrary, your host PC will work better if you only assign 512 MB to the Ubuntu virtual machine because it will use some of the extra RAM for disk caching, instead of recurring to the physical hard disk. However, it all depends on the guest operating system you plan to use and what applications you need to run. If you look closely at the Base Memory Size setting in the Memory dialog when creating a virtual machine, you'll notice that there are three memory areas below the slider control: the green-colored area indicates the amount of memory range you can safely choose for your virtual machine; the yellow-colored area indicates a dangerous memory range that you can choose, but nobody knows if your virtual machine and your host will be able to run without any problems; and the red-colored area indicates the memory range that your virtual machine can't use. It's wise to stick with the default values when creating a new virtual machine. Later on, if you need to run a memory-intensive application, you can add more RAM through the Settings button, as we'll see in the following section. Another setting to consider (besides memory) when creating a virtual machine is the virtual hard drive. Basically, a virtual hard disk is represented as a special file on your host computer's physical hard disk, and it's commonly known as a disk image file. This means that your host computer sees it as a 'large' file on its system, but your virtual machine sees it as a 'real' hard disk connected to it. Since virtual hard drives are completely independent from each other, there is no risk of accidental overwriting, and they can't be larger than the free space available on your real computer's physical hard drive. This is the most common way to handle virtual storage in VirtualBox; later on, we'll see more details about disk image files and the different formats available. VirtualBox assigns a default value based on the guest operating system you plan to install in your virtual machine. For Ubuntu Linux, the default value is 8 GB. That's enough space to experiment with Ubuntu and learn to use it, but if you really want to do some serious work —desktop publishing or movie production, for example—you should consider assigning your virtual machine more of your hard disk space. You can even get two hard drives on your physical machine, and assign one for your host system and the other one for your virtual machine! Or you can also create a new virtual hard disk image and add it as if it were a second hard drive! Before going to the next section, I'd like to talk about the two virtual hard disk storage types available in VirtualBox: dynamically expanding storage and fixed-size storage. The Hard Disk Storage Type dialog you saw in step 4 of the previous exercise contains a brief description for both types of storage. At first, the dynamically expanding option might seem more attractive because you don't see the space reduction in your hard drive immediately. When using dynamically expanding storage, VirtualBox needs to expand the storage size continuously, and that could mean a slight decrease in speed when compared to a fixed-size disk, but most of the time this is unnoticeable. Anyway, when the virtual hard disk is fully expanded, the differences between both types of storage disappear. Most people agree that a dynamically expanding disk represents a better choice than a fixed one, since it doesn't take up unnecessary space from your host's hard disk until needed. Personally, when experimenting with a new virtual machine, I use the dynamically expanding option, but when doing some real work, I like to set apart my virtual machine's hard disk space from the beginning, so I choose the fixed-size storage option in these cases. Have a go hero – experimenting with memory and hard disk storage types When creating a virtual machine, you can specify the amount of RAM to assign to it instead of using the default values suggested by VirtualBox. Create another virtual machine named UbuntuVB2, and try to assign the entire RAM available to it. You won't be able to continue until you select a lower value because the Next button will be grayed out, which means you're in the red-colored memory range. Now move back the slider until the Next button is active again; you'll probably be in the yellow-colored memory range. See if your virtual machine can start with that amount of memory and if you can use both your host PC and your VM without any problems. In case you encounter any difficulties, keep moving back the memory range until all problems disappear. Once you're done experimenting with the memory setting, use the UbuntuVB2 virtual machine with the same exact settings as the one you created in the previous exercise, but this time use a fixed-size hard drive. Just take into account that since VirtualBox must prepare all the storage space at once, this process may take a long time depending on the storage size you selected and the performance of your physical hard disk. Now go and try out different storage sizes with both types of disks: dynamically expanding and fixed size. Configuring basic settings for your Ubuntu Linux VM All right, you created your Ubuntu virtual machine and downloaded a copy of Ubuntu Desktop Live CD. Can you start installing Ubuntu now? I know you'll hate me, but nope, you can't. We need to tell your virtual machine where to boot the Live CD from, as if we were using a real PC. Follow me, and I'll show you the basic configuration settings for your VM, so you can start the Ubuntu installation ASAP! Time for action –basic configuration for your VM In this exercise you'll learn how to adjust some settings for your virtual machine, so you can install Ubuntu Linux on it. Open VirtualBox, select your UbuntuVB virtual machine, and click on the Settings button: The UbuntuVB – Settings dialog will appear, showing all the settings in the General tab. Click on the Storage category from the list in the left panel. Then select the Empty slot located just below the UbuntuVB.vdi hard disk image, under the IDE Controller element inside the Storage Tree panel, and click on the Invoke Virtual Media Manager button: The Virtual Media Manager dialog will appear next. Click on the Add button to add the Ubuntu Linux Live CD ISO image: The Select a CD/DVD-ROM disk image file dialog will show up next. Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the Ubuntu Desktop ISO image, select it, and click on the Open button to continue. The Ubuntu Desktop ISO image will appear selected in the CD/DVD Images tab from the Virtual Media Manager dialog. Click on the Select button to attach the Ubuntu ISO image to your virtual machine's CD/DVD drive. Next, the Ubuntu ISO image file will appear selected on the ISO Image File setting from the UbuntuVB – Settings dialog. Click on OK to continue. Now you're ready to start your virtual machine and install Ubuntu!

Running your Ubuntu Linux VM This is going to be the most entertaining section of the article: you'll get to play with your brand-new Ubuntu Linux virtual machine! If you haven't used Linux before, I'd definitely recommend that you browse through the Ubuntu documentation at https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/index.html. Time for action – running Ubuntu Linux The best way to test your new virtual machine is experimenting, so let's get on with it! Open VirtualBox (in case you closed it after the last section's exercise), select your UbuntuVB virtual machine, and click on Start to turn it on: Ubuntu will start to boot in your virtual machine. Eventually, the Ubuntu logo will show up along with the progress bar and, after a few seconds (or minutes, depending on your hardware), the Ubuntu login screen will show up. Click inside the virtual machine screen to capture the mouse and keyboard, type the username you assigned in the installation process, and hit Enter to continue. Now type the password for your username, and hit Enter again. Ubuntu will start to load. When finished, you'll see the Ubuntu GNOME Desktop screen: One of the first things you'll notice is the Update Manager dialog. This dialog shows up when your Ubuntu system needs software updates. Click on Install Updates to start the updating process. Normally, the Update Manager will ask for your administrator password. Type it, press Enter, or click on OK and then wait for the Update Manager to finish its job so you can work with your Ubuntu system fully updated. If the Update Manager asks you to restart your Ubuntu system after updating, click on the Restart Now button, and wait for your Ubuntu virtual machine to reboot. What just happened? Isn't it cool to have a little Ubuntu system running inside your real PC? Just like a pregnant mother feeling her baby's first movements! Well, not as touching, but you get the point, right? Ubuntu is one of the friendliest Linux distributions available. That's why I decided to use it for this article's exercises. Now let's go and test the Internet connection on your new Ubuntu virtual machine! Web browsing with Mozilla Firefox One of the best things about the Ubuntu Desktop edition is that you can use Mozilla Firefox out of the box. And the Ubuntu Update Manager keeps it updated automatically for you! Time for action – web browsing in your Ubuntu VM You have your virtual machine installed. What's next? Let's surf the web! After all, what could be more important than that? Open the Applications menu on your Ubuntu virtual machine, and select Internet | Firefox Web Browser from the menu: The Mozilla Firefox window will show the Ubuntu Start Page. Type virtualbox.org on the address bar and press Enter: The VirtualBox homepage should appear as an indication that you have Internet access in your virtual machine. You can close Mozilla Firefox now. If you cannot connect to Internet from your virtual machine, check your host's network settings. If you can connect from your host, try using another virtual network adapter type in your virtual machine to see if the problem disappears. What just happened? Well, this exercise is not really hard, right? But this is a cool way to test if your new virtual machine has Internet enabled by default. Later on, we'll talk about the different settings related to virtual network interfaces and VirtualBox. You can also know if your virtual machine can connect to Internet through the Ubuntu Update Manager because it will issue a warning if it cannot access the Ubuntu software sources. For now, it's good to know we can surf the web! Now let's see how you can do some real work inside your Ubuntu VM… Using OpenOffice.org in your virtual machine Ok, we have Internet enabled on our Ubuntu virtual machine; what else could we ask for? How about some word processing, a spreadsheet, and some presentations, for starters? I know it's boring, but some of us also use VirtualBox to work! Time for action – using OpenOffice.org Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that has proven to be an effective alternative to MS Office for Linux users. Now let's try it out on your new Ubuntu virtual machine... Open the Applications menu on your Ubuntu virtual machine, and select Office | OpenOffice.org Word Processor from the menu: The Untitled 1 – OpenOffice.org Writer window will appear. You can use OpenOffice Writer as if you were on a real machine: Now go to the Applications menu again, and this time select the Office | OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet option. The Untitiled 2 – OpenOffice.org Calc window will show up, overlapping the Writer window. You can also work with it as in a real PC: And now, go back to the Application menu, and select the Office | OpenOffice.org Presentation option. The Presentation Wizard screen will show up. Select the Empty Presentation option, click on Next twice, and then click on Create to continue. The Untitled 3 – OpenOffice.org Impress window will show up, overlapping the other two windows: Now you can close all the application windows inside your virtual machine. What just happened? How about that? A complete office productivity suite inside your main PC! And Internet access too! So, if you always wanted to learn about Linux or any other operating system but were afraid of messing up your main PC, VirtualBox has come to your rescue! Now let's see how to turn off your virtual machine… Have a go hero – trying out Ubuntu One: your personal cloud Now that you have an Ubuntu virtual machine, you would likely benefit from trying out the Ubuntu One service, where you can back up, store, sync, and share your data with other Ubuntu One users. And the best of all, it's free! To open an account, select Applications | Internet | Ubuntu One, and follow the instructions on screen. Have a go hero – sharing information between your VM and your host PC Use your Ubuntu One account to transfer some files between your virtual machine and your host PC. If you're using Windows, you can work with the Ubuntu One web interface at http://one.ubuntu.com. Shutting down your virtual machine I know you're thinking, "Geez, I can't believe this guy! He's actually going to spend an entire subsection of this article just to show us how to shutdown a virtual machine! Aw, come on!" Now it's my turn: Remember we're talking about a virtual machine here, not a real PC! You need to consider several things before shutting this baby down!

Time for action – downloading and Installing VirtualBox on Linux Ok, for this exercise you'll need a copy of Ubuntu Linux already installed on your PC. I chose Ubuntu because it's one of the friendliest Linux distributi ons available, as you will see in a moment. Before installing VirtualBox, you'll need to install two additional packages on your Ubuntu system. Open a terminal window (Applications | Accessories | Terminal), and type sudo apt-get update, followed by Enter. If Ubuntu asks for your administrative password, type it, and hit Enter to continue. Once the package list is updated, type sudo apt-get install dkms, and hit Enter; then type Y and hit Enter to install the DKMS package. The other package needed before you can install VirtualBox is build-essential. This package contains all the compiling tools VirtualBox needs to build the kernel module. Type sudo apt-get install build-essential, and hit Enter. Then type Y, and hit Enter again to conti nue. Wait for the $ prompt to show up again, type exit, and hit Enter to close the terminal window. Now you can proceed to install VirtualBox. Open the Synaptic Package Manager (System | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager), and select the Settings | Repositories option in the menu bar (if Ubuntu asks for your administrative password, type it, and press Enter to continue) : The Software Sources dialog will appear. Click on the Other (on earlier Ubuntu versions the name of this tab is Third-Party Software)and then on the Add+ button: Another dialog box will show up. Now type deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free on the APT line field, and click on the Add Source button: If you're not using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, then you'll need to change the APT line in the previous step. For example, if you're using Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, replace the karmic part with jaunty. On the http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads webpage, you'll find more information about installing VirtualBox on several Linux distributions and the APT line required for each Ubuntu distribution available. The third-party software source for VirtualBox will now show up on the list: Now open a terminal window (Applications | Accessories | Terminal), and type wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc to download the Sun public key: Go back to the Synaptic Manager, select the Authentication tab, and click on the Import Key File button: The Import Key dialog will appear next. Select the sun_vbox.asc file you just downloaded, and click on the OK button to continue: The Sun public key for VirtualBox should now appear on the list: You can now delete the Sun public key file you downloaded earlier. Click on the Close button to return to the Synaptic Package Manager. If the Repositories Changed dialog shows up, select the Never show this message again checkbox, and click on Close to continue. Now click on the Synaptic Package Manager's Reload button to update your package sources with the most recent VirtualBox version: Once the Synaptic Package Manager finishes updating the package sources list, click on the Origin button located at the lower-left part of the window and select the download.virtualbox.org/non-free repository from the window above this button: Click on the most recent virtualbox-3.X package checkbox in the right window, and select the Mark for Installation option: When upgrading to a newer VirtualBox version, you must first completely remove the older version. Then you'll be able to install the newest version without any hassles. The Mark additional required changes? dialog box will appear next. Click on the Mark button to mark all the additional packages required to install VirtualBox: Now click on the Apply button in the Synaptic Package Manager: The Apply the following changes? dialog box will appear next. Make sure the Download package files only option is deselected, and click on the Apply button to start installing the required packages, along with VirtualBox: The Synaptic Package Manager will start downloading the required packages and, when finished, it will install them along with VirtualBox.

Base Appliance Image We will use an Ubuntu Feisty domain image as the base image for creating these appliances. This image should be made as sparse and small as possible, and free of any cruft. A completely stripped down version of Linux with only the bare necessities would be a great start. In this case, we will not need any graphical desktop environments, so we can completely eliminate software packages like the X11 and any window manager like Gnome or KDE. Once we have a base image, we can back it up and then start using it for creating Xen appliances. In this article we will use an Ubuntu Feisty domain as the base image. Once this domain image is ready we are going to update it and clean it up a little bit so it can be our base. Edit the sources list for apt and add in other repositories that we will need to get software packages we will need when creating these appliances. Update your list of software. This will connect to the apt repositories and get the latest list of packages. We will do the actual update in the next step. Upgrade the distribution to ensure that you have the latest versions of all the packages. Automatically clean the image so all unused packages are removed. This will ensure that the image stays free of cruft.   Now we have the base appliance image ready, we will use it to create some Xen appliances. You can make a backup of the original base image and every time you create an appliance you can use a copy as the starting point or template. The images are nothing but domU images, which are customized for running only specific applications. You start them up and run them like ay other Xen guest domains. MySQL Database Server MySQL is one of the most popular open-source databases in the world. It is a key component of the LAMP architecture – (Linux Apache MySQL and PHP). It is also very easy to get started with MySQL and is one of the key factors driving its adoption across the enterprise. In this section we will create a Xen appliance that will run a MySQL database server and also provide the ability to automatically backup the database on a given schedule. Time for Action – Create our first Xen appliance We will use our base Ubuntu Feisty domain image, and add MySQL and other needed software to it. Please ensure that you have updated your base image to the latest versions of the repositories and software packages before creating this appliance. Install mysql-server using apt. Once it is installed, Ubuntu will automatically start the database server. So before we make our other changes, stop MySQL. Edit the /etc/mysql/my.cnf and comment out the line for the bind-address parameter. This will ensure that MySQL will accept connections from external machines and not just the localhost. Start a mysql console session to test that everything is installed and working correctly. Next we will install the utility for doing the automated backups. In order to do that we will first need to install the wget utility for transferring files. This is not a part of the base Ubuntu Feisty installation. Download the automysqlbackup script from the website. Copy this script to wherever you like, maybe /opt. Create a link to this location so it’s easy to do future updates. # cp automysqlbackup.sh.2.5 /opt# ln -s automysqlbackup.sh.2.5 automysqlbackup.sh Edit the script and modify the parameters at the top of the script to match your environment. Here are the changes to be made in our case. # Username to access the MySQL server e.g. dbuserUSERNAME=pchaganti# Username to access the MySQL server e.g. passwordPASSWORD=password# Host name (or IP address) of MySQL server e.g localhostDBHOST=localhost# List of DBNAMES for Daily/Weekly Backup e.g. "DB1 DB2 DB3"DBNAMES="all"# Backup directory location e.g /backupsBACKUPDIR="/var/backup/mysql"# Mail setupMAILCONTENT="quiet" Schedule this backup script to be run daily by creating a crontab entry for it, in the following format. 45 5 * * * root  /opt/automysqlbackup.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 Now we have a MySQL database server with automatic daily backups as a nice reusable Xen appliance. What just happened? We created our first Xen appliance! It is running the open-source MySQL database server along with an automated backup of the database as per the given schedule. This image is essentially a domU image and it can be uploaded along with its configuration file to a repository somewhere, and can be used by anyone in the enterprise or elsewhere with their Xen server. You can either start up the domain manually as and when you need it or set it up to boot automatically when your xend server starts. Ruby on Rails Appliance Ruby on Rails is one of the hottest web development frameworks around. It is simple to use and you can use all the expressive power of the Ruby language. It provides a great feature set and has really put the Ruby language on the map. Ruby on Rails is gaining rapid adoption across the IT landscape and for a wide variety of web applications. In this section, we are going to create a Rails appliance that contains Ruby, Rails, and the Mongrel cluster for serving the Rails application and nginx web server for the static content. This appliance gives you a great starting point for your explorations into the world of Ruby on Rails and can be an excellent learning resource. Time for Action – Rails on Xen We will use our base Ubuntu Feisty domain image and add Rails and other needed software to it. Please ensure that you have updated your base image to the latest versions of the repositories and software packages before creating this appliance. Install the packages required for compiling software on an Ubuntu system. This is required as we will be compiling some native extensions. Once the image is done, you can always remove this package if you want to save space. Install Ruby and other packages that are needed for it. Download the RubyGems package from RubyForge. We will use this to install any Ruby libraries or packages that we will need, including Rails. Now install Rails. The first time when you run this command on a clean Ubuntu Feisty system, you will get the following error. Ignore this error and just run the command once again and it will work fine. This will install Rails and all of its dependencies. Create a new Rails application. This will create everything needed in a directory named xenbook. $ rails xenbook  Change into the directory of the application that we created in the previous step and start the server up. This will start Ruby’s built-in web server, webrick by default. Launch a web browser and navigate to the web page for our xenbook application. We have everything working for a simple Rails install. However, we are using webrick, which is a bit slow. So let’s install the Mongrel server and use it with Rails. We will actually install mongrel_cluster that will let us use a cluster of Mongrel processes for serving up our Rails application.

Before we get to manage the VMs in the Oracle VM Manager, let's take a quick look at the Oracle VM Manager by logging into it. Getting started with Oracle VM Manager In this article, we will perform the following actions while exploring the Oracle VM Manager: Registering an account Logging in to Oracle VM Manager Create a Server Pool After we are done with the Oracle VM Manager installation, we will use one of the following links to log on to the Oracle VM Manager: Within the local machine: http://127.0.0.1:8888/OVS Logging in remotely: http://vmmgr:8888/OVS Here, vmmgr refers to the host name or IP address of your Oracle VM Manager host. How to register an account Registering of an account can be done in several ways. If, during the installation of Oracle VM Manager, we have chosen to configure the default admin account "admin", then we can use this account directly to log on to Oracle's IntraCloud portal we call Oracle VM Manager. We will explain later in detail about the user accounts and why we would need separate accounts for separate roles for fine-grained access control; something that is crucial for security purposes. So let's have a quick look at the three available options: Default installation: This option applies if we have performed the default installation ourselves and have gone ahead to create the account ourselves. Here we have the default administrator role. Request for account creation: Contacting the administrator of Oracle VM Manager is another way to attain an account with the privileges, such as administrator, manager, and user. Create yourself: If we need to conduct basic functions of a common user with operator's role such as creating and using virtual machines, or importing resources, we can create a new account ourselves. However, we will need the administrator to assign us the server pools and groups to our account before we can get started. Here by default we are granted a user role. We will talk more about roles later in this article. Now let's go about registering a new account with Oracle VM Manager. Once on the Oracle VM Manager Login page click on the Register link. We are presented with the following screen. We must enter a Username of our choice and a hard-to-crack password twice. Also, we have to fill in our First Name and Last Name and complete the registration with a valid email address. Click Next: Next, we need to confirm our account details by clicking on the Confirm button. Now our account will be created and a confirmation message is displayed on the Oracle VM Manager Login screen. It should be noted that we will need some Server Pools and groups before we can get started. We will have to ask the administrator to assign us access to those pools and groups. It's time now to login to our newly created account. Logging in to Oracle VM Manager Again we will need to either access the URL locally by typing http://127.0.0.1:8888/OVS or by typing the following: http://hostname:8888/ OVS. If we are accessing the Oracle VM Manager Portal remotely, replace the "hostname" with either the FQDN (Fully Qualified Distinguished Name) if the machine is registered in our DNS or just the hostname of the VM Manager machine. We can login to the portal by simply typing in our Username and Password that we just created. Depending on the role and the server pools that we have been assigned, we will be displayed with the tabs upon the screen as shown in the following table. To change the role, we will need to contact our enterprise domain administrator. Only administrators are allowed to change the roles of accounts. If we forget our password, we can click on Forgot Password and on submitting our account name, the password will be sent to the registered email address that we had provided when we registered the account. The following table discusses the assigned tabs that are displayed for each Oracle VM Manager roles:   Role Grants User Virtual Machines, Resources Administrator Virtual Machines, Resources, Servers, Server Pools, Administration Manager Virtual Machines, Resources, Servers, Server Pools   We can obviously change the roles by editing the Profile (on the upper-right section of the portal). As it can be seen in the following screenshot, we have access to the Virtual Machines pane and the Resources pane. We will continue to add Servers to the pool when logged in as admin. Oracle VM management: Managing Server Pool A Server Pool is logically an autonomous region that contains one or more physical servers and the dynamic nature of such pool and pools of pools makes what we call  an infinite Cloud infrastructure. Currently Oracle has its Cloud portal with Amazon but it is very much viable to have an IntraCloud portal or private Cloud where we can run all sorts of Linux and Windows flavors on our Cloud backbone. It eventually rests on the array of SAN, NAS, or other next generation storage substrate on which the VMs reside. We must ensure that we have the following prerequisites properly checked before creating the Virtual Machines on our IntraCloud Oracle VM. Oracle VM Servers: These are available to deploy as Utility Master, Server Master pool, and Virtual Machine Servers. Repositories: Used for Live Migration or Hot Migration of the VMs and for local storage on the Oracle VM Servers. FQDN/IP address of Oracle VM Servers: It is better to have the Oracle VM Servers known as OracleVM01.AVASTU.COM and OracleVM02.AVASTU. COM. This way you don't have to bother about the IP changes or infrastructural relocation of the IntraCloud to another location. Oracle VM Agent passwords: Needed to access the Oracle VM Servers. Let's now go about exploring the designing process of the Oracle VM. Then we will do the following systematically: Creating the Server Pool Editing Server Pool information Search and retrieval within Server Pool Restoring Server Pool Enabling HA Deleting a Server Pool However, we can carry out these actions only as a Manager or an Administrator. But first let's take a look at the decisions on what type of Server Pools will suit us the best and what the architectural considerations could be around building your Oracle VM farm.

The following topics were covered in the first part of this article series i.e (Oracle VM Management) Getting started with the Oracle VM Manager Managing Servers and Server Pools Let's continue from where we had left in the previous part of the article. Oracle VM Management: Managing VM Servers and Repositories There must be at least one physical server in the Server Pool that we have created. There are many things you can do with the VM Servers in the Server Pool such as changing the configurations or role or function of the server, restarting it, shutting it down, monitoring its performance, or even deleting it. The Server Pools are elastic and can adapt flexibly to the increase or decrease in the demand of workloads. It is possible to expand the pool with Oracle VM S5:42 PM 7/16/2009 servers and also possible to transfer the workloads or VMs to the VM Servers that are most capable of handling the workloads by throwing the available 4-core resources such as CPU, RAM, storage, and network capacity to the VMs. There is also a possibility of adding more Utility Servers to strengthen the capacity of the Server Pool and thus letting the Server Master handle the workload by assigning the server available to carry out the task. There can only be one Server Pool Master. However, there are basic tasks to perform before we can add the extra servers to the resource pool such as identifying them by their IP address and see if they are available to fulfill tasks as Oracle VM Server or Server Pool Master. Also we will need the Oracle VM Agent password to add them to the IntraCloud farm. Let's move on and start managing the servers. In this section, we will cover the following: How to add a Server Editing Server information Restart, shutdown, and deleting Servers How to add a Server In order to add Utility Servers or Oracle VM Servers to the array of the Oracle VM environment we will need to carry out the following actions: Click on the Add Server link on the Server Page: Search and select a Server Pool and then click Next. Enter the necessary information for Oracle VM parameters: Confirm the information, after testing the connection obviously, and you are done. However, ensure that the Oracle VM Servers are unique while registering in order to avoid any duplication of IP accounts. Editing Server information In order to update information on an existing Oracle VM Server, click on Edit. We can alternatively also click on the General Information tab. To monitor the performance of the Oracle VM Server we can click on the Monitor tab, where we get real time access to CPU, memory, and storage usage:

As more and more users start to explore and use Oracle VM Manager, more troubleshooting and tweaks will come up. This is by no way an exhaustive list and is also not intended to be. Please do participate as much as possible in forums and contribute your tips and tricks with the community. Oracle VM Manager login takes too much time I have faced this issue very often and normally if you are unlucky you ought to get this type of error while installing. For instance this error message says nothing about the memory issue: Failed at "Could not get DeploymentManager".This is typically the result of an invalid deployer URI format beingsupplied, the target server not being in a started state or incorrectauthentication details being supplied.More information is available by enabling logging -- please see theOracle Containers for J2EE Configuration and Administration Guide fordetails.FailedPlease see /var/log/ovm-manager/ovm-manager.log for more information.Deploying application failed.Please check your environment, and re-run the script:/bin/sh scripts/deployApp.shAborting installation. Please check the environment and rerunrunInstaller.sh. But when you upgrade your VM Manager OS with more memory you'll be able to continue with the installation. Sometimes, you may also get all kinds of errors, such as the following one: Internal Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space And they clearly point to the memory issue. This suggests that your OC4J may need more memory. Let's run the following commands to check the log information: cat  /var/log/ovm-manager/oc4j.log | grep "heap" If your OC4J ran out of memory you would typically get that heapsize error. To fix this go back to the console and examine the values of the following OC4J_JVM_ARGS function in the /opt/oc4j/bin/oc4j configuration file: Edit the following OC4J_JVM_ARGS="-XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m function and give more memory to the OC4J. Save the information and quit: Restart the service OC4J: service oc4j stopservice oc4j start HVM guest creation fails Normally there are many actions and functionalities within Oracle VM Manager that require the host to be truly HVM-aware, which means that 64-bit (preferably) Oracle VM Servers must be running with hardware virtualization support on the chipset level. Having said that, both Intel and AMD support it and it is highly unlikely that you will come across new machines that do not support that. However, always check the compatibility within a specific family and check whether the support is turned on or off. Nonetheless, you could be using some reusable older hardware that may or may not support HW-assist virtualization. If you are confronted with the following message: "Error: There is no server supporting hardware virtualization in the selected server pool. " Then you'll have a reason to worry and check your hardware, and carry out the following commands on the VM Server that does not allow you to create a HVM: Cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep –E 'vmx|smx' Use the preceding command if your hardware is HVM-aware, then you should get some reply as shown in the following screenshot: If you don't get a response, then you might have a problem. For instance we pick up another VM Server which we for sure know does not have a HVM support or HW-assist virtualization: Also ensure that the virtualization support is enabled at the HW level in the BIOS. Then run the following commands to see if the Operating System supports HVM: As you have seen in the preceding screenshot, we then quickly logged into the VM Server which we knew does not support HVM and did not get a reply from the 172.22.202.111 VM Server. Whereas, the x64 bit version with built-in, BIOS-enabled HVM support returns the values in the form of xen_caps. xen_caps : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_32 hvm-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_64 So if your CPU does not support HVM, use the PVM (Paravirtualized Method) to create your VM.

This function is only available to administrators, so use this role prudently. During the installation of the Oracle VM Manager, a default admin account is created. And with this admin's account we can go about managing the users and groups. Managing Users Here it is possible to create new users, delete older or unwanted ones, assign different roles to those users, reset user password, and so on. Let's break it up into a few topics and have a look at it. Creating a User Viewing or editing details Changing a role Deleting a User Creating a User To create a User, perform the following: On the Administrator's page click User tab and then click on the Create button: Enter the necessary information such as: Username (avoid using user, manager, and administrator as username) Password Retype Password First Name Last Name Valid Email address We can select the account status, it could either be locked or unlocked and is only accessible when it's unlocked. We can lock an account for security reasons by using the status Locked. We can grant the following roles to this newly created user—User, Manager, or Administrator. Then select the Server Pools for this user and also select the group to which this user should belong to. Click on the Confirm button to confirm the information and we will get this information: As we can see in the preceding screenshot this is a plain user and has no groups or servers assigned to it. However this was unlocked and was granted a User role. Viewing or editing a User Now let's view the User we just created. Click on the User tab on the Administrator page: Click on the Show link to view the Server Pools that the user is allowed to use: We can now edit account details such as change email address, change account status, and so on. Let's change the User's email address: Modifying the account status to either locked or unlocked: Changing the role: Next, add the User to the Server Pool: Removing a User from groups or Server Pools: Changing a User's role Lets change regular Users' role to Administrator: On the Administrator's page, select the newly created User and click on the Edit button. Select the role and click Apply to effectively assign the role to the User: Once applied, we will be presented with the following screen: Deleting User To delete a User, we need to do the following on the Administrator's page. We can carry out a search and then select the User that we want to delete. Click on the Delete button and confirm the User you want to delete: