A Redirection

XEN Center VM Backups

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:32:19 GMT

I found to day that you can take a snapshot of your running server and then export that to an XVA file. This can then be used as a fully restorable VM back up of your server.

The process is not difficult nor is it hidden away only to be found in a script. It is part of the Snapshot tab in the XEN Center. Just right click on the completed Snapshot and choose export. Just like doing an export of a shut down VM.

I also found some info on how you can setup a scheduled scripted backup system that takes advantage of the general ability to Export a Snapshot for backup. The best script I found on this is on SysAdminNotebook.blogspot.com.

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XEN Server

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:41:00 GMT

I know this is a departure from my normal DNN stuff and honestly my day job really has only small touch points with DNN so most of what I have to share these days is related to my day job, enjoy.

I recently moved into the world of virtualization in my production environments. Ya… I know this should be old hat given the time that VM tech has been around and in the main stream. In the past I was just not willing to deal with the additional new head aches that come with Production Level Virtualization.

Recently I found time to work with server Virtualization and I chose XEN Server from Cirtrix. I'm not a Linux Guru so I went with the most polished version of XEN I could find. I did not go with VMware mostly because I have had some bad experiences with an installation of ESXi installed in our development area. I will leave it at that.

I was able to get XEN up and running very quickly on reasonable hardware. what I had on hand was all supported and things just fell into place.

The timing aligned very well with a recent update / addition to our Hosting facility portfolio. We were in the process of standing up some new servers for a client and because of this we it also made sense to move another existing client to the new NOC as well. It just made sense to move them both. We were leasing the hardware* for the existing systems on a month to month bases and with this move we would be purchasing hardware. One of the clients was hosted on a VM at the current NOC and the other had a bear metal(BM) installed OS. I decided that this would be how we would redeploy them in the new NOC. The client on the VM would stay on a VM with comparable specs and this would leave some room for some additional VMs to handle other needs that might come up in the near future.

XEN Server (free) was perfectly suited for what I needed to do. There are some minor things I don’t feel 101% comfortable with. Like the fact that I did not have the infrastructure to have full hot swap servers to run the VMs. Meaning that in this install, I would only have one XEN Server and all the storage would be local to that server. I am able to mitigate the risks in the same way that I do for standard (BM) installations. I back up regularly and store the backups off site. I also have Base VMs that I can pull up on a new server and restore the backups to. The odds of hardware failure are 100% the same as if I had a standard (BM) server for each VM OS. At least this is true given that the current XEN server is only housing 1 client setup. Which would typically be one (BM) server.

Today I solved the biggest issue I had with XEN. How to get the VMs that need to be on to boot when ever the server was booted. This was as I understand from my reading something easy to set through the XenCenter interface. It was just a check of a box in the past. But with version 5.xxx or somewhere in there, it was removed due to some interference is was causing with larger deployments. There was some our cry from the community that used the XEN Server (free) version. And a standard way to do it was added back in before release. However to cause your VM to boot on startup, you would have to use the Linux Console to set the “checkbox”. This was a little disappointing to me when I first read this but I had been boning up on Ubuntu as of late as well and the Linux CLI was not that foreign to me.

What was on the forums on this topic was less than helpful for someone at my level of CLI experience with XEN. I could not just take what was there and use it. I had to find someone that more or less spelled it out line by line. I took a stab at this about a week ago and really had little luck. This was I think due to me not really reading the full thread on this topic. In the end there were 2 ways being touted and I had only really understood the one. Once I realized that the other was more inline with using XEN Server and not hacking the Linux scripts to get things moving. I was able to find an article written by virtuEs. Esther thank you for putting it down in a way that even I could understand and learn from.

Things go live in a week or 2 for this installation and I am feeling really good about the deployment. I also have a setup at the home office that I am working with and as I learn to to more with XEN I plan to post about it.

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New release of the HTRM (01.00.03)

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:55:00 GMT

This was primarily an update to support DNN installs that do not use the fck Editor Provider. Making it 100% compatible with DNN4,5,6. DNN6 does not use fck by default and this would cause the module to show error messages when saving or trying to manage the templates.

Install this version if you have a new install that does not have the Fck editor or you do not want to be tied to the Fck editor template integration.

HTML Template Repeater Source Code Released

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:38:00 GMT

We have complted the process of releasing the code to the public. It is a C# project and can be found on CodePlex.com. The Project URL is http://htrm.codeplex.com.

It will take a little while to get all the docs written and other things setup in Codeplex but it will get done. If there are questions, I am hoping that the Quick start Video will help in the short term.

Getting Started Video (HTML Template Repeater)

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:50:00 GMT

Today I posted a new video. It is a quick start for using the HTML Template Repeater. You can find it here.

HTML Template Repeater released.

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:03:51 GMT

Well today I released the Private Assembly version of the HTML Template Repeater module. It is my first offering from Software's Edge. The plan is to release one fully cooked module every other month. Ideas for modules are easy it is the time to build them that I think may be a future issue. My day job is hectic and sometimes I don't even have enough time to even make a blog post so having a goal of 1 every 2 months should help push me to get things done.

Anyway let's talk about the HTML Template Repeater. The module is similar to the Core HTML module in that is allows you to add html to a page in the exact same way as the text/html module. That is where the similarities end. The words Template and Repeater are in the name of the module to highlight the other main features of the module. It is all about the template and it is all about repeating the same template for each data item in your data set.

The template feature is 2 fold. First it allows you to edit the FCK Editor templates and add your own through its editor interface. Second it improves on the tag replacement feature built into the text/html module. The standard tag replace replacement feature is maintained as in the core module. But you can also add your own tags in addition to the ones that are available now. The tags are custom to that module template. The repeater feature lets you create as many unique instances of the template one for each virtual data row you add to the module.

For example say you have 20 images and each will have a small bit of text that should appear next to it. Formatted somewhat like this.

Using the current text/html module you could achieve this in 3 ways; Create a custom module, Use a single text/HTML module and enter the html for each of the 20 images and text into that single module or the 3^rd option would be to have a separate text/HTML module for each image + text set.

The first one could be expensive and the second and third are difficult to maintain. Forcing you to either maintain a large piece of HTML or lots of little ones. Ordering of these would be tedious and paging would be a kluge at best. These are the problems that the HTML Template Repeater solves.

With the HTML Template Repeater you get the manageability of a custom module without the cost and you can reuse it for any HTML Configuration. Lets take a look at what the process would be to produce those 20 image+text segments using the HTML Template Repeater.

First Define the template. In this case you would create the HTML for just one of the HTML Segments. You would write HTML something like this.

Type the title here

Type the text here

Once you have this all we need to do is replace the sections that will change for each segment with a replicable tag. Tags in the HTML Template Repeater are just unique words or phrases you use to name the part of the html to replace with your unique segment data. Each Tag is formatted by placing a "!" on each side of the word or phrase. For example "!Image URL!" would be a good tag to use where you need to replace an image src url with a specific url for the segment image. In our example it would be used like this.

Type the title here

Type the text here

As you can see I update the src value of the image in the above HTML to !Image URL!. This will allow us to replace that part of the html with a value for each segment we want to add to the module. When you use the [Add New Content Item] link or menu item you will be greeted with a data entry form that is specific to the Tags you have created for your template. In this case it would look something like this;

If we add another Tag for the Title, you would have this.

HTML:

!Type the title here!

Type the text here

Entry form:

As you can see creating the Tags in easy and entering the data is even easier. Once the Template is complete all you have to do now is enter the data. There is also an option in the module to do paging and you can even adjust the order that the items are displayed.

If you enable paging you automatically get a pager at the top and the bottom of the page set. Shown here on a page of 1. The format of the pager can be customized in the module.css

Right now I am making the Private Assembly version available but I plan on making the Source available as well. I would like a chance at working out any issues that users might have before it is just set loose in the wild. So please if you have use for something like this, register and download the package. Please give me any feedback you have. I can't improve it unless I have users that are willing to share their thoughts good or bad.

In my next couple posts I will create some demo videos. The first will be a quick start for using the HTML Template Repeater Module and the second will show some of the more advanced features.

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18 things you should do after installing DotNetNuke (DNN)

jcassel@softwaresedge.com — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:52:00 GMT

18 things you should do after you install DotNetNuke (DNN).

As a proud owner of your very own web site, there are a few things you should do to insure you get the most out of your DNN site. The typical DotNetNuke installs with very good defaults but there are something’s that need to be changed right away in order to make the site work a bit more like one would hope and expect. This is my rundown of those things. I hope it is helpful.