Code diving is a fact of the DevOps life and I just wanted to pass along a utility that makes those OpenStack Nova Deep Dive posts possible: ack. ack is awesome for the following reasons: speed ignores SCM directories like .git/.svn prints line numbers! Back to some code diving…

Based on the currently available code ( commit 114109dbf4094ae6b6333d41c84bebf6f85c4e48 – 2012-09-13) This is a deep dive into what happens (and where in the code) during a resize down (e.g., flavor 4 to flavor 2) with a Nova configuration that is backed by XenServer/XenAPI. Hopefully the methods used in Nova’s code will not change over time, and this guide will remain good starting point. Steps 1-6a are identical to my previous entry " Deep dive: OpenStack Nova Resize Up with XenAPI/Xenserver"....

I’ve been looking into the SDN craze over the past few weeks and assembled a few links along the way: Openstack Quantum Video Fundamentals of VXLAN - Do we really need Stateless Transport Tunneling (STT)? Software Defined Data Center - very cool to see this coming from a KY university, even if it is UK =P Dodging Open Protocols with Software On that note … all of Brad Hedlund’s site Open vSwitch FAQ

Nova is the Compute engine of the OpenStack project. Based on the currently available code ( commit 114109dbf4094ae6b6333d41c84bebf6f85c4e48 - 2012-09-13) This is a deep dive into what happens (and where in the code) during a resize up (e.g., flavor 2 to flavor 4) with a Nova configuration that is backed by XenServer/XenAPI. Hopefully the methods used in Nova’s code will not change over time, and this guide will remain good starting point....

Just some observations over time about the difference between applications in the Cloud and apps which run on Virtual Infrastructure. There seems to be some understanding gaps between the two. Cloud Apps: Load Balancers a must Segmented application data a must via persistent object store for pure storage and CDN for distribution Green field data Agile development cycle Continuous/Push Button Deployment with small incremental changes Virtual Infrastructure Apps: Waterfall development lifecycle (Off the shelf or behemoth internal app) Maintenance windows with long downtime Move to Virt Consolidation/savings driven Brown field data Large changes in releases, resulting in My-Mom-Cleaned-My-Room syndrome also found in Cloud/SaaS Both:...

What is Vagrant? From the Vagrant website: Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development environments. Why would a sysadmin care about building a development environment? Vagrant is a good way to get started with Puppet/Chef without a ton of overhead in setting up a server. How does using Vagrant mean I can do more with less? Imagine being able to provide developers with a virtual environment to do testing on their first day....

In 2009 on version 1 of this site I made a post entitled " VMware Knowledge Resources" outlining some of the strategies I used to find knowledge for becoming a successful VMware Administrator. It’s only appropriate to roll a similar post for version 2. DevOps and Cloud Computing can be very overwhelming for the uninitiated. Where do you go for help? How do you get help? How do you even begin to phrase questions appropriately?...

About a month ago I moved to Texas to take on a new exciting opportunity and work on cloud computing with Rackspace. While I will no longer be working on VMware products as a part of my day to day, the virtualization concepts are largely the same. With such a large personal and professional change, a rebooting of Virtual Andy is necessary. Virtual Andy’s new direction can be summarized with a paraphrased interview with Paul Maritz:...

Over the past few years our organization has been tried to adopt a pricing model for providing virtual machines. We are a small college with several semi-independent units to support. We need to be able to quickly quote, chargeback, and fulfill our incoming requests. This is a very big update to the post I made in December 2009 entitled VMware Expert System with PowerCLI and Excel. Problem 1: Solved. Problem 2: In progress…...

I’ve run into the issue lately where P2Ving a Windows 2000 machine will result in a blue screen when the new virtual machine boots. [A google search shows many others with this problem](communities.vmware.com windows 2000 blue screen p2v). The root cause of the issue is related to Update 1 of Service Pack 4. Luckily, with vCenter Converter, not VMware Converter Standalone, VMware delivers a nice fix for this issue. Follow normal steps in vCenter Converter - import a machine, setup your source, and as the Converter Agent is installed you’ll be prompted for a location to the VMware SCSI Disk Driver (scsiport....