I have been playing with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V, but I haven’t been able to locate a source of a free server to use (Okay, I am cheap, and won’t buy one). So I am using a laptop as my host machine. Horsepower wise it is fine, but the drive is small, and won’t handle too many Vhd’s at once. Not enough storage space. So I started looking for additional storage for my drives…
I have used USB hd’s in the past. They work well, but that means more crap sitting on my desktop, more cables, more power supplies. I decided to keep looking. I have a home server. Wonderful device. Between the HP device and a extra eSata drive enclosure sitting next to it, I have 7 TB of disk space. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could host the Hyper-V environment on my laptop, and store my lab Vhd’s on this pile of disk space. So, off I went….
Wait, what is this error? The home server presents storage to my network as a collection of shares. And Hyper-V won’t support storage on a share… Strike one. Next came the though of using iScsi, but after reading some options there, I decided it quickly got to complicated, threatened the stability of my home server (and if I messed it up, my wife would be looking for a place to hide the body. Our photo collection is sacred..), so strike two.
Then, an epiphany. Hyper-V won’t store on a share, but what about a drive letter assigned to a virtual hard drive living on the share. I went into disk manager, created and attached a 500 gig vhd file sitting on a share on my home server. Assigned it V:. And then, with fingers crossed, created a new virtual machine on that V: drive. It worked. Helps to have a healthy network (wired gigabit) and a reasonably fast set of drives, but for testing and lab use, it looks like it will do the trick.
Disclaimer, this is not a supported config. This is not something to use in an enterprise setting, but might be an interesting config for testing….
Wonderful tools exist to monitor and peek into the health of a client application, but what level of instrumentation makes sense? Some basic “memory used”? Transactions per a certain period? Up time? And at what cost?
What would a management pack for a client app look like? Must think about this.
First, let me state that I am not anti-gun. I own several. I hunt (yes, and what I shoot I eat). But on the news last night, I saw the most interesting news article...
It seems a local car dealer is offering a couple of incentives for new car shoppers. One is a 250 dollar gas card. Being the cynic, I think a couple of tanks of gas on that used SUV. Nice, but not life changing money.
The second option was a bit more interesting. A free gun. Yes, come in, buy a used crap box car, and get your own pistol. Okay, he doesn't actually give you the pistol there, you have to take a certificate to a local gun shop, and pass a background check. but if it all works out, you could be packing in your prius in no time.
http://www.kmbc.com/news/16345443/detail.html
The politically incorrect side of me (okay, that's both sides) suddenly had visions of getting the dealer provided handgun and using it to provide far more than 250 dollars of gas. Interesting to see how this plays out.