Changes for June 2010

[drgrussell]

As you might notice I am actively working on the system.
I am object-orienting the backend API which controls the virtual machines.
This will allow me to add in more virtualisation systems more easily, as well as provide dhcp to each virtual machine.
In turn I will be implementing a kvm virtual platform (rather than just User Mode Linux), which in turn will be offering Windows 7 to my University students. I am not planning to offer this to free users right now.

This rewrite is long overdue, but it is complex real-time code. I have written the code in an OO way, and provided this works future disruption should be pretty minimal.

As always let me know if there are any issues.

Gordon.

[drgrussell]

If you are a non-free user you may end up on 10.200.0.18.
If this is the case you will have an IP of 10.0.18.*
This is my test server and may prove to be unstable. Please let me know if you have any problems.
In particular this node is running my new API...
Free users do not have access to this node right now.

Thanks
Gordon.

[drgrussell]

Main and vm server nodes are being reformatted, updating them from fedora 10 to fedora 13.

It is a painful process so I only update once or twice a year... Its not fedora's fault, but I do use Oracle quite a bit and working out all the packages it needs is a pain! But once running Oracle is pretty safe...

Once done I will put fedora 13 on as a virtual UML image on the test server (which as it supports DHCP now should be much easier to configure).

The whole process should take a few days including testing, and the changeover should require only a few hours of downtime at some point next week. Note that as nodes are upgraded, your old virtual disks are deleted (they are too big to save and restore). Sorry about that.

Gordon.

[drgrussell]

Main server was backed up then reformatted from fedora 10 to fedora 13.
Naturally this means many changes to the underlying system.
SELinux got tougher... had to disable it to make my life worth living.
Oracle moved up from 11.1 to 11.2, but seems ok.
DNS lookups have got strange with signing.. everything seems to take a long time to resolve.

However other than that it all seems like a great success.
Gordon.

PS.
Actually I got bored and reenabled (and relabeled) selinux in permissive mode.
WIth a few (20 or so) changes and some guesses I havent had an alert in 10 minuties!
Must be going ok!

DNS lookups are trying IPv6 first, slowing everything down. Need to think about that one.

PPS.
I just discovered in permissive mode you only get the alert once, then it is cached in the kernel and blocked from being reported again until cleared from the cache. Looks very confusing and interesting at the same time...

[drgrussell]

Servers have been relocated today to our newer server room.
This has double air conditioning units, so offers me more A/C reliability.
I also updated the memory in all machines to 16GB for servers and 12GB for virtual server machines.
One virtual server machine only has 8GB, as I could not make it boot with the other 4GB installer.
Just not clever enough I guess...

I am planning to offer Windows 2008 virtual machines, and its minimum memory requirements is quite a jump from the 64MB I give each virtual linux machine. Hopefully I can get Windows 2008 running in 512MB, allowing me to run the same 16 virtual machines per server, and thus 64 or more virtual machines. I will endevour to keep 32 available for the public when students are not actively using the system.

Gordon.

[drgrussell]

2 of the main 4 back end servers have been reimaged with fedora 13.
After some testing I will do the other 2 servers tomorrow.
This will result in a loss of any data stored in your virtual machines.
It doesnt happen often, but moving all that data is too slow for me to do for free accounts. Sorry.

Gordon.

[drgrussell]

All web and backend servers now running fedora core 13.
I will work on providing users with a fedora core 13 virtual machine next, and offer this asap.

Gordon.