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Windows Installation Reference Overview

Overview

The specific versions of Windows which have been tested and are supported are:

If you are able to obtain ready-made Windows appliances/applications for your grid from CA Technologies or your service provider, you do not need to follow the instructions in this topic unless you want to create your own Windows appliances from scratch. If you are using CA Technologies supplied Windows appliances, review the Appliance Catalog Reference Guide for details concerning their operation.

If you need to create the Windows appliances/applications for your grid, CA AppLogic® provides tools which aid in the creation of these appliances and applications. The following basic Windows appliances and applications which can be created using these tools:

The Windows Server appliance is the base appliance used to create all other Windows-based appliances (and as such should be created first before any other Windows appliance, except the Windows 2008 Filer).

Notes:

Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition Caveat

While the Windows Server 2003 Standard/Enterprise/Web Editions work readily under CA AppLogic®, the Datacenter Edition is missing some required network drivers. To make these drivers available during the installation process it is necessary to create a small NTFS volume, store the required drivers on it, and make this volume available as one of the optional volumes in the iso2class utility (for example iso_volume3):

Before attempting to create an appliance using the Windows Datacenter edition, you must create a CA AppLogic® Windows filer based on either the Standard or Enterprise Editions (the Standard edition is recommended for the filer). Follow the instructions in the subsequent sections to create your Windows filer. This will be needed to create a Windows NTFS driver disk.

To create the network driver disk

  1. Create a new NTFS global volume and manage the volume using the vol manage command. Be sure to enable the external network access (see the vol manage command help on how to do this). Below is an example for creating and managing the volume: 
    volume create _GLOBAL:driver_disk size=50M fs=ntfs 
volume manage _GLOBAL:driver_disk --rw ip=application_public_IP netmask=grid_netmask gateway=grid_gateway dns1=grid_dns_server IP
  2. From applications tab, access the Login (Web) shell of the Filer invoked ‘sys_filer__global-driver_disk’, this will open the Volume Browser.
  3. Download the suitable networking drivers for the virtualized NICs that are present in a Windows appliance:
    1. Open IE and visit http://www.realtek.com.
    2. Download the RTL810X/RTL8130/ RTL8139(A/B/C/D) PCI Series Drivers for WinXP (WinServer 2003) onto a FTP server or a remote machine where the volume browser is opened.
    3. Navigate to the volume and upload the drivers from the FTP or the remote machine which were downloaded in point (b).
  4. Close the graphic console of the filer and exit from the vol manage shell.
  5. Proceed with building Windows appliances based on the DataCenter edition. You must provide the newly created driver disk as one of the optional volumes with the iso2class utility.
  6. After the OS installation is complete, you must make the driver disk visible in Windows (it usually does not appear in the explorer by default):
    1. Open My Computer
    2. Check to see if the driver disk has appeared in the list of disk drives in the appliance. If not:
      • Open Start >Administrative Tools >Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management.
      • Right-click the driver disk ntfs volume, select Change Drive Letter and Paths and click add driver letter and path.
      • After assigning an appropriate letter (that is, E:), go to drive E:
    3. Unzip the Realtek drivers
  7. Proceed with installing the Realtek drivers. If Windows automatically prompts for the network drivers (this needs to be done for all network devices in the appliance):
    1. Select No, not this time and click Next
    2. Select Install from a list or specific location (Advanced) and click Next.
    3. Select Don't search. I will choose the driver to install and click Next.
    4. Scroll down the list for Common Hardware Types, select Network Adapters and click Next.
    5. Click Have Disk.
    6. Click Browse and select E:\Driver_XP_5699_0828\Driver_XP_5699_0828\Netrlx.inf and click Open (assuming the driver disk is drive E:)
    7. Click OK. This should show a list of Network Adapters.
    8. Select Realtek RTL8139/810X Family Fast Ethernet NIC and click Next.
    9. Click Yes for the Update Driver Warning.
    10. Click Finish.
  8. If Windows does not automatically prompt for the network drivers, perform the following:
    1. Right-click My Computer, go to the Hardware tab and click on the Device Manager.
    2. Expand Other Devices if it is not already expanded and for each Ethernet Controller device listed perform the following:
      • Right-click Ethernet Controller and select Update Driver.
      • Repeat all steps under step #7 above.
Windows PV Drivers

The Halsign TurboGate PV drivers are distributed with CA AppLogic® (accessible through the appliance's default interface just like the Windows MSI's used to create Windows appliances). These drivers are used to enhance the disk and network I/O performance of a Windows appliance running on CA AppLogic®. These drivers work with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008

The following table shows example performance measurements with and without these drivers:

Drivers

Disk Read

Disk Write

Network TCP

Network UDP

No PV drivers

18 MB/sec

11 MB/sec

40 Mb/sec

68 Mb/sec

Halsign Turbogate PV drivers

41 MB/sec

25 MB/sec

690 Mb/sec

770 Mb/sec

Note: The performance numbers may vary depending upon the hardware that is used in the grid.

Halsign TurboGate PV Drivers

CA Technologies has tested the following PV driver versions:

Follow the instructions below for obtaining/installing these PV drivers in your Windows appliances. Be sure to install the PV drivers after the APK is installed.

To install the Halsign TurboGate PV drivers in your Windows appliance

  1. Start your application that contains the Windows appliance where you want to install the drivers.
  2. Open the graphical console to your Windows appliance.
  3. This Halsign Turbogate self-executing installer can be downloaded from the grid controller through the default interface of the appliance.
  4. Verify that you know the Administrator password. Restart the Windows appliance with the comp restart --debug CA AppLogic® command.
  5. After the Windows appliance reboots, log in through the graphical console. The hardware wizard automatically detects all of the network devices that use the newly installed PV drivers (no user interaction is required). After this detection completes, restart the appliance again without the --debug option to verify it works properly.

If you later add a new terminal to the appliance, the user may have to complete the Found New Hardware Wizard on the next boot of the appliance.

If you have an existing Windows appliance which uses an older version of the TurboGate PV drivers, and you want to upgrade to a newer version of these PV drivers, the following topic provides step-by-step instructions:

WIN03y and WIN08y: Windows Server Appliance - iso2class

WIN03y is created using the iso2class utility that CA AppLogic® provides. This command-line utilty can create a singleton class using an OS installed from an ISO image. iso2class creates and starts a CA AppLogic® application which is used to install an operating system from an ISO image onto a volume. This application is generated from a template and contains a singleton named iso2class. The boot volume of the singleton is an ISO image. A second volume on the singleton is the target for the OS install.

The end result of using this new interactive utility is a singleton with a single volume which contains the installed OS. This singleton can be moved into a catalog and used as the basis for creating new appliance classes. Detailed iso2class documentation can be found in the Command Line Shell Reference Guide. iso2class makes it extremely easy to create new OS distros in CA AppLogic®.

The ISO image used for the OS install can come from 3 locations:

Note: During OS installation, the singleton reboots. When this happens, an open graphical console no longer responds. Simply close the console and open it again from the CA AppLogic® GUI to obtain the console of the newly booting image.

Detailed instructions for creating WIN03y and WIN08y using iso2class are here:

Other Windows appliances and applications: IIS, SQL8y, VDS, and WISA

Once you have created the Windows server appliance WIN03y, you can create other Windows based appliances and applications. Detailed instructions are provided below:

Upgrading Windows MSI's

If you have built a Windows appliance and want at some point to install a newer version of the MSI used to create that appliance, thereby updating the Windows APK and any appliance specific scripts contained in the MSI, the following topic provides step-by-step instructions for doing this: