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Showing results for tags 'virtual'.
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Hi everyone, I'm keen to get some insights on how others in the school sector are handling the gradual move away from on-prem infrastructure, particularly for core services like DHCP and DNS. With budget cuts and the shift to cloud services, maintaining aging local servers is becoming a real challenge. I have a perfect example of this at one of my sites: an HP ProLiant DL320e Gen8 V2 server. It's well past its warranty coverage period, hasn't been rebooted since 2023, and the last time it was, we had a RAID array failure. It's now in a state where I'm genuinely afraid to power it down😭 This server is currently handling DHCP and DNS for the administrative network (for office staff, medical, SLT, etc.). While it's still running on Windows Server 2016, which gives us some breathing room, the hardware itself is a ticking time bomb. I'm finding that our reliance on Active Directory is decreasing as we move more services to the cloud. This got me thinking about the future of these core network services. Are you still running dedicated on-prem servers for DHCP and DNS? What are your strategies for replacing or migrating these services? Are you looking at more modern on-prem solutions (e.g., virtualised servers, micro-appliances) or are you moving these functions to the cloud? Any advice or shared experiences on this would be hugely appreciated! -
Hey all, Last weekend my VMWare host crashed out big time - whole network was out on Monday morning - DC's, print servers, everything. Could have been something wrong with the power in the room. Nothing in the UPS logs though! In addition to that, Smoothwall was hung, CCTV and a couple of switches hung. RAID needed rebuilding on a backup NAS. I have no idea what happened and logs don't point me in any specific direction! Nothing consistent except I suspect power problems. A full reboot sorted it, and a reboot/restore of all the guest machines. What I'm getting at is where my VMWare host is concerned is it possible to configure a 2nd host to 'hot' migrate. e.g. if Host 1 goes down, guests are in a 'hot' up to date state to take over ? I know this won't help some of the issues above but I'm planning on implementing a 2nd host at Easter and would like to do this rather than load balance. Is it possible ? We're running Esxi 5.5 Essentials plus (will be upgrading to v6 at Easter) and also using Veeam. Will vMotion do this for me ? Cheers in advance -
Hello, We are looking at re-furbishing our ICT suite and replacing PC's in school etc... and wondered what the cost may be to implement some kind of virtual computing environment? Our network is getting a bit full and the cost of installing new network points and switches, new computers etc... would be quite high. What would it be weighed against developing a virtual computing environment? Am I correct in thinking that if we have a virtual server a workstation could log on and use any operating system? Also- would all users see the same desktop and be able to use the same programs? I have more questions for later... J x
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Hello folks, Apologies if this should be in the Technical/Virtualisation thread, but I'm also after some non-technical answers, if possible. I'm a head of ICT (ex Network Manager many moons ago - went over to the dark side...) and I'd like to know if anybody has any direct experience on the usability of virtualised clients for the teaching of discrete ICT- i.e. is virtualisation more suited to just basic PC use, e.g. Web browsing, MS office, or can it cope with the full range of software that an ICT department might throw at it, e.g. CS5.5, dev software etc? Does it also give access to the full range of ports on the PC? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've always preferred the standard 3 yearly upgrade programme for hardware, but this is no longer cost effective at my school and we're seriously considering virtualising. Many thanks, Richard
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Hi all, I have been a long time viewer of this forum and I think it is really good. I was hoping that you lot could help me out with a new project I have been working on. I am in the process of creating a new virtual learning environment application, and would like to know people's views on what to include. I want to know what features you think are essential and which are desirable. Also I would like your view on what current VLEs do badly, or you think could be done better. These views can be generic to the education sector, or personal to your establishment. I am hoping the end result will be a top quality product, which will be set apart from other packages available at present. Taking into account the needs of the most, but also unique things that some may like. I think too many of the VLEs out there seem to be detached from their potential customers and their views, so hopefully we can help change this. Thanks
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Hey, Just got a bit of an idea running around in my head and I was wondering if anyone else has tried anything like this. In school we do an applied ICT A level and part of this the students must install an OS in the 1st year and a server OS + network stuff (AD a couple of clients and a couple of shared peripherals) in the 2nd year. At the minute they use our old knackered hardware cast offs which isn't ideal as they aren't in the best nik to start with and we often have hardware failure driver and compatibility issues (as the same hardware is often used for break and build stuff). Anyway it occurs to me a better way would be to virtualise everything, set up a Xen/ESXI/HyperV server and use the existing (knackered) hardware they have to remote into it. Then its just a case of having the students create new virtual machines to install and configure then for the networking stuff run each server out on individual own subnets and VLANs to stop any conflicts (I think this can be done with virtual VLAN bridges). There are a few issues I need to think through before I even think about suggesting this to anyone like how to install the guest OS's (as the students have to do this and will want to at the same time which I'm assuming will be a massive pain) but I would like to hear if anyone else is running something similar. Cheers J P.S. I've not got a huge amount of virtualisation experiences so please feel free to make suggestions/comments.
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Hello, We are a large secondary school in North London. We would like to build capacity in our data management team and would appreciate any contacts/advice/pointers regarding the recruitment of a virtual data manager. Anyone had any experience in this area? Kind regards, Mark
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Hi everyone. In an attempt to expand my networking knowledge, I'm currently trying to setup a Windows 2003 network virtually, with one server and two XP Pro clients. I've installed Windows Server 2003 Standard and setup Active Directory and DNS. However I can't join the clients to the server, i've tried changing IP addresses, and making sure the virtual machine has the networking set (i.e. bridged/local). I'm not entirely sure what I need. All I want is a functioning server, which clients can join and I can administer my own domain, trying out different bits and bobs etc. Any help would much be appreciated.
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Link: Virtual Disney World [YouTube]
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hi I was wondering if anyone transferred from a physical box to a virtual box that manages all the wireless systems. If so I have a few questions 1. did you have to by new access points to support this or does any model support this. 2. If you bought additional licenses do these transfer across 3. Is it reliable and performance is okay on hyper-v. 4. does it cost a lot to implement or is it cheaper than replacing a physical controller. Thanks Nathan
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Hi guys and gals, I'm setting up a new Virtual File Server to take over from an aging Physical. At the moment, all the data is on one drive (D:), and (badly) split up into folders/shares etc. At a previous school I've had two VHDs one for Pupils and one for Staff and had Homedrives and Pupil/StaffShares on each. I was wondering what you guys do? Do you have one big VHD (ours would be around 2TB, and carve it up just with folders and use FSRM to set Quotas and rules etc, or would you have separate VHDs, and if so, would you have a separate VHD as above, or go further one for each main share? Approx Sizes Staff Home - 540GB Staff Share - 815GB Pupil Home - 190GB Pupil Share - 280GB
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Hi, VMWare Esxi 5.1 & vSphere client. I have a VM that I use to create disk images for WDS. Each snapshot is a different machine configuration (office, pupil PC's, teacher PC's etc) The base disk size is 32Gb which isn't big enough for me to install all the programs I need to create my latest image. I can't increase the disk size because there are snapshots. I cant consolidate the snapshots because I will lose my different configurations. Can I migrate the .vmdx and snapshots to a new VM with a bigger disk size? If so, how ??
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Hi, What VM platform should I use ? Just got in a server to virtualise Windoze 2008 R2 /2012 Servers to replace old hardware... HP DL360p Gen8 - 4TB HDD - RAIDed, 2 x CPU, 72GB RAM, 4 x 1GB NIC, dual power etc etc. Platform will be Debian most likely. I'm aiming to virtualise up to 5 Windoze servers and one Smoothwall... So far It'll be... 1 x Domain controller, DNS, Auth, GPO etc 1 x WDS, WSUS, IIS, Apps 1 x Smoothwall / Proxy 1 x MS Exchange ... and anything I might need in the future. Got 30TB of NAS's and file server for storage so no file serving or anything like that. I've used the free version of Virtualbox quite a bit on my PC but reckon VMWare will be a better solution for this purpose. If so, what version do I need and is there a freebie version that will do what I want. ~Cheers for your comments~ ; )
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I came across a blog thread that made total sense and I had to follow the premise.. It seems obvious but I'd not thought of it. I created a new 2012r2 server and created a dedupped volume in which to store my VM backups. The key is to not encrypt or COMPRESS the backups. This way dedupe can work with the blocks. Traditionally I'd use incremental backups with compression on a standard windows share. This yields a lot of storage but is pretty slow especially at restoring. The beauty of the dedupe is the speed. But it's getting way better results than I expected.. Screen shot! that's over 7TBs of backup in less than 1.. And its faster.. (De dupe operations run during the day.) So you do need initially more storage. still this is great.
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Hello everyone, We have managed to App-V SIMS.net and it all appears to be working fine, except when we go to print timetables using Reports -> Timetables -> Student Timetable(s). The issue is that the initial print of a timetable will function correctly but subsequent prints will fail and it'll just hang on "Printing Page 1". Upon further research I have found that when printing a timetable a "rundll32.exe" process is invoked, and this is not automatically killed after the print has been spooled to the printer. As soon as this process is manually terminated using Task Manager, the print of another timetable is successful. Is there anyway in App-V 5.0 to terminate this process automatically - or any kind of workaround as this is currently holding us back? Many thanks in advance!
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Hi all, I'm running out of space on my Virtual host running VMWare Esxi - Haven't got a replica server yet. I'm doing this in order to free up a physical server to use a replication server but need more space. Currently have 2 x 1tb Disks in a RAID 1 array with a hot spare. I've got 4 spare disk slots in the server so I can build a new array with bigger disks. How will I copy the first array's data over without having to do a re-install of VMWare?
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Hi all, Easter will be time to get rid of my last physical machines converting them to VM's. I have a server running Server 2008 & Sims.net plus other associated sync programs etc. (It wont be a fresh install, I'll convert with VMWare Converter or deploy an image) Are there any SQL issues or other gremlins anyone has experienced that I should be aware of before I convert ?? Cheers in advance
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Hello everyone, I have an unusual issue trying to sequence Algodoo which is a piece of free physics software we are trying to use in school. I can sequence it but when I try adding it to the App-V Management Server so it can be deployed, I am receiving an error message: "The package Algo Physics was not added. An unexpected error occurred while calling AppX Com API. Error: 0x80080205 - The Appx package's block map is invalid. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80080205)." I have sequence a completely different application using the same sequencing VM (restored to a clean state) and these packages add successfully. So I can only think that it is something within the software (file path, filename that's a reserved word??). The Sequencer version is: App-V 5.1 March 2017 Service running on Windows 7 SP1 x86 (I have also tried my x64 sequencer VM with identical version of the sequencer to no avail) Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks!
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We are thinking about moving our physical sims.net server to virtual. We currently have our san and vmware esxi. Pleasde could someone advise if they have done this and any other steps need to be taken? Thanks
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We have downloaded and installed the Citrx VDI-in-a-Box trial and installed onto a ESXi 5.0 server. Must say we are pretty impressed so far with the provisioning of Windows 7 virtual machines to users. We have just ordered some trial Android tablets to test and see how useable a VDI solution will be on a tablet via the Citrix Receiver app. Does anyone down in the South West area currently have a Citrix VDI-in-a-Box solution in production? We are interested in taking a look at one in action with more users than we can currently get on our trial. To know of any problems etc...
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I would be interested to know if anyone has been successful in virtualising their RM CC4 DC's. We are considering virtualising our servers on our own VMWare infrastructure (not installed by RM). Has anyone been through this process? Does it work? Are there any pitfalls? Do RM need to be involved or can we manage this in-house? Many thanks, Daniel
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Hi, Using VMWare converter 5 for the first time trying to visualise one of our old Windows 2003 32 servers into an ESXi 5.5 virtual vSphere server The converter software is installed locally on the physical server and is connecting to the virtual ESXi 5.5 server. The physical server has 6 partitions on it's RAID array C,D,E,F,G and H (C is active/system, D,E,F, and G are all active and H is not active) When I try to convert transferring all the partitions I receive "A general system error has occured - Unknown system error" BUT If I only select the C drive to transfer, the converter initiates and starts the conversion? So I assuming it is something to do with the other partitions? This is the error log I receive (I have bolded the interesting part) Any help on this would be greatly recieved as I am new to this. Thanks 2013-12-05T12:50:28.738Z [03084 info 'Default'] TargetVmManagerImpl::CreateVM: Creating the target VM. 2013-12-05T12:50:28.738Z [03084 info 'Default'] Reusing existing VIM connection to 10.96.0.20 2013-12-05T12:50:28.738Z [03084 info 'Default'] ComputeResource for vim.HostSystem:ha-host is vim.ComputeResource:ha-compute-res 2013-12-05T12:50:28.738Z [03084 info 'Default'] ResourcePool for vim.ComputeResource:ha-compute-res is vim.ResourcePool:ha-root-pool 2013-12-05T12:50:28.754Z [03084 info 'Default'] Datacenter for vim.ComputeResource:ha-compute-res is vim.Datacenter:ha-datacenter 2013-12-05T12:50:28.754Z [03084 info 'Default'] Root VM folder for vim.Datacenter:ha-datacenter is vim.Folder:ha-folder-vm 2013-12-05T12:50:28.754Z [03084 info 'Default'] Creating VM BJX-SVR-002.blythjex.internal in folder vim.Folder:ha-folder-vm on host vim.HostSystem:ha-host and resource pool vim.ResourcePool:ha-root-pool (isVirtualApp = false)... 2013-12-05T12:50:29.519Z [03084 info 'Default'] Created vm vim.VirtualMachine:7 2013-12-05T12:50:29.535Z [03084 info 'Default'] [baseParserImpl::Parse] Config info is not cached 2013-12-05T12:50:29.535Z [03084 info 'Default'] Reusing existing VIM connection to 10.96.5.20 2013-12-05T12:50:29.535Z [03084 info 'Default'] Getting ConfigInfo for vim.VirtualMachine:7 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Filtering out invalid extra config options ... 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge0.present is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge4.present is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge4.virtualDev is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge4.functions is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge5.present is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge5.virtualDev is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge5.functions is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge6.present is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge6.virtualDev is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge6.functions is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge7.present is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge7.virtualDev is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option pciBridge7.functions is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option cpuid.coresPerSocket is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option vmware.tools.internalversion is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.550Z [03084 info 'Default'] Extra config option vmware.tools.requiredversion is removed 2013-12-05T12:50:29.566Z [03084 info 'Default'] Reusing existing VIM connection to 10.96.5.20 2013-12-05T12:50:29.582Z [03084 info 'Default'] GetManagedDiskName: Get virtual disk filebacking [datastore1] BJX-SVR-002.blythjex.internal/BJX-SVR-002.blythjex.internal.vmdk 2013-12-05T12:50:29.582Z [03084 info 'Default'] GetManagedDiskName: ticket has empty host name, using host name "10.96.5.20" and thumbprint "1A:32:A0:D0:4B:49:D9:B0:02:D6:AD:C9:88:F0:27:CF:C2:89:1D" from connection 2013-12-05T12:50:29.582Z [03084 info 'Default'] GetManagedDiskName: updating nfc port as 902 2013-12-05T12:50:29.582Z [03084 info 'Default'] GetManagedDiskName: get protocol as ha-nfcssl 2013-12-05T12:50:29.582Z [03084 info 'Default'] GetManagedDiskName: Get disklib file name as ha-nfcssl://[datastore1] BJX-SVR-002.blythjex.internal/[email protected]:902!52 c0 ea ed ea f4 28 13-a8 0d 51 69 b6 5f 0a 7d 2013-12-05T12:50:30.347Z [03084 warning 'Default'] Disk number 1 has been skipped because of errors while reading partition table 2013-12-05T12:50:30.347Z [03084 warning 'Default'] Disk number 1 has been skipped because of errors while reading dynamic disks header or LDM database is corrupted 2013-12-05T12:50:30.363Z [03084 warning 'Default'] [MoveActiveDiskIfNeeded] GetFirstBootDisk failed, mntapi error: 176 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 warning 'Default'] Partition:Invalid sector magic number. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 warning 'Default'] Partition:Invalid sector magic number. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 info 'Default'] Reusing existing VIM connection to 10.96.0.20 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 warning 'Default'] [PopulateCapabilities] Volume-based cloning was disabled due to: 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 info 'Default'] [LogMessagesForQA] System volume is not detected. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 info 'Default'] [baseComputerImpl::Open] Config file: [datastore1] BJX-SVR-002.blythjex.internal/BJX-SVR-002.blythjex.internal.vmx 2013-12-05T12:50:31.019Z [03084 warning 'Default'] Partition:Invalid sector magic number. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.347Z [03084 info 'Default'] Building partition list: Can't have more then one active partition on a disk. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.347Z [03084 info 'Default'] Failed to create the partition Tables error:-1 2013-12-05T12:50:31.347Z [03084 error 'Default'] [baseDiskSetComputer::PartitionDisk] Failed to partition disk disk-2000, mntapi error: 400 2013-12-05T12:50:31.347Z [03084 error 'Default'] [baseDiskSetComputer::AnalyzeErrorAndThrow] Error occurred when opening disk set, MNTAPI_ERROR = 400 MNTAPI errorType = 0, errorCode = 25 2013-12-05T12:50:31.363Z [03084 error 'Default'] TargetVmManagerImpl::CreateVM: Failed to retrieve the storage mapping with error Partitioning disk error. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.363Z [03084 info 'Default'] TargetVmManagerImpl::CreateVM: The target VM will be deleted now. 2013-12-05T12:50:31.363Z [03084 info 'Default'] TargetVmManagerImpl::DeleteVM 2013-12-05T12:50:31.363Z [03084 info 'Default'] Reusing existing VIM connection to 10.96.5.20 2013-12-05T12:50:31.363Z [03084 info 'Default'] Destroying vim.VirtualMachine:7 on 10.96.5.20 2013-12-05T12:50:31.581Z [03084 info 'Default'] Scheduled timer canceled, StopKeepAlive succeeds 2013-12-05T12:50:31.597Z [03084 info 'vmomi.soapStub[60]'] Resetting stub adapter for server : Closed 2013-12-05T12:50:31.597Z [03084 error 'Default'] Unknown exception while invoking VMOMI method createVM 2013-12-05T12:52:01.117Z [03096 error 'Ufa.HTTPService'] Failed to read request; stream: , >, error: class Vmacore::TimeoutException(Operation timed out) -
Hi all, Just setting up VM replication in Veeam to a second host - three mission critical production servers - a DC, MIS server and print/management server. This is for the event of the primary host going bang --> fire up the replica VM --> all good . I'm wondering how to schedule the replication process. I already run two separate Veeam backup jobs per night of all my production VM's, and an extra (third) one of the MIS server --> I could restore these backups in an emergency but it would take time hence the replication. I'm thinking once once per week. How would you do it ? Cheers in advance
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Hi! We've gone down the ESXi route for our back end stuff (DC, file server, printservers etc). Thought we'd switch to WDS in the process as well since it did really well in my testing before we made the switch to virtual. We seem to be having massive issues with laptops and machines not being able to pick up the TFTP (PXE-E32: TFTP open timeout) and on some occasions the images deploy to 100% but give us an error, upon restarting its a totally corrupt image. Now, as we had short time to resolve this in the summer we put WDS on a physical server, all worked fine. We've tried to go back to the virtual server but seem to be having the same issues again. The resource allocation to the server seems fine, ive tried changing the network card to a few other options, still the same error. I should add, we are imaging to physical machines only, all server side we we use templates and whatnot... Was curious if anyone has had any issues with WDS being on a virtual machine? Cheers!
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Just been watching James Quarles from Dell talking about Dell's vision of the connected Classroom Video: What a connected classroom looks like | IT PRO This is great, but slightly embarrassing for Dell, given that everyone in teaching is already using this stuff, and people like Microsoft, Apple, Frog, Smart, Promethean (honestly, I'd run out of space if I listed them all) have been talking about this sort of thing for years. Where on earth have they been? It's scary that the biggest name in education PCs seems to have only just realised where teaching is going... What does everyone else think?
