Word to the wise: avoid Virtual Machines

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SA - 20 Jul 2004 21:38 GMT

Hi all,

I wanted to share this experience, because it has proven to be very
frustrating for me.

I was developing some sample and "proof-of-concept" applications for WSE
2.0. In order not to create a mess of services etc. on my dev machine, I
created the apps in a Virtual PC 2004 VM.

One application used Secure Conversations. However, I was getting the
strangest error once in a while, but not all the time. I tried, but could
not find any consistency in when the error would occur. I then transferred
the app in question to my main machine, where it runs flawlessly.

AFAICT, there are problems with time and timing in VMs, that caused by SCT
to expire to soon, or not at all, etc. I think I will invest in a second
computer, rather than fooling around with VMs.

Just thought I'd share this and get it of my chest :)

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Sven

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Lucien - 27 Jul 2004 20:28 GMT

I'm not aware of any such issues and I actually run VPC a lot with
secureConversation. Check if online virus checker is not running causing the
IIS process to recycle (eTrust online monitoring typically causes this issue
and SCT cache would get cleared).

> Hi all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> Just thought I'd share this and get it of my chest :)

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SA - 28 Jul 2004 21:47 GMT

Lucien:

Did you try setting the ttl for the sct to 60 seconds?

Not only this episode, but other issues lead me to believe that the
Microsoft VPC implementation does not provide good timing.

Signature

Sven

> I'm not aware of any such issues and I actually run VPC a lot with
> secureConversation. Check if online virus checker is not running causing the
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
> >
> > Just thought I'd share this and get it of my chest :)

Reply to this Message

Lucien - 29 Jul 2004 00:44 GMT

Yes that's actually the exact value I've used as default. However I did not
use this cross machine. I'll give it a try later. I did notice earlier with
VPC some clock issues occuring very quickly. So yes clock speed may not be
as stable/consistent :-(.

> Lucien:
>
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
> > >
> > > Just thought I'd share this and get it of my chest :)

Reply to this Message

Word to the wise: avoid Virtual Machines

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