Specifications

162 IBM System z Personal Development Tool: Volume 3 Additional Topics
򐂰 Linux administration can be done using the vClient virtual console or through vnc.
The vClient virtual console is convenient. Mouse usage is slightly unusual. When the
mouse pointer is in the virtual console area, it works as expected. However, you must use
the Ctrl-Alt keys to “release” the mouse pointer to work outside the virtual console window.
򐂰 Our first Linux guest and a remote Linux system were openSUSE 11.2 systems. (Note that
openSUSE is not one of the supported and tested levels for zPDT on VMWare; however, it
provided a convenient base for initial usage. We later switched this machine to SLES 11
SP2.) We sometimes used a remote Linux as a vnc viewer (using TightVNC, which was
included with both systems):
– On the virtual guest (using the vSphere vCenter client virtual console) we issued
vncserver followed by vncserver -kill :1 (or vncserver -kill :2). (Note the space
before the last operand.) We then edited ~/.vnc/xstartup to appear as follows:
#xrb ....
#xsetroot
#xterm
#twm&
/etc/x11/xinit/xinitrc &
/usr/bin/gnome &
We then issued the vncserver command again.
– On the remote Linux system we issued a vncviewer 192.168.0.50 command. This
produced a graphic window for the Linux1 system. In our case the window did not
include the full Linux1 console (as seen in the vSphere virtual console). It also
produced a pop-up window on the vSphere virtual console. At this point we were using
the vSphere virtual console for Linux1 administration and did not further debug the
minor vnc problems.
򐂰 Shutting down Linux (using the vCenter virtual console) results in a logical Power Off
situation for the virtual guest. A vClient Power On function for that guest is then needed to
boot Linux again.
򐂰 We assume you could run vCenter on multiple Windows systems, providing multiple
control points. We did not try this configuration.
򐂰 The current VMWare releases (5.1) do not support SCSI-attached tape drives.
15.2 System z zBX
Our zBX configuration is shown in Figure 15-2 on page 163. We configured four guests,
named VS1 - VS4. Two were RHEL and two were SLES. Two internal VLAN networks were
defined; these are used in a way similar to hipersockets on a System z machine. One VLAN
network was defined for external connections. The zPDT license server was on this network
and an OpenVPN server that translated internal IP addresses to external addresses.
The Linux guests were loaded starting with an iso image. This was initially read from the HCD
DVD drive.
The Linux guests were configured by (virtual console) and later managed by vnc connections
to the Linux guest.