Well sort off.

I handed over the virtual testing environment to the full time staff last Thursday. I didn’t intend to do it, I had actually just arranged a meeting to show one of them what I had created. Keep them in the loop so to speak. And to keep them updated on my progress.

As time went by I realised what I had left to do and what little time I had to do it. The end result of the meeting is that I have a list of things to do that helps me complete my dissertation, and I’ve handed over the virtual testing environment. I wont be going back until the very end now just to see how they are getting on.

I left that day thinking “that was unexpected – and fast”.

So I’ve now got 4 weeks to write my dissertation up. As I’ve been writting bits of it up as I go it shouldn’t be as much of a problem were I not to have written any up. But it’s still not going to be easy.

Offers to write it for me will be gratefully received.

The week before last I was finally able to purchase all the required parts needed to complete my dissertation. The VMware stuff arrived a few hours after ordering, the Redhat licenses the instant they had been purchased, and the RAM after the weekend. But surpirse surprise I am still waiting on MS to get off their butts and get the MSDN stuff sorted.

I’m still progressing, it just means that some testing environments can only last for 59 days. Oh and 2GB of RAM in my laptop is very nice, all be it temporary.

Of sorts. I’ve given a proposal for the final solution. It has been agreed by the team who will be using the final product, by my boss, and members of the SMT. All the people that is required. Now the purchasing just needs to happen.

For reasons I’m not alowed to explain on a public web site, the pruchase request for my project has now to be signed by the CEO. And like most CEO’s he is quite busy so this is taking some time.

When I first started this project it is one thing that I did not think about and so plan in some time for. It’s now been 3 weeks in which I would have liked to progress and have atleast 2 people using the solution.

Still I guess that’s life and it’s some thing that I’ve learnt for future projects.

So maybe I lied when I said that I would blogging a bit more now that I was sorted in my new house.

Since then I have been either busy finishing up the last few tasks around the house, or bored at work. (Just kidding, been equally busy there too.) The table for my computer has now been aquired, I’ve repainted my room, and added in an extra electrical point at the top of the stairs for the phone.

Under the stairs has been completly cleaned out. You would not believe the amount of junk that the previous people left under there, certainly enough to fill 4 bin bags full. In the space that was let I have put my servers, I’ll post more about these at a later date but those that know me will not be surprised to lean that there is more than one pc.

At work I’ve completed my research into the virtual machine products available. In the end I suggested VMware Workstation. The reasons were simple – for more advanced use it’s better and provides more features. And the testers need the more advanced features. I gave my results in a presentation to the testers, some members of my team and senior staff.

Today (as in 30 minutes time) I meet with the senior staff to decide if they will accept my proposal, accept with changes, or reject it. My team boss is unable to make the meeting, but I’ve spoken to him and from the work he has seen me do and what I have sent him he is happy to give my proposal the backing. The presentation went well and I got some good vibes back from people so I don’t think I’ll have a problem, but I’m not going to put any money on it either.

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Edit: I think I’ve passed my exams for this year. The university has messed up and so sent them to my old address so I don’t know the individual scores, but the overall score has been posted on the wall and that indicates I’ve passed. Should know in a few days.

No update in the past few weeks because I’ve been doing exams, and so haven’t been doing any work towards my dissertation. But since my first time back after the exams was at the start of the month, it’s time for a review.

1. Project Scope – received and expanded to include what will be included and what wont be included in this project
2. Timeline – all tasks have been entered into the timeline and time periods put against them
3. Investigate testing & testing environments – research done, just needs writting up.
4. Other company testing environments – questionnaire done, sending out soon.
5. Meeting with testers – questionnaire completed and replies analysed. Goood discussions about how things will work.
6. Review of virtual machine products – still continuing

So as you can see I have done quite a bit, but I’ve also got quite a bit to crack on with.

I previously mentioned Vmware ACE, but not to any great detail.

VMware ACE is a product that you use to wrap virtual machines into, along with various permission. It then bundles this into an installer which you can pass to those that need it. Permissions include network policy, user policy, time outs (after which you can’t use it) and device control. It’s great for creating a setup that you want to pass out, but still keep control.

Imagine a demo of a product that needs access to your database over the internet. Easy. Just set the network policy to only connect to your database server, set the expiry date and add a password protected user. Then post on your web site. Customers can download and install it, then because of the network policy it can only talk to your server, it will time out after a certain time, and only customers can use it. It’s much harder to use the virtual machine to attack you because of the network policy, the general public can’t use it, and custemers can have a real trial of your latest killer application – but not get it for life for free!

I hope you can see the advantages of doing this. But due to the nature and intention of the product it has its limits. The biggest draw back for me is the lack of networking flexibilty. The point of this product though is not to wrap all the great features and as such shouldn’t be seen as a minus point when looking at it, but instead you must look at how you are going to use it.

For this reason I have decided not to use VMware ACE, but to remove it from my list of products that I will be recommending and using in my dissertation. It has great potential for the future use and it’s certainly one that I will be keeping in the back of my mind.

But for now it’s between VMware Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC.

Having now had a good look that the questionnaire results in more detail I can say that VMware is only just ahead of Microsoft for two reasons.

1. Linux Support
2. Experience and age of product

The meeting with the testers about the questionnaire went ahead on Tuesday. It lasted about 20 mins and I think both sides got some thing from it.

I started with a quick run down of what I’m doing to make sure that we were saying the same thing, then I moved onto looking at the questionnaire with them. This was a very good exercise as I was able to get a better understanding of what they actually do and how they actually test. My first surprise was that they don’t really test in as many operating systems as I thought, generally only XP with a splattering of 2000.

Besides getting some information from them about what they do and what I was going to do for them, I also had to get somebody to test the new environment. One member of the team volunteered which makes life much easier all round.

The results have been put into a spreadsheet but I now need to make sense of them, not sure how I’ll do that just yet but I’ll look at past analysis that I’ve done on questionnaires and see if I can get any ideas from that.

VMware produce a product that they call VMware ACE, you can visit their web site for more details but the main point of this product is to package environments into an installer. Apart from the time helping to install a few servers the rest of the afternoon was spent downloading, installing and using it. Not sure if I’ll suggest it in this context as you loose quite a bit of flexibility, but it’s still a good product.

So I sent the questionnaire out yesterday, along with the request to meet those that recieved it and chat with them. Some people would rather the whole group just talked to me, the others just didn’t seem to care. So in a group it is.

I then spent the rest of the day trying to get e-mail addresses for different companies to send the questionnaire to. You wouldn’t believe how many companies don’t want you to contact them, or at least make it very hard for you to do. What happens if you want to become a new customer but can’t contact them?

Today was spent reading some stuff for about an hour, then meetings until lunch. The afternoon was spent typing stuff up and adding more detail as I went though them. And finally having my laptop stolen off me Apparently there are more needy people then me

One of the meetings was a follow on with my first project plan. Having filled in the sheets from the first meeting I needed some feedback on the finer points and details on filling them in. I think I had the main points, and the rest I could have only known about with experience and from looking at things from a different perspective.

The last 15 minutes was a quick demo of how I could fit the plan I had so far into MS Project. (Yes I know it’s a MS product, but where I work is turning into a MS shop) The hard part for me is working out which bits of Project to use and which not to use. First I have to find them or at least know they exist. Just hope I can produce some thing that is of some use.

Tomorrow I’ll try and send some of those questionnairs to the different companies, but it depends of how much I can be bothered (so no changes there!)

So the questionaire is still in the creation. Another member of the team that I’m in at work has looked over it and come up good suggestions which I included, and then passed back for another review. And recieved more suggestion.

I’ve had a look over the changes and they mostly make sense, I’ll certainly be including them where I can. Once that’s done I’ve a list of people that I would like to send it to so I’ll crack on with that.

I also had a meeting with the same guy to find out what sort of things they want to run inside the virtual machines. I have to admit that I’m a little disapointed that they only want to run a few simple things inside the virtual machines. I think they are missing out on a huge part of what it’s all about. But on the up side it makes it much easier for me to create the environment.

The other good think to come from that meeting was the that they liked the idea of creating containers that VMware’s ACE product can create. The idea is that you create a virtual machine using one of the other virtual machines products developed by VMware, then you attach these to a project and after setting up some rules, permissions and network settings you package the lot. The user then installs the package and that it, no faffing with the creation virtual machine technologies on each persons pc. Just give it to them, install and away you go.

Powerfull stuff.