After a strong battle, I managed to set up MS Azure Account, set up Windows VM, install Chrome, install VS 2022, and VSCode. Also, I managed to connect from Desktop RDP and also from the Browser using the Bastion feature. This means I can now connect to the Azure VM using the Browser and no need for an RDP Desktop client. All such features are free based on a credit I got which will end after I utilize the remaining balance. I am also trying to have the same setup using AWS, but still struggling.
I thought this approach will allow me to connect to my local dev environment and no need to worry about updating my laptop to work with such technologies.
Now I can work on my Java and C# Projects from the Library Desktop computers and no need to carry my laptop with me, or this is what I am hoping at least. I realized after many years of working with different laptops, I have to upgrade it one day, and maintaining my laptop is very cumbersome.
I am wondering if anyone has been through such a setup and if it is worth it, and if you recommend using AWS or MS Azure. And, probably paying for the cloud subscription fee is more cost-effective compared to the cost of updating and maintaining your laptop.
I appreciate your feedback.
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We have multiple windows server 2016 running, will automatic updates on. I want to change the Windows Update mode to Manual.
The problem is when instance is created, out software installation fails many times due to running updates installation. I tried to set instance metadata 'disable-agent-updates' to TRUE. But it doesn't seem to be working.
Please help on how to modify windows update mode on creation and start of instance.
The quick answer is you cannot with Google provided Windows images.
You can create a Windows VM, configure as you desire and then create a new image that you use to launch new instances. This will accomplish your goal with some effort. This is standard practice for companies that manage/control patches and updates.
Note: I do not recommend disabling Windows Update from installing security patches on startup unless you understand the implications.
I have few queries related to Amazon Workspace.
Q1) I am building a .net website from where I want to access the Amazon Workspace. What could be a better way to do so? Is it possible that I create a webpage in my website and from there I can access the Workspace desktop in an iFrame or something? or is there any API support for same?
Q2) Can we set some startup program in Amazon Workspace which initiates any application for eg: photoshop, whenever the Workspace is started?
I think you're missing the point of Amazon Workspaces - they are a virtual desktop solution (loosely similar to Citrix), which provides a Windows 7 or Windows 10 'Desktop Experience' running on top of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and 2012 respectively.
So, to answer your questions:
Q1) I am building a .net website from where I want to access the
Amazon Workspace. What could be a better way to do so? Is it possible
that I create a webpage in my website and from there I can access the
Workspace desktop in an iFrame or something? or is there any API
support for same?
You don't want to embed a Workspace instance inside of a web-page, either as an iFrame or by using some other magic. It is probably possible, but you will need to jump through many, many burning hoops of death to achieve it.
If you want to access a web-page that you are building from the Workspace instance, treat Workspaces as just any other desktop and use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera etc. to access the site.
If you are looking at how to access Workspace Instances, AWS have desktop clients for all major Operating Systems, as web-based version (not to be confused with the web-page that you personally are writing); alternatively, Workspaces can be accessed from physical PCoIP Zero-Client devices. Take a look at https://clients.amazonworkspaces.com/ for the full list.
Q2) Can we set some startup program in Amazon Workspace which
initiates any application for eg: photoshop, whenever the Workspace is
started?
Yes you can, configure a Group Policy Object in your underlying Workspaces Directory to start an application on logon.
However, if you are going to run something intensive such as Photoshop, I would recommend either the Performance or Graphics Bundles - see https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/details/ for more information.
all. First of all I am sorry if this question is better for SuperUser, I couldn't tell. If it is it would be great if someone could migrate it.
So anyway, I'm building this service for SharePoint in Visual Studio 2008 with C#. Of course I need to be able to debug it to build it fast. Unfortunately my OS is XP Pro which can't run SharePoint because it is not a server OS. Instead of reinstalling my OS (which would create other problems) I got Server 2003 + SharePoint Server 2007 up and running inside a virtual machine with Virtual PC. Is there some sort of pipe I can create from Visual Studio that will let me test my service from within the virtual machine?
Thank you!
I guess I should add, these are the tools I have been given. At this time, reinstalling or getting new equipment/software is not an option.
This is definitely stackoverflow worthy. It is a development process related question after all.
So you have two issues, deployment and debugging.
For deployment, there are really two ways to approach this. One is that you create a real .wsp package that you can deploy/install/upgrade via the SharePoint provided mechanisms. You really should have this prepared since it is the way that your final code should be deployed. The trouble is that you can only perform the deploy/install/upgrade via a machine connected to the farm. In this case it would be your VM. In cases where I have had to work this way, I have scripted the creation of the .wsp and copied it to the server. On the server is another script to do the deployment. Yes it is more steps than I would like but it does work and it is pretty mindless so it isn't too much of a hassle.
The second approach would be the quicker, less correct way. In this case if all you are doing is changing the code, then you just need to get your new DLL to replace the old one and bounce IIS. You might be able to do that all remotely via script fired from Visual Studio after build succeeds action.
As for debugging, you can certainly debug things remotely. Look into tutorials on remotely debugging processes using Visual Studio.
We have the need to perform tests on localized platforms that put some burden on our hardware resources because for just a few weeks we might need plenty of servers and clients (Windows 2003 and Windows 2008, Vista, XP, Red Hat, etc) in multiple languages.
We typically have relied on blades with Windows 2003 and VMWare, but sometimes these are overgrown by punctual needs and also have the issue that the acquisition and deployment process is quite slow if the environment needs to grow.
Is Amazon EC2/S3 usable in the following scenario?
Install VMWare (Desktop because we need the ability to have snapshots) on an Amazon AMI.
Load existing VMWare images from S3 and run them on EC2 instances (perhaps 3 or 4 server or client OSes on each EC2 instance.
We are more interested in the ability to very easily start or stop VMware snaphsots for relatively short tests. This is just for testing configurations, not a production environment to actually serve a user workload. The only real user is the tester. These configurations might be required for just a few weeks and then turned off for a few months until the next release requires them again.
Is EC2/S3 a viable alternative for this type of testing purpose?
Do you actually need VMWare, or are you testing software that runs in the VMWare VMs? You might actually need VMWare if you are testing e.g. VMWare deployment policy, or are running code that tests the VMWare APIs. Examples of the latter might be you are testing an application server stack and currently using VMWare to test on many platforms.
If you actually need VMWare, I do not believe that you can install VMWare in EC2. Someone will correct & enlighten me if this is not the case.
If you don't actually need VMWare, you have more options. If you can use one of the zillion public AMIs as a baseline, clone the appropriate AMIs and customize them to suit your needs (save the customized version as a private AMI for your team). Then, you can use as many of them as you like. Perhaps you already have a bunch of VMWare images that you need to use in your testing. In that case, you can migrate your VMWare image to an EC2 AMI as described in various places in Google, for example:
http://thewebfellas.com/blog/2008/9/1/creating-an-new-ec2-ami-from-within-vmware-or-from-vmdk-files
(Apologies to the SO censors for not pasting the entire article here. It's pretty long.) But that's a shortcut; you can always use the documented AMI creation process to convert any machine (VMWare or not) to an AMI. Perform that process for each VMWare VM you have, and you'll be all set. Just keep in mind that when you create an AMI, you have to upload it to S3, and that will take a lot of time for large VMs.
This is a bit of a shameless plug, but we have a new startup that may deal with exactly your problem. Amazon EC2 is excellent for on-demand computing, but is really targeted at just a single user launching production servers. We've extended EC2 to make it a Virtual Lab Management environment, with self-service, policies and VM sharing. You can check it out at http://LabSlice.com and see if it meets your needs.
Amazon provides a solution themselves now: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/12/amazon-vm-import-bring-your-vmware-images-to-the-cloud.html
We recently bought a new rack and set of servers for it, we want to be able to redeploy these boxes as build servers, QA regression test servers, lab re-correlation servers, simulation servers, etc.
We have played a bit with VMWare, VirtualPC, VirtualBox etc, creating a virtual build server, but we came across a lot of issues when we tried to copy it for others to use, having to reconfigure every new copy of the VM.
We are using Windows XP x86/x64 and Windows Vista x86/x64, so I had to rename the machine, join the domain etc for every new copy.
Ideally we just want to be able to add a new box, deploy a thin boot strap OS (Linux is fine here) to get the VM up an running, then use it.
One other thing we have limited to no budget, so free is best.
I would like to understand others experiences in doing the same thing.
FYI, I am not in systems IT, this we are group of software engineers trying to set this up.
Any links to good tutorials would be great.
The problem you're running into is the machine SID must be unique for each machine in a domain. Of course by copying an image you now break that unique constraint.
I'd suggest that you read the documentation for Sysprep in the reskit and Vista System Image Manager - your friends for XP/Win2k3 and Vista/Win2k8 respectively.
These tools enable to "reseal" your configured instance of the OS such that the next time it boots - it can prompt for information such as network configuration, machine names, admin user ID's, run scripts etc.
Also be aware that the licencing restrictions for Windows desktop clients are generally per image - not per server.
Using these tools with HyperV we created complete preconfigured instances of Win2k3 & Win2k8 that boot to finish installing Sharepoint - going further we used the diffing disks to overlay Visual Studio so our devs could use the production images for their work. It has radically changed our development process.
At this point our entire public website is run on HyperV with of 5 boxes running 15 images for a mix of soft and hard redundancy - they take several hundred million page views per week.
Another option for dealing with the SID probelm is NewSID. This is a simpler tool than sysprep, in that all it does is rename the machine and reassign the SID; if you don't need all the other features of sysprep this is a much easier tool to use.