Bob Plankers, Author at The Lone Sysadmin

8 Things I Really Like About VMware Workstation 8

September 16, 2011 by Bob Plankers

I’ve been using VMware Workstation 8 for a few days now. I really like it. A lot of posts have been made hitting some of the major highlights, but there are hundreds of small improvements that add up to be a big deal for me. Here are eight. 1. You can connect to a vSphere setup, and upload your VMs into the server environment. I’ve already used it to set up a new VM template locally, then upload it to my production environment. As I get more into vCloud Director I anticipate using this heavily to set up templates for new (or old) OSes. It’ll also be a great solution for dealing with virtual appliances that make assumptions, like DHCP. …

Strange Characters in My WordPress Blog

September 14, 2011 by Bob Plankers

In late August I moved my blog from a host running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 to a host running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. With it came an upgrade to MySQL, from 4 to 5. The migration itself seemed pretty painless, as I was able to recompile Apache on the new host and just copy everything over intact. I moved the databases by dumping each one and importing them on the other side. A week ago I was doing some work on the blog and noticed that for every apostrophe there were three other characters now: â€™. I use a lot of apostrophes, and it sort of sucks to have every “it’s” become “itâ€™s”. More specifically, it was only …

LSI Security Question Fail

September 13, 2011 by Bob Plankers

I was trying to register for access to the LSI download center and in the process I ran across a very interesting security question: Gee, guys, if I knew what my password was I wouldn’t need the security question. I also enjoy “What is your mother’s last name?” Consider that a disproportionate number of IT staff are men, and that, at least in the USA, women of my mother’s era usually took their husband’s last name. It’s highly probable that my mother’s last name is the same as mine… This is all on top of the fact that it’s asking for passwords and such without SSL. I think it’s safe to say that your security is not their priority.

How to Fix Google Chrome Font Rendering Issues

September 12, 2011 by Bob Plankers

I’ve been having a heck of a time with terrible font rendering in Chrome. In fact, it’s been my biggest complaint about that browser. I get fonts with missing pieces, fonts that don’t render completely, text that is completely absent, and text with severely pixelated edges. I don’t mean to be a snob about it, but I look at this thing many hours every day, and I’d like it to work right. Here’s a severe example. The image on the left is what I saw in Chrome, and the image on the right is what I should have seen when visiting a particular web site: That’s like WTF levels of crappy, right? It was happening all the time, on …

Fallacies of Distributed Computing

September 10, 2011 by Bob Plankers

I was cleaning out a stack of old papers and ran across a copy of “The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing” that I’d made back in 2004. As Wikipedia puts it, a guy by the name of Peter Deutsch “asserted that programmers new to distributed applications invariably make a set of assumptions… and these assumptions ultimately prove false, resulting either in the failure of the system, a substantial reduction in system scope, or in large unplanned expenses required to redesign the system to meet its original goals.” 1. The network is reliable. 2. Latency is zero. 3. Bandwidth is infinite. 4. The network is secure. 5. Topology doesn’t change. 6. There is one administrator. 7. Transport cost is zero. 8. …

How to Change SCSI Controllers on your Linux VM

September 7, 2011 by Bob Plankers

A question from Matt Vogt prompted this, where he wants to go from the BusLogic SCSI controller to the LSI Logic SAS controller. It’s actually a straightforward conversion if you have the right steps. This is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5, but the principle should be the same for everything. It’s basically: snapshot, change config files, change hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, in contrast, appears to have all the LSI Logic, parallel & SAS, drivers, as well as the paravirtual SCSI drivers, so all you need to do is shut the VM down and change the type of SCSI controller you’re using. I always recommend trying this on a test VM before you try …

Official: Revisions to VMware vSphere 5 Licensing

August 3, 2011 by Bob Plankers

It’s official, VMware is changing the vRAM licensing in response to the feedback they’ve received. And, from the sounds of it, lots of feedback. They read every single vRAM post and thread in the Communities, read all the blog posts and comments, read all the feedback that was sent to them through the sales representatives and technical account managers. As they put it to me, most of the feedback was along these lines: It was less about the conversion to vSphere 5 than future growth, and the fact that the business case for future growth was drastically different now [and quite a bit more costly] than under the vSphere 4 licensing model. The new license model “introduced additional hesitation for …

Why Your Company Should Be A Part of Tech Field Day

August 1, 2011 by Bob Plankers

Next week I will be participating in my third Tech Field Day, this one in Austin, TX. It’s a great opportunity for both independent bloggers and companies. Here are four big reasons I think more companies should be participating in Tech Field Day. 1. The ability for actual users, and potential users, to give you direct feedback. Who is your company listening to for feedback? How does your company get feedback from actual users of your products, or potential users of your products? If it’s through your marketing or PR channels you might be getting a filtered version. Analysts are good, but in many cases they’re not actually going to use your product. With Tech Field Day there’s no filter. …

Tips for VMworld US 2011 & Las Vegas

July 28, 2011 by Bob Plankers

As VMworld US 2011 approaches I’ve been thinking about the things I’ve learned about traveling to & in Las Vegas, and things that I wish I’d been told the first time I went to VMworld. You folks probably also have a bunch of good ideas that I’ll miss, please add them in the comments! Transportation: There are multiple ways for a cab to get to your hotel, but the Interstate 215 tunnel is NOT the shortest way. Ever. That’s a classic cab scam and will result in a 30 minute cab ride, when the Strip is 10 minutes away. Explicitly ask to go to your hotel via Tropicana Avenue. Traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard (“the Strip”) at night is insane, …

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