• Look for a *.vmx file in the directory that your VM is stored in.
• Open up this file in notepad or your favorite text editor (make sure the VM is shut down).
• Look for a line that looks like this: memsize = “256″
• Change the number to equal the amount of RAM that you want in your VM
• Start the VM and enjoy your new RAM

So there you have it. Just edit a simple text file and your VM has more RAM. Happy Virtualizing!

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Google Query: games that work with vmware fusion

When I first talk about VMWare with most casual users and I say that they have a version for MAC. The first question I get is “Can it run games?” Well, the short answer is yes it can. The qualified answer is yes but…

VMWare Fusion has experimental support for DirextX 9 3D on applications that do not require pixel shaders. So, how do you know what will work?

Well for starters, there is a list of games that require pixel shaders on Wikipedia. These are the games that are guaranteed not to work.

As for the ones that do work, I had to do a bit of Google searching. I finally found a decent post on this topic in the VMWare Community Forums. A special thanks to etung for starting this document.

The document is a chart of games that people have tried along with details on how they worked. Very valuable information. While it’s still trial and error at this point, I am glad that this document exists so that users can add their experiences with VMWare Fusion and gaming. Register on the VMWare Community Forums if you have something to add to the VMWare Fusion gaming document. The more games that work, the better market share VMWare will have on the MAC. After all, we all know Windows is only good for gaming anyway .

Technorati Tags: VMWare Fusion, MAC, Apple, Gaming

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If you have installed VMWare, then congratulations! You have taken an exciting step into the freedom and efficiency that comes with virtualization. You are no longer stuck just running Windows, or Linux, or Unix, or Mac (VMWare Fusion is the Mac VMWare product). However, you still have to create virtual machines and install Operating Systems and applications on those machines for them to be useful. That is, unless you just download any one of the many pre-configured virtual machines from the VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/).

Not only are these virtual machines pre-configured with Operating Systems, many of them have application stacks already pre-loaded and ready to go. Want to experiment with Ruby on Rails? No problem just download the appliance. Want to try out aWiki? No problem just download the appliance. I think you can see a pattern developing here . Each virtual appliance is a complete virtual machine that is ready to run in VMWare Server, VMWare Workstation, VMWare Player, and VMWare Fusion. They could also be run in VMWare ESX with some importing.

Just download the virtual appliance, unzip it to your preferred location and open the *.vmx file in your VMWare product. After that you are ready to roll. That’s it!

Do you have a favorite virtual appliance? Let me know in the comments. Happy VM’ing!

Technorati Tags: VMware, Virtualization, Virtual Appliance

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For those who work with VMWare ESX Server regularly, you know that one of the quickest ways to get an Operating System installed on a VM is to install it from an iso image. But how do you get the iso image onto your ESX host easily? You could create the iso on another system and transfer it to the ESX host, but why not cut through the middle-man and create the iso image right on the ESX host using the console.

Thanks to VM Weekly I found this little command that will do the trick (you may want to navigate to the location you are storing your iso images before doing this):

dd if=/dev/cdrom of="filename.iso"

That’s it! This should also work on any Linux Distribution also. Happy iso creating!

Technorati Tags: VMWare, Linux

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About a month into our file server consolidation project at work, we receive a call from the Sales manager that one of their applications that runs from the new file server is slow. It is taking five minutes to create a report that should only take about 30 seconds to 1 minute. This particular file server happens to be a Virtual Machine that is connected to an iSCSI storage array. However, the fact that it is a VM has nothing to do with the slowdown. Here’s the troubleshooting process that we took.

We ran the particular sales report on the server locally. It behaved as normal. Hmmm…

When we ran the same report via UNC path on a separate workstation we experienced the slowdown. AHA! Bandwidth. A quick check of the switch port utilization revealed the culprit. Our backups were still running into the morning. They were hogging all the bandwidth by shoving all that data across the network into the tape library. It was not a processing power issue because the reports were running just fine on the local VM. We stopped the backup job temporarily and we could run the reports quickly again. So how did we fix it? By using the below steps.

-We added another physical NIC to the VMWare ESX host server.

-After we added the NIC we created another vSwitch called “VM Backup Network.”

-Then we added another virtual NIC to the file server VM and attached it to the “VM Backup Network.”

-Booted the file server VM, assigned it an IP address and the VM side was done.

-Then we configured our backup software to backup the VM via the new IP Address.

Voila! Bandwidth redirection. Take that you bandwidth hungry backup. The sales reports run beautifully now and our bandwidth sucking backup can have its fill. Happy Data Archiving!

Technorati Tags: VMWare, Networking, Backup, Consolidation

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*Cue the music of dread and certain doom*

In my thesis, I wanted to see what a criminal might be able to accomplish with Virtualization technology as far as data hiding goes. No, I am not a criminal, but I do believe that one should “Know thy enemy!” I got the chance to have computer forensics analysts at the local law enforcement level take a look at a couple of hard drives in a forensics lab. One hard drive used traditional data hiding techniques and the other used a data hiding technique that I devised using a virtual machine.

I had two main goals for the thesis. One was to see if Virtualization technology like VMWare could make data hiding easier for criminals. I also wanted to help establish a preliminary framework for conducting a criminal investigation where the criminal use of a virtual machine was involved. I won’t ruin the ending for those who might want to read the thesis, but let’s just say that the local law enforcement in my area may need more computer forensics training to deal with something like this.

For those who do want to read it, the Thesis can be downloaded below:

Harley Stagner’s MBA Thesis

I will be discussing portions of this Thesis in upcoming posts. Happy Reading!

Technorati Tags: VMWare, Data Hiding, Education

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I am a huge fan of VMware. I even write freelance articles about VMware and virtualization technology. With Ubuntu the cool factor with VMware is evident when you can have an Ubuntu workspace on one side of a spinning cube and a Windows Desktop on the other side of the spinning cube. Yes, I still need Windows for some things, but I have banished the OS to a Virtual Machine running in VMWare Server.

In Feisty Fawn VMWare Server was in the Ubuntu Commercial repository. Sadly, this is not the case yet with Gutsy Gibbon. If you can’t wait for the repository, then these steps are the ones that worked for me. Thanks to Ubuntu-Tutorials.com for leading me in the right direction.

-First you have to download VMware Server for linux from the VMWare Website (get the tar.gz package)

-After you have downloaded VMware Server for linux, go ahead and register to get your VMware Server serial numbers. You will need them later.

-Get your build environment installed by typing the following at the Terminal:
sudo apt-get install build-essential xinetd linux-headers-$(uname -r)

-Unpack VMWare Server by typing the following at the Terminal:
tar xvzf VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz

-Navigate to the “vmware-server-distrib” folder by typing the following at the Terminal:
cd vmware-server-distrib/

-Finally, install VMware Server by typing the following at the Terminal
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

-Giving the default answers to the questions will usually get you through a vanilla install of VMWare Server. You will need one of those serial keys that you registered for at the end of the installation.

That’s it! You should be able to run VMware Server from “Applications -> System Tools -> VMware Server Console”.

If you have any questions on specific VMware setup, such as bridged vs nat virtual adapters and creating a virtual machine please let me know in the comments below or contact me and I will try to help you.

Happy Virtualizing!

Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, Virtualization, VMware

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