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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Virtualization’ Category

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No network connection in your VM? Check your VMware services on the host. (via: How to Start & Stop VMware server/Workstation manually | Windows Reference)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/02

If you:

  1. you run VMware Workstation, Server or Player,
  2. and your VM under NAT does not get an IP address on a NIC in the NAT network (usually VMnet8),
  3. and the NIC of your VM has the status “Connected”

Then check if the “VMware DHCP Service” and “VMware NAT Service”  are running using this command:

rem "VMware DHCP Service"
sc queryex VMnetDHCP
sc queryex "VMware NAT Service"

If either of them has’t started, use these command – as an Administrator – to start them (they won’t start a service that is already started):

rem "VMware DHCP Service"
net start VMnetDHCP
net start "VMware NAT Service"

Note that VMware will not complain if the VMware DHCP Service or VMware NAT Service have not started (not even in the eventlog) and will just start your VM fine.

If your VMware DHCP service is not running, and you un-suspend a VM that had an address assigned through DHCP, you usually get errors like this:

C:\Users\j.pluimers>tracert -d 194.109.6.66
Tracing route to 194.109.6.66 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 Transmit error: code 1231.
Trace complete.

For my memory:
There are a few more interesting batch files at How to Start & Stop VMware server/Workstation manually | Windows Reference.

–jeroen

via: How to Start & Stop VMware server/Workstation manually | Windows Reference.

Posted in Power User, VMware | Leave a Comment »

VMware workstation will re-create different vmnet1 and vmnet8 when updating from 8.0.1 to 8.0.2

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/03/01

Sometimes you have a DUH moment.

I just had was one: I upgraded VMware Workstation to 8.0.2 a couple of days ago.
Today one the less frequently used development virtual machines would not see the SQL Server 2000 alias it could find before.

Reasons:

  1. the ALIAS cannot be found through DHCP, so it was in the HOSTS table on the development virtual machine.
  2. the subnet of vmnet1 and vmnet8 got changed because the VMware update actually is performed ad a complete reinstall.

I blogged about the SQL Server 2000 alias last week, but in fact the work had been more than 2 months ago, so it took me a while to add up reasons 1 and 2 and find out the answer was in fact 3:

Reset the VMware vmnet1 and vmnet8 to the subnets they were before, and everything works fine and all is dandy again.

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, VMware | Leave a Comment »

VMware View Client uses PCoIP; please network admins read the PCoIP checklist!

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/24

Somehow, I have the impression that not all VMware View Client network admins fully read and understand the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist”

That checklist is important, as it is easy to get things wrong and dissatisfy your users without reason (heck, they get worse than mediocre RDP performance experience, so you could’ve saved you the work of PCoIP in the first place).

So please do read the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“.

It starts with

The PCoIP protocol provides a real-time delivery of a rich user desktop experience in virtual desktop and remote workstation environments.

To ensure a responsive desktop, the PCoIP protocol must be deployed across a properly architected virtual desktop network infrastructure that meets bandwidth, QoS, latency, jitter, and packet loss requirements.

CheckPoint VPN sometimes can be a dork combined with PCoIP. and at least make sure UDP works well over your VPN.

–jeroen

via: “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist”

(Some more backgorund reading and even more)

(fixed typo: one of the PCoIP occurances was PCiOP, luckily, Google knows better :)

Posted in Power User, View, VMware | 2 Comments »

Very odd cause (and solution) for VMware View Client “Connect Desktop Failed”: Event Log could not start because of Access Denied error 5.

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/09

Lets start post 800 by mentioning it took quite a bit of time to solve the connection problem to VDI. I hope it will help others, and if I ever run into this again myself: now I know where to look :)

Some clients make heavy use of VMware VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) which moves the desktop into the VMs in the data center.

A while ago I spent most of the day tracking down a “Connect Desktop Failed” error with VMware View Client running on a Windows 7 x64 workstation to connect to a VDI VM. It would connect to the VDI server, authenticate, start the Desktop, but could not connect to the Desktop.

The amazing thing is that the VMware view client worked fine on an XP VM workstation (with and without SNX) XP physical machine with SNX, and another Windows 7 x64 VM workstation (also with and without SNX) and Windows 7 x64 physical machine with SNX.

Clearly something was wrong with this particular Windows 7 x64 workstation that is host of most of my development VMs so I didn’t want to do a re-install.

I tried many obvious things on the Windows 7 x64 workstation:

  1. reboot
  2. disable firewall
    (that would have indicated some of the ports required by VMware view were not open: in practice not all ports mentioned in the list are used)
  3. uninstall software from various vendors that might interfere with network activity
  4. disabled virus scanner
  5. step down from VMware View Manager 5 client to VMware View Manager 4.6 client
  6. circumvented SNX (CheckPoint SSL VPN extender) making sure I was on the same WAN and later LAN of the VDI
  7. verified twice I had indeed Windows 7 SP1 applied
  8. laughed about the SSE support required by VMware view client

Since the “Connect desktop failed” does not return many English search results, I started browsing the Russian ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, View, VMware | Leave a Comment »

VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/23

Note that Sharing a Mac folder through VMware Fusion to a Windows VM works, but is:

  1. not fast
  2. eats a lot of Mac resources
    (it would get the fan of my MacBook Air running like mad when copying about 1Gigabyte of files – about 20-thousand files total; a robocopy /mir sync when nothing is changes takes a whopping 5 minutes)

This is how you do it:

To configure a shared folder in a Windows virtual machine:

  1. Launch VMware Fusion.
  2. Power on the virtual machine.
  3. Click Virtual Machine > Settings.
  4. Click Sharing.
  5. Select Share folders on your Mac.
  6. Click the + button.
  7. Browse to the folder on the Mac that will be shared with the virtual machine and click Add.

Shared folders can be accessed via the VMware Shared Folders shortcut on the Windows desktop or the mapped network drive Z:.

–jeroen

via VMware KB: Sharing a folder from your Mac to a virtual machine.

Posted in Fusion, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, Power User, VMware, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

VMware fusion on MacBook Air with OS X Lion seems to hang when getting back from sleep – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/11/14

If you have reactions on the question below, please add them to the SuperUser.com thread when possible.

Every once in a while, my MacBook Air becomes unresponsive when it is sleeping and I open the lid.

It seems to only happen in these circumstances:

  • the MacBook air got into sleep modus because of closing the lid
  • VMware Fusion 4 (4.0.2 build 491587) is running full screen
  • The guest OS has a blank screen screen saver

When opening the lid, the backlight goes on, but the MacBook Air does not react on any key-combinations I tried.

I tried these, but to no avail:

  • press the Touchpad
  • press Control + Command
  • press Control + Command + Enter
  • press Command + Tab

The only thing that works is to press the Power button for 5+ seconds (forcing a hard power off) then reboot.

Two questions:

  • For anyone having seen similar bahviour: what circumstances did you have?
  • Any solution to this apart from first suspending the guest VM?

–jeroen

via: VMware fusion on MacBook Air with OS X Lion seems to hang when getting back from sleep – Super User.

Posted in Apple, Fusion, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, Power User, VMware | 2 Comments »

Running OS X Lion 10.7 on VMware Workstation 7.1.4 and 8.0 (via: How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 under VMware Workstation or Player – InsanelyMac Forum)

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/14

This might not be strictly legal, but it is supposed to be possible to run the retail OS X Lion 10.7 under VMware Workstation 8 (or VMware Fusion 4) and VMware Workstation 7.1.4 (or VMware Player 3.1.4) on a regular PC (if that PC Supports VT) running Windows 7 x64.

Since Apple MacBook still don’t come with a TrackPoint (and having suffered from RSI, that is about the only pointing device I can use) there are only two options for me:

  1. Go the route described above
  2. Use an external USB TrackPoint keyboard with a Mac
    (traveling with a huge external USB keyboard, I’d look like my long time friend Mark Miller from DevExpress, who also suffered from RSI)
    (boy I wish there was a wireless ThinkPad TrackPoint keyboard)

–jeroen

Via: How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 under VMware Workstation or Player – InsanelyMac Forum and 
How to Install Retail OS X 10.6 “Snow” and OS X 10.7 “Lion” under VMware Workstation 8 and Fusion 4, A simple set of instructions – InsanelyMac Forum

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, RSI, UltraNav keyboards, VMware, Windows, Windows 7 | 1 Comment »

Mouse cursor sometimes invisible when running an XP guest in VMware Workstation/Player: Invisible Mouse Cursor on Text Editors « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/30

The  RDP to VMware host running an XP guest: Invisible Mouse Cursor on Text Editors problem is not limited to RDP-ing into the VMware host, but also happens on some hosts themselves (including my ThinkPad W701 running Windows 7 x64).

This  VMware Communities: Invisible Mouse Cursor on Text Editors … thread (that has a different host configuration: Vista) comes up with 2 different solutions that both work:

  • Make your Windows XP mouse scheme the “Windows Black (system scheme)”
  • Put the Windowx XP video hardware acceleration one position below maximum.

Since less hardware acceleration also means far less performance, I’ve opted for the first solution.

–jeroen

via RDP to VMware host running an XP guest: Invisible Mouse Cursor on Text Editors « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff.

Posted in Power User, VMware | Leave a Comment »

Download VMware Fusion 4

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/16

Right after finding out VMware Fusion 4 got released, I downloaded and installed it.

Basically, there are two VMware Fusion 4.0.1 downloads:

I can’t imagine McAfee being larger than the size of VMware, and if it has the same speed impact on a Mac as it has on PCs, then don’t get it: get the light version.

–jeroen

Via: Download VMware Fusion 4.

Posted in Apple, Fusion, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Power User, VMware | Leave a Comment »

Coincidence? MacBook Air arrived, Windows 8 preview and VMware Fusion 4 got released

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/15

My MacBook Air has arrived, a few days before VMware Fusion 4 got out and a very early preview of Windows 8 got released.

Time to move my iOS dev env from my Mac Mini Server dev env over to this fully loaded 13.3 inch MacBook Air model  (A1369 with 1.8GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 / 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM / 256GB Flash Storage).

A few initial observations on the MacBook Air:

Oh well, will install it at the Embarcadero office later this week.

A few things on VMware Fusion 4:

Time to have a lot of fun :)

–jeroen

Via: VMware: VMware Support Insider: Fusion 4 is here!.

http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=A1369

Posted in About, Apple, LifeHacker, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Personal, Power User, VMware | 1 Comment »

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