Year: 2007
June 20

Reclaim virtual redo disk space; VMware Converter 3.0.1

I got a small problem regarding a acceptance environment build on VMware Server (currently version 1.02) on Windows. This virtual environment with, amongst others a Oracle 10gR1 database on it, was once build with the older VMware GSX 3.21 software, but the supported (and paid for) VMware GSX version has become over time, the free downloadable VMware Server edition.

When I started, I thought it would be useful to enable the snapshot function, so if an upgrade or patch process, for database, OS or application went wrong, I would be able to reset the virtual machine to it’s starting point and try again… I noticed that after upgrading the software to VMware Server 1.01, and after a while to VMware Server 1.02, that I couldn’t disable the snapshot function anymore because the enable/disable feature was grayed out. The VMware disks had a lot of REDO files, so I wanted to reclaim this space, because the SAN where the VMware virtual disks were residing, had almost no disk space left.

Normally, if the VMware Tools are installed in a VMware machine, it is possible to shrink the disk space of the virtual disks, but this feature is only available if, amongst others, the snapshot feature is not enabled. In my case, I couldn’t disable snapshot feature because it was grayed out and not clickable anymore…

So what now?

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June 16

VirtualBox 1.4.0

There is great virtual machine software out there, VMware, XEN, etc. VMware was one of the first I also dared to use for more serious environments, like for instance development environments. Triggered by my old friend Erwin Brinkhuis, he completely switched to Linux (in his case Ubuntu), I had a look at VirtualBox. This product has, IMHO, real potential to become a VMware contender. Currently it can be used on Linux and Windows, a OSX version is in the making.

VirtualBox Vista

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June 15

“Applied Mathematics for Database Professionals” – Toon Koppelaars

On the oracle-l list of freelists.org, Toon Koppelaars announced that Lex‘ and his book project, now has finished and he also recieved his first copies via DHL. Knowing the effort and the involved people, Lex de Haan and Toon Koppelaars, I only can imagine that it is a great book (I wasn’t one of the lucky people who got a brief insight via an electronic version). 🙂

I hope I can make some time to read it during my upcoming holiday. 😉

As Toon announced it on oracle-l:

Hi All,

I understand Lex was an active contributor to this list, so I thought
this might be of interest.

As some of you know Lex and I embarked upon a joint project at the end
of 2005 to write a book entitled “Applied Mathematics for Database
Professionals” (AM4DP in short). Due to unfortunate circumstances this
project took much longer than orignally planned.

But I’m pleased to be able to inform you that Lex’ last project is now
finished: DHL delivered my copies yesterday, so it is safe to assume
that the AM4DP book is available for the general public.

To give you an impression on what this book is about, here’s a list of
the chapters:

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