Virtualization has been around since the mainframe days but virtualization as we usually see today started with VMware (to the best of my knowledge). VMware has had available for years a few different products that allowed you to dedicate and entire machine to hosting virtual machines or simply run other operating systems on your desktop PC. Today’s computers are more powerful than ever before and even the cheapest of computers today typically has some power to spare. With the abundance of computers with excess power continuing to grow, it is no wonder virtualization has gotten to popular.

About a year ago VMware noticed that virtualization was getting more popular and decided that then was the time to really hook people. They released a free virtualization product (and since then some more) allowing people to run virtual machines on their computer for free.

Soon other virtualization techniques came to market, many of them also free. VirtualBox is one of them and is a relatively new entry into the virtualization market but is already showing some great promise. Unlike some other virtualization products, VirtualBox is cross platform covering the usual suspects like Windows, Linux and Mac. Of course, being from Sun it also runs on Sun’s Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems.

VirtualBox, while young, shows great promise and it is available for free (for personal using and testing). It brings together some of the things I love about VMware. Simple to manage, cross platform and easy migration from one host machine to another. Some of what VirtualBox adds is native iSCSI initiator support, Remote Desktop Protocol support for running virtual machines and the ability to run on Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris. It even supports the seemless mode seen in VMware’s Fusion and Parallels.

If you’re looking for a free way to get into virtualization then give VirtualBox a shot. I think you’ll be impressed.

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Although the ability to resize file systems has been around for a while it has never been as easy as it is today. Linux has been able to resize file systems for some time and the latest versions of Windows provides the ability right in Disk Management. I run a number of Windows systems and the ability to resize NTFS iSCSI volumes is what I’m primarily interested in.

Click read more to learn how this is done. This isn’t a full how-to but more of an overview of how to make it all happen.

Please bear with me a bit, I’m writing all of this from memory. Some things may differ slightly from what I’ve written. I’ll do what I can to come back and update this post. Also note that this has been tested using Server 2003 and Vista SP1. I resized the disk using Vista, remounted it in Server 2003.

To get started create a new ZFS dataset and share it using iSCSI. The following command will accomplish this.

zfs create -V 1G -o shareiscsi=on test/iscsi2

Unless you are running Vista or Server 2008 you will need to install the iSCSI initiator software for Windows. Once installed start the software and add an entry on the Discovery tab’s Target Portals that points to your OpenSolaris server. In my case I just entered the IP address 192.168.0.233. Click ok and head to the targets tab. You should then see an entry that you can log in to. Log in to the target.

Start Disk Management by clicking start and doing the following. Right click My Computer, choose Manage. Once open, click Disk Management. You may be prompted to initialize the new disk. Go ahead and do so, then partition and format the disk as well.

Once this process is finished, a new disk will be available in My Computer. You can copy files, delete files or what ever you like. As far as the system is concerned it is just another disk.

We can now go ahead and resize the disk. To do so, return to the iSCSI initiator software and to the targets tab. Click the entry that you are connected to and click the details button. Click the check box for the disk your connected to and click Log off.

Return to your Solaris box and resize the dataset. The following command will achieve this.

zfs set volsize=2G test/iscsi2

Return to your Windows machine and start the iSCSI initiator software. Reattach to the iSCSI share and then return to Disk Management. If you are using Vista or Server 2008 you can extend the iSCSI disk to fill all available space.

pkg refresh

Will cause the system to refresh what packages are available.

pkg image-update

Will initiate a system upgrade.

pkg install SUNWiscsitgt

Will start an install OR upgrade of the SUNWiscsitgt package

Create the pool from the available disks, if they don’t already exist. Be sure to read docs on what kind of pool you want to create. I’m using raid-z

zpool create raid-z test /dev/dsk/c0t1d0 /dev/dsk/c0t2d0 /dev/dsk/c0t3d0 /dev/dsk/c0t4d0

Create the data set and share it using iSCSI

zfs create -s -V40G test/iscsi
zfs set shareiscsi=on test/iscsi

You should now have 40GB of iscsi based storage available. Use iscsi-initiator on Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003 to attach to the iscsi target, assign a drive letter and format.

Although my current favorite OS is definitely OS X I’m not exactly afraid to try out other operating systems. OpenSolaris is an OS I’ve played with before simply because I wanted to get to know ZFS, an incredible file system that should not be over looked. I have written about ZFS before but haven’t really worked with it much since then.

My interest in OpenSolaris and ZFS has been renewed as of late because of the need for a good amount of storage in the most cost effective manner possible. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting quite bit as I learn how to use OpenSolaris. Many posts will simply be reference information for myself and others might be more educational. Stay tuned.