Top Virtualizaiton Myths

Just found a great article on the top myths around virtualization.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/05/vmware-microsoft-servers-technology-virtualization-09-myths.html

Palm WebOS 1.2.10

Upgraded yesterday afternoon and so far, so good.  I haven't tested any of the new features, but I also haven't had any problems which is a good thing.

New Palm Pre Update

Palm just release Update 1.2.0 for the Pre. I'm excited about this release for a few reasons. One of my biggest complaints about the Pre is the inability to tap on a phone # listed in a calendar event and automatically dial it. I always have to write the # down and manually dial it. This update fixes this issue.

This list of features in webOS Update 1.2.0 copied from:
http://www.wirelessandmobilenews.com/

• You can buy from Amazon MP3 over a phone network connection you don't have to do over Wi-Fi any more.
• Credit card number storage in profile and sharing options.
• If you buy an app you can download it again for fee.
• Web browser bookmarks are now backed up to your Palm profile.
• Copy and paste of web pages.
• Car kit changes and you can make a Bluetooth connection to a computer even if the computer's Bluetooth device name field is blank.
• More calendar view options, glitch fixes and features.
• IIf a calendar note contains a phone number, you can tap the number to dial it
• More send, detail, copy and direct dial features in contacts.
  
• Automated LinkdedIn syncing.
• Better email search, as well as cut/copy paste functions.
• If playback of an audio file is paused or interrupted, when you resume playback, playback resumes at the point where it was paused. This applies to audio files for which the Genre field is defined as podcast, speech, spoken word, netcast, or audiobook only.
• You can use music playback controls on the dashboard even if the screen is locked.
• If the ringer switch is turned off, music playback is not interrupted by an incoming call.
• You can now turn carrier data services on or off .
• The Photos app can now display photos in JPG, BMP, and PNG format.
• Sprint Navigation now pulls Google contacts from the phone, as well as Exchange and Palm profile contacts
• The browser now supports downloading files from a web page.

Linux ext4 Banchmarks

My buddy Dimitris posted a great article about ext4 performance on Fedora 11.

http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/06/14/new-ext4-vs-xfs-benchmarks-using-fedora-11-leonidas/

Thanks D!

Whitepapers

Earlier today I finished a whitepaper I've been working on about storage design for virtualized data centers. Once the marketing people have approved it, I'll post a link to it here. In the meantime, here is a link to some whitepapers that have already been published.

I finally made my choice

I finally made my choice last week. For months I've been trying to decide if I should go with the new Palm Pre or the new iPhone. Last Wednesday on my way home from Sacramento my Blackberry broke. The phone still worked, but the place where you plug the charger into snapped and the phone wouldn't charge any more. At that point I had a choice, pay $50 for a replacement or get a new phone. Since I hate my Blackberry, I decided to go for a new phone.

Over the past few months I've been weighing the choice of Pre or iPhone. My thoughts on the iPhone were:

• Tons of apps available for it. I really like the idea of this, but realize that I probably won't use many of them. I'll install tons, but only use a few.
• It's AT&T. I only know 1 person who has an iPhone and doesn't complain about AT&T coverage. Most people I know put up with it so they can have an iPhone.
• I can always get an iPod Touch.
• There is NO insurance available from AT&T. Right now I pay $6 per month to get a $50 replacement if I lose of break my phone.

My thoughts on the Pre are:

• New OS. I used to have a Palm Treo and loved it. New OS means new features, but also means bugs.
• Sprint coverage. This is good.
• Lacks apps. There are some, and more are on the way.
• Way small keyboard.
  

In the end I went with the Pre. Both had great features, but I tend to break phones and I can't stomach paying full price for a replacement iPhone.

I need to start updating via SMS more often. I'm at Momo's in SF right now thinking about how I haven't hit a baseball game all season.

Open View Client

Finally installed and started testing the open source View client on my laptop. So far it seems to work pretty good. Not as good as on the X90 though. There could be a few reasons though...

• Linux based RDP client vs Windows based
• I'm on my Wireless connection
• Lack of Wyse TCX optimizations

More to come as I keep testing.

30 Days - Final Thoughts

Tonight ends my 30 days using a thin client laptop, so I guess it's time to share my final thoughts.

I had some challenges during these last 30 days, which I expected. As I worked to resolve them, I tried to employ solutions that I could recommend to a customer. Back doors and workarounds are something I could personally use, but any real solution would need to be something that an IT department could roll out and manage.

My biggest concern during this experiment was that my ability to connect to my virtual desktop was going to a challenge. I have to admit, I did have some challenges. Making some changes to our VPN configuration allowed me some options when faced with a customer network that was being "less than friendly". It didn't work 100% of the time. That's where a wireless broadband card would be helpful. I was unable to get my Blackberry to work with the X90 which was a disappointment. I was tempted to get myself a broadband card, but Apple just released a new iPhone, Palm released the Pre, and I'm still weighing my choices. From what I've read, I could use either access the Internet from my laptop. I really like the iPhone and all the apps that are available for it, but AT&T doesn't offer insurance. I usually drop my phone and need a replacement once a year. I can't afford the cost of a new or refurbished iPhone. I'm not sure which way to go. If I had one, it would have eliminated my connection issues. Having said that, once I modified my VPN, I had good success connecting where ever I was.

I also found that there were some applications that I just needed to have at a moments notice. I do a lot of presentations, but face to face and remotely. I had some issues using GoToMeeting over a VPN connection. I also had a presentation where I didn't have time to boot up and log into a virtual desktop. I needed to just start the presentation. My workaround was to install GoToMeeting and the Powerpoint Viewer directly on the X90. In a corporate setting, these could be pushed out using the Wyse Device Manager.

Flash proved to be a bit of a problem. I tried two different options, but neither worked as well as I hoped. The Wyse Flash Optimizer crashed my browser. This was because I had already upgraded IE to version 8. I have a lot of hope for this piece of software though. All of the other Wyse software worked great, and the Flash Optimizer is still beta. The other was the new Flash management options in View 3.1. These helped out, but only in IE and only when I had a decent connection. Firefox and Opera weren't helped out, and when I had a low bandwidth connection the flash content consumed a ton of bandwidth and slowed my whole VM down. I tried playing with the quality and bandwidth throttling options, but didn't find the right blend that would make the end user experience great. When I was connected to the same LAN as the virtual desktop, this was not an issue at all. Was this enough to make me unproductive? No.

One thing I'd like to see is the ability for the end user to control more of the options RDP offers. Using RDP (mstsc.exe) I can modify screen resolution, disable audio, and a few other options. This are handy when you have a slow connection. Being able to modify these would be helpful. Even if the user was presented with a choice of connection options that are pre-defined would be great.

I guess the real question it, will I keep using this? Yes and no. Typically I have Linux installed on my laptop, and I use VMware Workstation for an XP desktop. I'm definitely going to continue using my virtual desktop located at the corporate data center instead of using VMware Workstation. There is an open source VMware View client for Linux which I am looking forward to testing. I'm going to switch back to my Lenovo for a few reasons:

• My Blackberry works with it, and I can connect to the Internet.
• I can listen to music, this is big for me.
• It's Linux based.

Having said that, I still plan on keeping the X90. It's great not having a heavy laptop to carry around. I would also recommend this to my customers for some use cases. On a LAN the experience was great. Remotely I had some issues, mostly with multimedia. However, many organizations block a lot of Internet sites that are not work related (YouTube, Facebook, etc..). They also shutdown audio services and sites. This eliminates most of the experience issues I was having.

I'm still going to continue to blog about mobile VDI. Once I'm using my Lenovo again, I'm going to test the open source View client and test this with my Blackberry.

Almost a week

It's hard to believe it's been almost a week since I've blogged last. I also can't believe it's been 29 days since I started this. It went pretty fast.

Not a lot has changed in the last week. Installing GoToMeeting on the X90 was the fix I needed. Once I did that, I've done a few GoToMeeting sessions since then. It would be nice to have this inside my virtual desktop, but I can live with the way things are now. In an enterprise deployment, GoToMeeting could be pushed to the clients.

Over the past week I also tested using iTunes to sync music on my iPod. I have a very large mp3 collection, so I didn't test my whole collection. I recently got my hands on some early Elvis Costello albums and wanted to add those to my iPod. Everything worked. No problems. I was on my home wireless when I did the test. It took longer than if I had used my laptop, but that's to be expected.

What about listening to mp3s? I tested this, I even went so far as to test listening to Pandora Radio. It worked in some situations. While at home there was a noticeable pause to the music when I changed windows. The pause is about a 1 second pause. This is because RDP needs to push a lot of new screen data to refresh the screen. When I'm at the office and not over the WAN this isn't an issue. If I were using a broadband wireless card this would eat away at my data plan. At times like right now, while I'm using a single Firefox window to write this blog post, Pandora works GREAT. If I were switching windows a lot, I would just grab my iPod.

Tomorrow is the final day of this experiment. I'm going to be sure to blog tomorrow night with my "final thoughts".