Author Archives: Daz

opensolaris – setting up dhcp

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You’ll need these two packages installed;

SUNWdhcs, SUNWdhcm

First ensure that the DHCP service is running. Go into the “services” gui and tick the box to enable the DHCP server.

now from commandline run…

dhcpmgr
  1. From edit menu choose “network wizard”, step through the wizard (defautls are o.k i you have a fixed IP already assigned to your opensolaris box)
  2. From edit menu choose “address wizard”

If you step through the wizard (the following is an example of what i have choosen)

  1. Choose Text files
  2. Leave default path of /var/dhcp
  3. Do not manage hosts records
  4. Default lease of 1 day (clients can renew their leases)
  5. DNS Domain “yourdomainname”, also add your DNS here
  6. Network Address & subnet (should be pre populated if you have fixed IP on your host)
  7. Network Type (LAN), Routing (leave as default)
  8. I have left NIS blank
  9. I have left NIS+ blank

Wan Acceleration Appliances

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There are some really good products out there in the market at the moment…

Exinda – low cost, really good QOS / prioitisation and visibility. Falls short on acceleration (at the moment)
Riverbed – One of the key players in the acceleration market. Optimized algorithms for specific traffic.
Silver Peak – Relatively new, work well as a capture all acceleration device with QOS / prioritisation included.

One to watch – traffic squeezer. I’m always a fan of open source getting into new technologies, and this project seems to be a good start. Its still early days but I’m hopeful this will take off and become a contender in the future ahead.

A few of the above vendors actually have a virtual version of their appliance. Depending on your current investment in virtual infrastructure this may or may not be a good idea. I’m still a fan of dedicated hardware, but in some cases the redundancy provided by a virtual infrastructure can out way the potential performance gains.

Windows 7 – Moving to SSD

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Want to move your current disk image onto a SSD drive?

Quick, easy and free. Also aligns disk sectors :)

  1. Tidy up your current HDD – delete / move any unneeded items to an archive disk
  2. Shrink the C volume to under the size of the SSD (you do not need to shrink as small as possible, just shrink just under SSD size)
  3. Run Windows Backup (win7 backup is very good, i.e. image backup) onto external USB Drive
  4. Remove your current HDD and install SSD
  5. Restore via Windows Backup — Boot install DVD, and choose Repair your computer, then select recover from windows backup image (use the image you backed up onto your USB drive).
  6. Reboot, then expand the C volume to consume the full space of the SSD

Done.

Quick way to check that TRIM has also been enabled;

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If the result is ‘0’ TRIM is enabled.

Optimising Windows 7 Images for use in VDI

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Cool tool for optimizing win7 VDI – http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2010/08/31/optimising-windows-7-images-for-use-in-vdi.aspx

The beta of this tool is available from http://www.autoitscript.com/files/tools/VDIOptimizer.zip but please remember The tool is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, confers no rights, and is not supported by the authors or Microsoft Corporation.