Setup Openfiler 2.3 iSCSI on ESXi 4 for Windows

1. Upload folder openfiler-2.3-x86 to the datastore through Datastore Browser. Right click openfiler-2.3-x86.vmx in the folder and select Add to Inventory. Enter the name then click Next button twice, and Finish button to complete the process.

2. Click Edit settings for openfiler, the add hard disk from ESXi as the new iSCSI storage device for Openfiler.

3. Power on the Openfiler, and open the console to confirm the URL for web administration. I use https://192.168.1.105:446 as an example.

4. Logon to Openfiler with your web browser at https://192.168.1.105:446 with the openfiler and password as the user name and password respectively.

5. Go to Volumes, a warning "No existing physical volumes were found, or all existing physical volumes are used. You can create new physical volumes" shows up. Click create new physical volumes, the newly added disk, /dev/sdb, has no partition. Select /dev/sdb from the Edit Disk list, then click Create button to use the entire disk space for the single partition.

6. Go to Volume Groups to create a group by entering the Volume group name and select physical volume /dev/sdb1 to add, then click Add volume group button to complete. Click Add volume, enter the volume name, description, select required space, and then select the filesystem/volume type to iSCSI, finally click Create to create the volume.

7. Go to System, in Network Access Configuration section, enter 192.168.1.0 for both Name and Network/Host, select 255.255.255.0 as Netmask, and select Share as Type, then click Update button.

8. Go to Services and enable iSCSI target server.

9. Go to Volumes, click iSCSI targets, select target configuration, the default target name is shown up, if no changes needed, click Add button to add the new target. Select LUN Mapping, then click Map button. Select Network ACL, select Allow from the Access list, and then click Update button.

10. Windows XP is used to test this iSCSI storage. Download the software from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=12cb3c1a-15d6-4585-b385-befd1319f825&displaylang=en, and then install it to you PC.

11. On Windows, from All programs, select Microsoft iSCSI Initiator for configuration. Select Discovery then click Add button to add target portal, enter the IP address of the Openfiler, then click OK.

12. Select Targets then click Log On button. Select Automatically restore this connection when the system boots, then click OK button twice to finish the Windows XP setup.

13. From the disk manager, the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard pops up automatically. Click Next button to continue. Select the correct disk, then click Next button. It reminds you that the disk will be converted to dynamic disk. Reselect the disk, then click Next then Finish button. Right click on the new disk, and then select New Volume to start the Wizard, click Next button to continue. The simple volume is the default for a single disk volume, click Next button to continue. If the entire disk is used, click Next button to continue. Select the drive letter, the click Next button. Select the Volume label, the click Next button. Click Finish button to finish performing the disk format. Finally, the iSCSI disk is created like a local disk to Windows.

Application Menu on Ubuntu 9.04

To add manually installed Eclipse 3.5 to the Applications->System Tools for easy start up.

1. From System->Preferences->Main Menu to start the menu editing, highlight System Tools, select New Item, the Create Launcher dialog pops up.

2. The default type is Application, Enter "Eclipse 3.5" in the Name field, Browse the executable /usr/local/lib/eclipse/eclipse, click OK, then enter the comment as Java Development Tool. Click OK. The new item Eclipse 3.5 is created and selected at Main Menu dialog. Click Close to finish the Main Menu editing.

3. The item Eclipse 3.5 is the new item in Application->System Tools now.

Tools for Android development on Ubuntu 9.04

1. Install Sun Java tool kit 6:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

2. Verify the Java version:

java -version
javac -version

3. Download Android SDK, android-sdk-linux_x86-1.5_r3.zip, from http://developer.android.com/sdk/1.5_r3/index.html, and extract to /usr/local/lib. Update the ~/.bashrc to append the Android SDK tools to $PATH:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/lib/android-sdk-linux_x86-1.5_r3/tools

4. Download current Eclipse 3.5, eclipse-java-galileo-linux-gtk.tar.gz, from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. Extract to /usr/local/lib.

5. Start up Eclipse, select Help->Install New Software. In the Install dialog, click Add..., then enter http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ in the location then click OK. Select Developer Tool which contains Android DDMS and Android Development Tools, click Next, Next. Accept the terms of License agreement, then click Finish. Go ahead at the restart Eclipse prompt.

6.Set up the Android SDK PATH in Eclipse. Select Windows->Preferences->Android. Browse the SDK Location to set the path.

7. Create an Android Virtual Device (AVD):
android create avd --target 2 --name my_avd

8. If Subversion is not on the system, run follwing to install Subversion:
sudo apt-get install subversion

Otherwise, run following command to checkout the example source from Google to learn and start:
svn checkout http://android-examples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ android-examples

Gigabit network for VMWare ESXi 4 Server

A gigabit network is a must for VMWare ESXi 4. Otherwise the slow network will cause lots of problems such as the vSphere Client is extremely slow and some times it complains the server takes to long to respond and the operation can't be completed. In addition, either upload or download from the datastore browser will complain the IO error as well.

If a gigabit connection is established, all of above problems will be resolved.

Transfer files between VMWare ESXi server and your computer

To enable the ssh at ESXi server, at the server console, press ALT-F1, type "unsupported", press Enter. When the password prompt shows up, enter the root password to log in.

Delete the first character # in the line containing ssh in the file /etc/inetd.conf to make it similar to the line below, then reboot the server.

ssh stream tcp nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear ...

After ssh is enabled, putty can ssh to the server from your PC. WinSCP can upload/download files with the server as well.

An other tool can download files from the server is Firefox. Following example URL can browse the files at datastore1 on the server that has the IP address as 192.168.111.222:

https://192.168.111.222/folder?dsName=datastore1

In addition, the ESXi server's datastore browser also can upload and download files between the server and your PC.

VMWare Tools on CentOS

1. Update the system.
yum update

2. Install gcc and kernel development tools.
yum install gcc kernel-devel

3. Following the instruction at http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_newguest_tools_linux.html to complete the installation.