Before this week, my server that handles this website was beginning to show signs that it need a fresh start. It’s currently running CentOS 4.4, so I decided it’s time to upgrade. So I grabbed the latest DVD iso from CentOS for 5.4 and installed a clean virtual machine on my desktop. I’ve just finished migrating everything from the old server to the virtual machine. I’ve also done away with the cobbled together mail solution of sendmail, dovecot, and assp I had running in favor of a very nice open-source Exchange-type replacement called Zimbra.

The next step after a couple of days of testing will be wiping the old drive in the old server and installing VMWare ESXi on it. I decided to virtualize to make it easier to upgrade in the future when I decide to build a new desktop. I’ll retire my current desktop and recommission it as the new server and having everything virtualized should make the transition much smoother. I’m hoping downtime will be minimal if any at all.

VMware announced it’s newest product dubbed vSphere 4. What does vSphere do you ask well, it allows a small business to tap seamlessly into much more processing power via commercial cloud computing service such as Amazon’s EC2. Or it allows large business with multiple data centers to consolidate resources together seamlessly. vSphere is a collection of some of VMware previous tools such as ESX and HA and some new ones like vStorage VMFS a clustered file system and vNetwork Distributed Switch for virutalized networks. These and other products make up the vSphere suite and available in different versions with more or less features depending on the business’ needs.

Sources:

eWeek

VMware vSphere

Core Security has the full report but if your using VMWare Workstation, Player, or ACE on Windows there is a security exploit in the shared folders feature that allows a traversing of folders not being shared. According to VMWare until a patch is release there is this workaround.

To disable shared folders in the Global settings:

1. From the VMware product’s menu, choose Edit > Preferences.
2. In the Workspace tab, under Virtual Machines, deselect the checkbox for Enable all shared folders by default.

To disable shared folders for the individual virtual machine settings:

1. From the VMware product’s menu, choose VM > Settings.
2. In the Options tab, select Shared Folders and Disable.

Vmware has announced the beta of their virtualization product. I haven’t tried out the newest version yet but I use Vmware Server on an almost daily basis for testing with different operating systems. I have several distros of linux installed as well as different server environments.

Features:

• Web-based management interface: A new Web-based user interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive way for you to manage your virtual machines.
• Expanded operating system support: VMware Server now supports Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn Server Beta 3), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.1, among others.
• Greater scalability: Take full advantage of high-end hardware with support for up to 8GB of RAM per virtual machine, up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors and up to 64 virtual machines per host.
• 64-bit guest operating system support: Run high-performance operating systems in virtual machines with support for Intel EM64T VT-enabled processors and AMD64 processors with segmentation support.
• Support for VIX API 1.2: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.
• Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode.
• Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.