Who’s On Phirst

Even though it’s been available for a few months, I only recently had time to check out the latest and greatest free virtualization offering from VMWare. I haven’t run it through the wringer completely, but from what I’ve seen there are several new features and improvements that will definitely hasten the upgrade process in our test environment once it clears Beta. Here’s what I like so far:

• A vastly better web console. The console obviously came under some major scrutiny. The 1.0 version wasn’t unusable, but it wasn’t as feature rich and intuitive as the 2.0 console. Everything you need to manage your virtual machines is easily accessible in a clean web app.
• More detailed event reporting. This helps you keep track of changes made to your virtual machines. It also helps you find who started, stopped, or reverted your virtual machines. So now instead of cursing the Void when a VM is reverted out from under you and you lose weeks of unsaved test data, you can find the culprit and break their coffee cup or mess with their chair settings late at night when no one else is around.
• If you are not a late night saboteur and would rather avoid the situation altogether, virtual machine permissions are a lot easier to manage in this release.
• Instead of assigning a single ‘Default Virtual Machine Location’ as you do in 1.0, you organize your virtual machines in one or more datastores. You can then set access permissions on your datastore to keep others from interfering with your diabolical machinations…or software development.
• Virtual Machine memory allocation ceiling has more than doubled. 1.0 capped per virtual machine memory allocation at less than 4 GB. 2.0 bumps this up to 8 GB as long as you have the memory to spare. This is a very big deal for anyone that plans on running multiple virtual machines hosting WebSphere Portal.
• Updates to the VIX API. 2.0 includes support for an updated API (VIX 1.5) with some exciting new features. I am most anxious to get my hands on the Record and Playback features.

The only thing that I hoped was going to be available in 2.0 was support for multiple snapshots per virtual machine. This would make it a lot easier to switch between WebSphere and WebLogic patch levels when tracking down configuration bugs. All in all, I’m very pleased and excited about digging deeper.

In Vmware Server 2.0, Virtualization
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Why buy the cow? Open Source QA Tools can provide a sturdy test and automation framework.

I’ve spent the bulk of my career in QA at startups so I’m not accustomed to operating with an abundance of resources. As such, I’ve researched a ton of free and open source testing tools in the hopes of automating or streamlining the test process to compensate for a lack of manpower. I’ve decided to use my blog posts to detail some of the tools that I have found useful over the years.

At my last job, we built our test lab by cruising Goodwill stores in search of donated systems capable of running Windows 98, NT or 2K with a minimum of upgrades. While our experiences in creating this “Franken-lab” made for a few good stories, we often spent more time dealing with hardware outages and the quirky behavior common in donated technology than we did testing. At the time disk space, memory, and powerful processors were expensive. Even if we were to buy mid-range systems we’d have quickly exhausted our budget. Without enough hardware to cover all of our supported platforms, we’d have had to rely on disk imaging, a process that includes a lot of downtime while one system configuration is being blown away and another written to disk.

VMWare has changed all of this. At Phurnace, my test lab consists of one system with 8GB of RAM, 2 quad-core processors, and a terabyte of disk space. I can run up to about 10 Virtual Machines concurrently so I can use one as my client test platform, use several more to create clustered WebSphere or WebLogic environments to test against, and have a few virtual machines to spare for developers to troubleshoot defects or test code before checking it in.

Benefits of the Virtualized Test Lab:

• Installation of VMWare Server and Virtual Machine creation couldn’t be easier.
• Quickly shift gears. If I get blocked while testing one platform, I can power down those servers and bring up another set of server images in a few minutes without leaving my chair.
• Snapshots! VMWare also allows me to start from a known good base state every time I power on a virtual machine so I know that ‘pollution’ on my test bed will be minimal.
• A basic CLI that allows you to start and stop VMWare images remotely. This has been very handy for test automation
• A library of virtual appliances, some offered for free, that provide pre-installed and configured enterprise applications. I have just started investigating some of these to manage the virtual network my virtual machines are connected too.
• Lots of available help is just a good Googlin’ away. VMWare is very widely used.
• Free! Gratis! On the house! VMWare Server is a free offering that is intended to familiarize users with virtualization. While they have several support subscriptions and product upgrades available at a price, this free offering has more than met our needs.

So check it out here . I recommend it highly.

In Virtualization
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