I recently purchased Veeam Backup 3.0 to back up my three VMware ESXi Free hosts. Veeam Backup is awesome and their version 3.0 is the first version to support the free ESXi version! I love the deduplication and compression and the ease of use when making backups! On March 31st, VMware released ESXi 3.5 Update 4, which added drivers for some very nice NetXtreme quad-port Gigabit Ethernet cards, which I have in two of my three VM host servers but have been unable to use until they released an updated version with built-in drivers for that hardware.

So I upgraded yesterday when Update 4 was released (I actually just did a point release update to new Update 3 firmware the night before…doh!). The new NICs work great and now I have redundant paths to the SAN! (In one case I now have more than one NIC in the whole box that was doing SAN and LAN just on VLANs, so it’s quite nice to have multiple NICs available now!)

I was going through and upgrading VMware Tools on all of my virtual machines (the new release adds some driver support for enhanced NICs to Server 2003 and a few other minor things). One of my Linux CactiEZ VMs was being a bit picky with the yum package I was trying to install so after some troubleshooting I figured I’d restore a virtual machine from Veeam Backup (granted not 3.0.1 which I believe is out, I have the original 3.0 release installed right now) to get an earlier state and see if it helped to start fresh (my other thought was there was a repository issue but my older CactiEZ 0.4 yum was working just fine, it was my CactiEZ 0.6 box I recently set up that was having issues (it runs CentOS 4.7)).

But my restore fails, with an error relating to not being able to create the directory on the ESXi host to restore the virtual machine. The exact error is along the lines of:

Failure to restore item “VM Name Here” Cannot make directory ‘[datastore] VM Name Here’ on ‘ha-datacenter’. Soap fault. fault.RestrictedVersion.summaryDetail: ‘<RestrictedVersionFault xmlns=”urn:intervalvim25″ xsi:type=”RestrictedVersion”></RestrictedVersionFault>’, endpoint: “

The simpler error is in the status dialog box, “Restore error: Restore VM failed: Cannot make dir…”

I dig a little deeper and notice that the last couple of backup jobs scheduled to run overnight for some virtual machines have all failed completely. Nothing updated, and when I force a backup to start now it fails quickly for all VMs with an error along these lines:

Releasing VM files

CreateSnapshot failed, vmRef 224, timeout 1800000, snName “VEEAM BACKUP TEMPORARY SNAPSHOT”, snDescription “Please do not delete this snapshot. It is being used by Veeam Backup.”, memory False, quiesce True

fault.RestrictedVersion.summary

So, I’ve submitted a support ticket. Fortunately, right now I have nothing urgent that needs to be restored (CactiEZ is more of a plaything right now, at least my new 0.6 install), although obviously not keeping backups up to date is not a good thing.

I guess I’ve been running ESXi without Veeam (Veeam’s only been running for…maybe a month?) for long enough that I wasn’t considering backups when I did my ESXi upgrades, so I’ll admit first-day upgrading is jumping the gun. But Veeam is a VMware partner as far as I know, and I don’t know why they haven’t been able to work with VMware around this release to verify that their software works…it’s not like this is ESXi 4, it’s just an Update release of 3.5. At least an announcement of the incompatibility with a warning about upgrading sent to customers would have been nice, although it’s not something that was promised or anything.

I’ll keep this updated (here or in the comments) as the “story” progresses! Tomorrow I will also look into making sure I’m on the very latest point release of Veeam Backup to see if that makes a difference…just don’t have the energy left tonight to do anything else, I was up until 5:30 am last night doing a P2V of our nursery checkin system (long but successful!).

One of my goals for the new system is redundancy. If something goes down, I’d really like a second system around to stay up and running, in particular when using virtualization it does create bigger single points of failure (one phyical server going down takes down multiple virtual servers), which is one of its biggest weaknesses. This can be mitigated by using shared storage (hence the SAN) and multiple servers that can take on the virtual machines the “down” physical machine can’t run temporarily, even if it runs a bit slow from the additional load (even better if your secondary server is not heavily loaded!).

Having the R805 would be great, but my next-best server is a Dell PowerEdge 1800 that’s three years old, with a single Xeon 3.0GHz processor and 6GB of RAM. It’s a very nice server, but it wouldn’t be able to shoulder a load the R805 could handle easily so it would only be able to run absolutely critical machines. Additionally, the Xeon processor is too old to support Intel’s VT (Virtualization Technology) extensions that make running a virtual server hypervisor easier, and allows 64-bit guest operating machines to run. If we make the move to Exchange 2007, there would be no backup server for it to move to, and it would be one of our most critical servers!

VMware’s ESXi hypervisor runs just fine on the PowerEdge 1800 (as long as you don’t need 64-bit guests); I have it running now with a couple of VMs and it’s barely breaking a sweat. It will work even better on the nice “new” PowerEdge 1950’s, but the other thing that having VT-capable processors will help me with hypervisor selection options. If I don’t end up running the now-free VMware ESXi, which I’ve tried and like but keeps you from using some of the really cool features unless you buy their Virtual Infrastructure/Virtual Center packages (these easily get into the same price as the hardware for both servers I bought!). Microsoft’s new Hyper-V virtualization platform (separate entirely from the old Microsoft Virtual Server product) is capable of running only on processors supporting VT, and now I’ll have two of them, the magic redundant number. It does preclude using the PowerEdge 1800 as an third backup, but down the road it will offer some of the similar moving of “live, running” virtual machines from host to host, and Microsoft is releasing their Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) soon as well for management, which will be siginificantly more cost-effective for us given charity pricing than VMware’s Virtual Center. But some of this stuff isn’t going to be here right away, and VMware’s solutions aren’t necessarily lacking anything we desperately need. What’s the answer? For now, it’s keep researching, maybe even try both when the servers arrive, and see which is the best fit for us. Microsoft certainly wants to take over the market and they’ve been successful in other areas in doing so after entering late, but it’s way too early to tell in this case, in my uneducated opinion! I do think VMware will be around for a while, and is not a poor choice from a longevity perspective yet.

Licensing is the only “kicker” with my new servers. Microsoft licenses (that link has a cool calculator, but it gives retail and not charity prices!) their Microsoft Server Datacenter software per socket (physical processor) in each server. So if you have a dual-processor system, you buy two licenses. The R805 is a dual-processor system, but the 1950s are as well, and I just doubled my processor count and therefore licensing cost! That’s OK, I’m likely going to, for now, use the Datacenter license from the PE 1800 for one processor in one of the new servers and use a Server Standard license on the PE 1800 for now that I’ll be freeing up by virtualizing to pre-licensed VMs. This will just add around $500 to the cost of getting a second server, making the hardware and licensing increases in going from one to two servers come in right at $800. That’s not bad for a second server, doubling your quad-core processing power and RAM as a consequence!

Because these servers were in the Dell Outlet, where items in your cart last only 15 minutes unless you modify them, the server have now been purchased and are estimated to ship on October 1st. I’m still waiting to pull the trigger on the MD3000i SAN and I’m still researching backups (which just had its budget cut a bit with this server swap!). I did hear from my Zones rep that October 1st begins Microsoft’s new fiscal year, and they will be announcing any pricing changes at that time. Pricing on Datacenter could go up, or stay the same (well, it could go down but how likely is that? Exactly!). Since I have the servers for sure now, I may go ahead and grab the Datacenter licensing before the end of the month for that reason if I can (my boss is out of town at the moment; he approved the server purchase earlier waiting to change airplanes at an airport in the Bahamas on a business trip. No, he called me first for some technical assistance, I didn’t bug him until I had him on the phone already. Yes, I should have asked if he needed an assistant for his business trip :-)

So, one more step completed in the process, many remaining. Also, I’m possibly going to need (or want very much to have) a cheap or free server rack that I can pick up locally. Just saying, if you happen to be throwing one away and are nearby :-)

• A Dell PowerVault MD3000i iSCSI SAN (with 10-15 near-line SAS 1TB drives and dual controllers)
• At least one new server (likely a Dell PowerEdge R805 with dual quad-core AMD processors)
• Microsoft Server Datacenter licensing for the same
• An iSCSI Ethernet switch
• Battery backups for server and SAN
• Backup software and some drives for backup
• A rack for the server room (maybe. If I can find a free or dirt cheap used one, locally)

Unfortunately, my budget for all of this as assigned is going to be a bit of a tight fit to squeeze the last few bits in and I’m still trying to figure out the best and most cost-effective way to do this. I’m also struggling a bit with which backup software to use. The server we were using to mirror our data is now dead, and although we have a RAID 5 array that is nowhere near the level of protection we need to have, but I am starting from scratch as far as which data backup software to buy. I have no tapes nor the budget for a tape drive, but I do have some PATA hard drive arrays that are only half-full that are SCSI-attached and will probably work in tandem with an existing server to become my disk-based backup server. Figuring out how to do offsite backup, within the same budget, is high on my todo list :-)

My budget for all this is actually less than the retail price of just the server and SAN. Fortunately, I rarely pay retail and this is certainly no exception! The plan, if isn’t obvious, is to virtualize. I’ve already been doing virtualization for a while to some extent. I used Microsoft Virtual Server a long time ago but switched to VMware Server product when it was released for free. I’m currently running four virtual Windows machines and a virtual Linux machine for our helpdesk software. Recently, since VMware’s ESXi became available for free, I’ve started running it on our newest server, a 3-year-old Dell PowerEdge 1800 Xeon 3.0GHz system with 6GB RAM. It runs very well and I love the management interface, even just using the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client it comes with (since we aren’t paying for Virtual Infrastructure 3, or VI3 as it’s known!).

The goal of the new system will be to move virtual machines and file shares onto the MD3000i SAN. The Dell R805 server will be the primary virtual machine host, and although my plan was to use VMware ESXi, a good friend and mentor has recommended I examine Microsoft’s new Hyper-V virtualization platform as a strong contender, especially since Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 is coming and Live Motion will be available in the future, something that VMware does (simliarly, at least) with VMotion only for a high licensing cost. I’m open to either virtualization solution at this point, but here’s my main problem: Hyper-V will only run on procesors that support the new virtualization extensions. Right now, that’s zero of our servers. The R805 will support them of course, but the PowerEdge 1800, our only server with even a 64-bit processor, is too old to have the extensions and thus cannot run Hyper-V or 64-bit guests (although it runs ESXi just fine right now). My plan was to use the PE1800 as a backup server to run critical systems as needed if the R805 was ever down. With Hyper-V, this is no longer an option (and really, with the PE1800 and ESXi I still can’t run any 64-bit guests, so Exchange 2007 is out), and my concern is being left without a secondary server should the primary fail.

So, I’m left trying to fit a second server of some sort, new enough to have virtualization extensions but cheap enough to fit into my already packed budget. Suggestions, and of course donations, are welcome :-) I have been keeping an eye on the Dell Outlet but that is mostly pointless until I have the money to spend same-day when something shows up in stock.

At the moment I’m likely going to get a couple of refurbished UPSs from RefurbUPS for battery backup. However, I will be pursuing a contact or two who may be able to help with this as well.

The final area I’m still investigating still is data backups. There are a plethora of disk-to-disk backup options, and obviously I’m limited by price. I’m not going to use Symantec’s BackupExec for various reasons. The options I am considering so far consist of the following:

• Amanda (Enterprise for Exchange, open source if it will mix with Enterprise)
• Righeous Software’s Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
• Backup Assist
• CommVault (the Small Business version available only through resellers such as Dell)
• Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM)

CommVault is the solution that Jason Powell and his team use at Granger Community Church. They like it and it allows for Exchange restore down to the individual message if necessary without restoring the entire data store. The other options I have done varying levels of research on; enough to know they are still a contender on both price and features but not enough to provide an in-depth comparison summary. I am also still working how exactly how many virtual machines I will be running, and how many need to run a backup agent (some things can just be backed up with scripted backups to a file server where the data can be backed up along with everything else on that server, so I don’t necessarily have to have a backup agent for every VM).

The funding will be available most likely in the next couple of weeks or so to go ahead and make these purchases. If I can hold off on some of the backup questions, I may try to wait until after the upcoming Seacoast Fall Church IT Roundtable so I have more time to bounce ideas off of the smart guys there!

This is an overview and of course is not the only research, thinking, and questioning I’ve done about this solution! So feel free to comment and suggest away; I’m just saying there’s a possibility I’ve considered your suggestion and if so, I’ll note it. More often than not though, my thinking is challenged here in the comments, so please delight me with your insights, they are much appreciated :-)

I’m going to have to work on getting a server available to play with this at Lakeview, but it came at a great time for the Indiana District Assemblies of God office where I work one day per week: I had a server that I was about to transition into a role as a virtual server host and ESXi was released freely at just the right time to try it out! My server is a ProLiant DL580 G2 model, which isn’t on the “officially supported” HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) for ESXi, but is for the full ESX. Worth a try; I’m not planning on buying support anyway.

After registering, downloading the ISO image file, burning it to a CD, and booting the CD on the target server, the installation process completed without a hitch. It was so quick and easy, there’s no point in describing the process in detail! If you can’t make it install on supported hardware, you shouldn’t be using servers anyway :-) (You can find how-to guides online easily enough if you do need one, and I will mention that you need to change the BIOS on the DL580 G2 to indicate that the supported OS is “Linux” before installing.)

After installing, the server boots and you get a screen that you can’t actually use to do much. It tells you your IP address (if it obtained one using DHCP, which mine did) and lets you set a root password (which I recommend). Then, you need to visit the IP address of the server from a client machine on the network. This page gives you a download link to install the VMware Infrastructure Client, which you’ll need to actually setup and manage ESXi. Connect with the Client to the IP of the server using the username root (and either a blank password or the one you set earlier if you changed it–you did change it, right?).

I’m using an onboard RAID controller with SCSI storage rather than a SAN (I’ve been told ESXi does not support IDE disks but does work with SATA drives if you need it to), so I didn’t need to set up any iSCSI targets or anything like that, although that appears to be very easy if you’re fortunate enough to have a SAN.

One thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need the free VMware Converter if you want to convert Virtual Machines from a VMware Server installation to your ESXi box. It’s a rather simple process I haven’t really gone through in production yet so I won’t say more, but you can’t just copy the files over and run them.

So far I’m only running a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/Perl-or-PHP-or-Python) appliance from VirtualAppliances.net, which I absolutely love when I need a quick webserver! Installing this from the Virtual Infrastructure Client is very, very easy. File menu->Virtual Appliance->Import. I used the Import from URL function, and used this VirtualAppliances address to the .ovf file needed to install the appliance. Confirm and wait, it has to download the disks from the internet and transmit them to the ESXi server!

I’m using the LAMP server to run the HelpSpot helpdesk application. Since I had this running in a VMware Server appliance already, I simply used the “scp” command to transmit the web files from the existing appliance to the new one, and moved the MySQL database dump over as well. I logged in as root to the appliance and used “aptitude update” and then was able to use “apt-get install php5-imap” and “apt-get install php5-tidy” which are required or recommended for HelpSpot, and I used the web-based configuration to turn on the Zend engine in the Apache configuration, which HelpSpot requires. It popped up and took off like I’d never moved it! I also copied over the cron entries needed to execute the regular email checks that Helpspot does. Note that I’m leaving off a few steps involving DNS changes and firewall modifications because I gave it a new IP address, but basically the move was very easy and straightforward.

Then I ran into trouble, because I like to experiment :-) In the VMware Infrastructure Client, I right-clicked the LAMP VM and told it to “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools” on the VM (it said the Toold were out of date…wouldn’t want that now, would we?). I used the Automatic option with no Advanced Options. Everything seemed to complete successfully, and I rebooted the appliance. Oops, no network! The eth0 network interface was nowhere to be found! (Using “ifdown eth0” and then “ifup eth0” normally disables and re-enables the Ethernet interface, in case you didn’t know (I didn’t, until recently, thanks to #citrt!), but in this case only the localhost “lo” interface showed up at all.) This could be a problem, since the whole point is to be a “networK” server! I tried asking around in the #citrt Church IT Roundtable channel on IRC, where usually someone knows what to do, but I didn’t get much help on this issue from the folks currently in there when I asked. Time for Google! Without too much effort I’m pointed in the right direction, to this forum thread on the Ubuntu Forums (The VA LAMP appliance is based on Debian linux). User “modifiedmind” had the same problem as the original poster, and then found the solution and posted it later…thanks! I couldn’t quite find what to enter as the argument to the modprobe command, but I managed to track it down and this is what I had to do:

1. Edit the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file on the appliance and delete the last two lines (the one starting “1. PCI device…” and the one beneath it, starting with “SUBSYSTEM==”net”…” (I like using the nano text editor because I’ve never spent the time to learn vi or emacs, so I did an “apt-get install nano” first; make sure to use the -w argument to nano so it doesn’t line-wrap for you, like “nano -w /filename“. Or use whatever text editor you’re comfortable with!)
2. Run this command: /etc/init.d/udev restart
3. Run this command: modprobe -r pcnet32
4. Run this command: modprobe pcnet32
5. Run this command: ifdown eth0
6. Run this command: ifup eth0

That’s it. Back to working order! So far I’m very happy with ESXi and I’m going to do everything I can to use it everywhere possible :-) It also has the capability of adding the higher-end features (HA, VMotion, VirtualCenter Manager) just like you can with ESX, if you’re willing to pay for them. I’ve never used them, this is my first ESX/ESXi experience ever, so I figure I’ll be happy without them as long as I don’t use them to see what I’m missing! The biggest thing that ESXi doesn’t have that the “full” ESX has is a “service console” that lets you control the machine locally. I’ve heard that many people have had great success running ESXi on even non-supported hardware, and it should at least run on anything that ESX will run on without a problem (just don’t try to pay for support!).

So I am switching all of my domains (mostly mine and those of some friends, but I have hosted a Lakeview website on this server for over a year as well) over to a shared account on DreamHost, which is inexpensive and allows for unlimited domains and more disk space and bandwidth than my dedicated server, should I need it. They also offer a cool new service called DreamHost Private Servers, which lets you move from a shared server to a server with dedicated resources (CPU and RAM) that can not only spike above your guaranteed minimums as the server has capacity, but will also let you reconfigure (and pay more for) more resources incrementally at any time for that Private Server, with the change taking place in minutes. You can choose from regular and MySQL Private Servers, or both (they split out MySQL servers onto different machines than the web hosting files on all accounts). Each Private Server starts at only $15/mo for 150MHz processor and 150MB  memory guaranteed resources, and goes up from there depending on how many resources you want (you are only charged for your resource usage at each setting for the time you are at that setting).

I am in the process of moving the hosting for all of my domain names to my DreamHost account, and the process is going smoothly. However, there is a lot of useful information on the dedicated server that I’d like to keep for posterity, preferably in an accessible format and not just an archive file. It doesn’t have to be on the internet, but having it running as a virtual machine on my local computer would rock! My main limitation in converting the machine to a virtual server is that I can’t reboot it into a special CD or something, since it needs to remain running and accessible to me remotely at all times via SSH. The hard drive on the dedicated server is 60GB, but only 20GB of that is used, so it will take a while to move everything but it shouldn’t be too bad.

I have done a little bit of research on moving a Linux machine into a virtual machine, and have found interesting articles here (especially in the comments as far as doing a hot-copy), and here. I haven’t done the research to decide for sure, but I like the idea of installing the same or similar Linux distribution on a virtual machine and using rsync to copy the changed files from the physical server. This would likely reduce the amount of data transfer by an order of magnitude. Then I still have to determine all the fun details of how to get the virtualized server to recognize the new hardware properly and get all of those tweaks done, which is harder to find information on due to the differences between specific Linux distributions.

My goal is to complete this as well as the transfer of all my remaining domains over to my DreamHost account by the end of this month so I am not billed for the dedicated server next month. We’ll see how that goes. If you have any bright ideas (especially if you’re a Linux guru), I’m certainly open to suggestions and recommendations!

Disclosure: The link to DreamHost above is an affiliate link. If you sign up through that link without using a promo code, I get the referral credit, which I would of course appreciate but is not required. You can visit www.dreamhost.com directly yourself. Or you can get $50 off an account and give me the credit and some of the referral amount by using promo code SZP50OFF, which is a better deal for both of us :-)

To the (sparse) details already: PaulDotCom has an article discussing a program that runs on a VMware virtual machine, and in about a minute crashes the machine and then runs a program on the host machine. Whether this was an ESX Server or a VMware Server install is not clear, and neither are most of the other details. It does seem that running VMware Tools on the virtual server might be the attack vector and you would be safe if not running them, but again, the details are sketchy. Cutaway also has some commentary on the new security hole. Originally via Martin McKeay’s blog.

I also updated the HelpSpot LAMP VirtualAppliance to the newest version (1.0.131 is now based on Ubuntu Server and allows you to install any Ubuntu module!) to fix the issue I had with DNS resolution, which I haven’t run into on this new version; outbound DNS works just fine now, and the PHP IMAP module installs! (As yet untested, however.) But hey, that was fun, and you’re supposed to have fun on vacation, right? At least I did it from a cottage overlooking the ocean in Maine :-) And there were minimal interruptions from the office the entire time (what there was I instigated by checking my email :-) and I returned to no emergencies or exceptionally urgent or unexpected requests. All-in-all a very good vacation! I could’ve used a little less time in the car (1300 miles in the last three days and that was just the return journey), but I’m not complaining (too loudly ;-)

Anyway, I’m back! And now you know why my posts have been sparse and not full of detailed technical info. Truthfully, I’m actually running low on detailed technical post ideas for the moment (and I do have some catch-up to take care of along with some personal stuff, which is why I’m posting this today even though I returned to work on Tuesday), but I’m sure that won’t last long. Stay tuned! I have a post coming this afternoon about a power adapter mystery/adventure that just happened, in fact…

However, I want to host HelpSpot internally if we select it, because internet outages are one thing I want people to be able to report and track. If it’s externally hosted, how can they access it to report an outage? They can’t :-) I could install it on a Windows box, but although my desktop is set up as an Apache and MySQL server already for testing, I want a more permanent option (there is a HelpSpot Windows installer available, which is very nice if I was going that route). And I’d rather not put it on any existing production servers, or pay for another OS license of any sort. Sounds like a good task for a virtual machine and Linux!

I’ve been eying VirtualAppliances.net ever since I found them on the VMware Virtual Appliances directory months ago, but until now haven’t needed them and haven’t had the time to play. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity for testing their LAMP Server. I downloaded their VMware image, version 1.0.110, and loaded it on my new VMware Server installation (recently switched over from Microsoft Virtual Server, the only free one at the time I set it up). Setup worked great, no issues until I started to run the HelpSpot installation script. It choked saying that Zend Optimizer wasn’t installed, even though it supposedly came with the LAMP Server. A quick browse through the configuration options from the LAMP Server control panel found the Enable Zend Optimizer option under the Apache HTTPD configuration page, which corrected the error. Installation continues, but warns that the PHP IMAP module is not installed (what do I care? I want to use POP3 for email anyway). I continue with the installation, complete it, log into the HotSpot control panel, and go hit Admin to set things up.

Looking good so far–until I click Mailboxes. Wrong answer. Apparently I haven’t kept up on PHP (I’m a Perl guy originally); the PHP IMAP module is required for IMAP, POP3, and other email functions, however misnamed. How do I get this installed? Well, that took a bit of investigation. I tried my hand at several Linux commands, some of which are available on the LAMP Server appliance, others not. PHP was hard to find, and when I discovered PEAR (CPAN clone, anyone? :-) and that it was installed, I attempted to use it but got multiple errors (about the location of PHP, and then about the configuration file which I’d modified by hand to try and fix that problem). A search of Google revealed a link to the VA forums, to a post saying that PHP IMAP was included in the most recent build. Skip to finding that in another forum entry. Download, unzip, run. Configure the appliance (turn on Zend Optimizer, re-create MySQL user and database, etc.), copy over HelpSpot files, run install script. Now we’re cooking with fire! No errors, warnings, weeping, or gnashing of teeth.

Well, almost. In either version of the LAMP Server appliance, I cannot get external name resolution to work, via the hosts file or DNS. IP-based access works fine (for ping, wget, etc.) but although DNS is configured in /etc/resolv.conf, set via our standard DHCP server that assigned an IP just fine, it just Won’t Work. This doesn’t bode well for the POP3 mail function, which I just now realized was failing to send email because I was using a hostname–which won’t resolve! Duh! Sometimes typing out a story brings the final solution. Or at least, the final problem. No, the final solution — I just tested HelpSpot using an IP address for the mail server, and it’s working! Now to set up cron to run the daily maintenance script (tasks2.php) and the every-few-minutes POP3 mail checking script (tasks.php) and I’m set! (After a false start trying to run the cron jobs using the php executable, I switched to wget calling the scripts via the URL because running PHP directly caused errors about the Zen Optimizer not being installed; it works!)

So, if I can get DNS working, things will be much better, unless the Active Directory integration add-on scripts to HelpSpot require something else that the LAMP Server doesn’t include; I haven’t made it that far yet. Until then, I’m feeling somewhat accomplished to have gotten this far given my ad-hoc knowledge of Linux with even less Gentoo experience (the distro the appliance is based on, admittedly stripped way down). Success feels good!