VMWare Release Team Meeting
April 11, 2008
Attendance:
Alex Prengel
Chris Murphy
Heather Anne Harrison
Patrick McNeal
Deb Bowser
Alex Kozlov
Bill Cattey
Action Items:
*Deb will contact Mark, Theresa, and Ron to get a perpetual student download.
*Patrick will start a Phase 2 recommendation page.
Documentation
Much of the documentation is available. Heather requests that everyone review the Guest OS installation documentation as things are solidifying. Please let Heather know if things are missing or of other feedback.
The known issues will stay in the Wiki as a dynamic document. Updates will happen there and eventually move to Hermes.
Networking documentation is needed. Good news is that Lee Ridgeway will be able to assist with the networking documentation.
Testing
Student XP issue is still unknown. Deb will take an action item to contact Mark, Theresa, and Ron to get a perpetual student download.
Alex suggested we document what happens when a 64 bit Guest is installed in a 32 bit Host. Heather indicated that information is in the installation docs but including the information would be helpful.
Patrick indicated that the Mac client seems to work properly with all of the available Guests.
Team agrees that Athena virtual machines are out of scope for Phase 1. We should include a note that we are working on these guest OS installations.
Parking Lot Item: Patrick was able to do a PXE installed in bridged networking.
Upgrading to 6.0.3
Auto updates don't seem to be working. Deb is contacting Terrance to get the problem escalated even though we don't yet have service packs.
Patrick brought up issues that can arise when hosting the actual download in a SWRT locker versus an OIS server. We can have faster turnaround times for making updates to the installer if the files are locally controlled.
VMWare Support Packs
Issues to raise to VMWare?
Bill brought up the repetitive dialog boxes asking for permission. This is in the known issues list.
Known Issues
Problems with time synch still occurring for some folks. Deb is still experiencing the problem. She finds it on both XP and Vista guest OSes. Chris M. has not seen it with Ubuntu. Alex has seen warnings about CPU clock speeds affecting time sync. If he sees it again, he will grab a screen shot.
Timeline
Documentation timeline seems good.
An end of May release goal for Phase 1 was discussed .
What does phase 2 look like?
Much discussion. A basic XP image that has necessary software - Updates, VirusScan, Windows Defender, etc.
Chris M. suggested focusing on one specific user group - Mac OS users wanting a Windows VM. This may make it easier to see what is needed for the process.
Licensing
What does it look like when every machine has the same key?
Do we have to track each of these?
Should we include PXE in phase 2?
Virtual appliances? Should this be phase 2 or phase 3? Departmental appliance needs?
Does training need representation in phase 2?
Phase 1 - there should be a "this is what is legal to do with licensing" document. - Alex P.
Athena VM
NAT Problems with Athena VM:
Kerberos 4 Ticket Validation
Zephyr
Unknown how long NAT timeouts need to be
Athena VMs should get a lot of testing from people other than Alex P. Chris M. indicated he was going to work with this more.
General Discussion
Should warn people that it can take a while to suspend VMs. If you shut down or log out before that finishes, you can create serious problems (potentially fatal) with the VM image.
Make a general statement about what we would and would not support in regards to other virtual machines. That is, we'll only support VMWare virtual machines.