Quick-Take: vSphere 4, Now with SUSE Enterprise Linux, Gratis

Earlier this month VMware announced that it was expanding its partnership with Novell in order to offer a 1:1 CPU enablement license for SLES. Mike Norman’s post at VirtualizationPractice.com discusses the potential “darker side” of the deal, which VMware presents this way:

VMware and Novell are expanding their technology partnership to make it easier for customers to use SLES operating system in vSphere environments with support offerings that will help your organization:

• Reduce the cost of maintaining SLES in vSphere environments
• Obtain direct technical support from VMware for both vSphere and SLES
• Simplify your purchasing and deployment experience

In addition, VMware plans to standardize our virtual appliance-based products on SLES for VMware further simplifying the deployment and ongoing management of these solutions.

• Customers will receive SLES with one (1) entitlement for a subscription to patches and updates per qualified VMware vSphere SKU. For example, if a customer were to buy 100 licenses of a qualified vSphere Enterprise Plus SKU, that customer would receive SLES with one hundred (100) entitlements for subscription to patches and updates.
• Customers cannot install SLES with the accompanying patches and updates subscription entitled by a VMware purchase 1) directly on physical servers or 2) in virtual machines running on third party hypervisors.
• Technical support for SLES with the accompanying patches and updates subscription entitled by a VMware purchase is not included and may be purchased separately from VMware starting in 3Q 2010.

– VMware Website, 6/2010

The part about standardization has been emphasized by us – not VMware – but it seems to be a good fit with VMware’s recent acquisition of Zimbra (formerly owned by Yahoo!) and the release of vSphere 4.1 with “cloud scale” implications. That said, the latest version of the VMware Data Recovery appliance has been recast from RedHat to CentOS with AD integration, signaling that it will take some time for VMware to transition to Novell’s SUSE Linux.

SOLORI’s Take: Linux-based virtual appliances are a great way to extend features and control without increasing license costs. Kudus to VMware for hopping on-board the F/OSS train. Now where’s my Linux-based vCenter with a Novell Directory Services for Windows alternative to Microsoft servers?

Quick Take: Installing Missing Packages with Zypper

OpenSuse 11.1 has added a nice touch for minimal installs: repository index to commands NOT installed. In a most client installations, we installed only minimal OS footprints to reduce size and  attack surface. In the past, this has meant a trip to YAST to install “needed” packages that were not installed initially. While this is no big deal for OpenSuse vets, it can be a bit of a learning curve for clients.

Enter the repository index. Now, when a “missing” executable is attempted, the index is searched for the package containing the executable and guidance is offered on how to install it (assuming repositories are setup correctly.) Here’s a sample of how this works on a low attack surface DNS server missing a “whois” utility:

nsarpa:~ # whois supermicro.com

The program 'whois' can be found in the following package:
 * whois [ path: /usr/bin/whois, repository: zypp (openSUSE 11.1-0) ]

Try installing with: sudo zypper install whois

-bash: whois: command not found
nsarpa:~ # zypper install whois
Retrieving repository 'openSUSE-11.1-Update' metadata [done]
Building repository 'openSUSE-11.1-Update' cache [done]
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following NEW package is going to be installed:
 whois
 

Installing OpManage 8.0 on SLES 10 SP2

Network and device managers abound, but the OpManage platform from AdventNet keeps building features and capabilities. Unfortunately, their embrace of Windows and Linux installation choices leaves some in the lurch depending on the platform chosen.

Recently I took version 8.0 for a spin on a trimmed-down installation of SLES 10 SP2. As has been typical with this platform on Suse systems, there were some issues requiring resolution before OpManager was up an running. Fortunately, the issues were localized to the apache server that comes with OM8.

First up, in my trimmed-down install (minimal X-windows, no additional servers), no Apache was included as a SLES package (i.e. in an attempt to avoid package collision). This required the following changes to the SLES environment after OM8 installation:

create file: /etc/ld.so.cond.d/opmanage.conf
   edit, add:  /opt/AdventNet/ME/OpManager/apache/lib
run:  ldconfig

Next, trouble-shooting the remainder of the apache-related issues uncovered the following dependencies:

create link:  ln -s /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.3 /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.2
create link:  ln -s /usr/lib/libdb-4.3.so /usr/lib/libdb-3.2.so
create link:  ln -s /usr/lib/libexpat.so /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0

Once completed, test the service by issuing the following:

cd /opt/AdventNet/ME/OpManager/bin
run  ./StartOpManagerServer.sh

OpManager will point-out the service port you chose during installation. Remember SUSE’s firewall services manager if you get stuck accessing OpManager from the “web client” – it is deny-all by default when enabled.

From the first 15-minutes with the new OpManager, it is clear that AdventNet has come a long way since the early days of the product. There are many new features and devices supported. Check it out for yourself if you’re still shopping for a network/server monitoring system that runs nicely in a virtual machine…