These provide an easy way to see events I’m normally “interested in” without having to trawl through logs or setup filters each time.

However one piece I initially found annoying is “Keywords”

At first glance this looks “obvious” – just type in one or more “keywords” you’re interested in filtering on – job done!
WRONG – this is not what it means.
In-fact you can’t even enter text in this dialog

This seems bordering on “counter-intuitive”

On closer inspection, what it provides is a drop-down as below:

It appears that “Keyword” is a term used by Microsoft to group / classify types of events

To demonstrate:

and

So the Keywords drop-down provides a way to filter based on one or more “types” of event.

From MSDN:

EventRecord.Keywords Property:
“The keywords for an event are used to group the event with other similar events based on the usage of the events.
Each keyword is a bit in a 64-bit mask.
Predefined bit values and reserved bits occupy the top 16 positions of this mask, leaving the manifest to use any bits between 0×0000000000000001 and 0×0000800000000000″

The standard event keywords are defined in StandardEventKeywords Enumeration:

It’s worth noting this also generates an Event query in XPath form which you can edit via the “XML” tab:

Bitmask highlighted above right (wouldnt fancy trying to derive this by hand !)

Windows XP

Task Manager (by default) shows “Mem Usage“. The perfmon equivalent is “Working set” (selectable within “Processes”)
“VM Size” within Task Manager is “Private Bytes” within perfmon

 Vista/Windows7

Thing are much better in more recent Windows OS variants – MS have brought the definitions used in Task Manager / Perfmon in-line (and dramatically improved perfmon!)
Task Manager (by default) shows “Memory (Private Working Set)“. The perfmon equivalent is “Working Set – Private”
Working Set (Memory) within Task Manager shows as “Working Set” within Perfmon.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  The “Memory” colums displayed by default in XP is diferent to that in Vista\Windows 7.
i.e. “Mem Usage” does not mean the same as “Memory (Private Working Set)”

Memory Terminology

 
Guest physical memory is backed by host physical memory (this means the hypervisor provides a mapping from the guest to the host memory)
The memory transfer between the guest physical memory and the guest swap device (e.g. the windows swapfile) is referred to as “guest level paging“. This is driven by the guest OS.
The memory transfer between the guest physical memory and the host swap device is called “hypervisor swapping“. This is driven by the hypervisor.

Memory Overcommit Techniques

ESX uses three memory management mechanisms — page sharing, ballooning, and swapping — to dynamically reduce the amount of machine physical memory required for each virtual machine.

Guest VM memory sizing Guidelines:

“You should allocate enough memory to hold the working set of applications you will run in the virtual machine, thus minimizing swapping, but avoid over-allocating memory. Allocating more memory than needed unnecessarily increases the virtual machine memory overhead, thus using up memory that could be used to support more virtual machines“

Usefull Links

Virtual Center Memory Statistic Definitions 
Memory Performance Chart Metrics in the vSphere client 
Understanding Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX Server 
Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.0

I wanted to confirm exactly what the “CPU Usage (Average)” counter actually meant, so had a browse and found a  VMware “Performance Counters” technote which says:
“Name : Usage
Unit : Percentage : The CPU utilization over the interval of collection
Example : A value of 100% represents complete usage of all processor cores on the system”

Now given the host I’m using has 2 x 3Ghz Quad Core processors, thats an awful lof of horsepower to be “tied up” by a single VM!!!
My initial (and correct) reaction was that the description in the Technote is either wrong or seriously misleading.

Following investigation here’s a clearer explanation of what these values actually mean:

A VM can only ever use a maximum of one physical CPU core for each virtual CPU core

So to demonstrate:
A host with 8 Cores running at 3Ghz gives a total of 8 x 3Ghz = 24Ghz to play with

However:
a single vCPU VM can only ever use 3Ghz
a dual vCPU VM could only ever use 6Ghz

This is because ESX (and any Hypervisor) dosn’t “magically” multi-thread the workload – it can only ever schedule the vCPUs on individual pCPU cores.

So going back to the initial screenshot.
The VM has 2 vCPUs
Its showing a CPU Usage(Average) value of 99.98% of the 2pCPU cores to which its entitled, and not “all processor cores” as the technote states.

There a several ways to do this from outside the VM, but I wanted to find a way to enable time sync from within the guest itself either on or after tools install.

Surprisingly, this wasn’t quite as straightforward as I expected.
(I assumed it would be posible to set this as a parameter / config option during tools install)

After a bit of searching I found a way to do this in a VMware article called “Using the VMware Tools Command-Line Interface“.

So, if time sync is disabled, you can enable it by running the following command line in the guest:

          VMwareService.exe –cmd “vmx.set_option synctime 0 1″

Additional Notes

For some (IMHO stupid) reason, this utility requires you to specify the current as well as the new value

0 = disabled
1 = enabled

So – if you run this command on a machine which has this already set, you will get an error saying – “Invalid old value“.
Obviously you can “ignore” this error when run (so not a huge deal) but the current design seems a bit dumb.
IMHO it would be much more sensible if you could simply specify the value you want to set and not require the current value to be specified.

i.e.
           VMwareService.exe –cmd “vmx.set_option synctime <0|1>”

Creating a VM to run Chrome OS

Based on various posts on the web, it looked the “best chance” of getting this work ing was to create a VM in VirtualBox.
So, I installed VirtualBox and setup a VM.

Web comments I read indicate that selecting Linux 2.6  as the version yields best results

I opted for a minimal amount of Ram.

I used the .vmdk file (chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vmdk) from http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/
and setup VirtualBox to point to this file

Summary Info

Booting up and Logging on

The VM boots up and presents a logon screen
Based on web comments I decided to try an account called “chronos” <no password>

Result – I’m in
Time to setup a gmail account (sigh!)

Usefull Links

Google Chrome OS
Getting and Building a Chromium-Based OS
What is Google Chrome
Google prepares for Chrome OS update with Web Event

Download location

I downloaded Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
The download is in the form of a .iso (ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso)

System Requirements

Requires at least 256Mb Ram (the standard installation CD requires 384MB of RAM).
Install requires at least 3 GB of disk space.
(Source: Ubuntu System Requirements)

Version

I used Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 (32 bit)

Creating the VM

I decided to install Ubuntu in Virtual Box.
The install is very straightforward and some handy tips are also available on the Ubuntu site

Enter a Name for the VM
Set the Operating System to “Linux“
Set Version to “Ubuntu“

Installation

Attach the CD to the downloaded .ISO file (ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso) and Turn on the VM.
Select “Install Ubuntu” (doh !)

Choose the Language

Select TimeZone

Followed by Keyboard Layout

Set partition details (go with the defaults)

Set username (this is also used to form the suggested computername)

Ready to Rock ‘n’ Roll…

It’s happening … my first Ubuntu install is underway!

It’s installed!

Booting up and logging on

After detaching the .ISO, it’s time to “give it a go” !

Booting up…

Login prompt

It’s booted – no errors (well no visible errors anyway !)
Job done.

Useful Links

What is Ubuntu
System Requirements
Ubuntu Download
Installing Guest Additions for Ubuntu in VirtualBox

General 

System 

    

Hard Disks

CD/DVD-Rom

Floppy

Audio

Network

Serial Ports  

USB

Shared Folders           

Download Location

VirtualBox can be downloaded from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

I used VirtualBox 3.0.12 for Windows hosts x86/amd64

Installation

Installation is very straightforward and consists of clicking on the downloaded executeable (VirtualBox-3.0.12-54655-Win.exe) and following a small number of prompts as shown:
(I experienced about 5 prompts to confirm installation of unsigned drivers. I’ve only inclued one example of each below to avoid duplication)

This post explains what WQL is and how to use it.

What is WQL
WQL stands for “WMI Query language“
WQL is a subset of SQL and can be thought of as “SQL for WMI“

Why use it?
Having the ability to run a task based on a WQL query is incredibly powerfull.
This means you can cause something to happen (or not happen) based on the result of a WMI property.

e.g
You may want to run a driver package only on specific types of hardare
Whilst this is a common scenario, it’s not “obvious” how to create and test a WQL query when starting from scratch.

Creating and testing with WQL
The Task sequence editor dosn’t provide any help with constructing or testing a WQL query, so (to avoid pain and disappointment!) it’s best to TEST this using another tool before using a WQL query in a task sequence.

An easy way to do this is by using WBEMTest.exe

Using “Windows Management Instrumentation Tester” (WBEMTest) to validate a WQL query

run WBEMTest.exe
Select “Connect…”
Enter root\cimv2 (instead of root\default)
Select Connect

Select “Query…”

Start by entering a simple query
        e.g. SELECT * FROM Win32_Computersystem
Select “Apply” to run the query

You’ll see a “Result” similar to the one below:

Double-click on the result to “drill-down” and have a look for some more “interesting” properties to query for!

Scroll-down within “Properties” and note the value for “Model“
(in my example this is a “ProLiant ML110 G5″)

You can use these details to construct a more useful WQL query.

Go back to the query screen (Close,Close then Query)

Enter a query using the new values:

SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE Model = “your model”

In my case this returns “1 objects“. This means it’s a “success”
(i.e. will be evaluated as “True” if used within a Task Sequence)

What happens if a query dosn’t evalue to True

Below is a query for something that won’t result in a match

Basically it returns “0 objects“
(i.e. will be evaluated as “False” if used in a Task Sequence”)

What happens if an invalid query is specified

This is likely to be a common scenario when “getting the hang of it” / testing.

Other Queries to try

Show all local accounts

SELECT * FROM Win32_Account

This can be easily “refined” to look for a specific account

SELECT * FROM Win32_Account WHERE Name = “FredBloggs”

Useful References

MSDN : WQL (SQL for WMI)