Virtual Windows 8 ... Sort of.

OK, I know there are people there that love Windows 8, and those that don't really like it.  I am not going to debate that here, but lets say, I need to advance with the times because of my job and will use Windows 8, and try to get the most out of it

Having said that, I work with servers, so my main system is Windows 2012.  Now on first look Windows 2012 looks a lot like Windows 8, so why cannot my Windows 2012 system also be my Windows 8 system.  Now I don't want a completely transformed OS, but try to get the best of both worlds.  So here are the things that I did to my system and hopefully guide you on your transformation.  And for why I did this, I can say only 1 thing: I want to play Halo: Spartan Strike on my computer along with my phone.

Add the Desktop Experience

This is a straight forward process, just adding a feature called 'Desktop Experience'  If you need directions on how to add this web site has it.

Please remember in order you use the Windows App store, you need a Microsoft account, and your logon account cannot be administrator.

Install Halo: Spartan Strike

Go to the Windows store and install it.  Now this application is not free, and for some reason I could not purchase it within the application store, but I used my phone to purchase because it is a single purchase for phone and desktop, so once that was done, it installed fine on Windows 2012

Issue with running app and Xinput1_4.dll

Halo: Spartan Strike installed, but when it ran I was getting an Xinput1_4.dll error, and it bombed out.  I found better description of the error here, and then another page that comes with files and an install script

The script is straight forward and comes with 6 files.  Now I normally don't trust these files especially since they are not signed, and I didn't want to expose my system to any unscrupulous files, so I built a Virtual Windows 8, and extracted the same files to install into my 2012 system.  I did compare my files to the downloaded files, and they were same on the binary level, but better safe than sorry.

Once those files were added the program worked fine, and I am hoping that all other DirectX games will also behave as well.

Issue with keyboard - Halo: Spartan Strike

Now the program is running but for some reason, the mouse works, but the keyboard does not.  For me fixing that is a simple solution.  My system has PS/2 keyboard and mouse, so I just add my  USB wireless Logitech K400 keyboard, now the game works!!!

Better Gaming experience - Xbox 360 Game controller

I have a working game, but using the keyboard is a little kludgey because the key choices are chosen and you cannot change them, also with the AWSD to move, it is a little choppy.

So I picked up a used Rock Candy controller.  It plugged in fine, but didn't work.  Went to the vendor's web site, pdp.com and they state the controller is for Xbox 360, so there are no drivers for windows.

Well not being discourage, went looking for a driver for a Microsoft Xbox 360 drivers from Microsoft and found them here.

Installed the driver, rebooted, and the controller worked fine. It plays like a dream and now I can spend all of my time killing the Covenant!!

I hope my work will enable you to play this game with Windows 2012, and your system primed to play other games from Windows Store.

Getting Windows 8 or 2012 to work as a guest under vSphere 4.1

There have been other blogs and kbase articles that define how to get Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 2012 / 2012 R2 running under vSphere 4.1.  I plan to to offer you a complete document with references

For the guest configuration, I would choose the following:

Windows 2012 / 2012 R2
Guest OS: Windows 2008 R2
vCPU: 2
vMemory: 2GB
Network Card:  E1000

Windows 8 / 8.1
Guest OS: Windows 7 (32 or 64 to match your media)
vCPU: 2, but 1 should work
vMemory:     1GB, but 2 would be better
Network Card:    E1000

After you build the OS, but before the OS is installed the VMX file needs to be modified, so use the vSphere client to do these steps

1. Browse to the datastore where the VMX files is located
2. Download the VMX file to your windows system
3. Edit the file with a Linux compatible editor like Notepad++ and add the following lines:
1. bios440.filename = bios.440.rom
   mce.enable = "TRUE"
   cpuid.hypervisor.v0 = "FALSE"
   vmGenCounter.enable = "FALSE

Then upload the updated VMX file and the bios ROM file from this location.  If you feel a little unsure about using a random file acquired from the internet there are directions on how to extract the file from VMware Player.  I have not done this yet, but trust the ROM file that is the VMware community

Next just install the OS as normal, it should work fine, no BSOD.

Now what I have not seen is anything on VMware tools, and from what it looks like any version of the VMware tools that come with 4.1 will corrupt the video and make  it unusable, so when installing VMware tools, use the OSP version.

Here is the root location of all the tools:  http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/index.html
Here is the version that I have used successfully:  http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.5p01/windows/index.html
But guessing the latest which is for vSphere 6 would also work:

• 64-bit http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/latest/windows/x64/VMware-tools-windows-9.4.11-2400950.iso
• 32-bit: http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/latest/windows/x86/VMware-tools-windows-9.4.11-2400950.iso

If you want read more about OSP tools, this page is useful.

Good luck with your Window 8 / 2012 builds!!

Windows 8 / 2012 on ESXi 4.0 / 4.1 hosts

OK, so others have documented on how to enable using Windows 8 and Server 2012 with an ESXi 4.0 / 4.1 host.  I am not going to recreate the procedure, but here are links to some:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/394669
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/312358-how-to-install-windows-2012-server-on-esxi-4-1
http://en.blog.skydriver.org/2013/02/03/windows-server-2012-and-windows-8-on-vmware-esxi-4-1/

What I was curious about was where this bios.440.rom file came from and is it safe.  From the first reference from the VMware communities it came from a vmware employee.  Did some more searching and found these two sites that detailed building / modifying BIOS-es

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/19329-HOWTO-Modify-VMWare-BIOS-with-SLIC-2-1

While it was detailed, and looked like it used some files that were coming from questionable sources, the original toolkit was sound

http://www.bios.net.cn/Files/soft/biosfile/qt/SLIC_ToolKit_V3.2.rar

So I concluded to accept the file and not research further.

High End Video Cards, IBM servers and Virtulization.

Today I found this announcement of new products for the dx360 M4

Now I normally don't use this model of computer, but just decided to look at it.  So I looked at the specs of the server then saw the specs of two of the cards, the NVIDIA Tesla K20, and the NVIDIA VGX K1 / K2

The server can handle 2 half length full height cards, with 2 servers in a 2 u space, so that is 4 GPUs in 2U.
The K20 was just a number cruncher, nothing exciting there, could be used for mathematics, or large scale models or something like that.  but the VGX K1 was interesting.  It was a video card that is supposed to be used for virtualized workloads.  From their website:

"VGX boards feature NVIDIA Kepler-based GPUs that, for the first time, allow hardware virtualization of the GPU. This means multiple users can share a single GPU, improving user density while providing true PC performance and compatibility."

Now that is interesting.  What struck me as more interesting is this.  The GPU is supported right now under the following OS's

• XenDesktop with HDX 3D Pro
• XenServer

 And is coming for these platforms:

• XenDesktop with HDX
• XenServer with NVIDIA VGX Hypervisor
• RemoteFX
• Windows Server 2012
• VMware View with vSGA
• ESX

 And I see that the dx360 M4 supporting these OS's

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Datacenter x64 Edition
• Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server with Xen x64 Edition
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server x64 Edition
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 x64 Edition
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 with Xen x64 Edition
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 x64 Edition
• VMware ESX 4.1, ESXi 4.1, and 5.0

 So if I look and see what both card and Server OS support, right now, there is nothing.  Now knowing IBM and what the officially support on their products, I don't see XenServer being a platform that they will add.  And I don't see any development of support of the VGX on RedHat which would say it would be supported by KVM.  I can see This server being supported by Windows 2012 when things get rolling, and that leaves one thing in the wings...

..VMware.  I am guessing that there might be an upgrade on the hypervisor's part for it to better handle virtual GPUs.  For vSphere and for View.  I don't think IBM would work on and develop a > $3500 video card for a server that no platform will support.

I guess we will have to wait and see.