To whom it might concern... my super-duper-team!

Hi guys,

just read your blogs... I think the work you've been doing so far it's ok... I guess the major issue we have at the moment is with running the game in a virtual environment. I worked with Fred last week (do you like cross-team work? There's plenty of it here! :)) because I thought that trying something with real machines would've helped... nothing like that... Well.. we did achieve some goals but nothing spectacular... In conclusion that "thing" still wouldn't work.
We are able to build a Windows 2008 cluster as I showed you last time during the presentation using 100% Microsoft software compliant which would work for a business environment but it wouldn't for a gaming one.
Tafe is about finishing and I really can't make much time to work on this (by the way today I got flu...) so I guess we can just show our team work as it is, merge the presentations we have in order to come up with something well organized.

Probably we are not gonna fix this issue but we shouldn't be feeling crap... At the moment finding NAS solutions able to run with 2008 is not easy, finding desktop virtualizations able to run 3D app is not easy (most of'em just sort of run OpenGL but not DirectX) and the semester is going to end...
Running DirectX in a virtual env is not easy simply because:

1) DirectX is not OpenSource
2) Vendors are not happy with releasing docs about video cards specs

That's a big issue... I wrote some lines on the forum of VirtualBox (wich runs OpenGL but not DirectX) and the moderator got irritated... he wrote:

"You and dozens of others want it, and it's been shouted here dozens of times. The devs know, alright. It's not as easy to implement DX, especially on non-Windows systems. And DirectX isn't OpenSource, which is a bit of a problem for VB.

... I'm locking this, as there it's already known users want it. It will come in due time."

Did I make myself clear? :)))) It's not easy...
At the moment we know that the game'd work in a 2003 cluster env but it won't in a 2008 one.
Please post ANY comment you guys feel like write because it could help for the final presentation... once again I ain't gonna work on the 3D issue during next week, I'll do it just on monday (I hope with Fred again) and then I'd like to get the final presentation done.

Isa, pizza and... farewell!

Hi guys (the networking ones),

Probably it might not seem the right blog to write this message... but this is a damn team work too :)
In fact I was thinking about organizing something special with food and a lot of useful Microsoft technology... We could meet at TAFE and I could go through the whole isa/exchange configuration needed to pass the test while eating pizza, drinking coke... By the way it's about waiting a lot till the software gets installed... (the best config would be: Win2003 Sp2, Isa 2004 Sp3, Exchange 2003 Sp2)
I would suggest to do this on next thu cause it will be after the very first part of the very first attempt so we all will know what exactly we are required to do.

I thought that could be the perfect way to end this diploma. In fact some of us will be soon looking for work, some of us will be going to Uni (Rob and Miroslav go to Uni!!!)...
Well... what to say... I did enjoy this semester because we have been dealing with security architecture/issue/etc... which is what I am interested in: in fact I think it will be really useful at Uni cause I will be dealing with security most of the times.

Nerworkers mob! Read this...

In order to solve the "well known" issue with DirectX 9/10/11/12... I would suggest to install Windows 2008/Vista on a laptop (which would work as client) which could be easily shared between two teams. Should the configuration still not work we had better consider investigating in a really thorough way which would mean an extensive logs analysis. Using a network sniffer at that stage I think would be more than necessary, it could answer to these two basic questions:

1) Is the client trying connecting?
2) Is the server accepting the connection giving the client an answer?

DirectX, DirectPlay and... DirectWeAreAllDoomed! :-)

Hi guys!

I think the problem we are having connecting the game server to the client is because the DirectPlay libraries wich came with the old DirectX are now deprecated. So while the XP client is trying opening a network connection to the server using DirectPlay the 2008 server might have problem answering. In fact network connections to game server were usually coded using DirectPlay. According to MS documentation some components of this library were already obsolete when DirectX 9 was released:

DirectX Doc

That said we need to know which part of DirectX are being used by the client/server in order to figure out whether any of these components are still available on the latest version of the library. In fact:

DirectX FAQ

The interesting part says:

"... The Direct3D Retained Mode API was completely removed from Windows Vista. DirectPlay Voice was also removed, as well as DirectPlay's NAT Helper and DirectInput's action-mapper UI. Support for the DirectX 7 and DirectX 8 interfaces for Visual Basic 6.0 is not available on Windows Vista..."

So as we could imagine some components of that library have been removed. But... the thing that we should make clear is: have these components been completely REMOVED or just DEPRECATED? ? ? Documentation does not seem to be really clear about it...

What is anyone up to? (My group of course!)

What is anyone up to? Will we be able to finish the cluster part by tomorrow? What about Ventrilo documentation/presentation? Tomorrow I'll be checking just to make sure I can easily integrate your work guys with mine... next week I'd like to work on network getting ready for the final test... I wouldn't like end up doing everything the last minute... I'd be like that:





















eh eh eh ;-) Reply using comment if you like so I'll be able to know your progress... I'll be checking this afternoon...

Supercool programming presentation!

Hi programming guys!

I really liked your game-presentation... you do work hard! If you are modifying C/C++ graphic libraries you are really working on the hardest task! I can tell you that because I used to be a programmer... but my screen was less colorful, it got no explosion at all and it looked like this:











... boring! Just do not try this at home ;-) ... I also played a bit with Visual C++ and I think it's the hardest programming environment you can choose! But anyway hard work pays off and I don't think you guys'll have trouble finding a job :-)

Message to... my awesome group!

Hi guys,

It would be great if everything that still needs to be done will be ready by next Monday... that's because we still need to perform some installation on the cluster (Ventrilo, services needed by Ventrilo, etc...) and in case the cluster gets corrupted I need 3 hours to rebuild it so we can't wait till the last minute... I could perform the Ventrilo installation by myself (well... I did something but I won't tell you anything about it :)) but I want to share the work that still is to be done...
So... let's get to work because we should be able to get everything done by next monday... guys I know we can do that!!!

If any of you hasn't got anything to do...

Hello guys!!!

if any of you (I am talking to my group of course) does not have anything to do I would suggest something you could do because we still need it:

1) Deploy the actual application on the cluster
2) Further documentation is needed about the website and the game
3) You could help with the website... even though I think Miroslav is doing a great job at the moment

I am sure you can still come up with something else to do ;-)

Presentation...

My presentation will be completed by Sunday afternoon. It is going to be about:

1) Software requirement
2) Shared resources configuration
3) Cluster setup procedure

... As we still need to test the actual game server the final part will be added by tomorrow... if nothing strange happens to my cluster... of course ;-)

In theory...

In theory we should be able to build the Microsoft cluster (Windows 2003 edition for sure) using a Novell server as iSCSI target! I would like to play a bit with it just to count how many times the Novell machine crashes :-)))))))))))
If you can run a MS cluster using Novell as storage server let me know... we will celebrate with peperoni pizza! :-)

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 users...

I have been noticing people moving their cluster on Virtual PC 2007 (which I did as well because it is already installed :-)).
You might already know about it.. but... if you are using Virtual PC 2007 installing a Windows 2008 guest DO NOT install VM extensions becuase they will screw your network up! If you need/want all the fancy stuff that come with the extensions you have to install Virtual PC 2007 SP1 which is made to run Windows 2008 guests...
I hope this will help someone ;-)

Now we need a presentation!

Hi guys,

I have completed my task... all we need to do is installing an application on the cluster... that can be done easily... as you can see on the left :-)

Now what we really need to do is creating a presentation to explain all these cool details to someone who may not be "tech savvy" :-)

I will be doing that because I thick I will be enjoing... so see you next week guys!

Cluster: a 100% Microsoft implementation

Hi guys... so as you can see the 2008 cluster is up and running...

But this is a project management course and not a technical course so let me talk about what I found out just working with this cluster so I can share my experiences with you all guys!

Building a cluster using 2008, at the moment, is a bit harder than using 2003. That's mainly because the iSCSI target needs supporting persistent reservations. Unfortunately just few iSCSI target support this feature...
If you read my previous posts you may know that I tried building the cluster using OpenFiler (a free NAS server Red-Hat based) but I failed because of the persistent reservation which are not supported by OF. So... how could I fix the problem? It's simple... at the moment the best solutions are:

1) Microsoft Unified Data Storage Server (which I used... there is a trial version!)
2) The last version of OpenSolaris
3) StarWind (which is free... well... the standard edition)
4) A hardware NAS solution... very expensive and looks like a coffin! ;-)

I really loved the idea of using a 100% Microsoft solution so I installed a trial of Microsoft Unified Data Storage Server and I fixed the problem but you could try different avenues...

Win2008... sh***t...

I kind of knew it... I installed a Win2003 cluster using iSCSI connected to an OpenSource NAS target and everything worked really cool... But I kind of knew it... Windows 2008 iSCSI interface requires more iSCSI commands which are not implemented yet on the iSCSI target I was using (which is the best one if you are looking for something free... of course you can get better if you pay lots of $$).

But the funny thing is you can actually connect the Win 2008 using the MS iSCSI Initiator and you get no errors at all:


and I can assure you all... both the cluster nodes could connect to the remote partition!
But when you start your cluster... the tragedy happens... Windows could not start the device (the one which was working so sweet using Windows 2003):


So... no shared device no cluster... I knew it because I did read a lot of posts about it... I would not really want to build the cluster using same sort of "fake" technology like the ones which are provided with the virtual software... that would be too easy! But... I already have plan "B" ready to start... something really AWESOME is going to happen on my cluster! I promise!

If anyone would like to try...

If anyone would like to try something new there is a new virtual desktop solution which can run Quake II... I suppose in a Windows VM... it is called MokaFive:

http://www.mokafive.com/

I am not going to download it because I have already download VMWare Server, VirtualBox and I am getting bored... :-)

Cluster built, still problems with 3D to be fixed...

Hi guys... after having built the cluster using basically all possible ways/technology I still have to find a way to make 3D "things" work... It is not going to be easy because the virtual machine 3D support is still experimental... also VMWare Server does not support 3D yet, just Workstation (which is not free) does...
But... my video card is a crappy one and my host system is Ubuntu... I would like to try running 3D on a Windows machine using VirtualBox... I will be doing this very soon...

Which game should we try?

Which game should we try first? I would say quake... if Arena works (even slowly) everything should be set properly :-)

Also we could try one of those s***t racing games we can buy in any mall for just 5 dollars... any idea?


Please do not say PacMan!

I realized...

I realized that VMWare and Microsoft Virtual Server are the BEST choice to install and run a virtual cluster... even Xen will work fine but... it is not well-known at the moment like the other ones I mentioned before...
VirtualBox is a good choice for a desktop environment and I think it would work much better than Virtual PC ( are you kind of suprised? :-) ) but both got a really BAD support for SCSI emulation... anyway I really do not like the HD id wich is used by VirtualBox: if you need to back up a drive you can not just copy the file but you need to unregister the disk first or use the command line otherwise two disks will be sharing the same id and nothing will work...

I just forgot...

Hi all!

just forgot... DO NOT try installing OpenFiler on VirtualPC... I did it and I would not install at all!

I would recommend VMWare or VirtualBox... I tested both!

This week end

This week end I will try building the actual cluster... I think I will try different type of virtual software (VMWare, VirtualServer, Xen, VirtualBox, ...) looking for the best options...