February 23, 2012

Breaking new ground : An UBER Tool for the Mac

Screen Shot 2012-01-10 at 12.45.45 AMA few months ago I bought my first Mac. I had been a hardcore Windows workstation kind of guy. And being a C# coder in the late hours of the night it was all I needed. But, after seeing my former teammates (vSpecs) using their sexy Mac Books I finally made the switch. I picked up a Mac Book Air and from the minute I started using it, fell in love with everything about it.

Because of this switch I have come to learn the things that the Mac (and Lion) do really well with some things while Windows does better with others. For almost all of my UBER projects I use my beefy Windows workstation running VMware Workstation to setup my lab/dev environments.

But, recently I started trying to move over to my Mac and using VMware Fusion to build lab virtual machines for developing. And to my surprise I found that things in the Fusion world aren’t quite the same as for Workstation. Namely, the networking options are rather limited. By default you only get the choices of three networks 1) DHCP w/ NAT  2) DHCP and 3) Bridging to a physical interface. For me that meant that I couldn’t get a network without DHCP (important if you are testing it) or create multiple isolated networks like I could on Workstation.

So I went digging and found that at one point someone has written some slick scripts to allow for custom multi-network setup but it stopped being updated after Fusion 2. I also found that VMware has some KB articles on how to hack your way to adding networks. But neither was very easy to do or dealt with modifying the VM’s well.

So I decided to fill this gap myself. Over the Christmas holiday I worked furiously to make this and now I am proud to present the next UBER release and my first project in the Manic Innovation Challenge: UBER Network Fuser (UNF)

UNF is a native Mac OSX application supported on Snow Leopard and Lion that allows you to add additional networks to VMware Fusion, customize their settings, and easily change network selection for any Fusion VM’s. I designed it to be simple to use and be similiar to how VMware Workstation network editor works.

Screen Shot 2012-01-10 at 12.46.01 AMHere is the full feature list:

  1. Allows up to 10 additional custom networks (total of 12)
  2. You can enable/disable DHCP, NAT, virtual host adaptor on any network
  3. Protects and provides rollback of default Fusion settings
  4. Allows dynamic changes of network membership with Fusion VM’s
  5. You may alias networks with custom names (even Workstation doesn’t do this)
  6. Tested and confirmed that VLAN tagging works as expected within private networks
  7. Saves configuration per user (names, paths, etc)
  8. Integrates with Apple’s Security framework for elevated privileges when needed

 

I created a video to demonstrate how it works below:

And to download (free as always) use the link below:

Download UBER Network Fuser 1.0 – DMG for Snow Leopard & Lion (Updated link to new 1.701 version)

 

This is my first release in the Manic Innovation Challenge. It is written in Objective C & C and uses the Cocoa and Security frameworks. Challenge-wise it was definitely an experience learning and writing an app in Objective C in  few weeks. But, it was crazy fun and I have all kinds of cool ideas for the Mac now.

Also, this marks post #100 for me in the 2.3 years I have been running Nickapedia.com. Being that it is also my birthday I am considering today a good day.

As always please test and play with it and let me know with some comments below.

.nick

VPLEX Geo / GoogleMaps Mashup : Higher Quality Video

My previous post showing the VPLEX Geo / GoogleMaps mashup was an early version and low quality. I created this one to better show the UI and recorded it at 60FPS using my HD camera.

thanks,

.nick

EMC World 2011 : AKA the last 3 months of my life

This post will cover so much of the last few months of my life that I don’t even know where to start. I am sitting here in the Las Vegas airport trying to remember all the details of how I got to this spot. It really started at the beginning of March when I moved to the vSpecialist Technical Enablement team. The TE team is tasked with arming the front-line vSpec with information, tools, messaging, and more to do their jobs more effectively.

Another aspect of the TE team is they usually provide many of the keynote and session demos for the conference and partner events like EMC World or VMworld. Also, the TE guys have been running the EMC Hands On Labs for over a year now at events across the US.

Within a week after joining I had a discussion with my boss, Chris Horn, about the how the existing Hands On Labs (which he pioneered and maintained) could be improved and expanded for EMC World. The goal was to do something much more like the experience the VMworld labs provide. Chris had been talking with the EMC Demo Cloud team about using cloud-hosted labs they could provide to the users in Las Vegas at EMC World. After a few long conversations I committed to write the lab automation that would take a session in the Demo Cloud and automate it straight to a user at a desk across the country. Not a small feat and honestly I realized shortly after that it would require a massive amount of design and work.

Step 1: Design

I had multiple aspects to look at to accomplish what I wanted. My goal was to be as completely hands off as possible. I am a firm believer that Cloud automation should just work to a point that it can be forgotten about. This meant I had to adopt patterns that allowed for failure and self-healed without human intervention. [Read more...]

Excited about EMCWorld 2011? : Show it off

I was working on something completely different when I realized some of the code/graphics I had put together would look quite cool as a screensaver. So if you are a fan of the cloud, a fan of EMC, or even just a fan of slick multi-monitor screensavers; give my new EMCWorld 2011 screensaver a shot.

Couple of details:

  1. It is hardware accelerated. I can’t guarantee the frame rate on weaker graphics chips. All mine are beefy.
  2. It is multi-monitor capable. Looks great on my 3 monitors.
  3. Works is all the resolutions I could try. You can have different resolutions on different monitors also.
  4. Each monitor gets a different randomized effect which looks quite cool.
  5. Reminds you every once in a while about EMCWorld 2011 being the place where Big Data and Cloud are going to meet.
  6. I don’t have a Mac version yet and probably won’t since I don’t own a Mac (I know, my team shuns me for this…)

Video:

EMCWorld 2011 Screensaverfrom Nicholas Weaver on Vimeo.

 

And the download:

EMCWorld 2011 UBER Screensaver

 

Installation Instructions:

  1. Download
  2. Unzip
  3. Right click as an Administrator and click ‘Install’
  4. Open up Screensaver settings and select ‘EMCWorld 2011’

 

Disclaimer:

This screensaver is neither endorsed nor supported by anyone at EMC. It is solely the product of me, an overactive and slightly strange geek.

 

Comments rock my world. Thanks

.nick

Being a vSpec : One year under the belt

Today is the one year anniversary of joining EMC as a vSpecialist. Kind of feels like I just got here and compared to some of the vets, I have. Still I think back to my first post on moving to the vendor side of things (Change is good : Fear & Atmosphere) and I am amazed at everything that has happened to me since then. As I pointed out back in that blog post. My goal was to surround myself by people that would challenge me in new areas. That has definitely been the case this year and is still a primary motivator for me. I can also say this job has used a broader set of my skills than any other.

I decided to throw together a video of random pictures from the last year as a vSpecialist. Here is my year as a vSpec:

I am really looking forward to the rest of 2011 and where my career takes me at EMC. Guess that big step in February of 2010 ended up being a good one after all.

.nick

Interactive Cloud Video : Chad Sakac Demo / VMware PEX 2011

I was able to grab a video with my phone of Chad’s demo of Interactive Cloud (my blog post here: Interactive Cloud) that was missing from Chad’s excellent VMware PEX 2011 recap post here: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/02/vmware-partner-exchange-2011recap-and-content.html

I think this video shows how cool and easy it really is. It was funny watching the standing crowd gather as Chad went through this demo.

.nick