Christopher J. Umina

Got a new storage server, it’s a PE2900 from Dell. Installed FreeBSD 7.2 on it, rebuilt the kernel with all the updates and included:

options iscsi_initiator

connected to the iSCSI target across the LAN, then I used:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/testiscsi/file.out bs=65536

to test the speeds after mounting it. I observed horrific speeds (in the range of 300-500KB/s).

To make a long story short, I discovered that using the extra Intel NIC I put in the system’s PCI slots fixed the problem. So I tried to upgrade firmware, but they all seem to be up to date. Looks like I’ll be disabling them in the BIOS and ordering some more Intel cards.

Damn Dell for putting those crappy Broadcoms in there.

I hate it. I didn’t buy it, someone else did and I got stuck “using” it, then selling it.

It came preconfigured with a bunch of 300GB SAS 15K RPM drives in it for use with iSCSI. To me that makes no sense. What’s the point of the HUGELY fast drives in something that at MOST will be reading/writing at 400MB/s? Worthless design.

So I decided to change out the SAS drives for some (much) larger SATA ones, but figured I’d insert them when/if I order them. I remove the disks that came in it (which oddly had threadlock on every screw) then boot it, only to find it no longer knows its serial number.

It seems the system configuration is stored on the disks. The system cannot be upgraded. So, if it doesn’t support a huge amount of storage and it can’t possibly use the speed of the array inside, what’s the point of owning it? As I understand they go for around $7-10K configured this way.

A SAN that’s expandable and usable for WAY more storage is probably not too far out of that price range. If you bought one of these, you’ll be mad at yourself for it. If you’re going to buy one of these after reading this, I’ll be mad at you.

Here’s my horrible looking summer schedule. I can’t wait for August 15th.

Seriously? History of Folk Music?!?!

One more semester after this!!!

http://www.easymac.org/~uminac/schedule.pdf

In a recent battle at work I put a Cisco 2960G up against a Dell PowerConnect 5424. The PowerConnects aren’t bad… They’re cheap, gigabit, and Layer-2. Anyway, I quickly found out that unless you use GVRP, the Dell cannot learn what VLANs are out there. You have to specify allowed VLANS specifically on both ends of a trunk.

The Cisco 2960G doesn’t support GVRP, and VTP is proprietary, so I was forced to use this method.

On the Cisco:

switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan add 2,100,101
switchport nonegotiate

On the Dell:

switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan add 2,100,101

So, I hate hard drives. I think everything about them is like a bad flashback to the 1980′s. They have something that constantly spins (stupid), which means they require lots of power (also stupid) and in turn generate lots of heat (ridiculous). All that aside, they’re by far the slowest part of any given computer!!!!!

I propose that everyone go to SSD and delete half the music/movies they don’t listen to/watch.

Also, in terms of the datacenter, I’ve been playing with these CF RAID -> SATA enclosures in our ESXi systems.  They make perfect sense to me, CF cards come in various sizes from 2GB up to 32GB (or even 128GB I hear), which means that they can store all the configuration info for a VMWare ESXi server just fine.  Since we use iSCSI for the SAN for these little VM environments, everything is great!  The servers run cooler.  Also, since the CF cards are mirrored within the enclosure, I don’t have to buy an expensive RAID card for each server, etc.

Also, I’m thinking of getting another at home for my laptop that lives next to my bed.  It doesn’t need a hard drive at all, all it does is play video over the network.

Sure you take a performance hit using CF over SSD, but for ESXi the only time the CF cards are even used is when you boot, edit VM metadata, or shutdown.  It does NOT affect the performance of the VM’s running off the SAN.

Now to get the SAN going with SSD…