Re: [ANNOUNCE] Happy Graduation!
Great news! Congratulations! -Kelly On 6/20/12 2:04 PM, Kevan Miller kevan.mil...@gmail.com wrote: All, The ASF Board has approved the resolution to establish Apache VCL as a top-level ASF project. Congratulations to all! --kevan
Re: Block Allocation
Thanks Mike, I'll give this a try.
I've noticed that anyone can make a Block Allocation request. Can this be
limited so that only those within a particular group (faculty) can make the
request?
Kelly
From: Waldron, Michael H
mwald...@email.unc.edumailto:mwald...@email.unc.edu
Reply-To: vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org
vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:23:56 +
To: vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org
vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org
Subject: RE: Block Allocation
Kelly,
Yes, the block allocation is assigned to a user group, so the students must
belong to that group. In order for the students to be assigned to the group,
their accounts must already exist in the database.
Rather than wait for the students to login to the VCL, what I do is have the
faculty member send me a list of student ids for the class. I'll run a quick
check to see if any are not already in the database. For ones that aren't, I
run a script that inserts them into the database.
I create a file of the format:
userid firstname lastname emailaddress
Then I feed this to a script which runs the insert:
echo insert into user (unityid, affiliationid, firstname, lastname, email,
emailnotices,\
lastupdated) values ('$1', 2, '$2', '$3', '$4', 1, now()); | mysql vcl
To easily add the users to a group for the block allocation, I use a neat
script called managegroups.py provided on the VCL site at
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/VCL/managegroups.py+-+Remotely+managing+user+groups
.
Again, this can take a file as input, with the format:
userid@affiliation
So I run a command like:
managegroups.py addUsersToGroup -n myclassgroup -a Local -f myclasslist
The Block Allocation menu is a recently added feature which I think makes it a
lot easier now for faculty to request block allocations. They can fill in the
form which provides all the necessary information to setup the request, and by
simply clicking accept, the block request is actually created, I no longer have
to do that separately. There are also nice statistics for the admin both on the
Block Allocations page and the Dashboard to view whether there were any
failures in provisioning the machines for the request, and how many are
actually being used.
I hope this helps.
Mike Waldron
Systems Specialist
ITS Research Computing
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB #3420, ITS Manning, Rm 2509
919-962-9778
From: Kelly Patrice Robinson [krobinso...@gsu.edumailto:krobinso...@gsu.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 9:55 AM
To: vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Block Allocation
Is there documentation on how the Block Allocation works? I've been searching
the Apache site and haven't been able to find anything that describes the
process. If a faculty member (or any user) wants to use block allocation will
they need to create a user group and assign their students to that particular
group in order to allow access to the images that are part of the reservation?
If this is the case, does this mean that the students will need to login first,
before the faculty member can assign them to their group?
Kelly
Georgia State University
Re: VCL2.2.1 Windows 7 slow boot time
Ok, I have another issue with slow boot times. We are testing VCL2.2.1 and ESXi 4.1. Observations: --Provisioning images (on an NFS datastore) is successful if RAM on the image is 1G. --If the RAM on this image is 1G, the reservation will fail. (Boot time is 10 mins). --Powering off/Powering on this image (from the ESXi console) results in a much faster boot time ( 1min) --Provisioning images of 1G of RAM to the local datastore can be performed successfully. (note: Nodes have 146GB SAS 15K drives. The SAN connected through NFS is composed of SATA drives) I would expect there to be performance differences between the local datastore and the SAN due to the differences in the types of drives, however we were able to provision 2G and 3G images successfully using VCL2.1 and ESXi 3.5. The only notable difference that I'm aware of is that the provisioning module we used in VCL2.1 made copies of the vmdk file each time an image was requested and VCL2.2.1 uses the same vmdk file and writes the deltas for each instance. Would this change cause the images to now fail? Does any one know of any changes in ESXi 4.1 that could also explain this occurrence? Thanks, Kelly From: Kelly Robinson krobinso...@gsu.edumailto:krobinso...@gsu.edu Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:32:58 -0400 To: vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org vcl-user@incubator.apache.orgmailto:vcl-user@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: VCL2.2.1 Windows 7 slow boot time Not sure which of these changes made the most difference, but I removed the floppy disk from the base image (since the cloned image is not configured with one). I also removed the iso image that was mounted on the cd/dvd drive of the base image and turned off netbios on each interface. The startup appears to be faster. I will continue testing and let you know if there are any issues. Thanks, Kelly Andy Kurth andy_ku...@ncsu.edumailto:andy_ku...@ncsu.edu 06/14/11 9:23 AM I'd try to configure the image to not show the GUI Starting Windows screen so you can see where it is hanging. -Run msconfig -Select the Boot tab -Select No GUI boot and Boot log If the delay is happening each time you restart the image you can just manually reboot at this point. If not, you'll have to save a revision with these settings applied. When the VM boots you should see a list of items being loaded. The last one to appear before the delay doesn't really tell you much by itself but it is useful when you Google the problem. My guess would be a driver problem. Have you tried reinstalling VMware tools? -Andy On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Kelly Robinson isg...@langate.gsu.edumailto:isg...@langate.gsu.edu wrote: It remains on the Starting Windows screen. It happens when I perform the Create/Update Image function and the image is cloned to create the new vm. The Windows (System) log doesn't show anything out of the ordinary, although I did notice that there is about a 9min delay from the Kernel-Processor-Power entry and Service Control Manager entry. Details of both entries are listed below: -- Information 6/13/2011 4:13:25 PM Kernel-Processor-Power: Event Properties -Event 26, Kernel-Processor Power Processor 0 in group 0 exposes the following: 1 idle state(s) 0 performance state(s) 8 throttle states(s) --- Information 6/13/2011 4:21:56 EventLog: Event Properties - Event 6005, EventLog The Event Log service was started. --- Any ideas on the issue(s)? -Kelly Andy Kurth andy_ku...@ncsu.edumailto:andy_ku...@ncsu.edu 06/06/11 10:12 AM I haven't experienced this. What is on the console during this time? Do you see the Starting Windows screen. Does it happen every time you reboot the VM or only the first time it is powered on? There may also be helpful information in the Windows event log. -Andy On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Kelly Robinson isg...@langate.gsu.edumailto:isg...@langate.gsu.edu wrote: I'm testing a Windows 7 image (on ESXi 4.1) and have experienced extremely slow boot times which causes imaging reservations (or reloading) of the Windows 7 image to fail due to timeouts. The vm eventually boots, but it takes about 12 minutes for the login screen to appear. The Windows 7 image is configured with 2Gs of memory, 1 CPU and with the LSI Logic Parallel SCSI controller. Are there other values that need to be tweaked? I was able to successfully perform imaging reservations for Windows XP, but Window 7 has given us problems. Has anyone else experienced this issue? Kelly Georgia State University
