Aug/100
Lowest power dual socket server ever
TechOps Guy: Nate
This was posted a couple of weeks ago but I was on vacation at the time and didn’t notice it until a few days ago.
It talks about the latest 4000-series low power chips from AMD running in a dual socket system from ZT Systems.
The numbers are pretty startling. At peak load they measure the power draw at only 126 watts for the system as a whole:
- Dual processor 6-core Opteron 4164 EE (1.8Ghz per core)
- 16GB memory (4×4GB DDR3-1333)
- 128GB SSD
From the blog:
[..] There are four major enhancements to the AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform which significantly lower server power consumption:
- The AMD Opteron™ 4100 EE Series of processors are the lowest power AMD Opteron processors ever. These processors are rated at 32W ACP, which is 20% lower than AMD’s previous generation 2400 EE Series processors.
- AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processors support 1.35V DDR3 memory, enabling lower server power consumption at load.
- The AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform uses low-power chipsets. The SR5650 has a maximum TDP of only 13 watts.
- AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processors include new AMD-P power management features, including C1E. C1E is a feature that helps reduce the power consumption of the AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processor’s integrated memory controller and HyperTransport™ technology links.
[..]
The two lowest power Intel Xeon processor-based servers consume 28% more and 34% more power than the ZT Systems 1253Ra Datacenter Server[..]
Pretty amazing that you can get a dual processor, 12 core(total) system running at less power than some CPUs out there consume by themselves.
I’m sure it will run even at even lower power with rack level DC power and cooling.
Aug/100
Good Gog
TechOps Guy: Nate
Almost done with my vacation, I have been reading this book recommended by a friend that has a lot of different stories in it from different time periods, and during reading it I thought of a couple games I used to play a long time ago – Castles, and Castles II, with the first one being almost 20 years old at this point. I wanted to play it again, so I searched around and pretty quickly came across a pretty cool site – Gog. Very professionally done, they seem to package everything you need for some of these really old games at a low price. Including integrated DOSBox, installation, even the manuals are included.
I don’t know if they are legit or not, whether or not the original publishers have given their blessing to re-distribute these games(I would expect not), but there is likely very few legit ways to acquire these games at this point anyway. But for $6 to get Castles and Castles II in a single package was more than worth it. I spent nearly two full days playing these games, had a lot of fun.
If you know me, you know I don’t play a lot of games these days, so I was happy to come across this on vacation so I could devote some real time to them, and I beat them both pretty quickly so I won’t have it in the back of my mind that I need to play them more in the coming weeks. Though I did come across several other games that look neat too. I also bought Descent & Descent II from Gog, I had good memories of Descent II, I was really good at that game back in the day. I haven’t downloaded it yet though.
I’m not going to vouch for Gog, though so far the experience has been good and the result very high quality. There are a lot of key games that are missing from Gog still, so I’m not sure if they just don’t have all the materials yet, or if they are legit perhaps the publishers have denied them rights or something. I’m thinking of the Wing Commander series and the X-wing series. I did go through and re-buy most of the Wing Commander games last year, it really feels strange to me as someone who likes modern technology to find myself really enjoying playing some games that I used to play on a 286 15+ years ago(in the case of Castles, and Wing Commander I any ways).
While I’ve been away from home I did notice that the FTC settled with Intel (in an update to an earlier posting), time will tell if it does anything, I am in agreement with this statement from The Register reporter:
To be even more honest, you could argue that the damage to AMD has already been done and that a resurgent Intel got away with all kinds of anticompetitive practices. It is debatable as to whether AMD, VIA, and Nvidia (which may now enter the x86 chip market) can beat Intel even on a more-level playing field, now that Intel has its engineering act together.
So on that note..
Happy Saturday from Cannon Beach Oregon.
Jul/100
Moving on up, to the west side
TechOps Guy: Nate
So I made the decision, I gave my notice to quit my current gig a couple of days ago. Out of respect for most of my fellow co-workers, I offered to stay the standard two weeks to transition some stuff to other people. I could leave tomorrow and be fine (or yesterday for that matter), doesn’t really matter to me.
I just wanted to thank all of my friends, co-workers, acquaintances, recruiters and those I have interviewed with over the recent weeks for the positive support you have given me. It really helped make the decision much easier. I’ve worked hard, harder than most people I know work in their careers to get where I am today. I’ve sacrificed a lot from a personal level, because I didn’t want to get caught off guard like I did during the last recession. And when I saw signs the economy and society in general was peaking, it was more motivating to get to the top of my game and stay there. And I believe I’m there now(have been for a while). Really takes the stress of a down economy away.
I went through four different job offers before settling on a “Web 3.0″ startup in Seattle. They seem to be growing fast and in great need for someone like me. This was the best and most active job search I’ve had in my career, I’ve turned down companies before but I’ve never been so pursed by them both before and after I turned them down. It feels so encouraging that there is such a high demand for folks such as myself, that made the decision even easier — if I don’t have to put up with the current situation that has been festering for years (before I started even!) with no end in sight then I don’t have to. It’s a very fortunate position to be in I have no problem admitting that, I know people who are in, how should I say it, less than ideal career situations but aren’t as fortunate to be able to find a more healthy work atmosphere at another organization.
My work is my life( I’m working on fixing that still), so having a positive professional experience on the job is very important to me. Becuase my work is my life, myself I know of nobody more motivated, more dedicated to their work at least in my field. Which makes it that much harder when an employment situation doesn’t work out.
Anyways, on to the category of jobs, my new gig is hiring many more people, including what appears to be a mid level linux system administrator, if you are looking to make a move, drop me a line with your resume and I’ll pass it along. I would expect the position to have career growth opportunities given the size of the company and where they are at (they are a pretty young company but not your 10-20 person startup).
Other positions include a lead PHP developer, and a Java developer, I can send you more complete job descriptions if you are interested. And of course willing to split the referral bonus 
One thing I have learned though, is think twice(or three times) when the position your interviewing for was for someone else who left suddenly. There may be very good reasons why they left, or maybe not. I first noticed signs of problems more than a year and a half ago, but decided to try to work through them and see if things could work out, no such luck! My current position is my 3rd position in which I replaced someone else. The first was my first job, the previous guy was a flake(showed up to work maybe 25% of the time), the second I forgot why the previous person left but the company was halfway decent and I got a lot of stuff accomplished until the economy ate them. And my current is of course the same situation, and the previous two people left for much of the same reason I am, in fact I’m told that I have held my position longer than anyone else had held it at the company. What does that tell you?
Oh and in case it wasn’t obvious, my current job is probably open, I can’t reccomend anybody senior going there, for reasons I won’t get into here. But if your a junior or mid level admin without a lot of career aspirations then it could be a good fit.
Jun/102
Cross Pollination
TechOps Guy: Nate
I don’t know about you but to me it’s kind of odd. It’s not something I would expect to be such a regular occurrence. Maybe it’s just the region, or maybe it’s broader.
I’m talking about vendor sales reps and engineers jumping from one company directly to the competition. I mean just from my own experience, I know people who have
- Moved from Extreme networks to Juniper
- Moved from Foundry networks to Extreme
- Moved from HP networking to Extreme
- Moved from Foundry networks to A10 networks
- Moved from F5 networks to A10 networks
- Moved from EMC to 3PAR
- Moved from NetApp to 3PAR
- Moved from Equallogic to 3PAR
- And recently saw someone I hadn’t seen in more than a year and a half moved from Hitachi to Xiotech
Maybe it’s just the line of work, but to me at least it seems like an amazing amount of cross pollination to the point where it’s hard to tell on occasion what the person really believes, I mean one minute they are pitching product X from you and bashing product Y then the next their doing the opposite.
Then there are other less direct migrations of course going from a manufacturer to a VAR or a distributor, but I’ve been more fascinated by those making the leap from one manufacturer to another.
I suppose it’s just a job at the end of the day.
May/101
Tapped out
TechOps Guy: Nate
An interesting article on slashdot posted in reference to water shortages and companies like Intel and Coke consuming large amounts of water that might otherwise be used for farming.
About 2.4 billion people live in “water-stressed” countries such as China, according to a 2009 report by the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit scientific research group
[..]
China’s 1.33 billion people each have 2,117 cubic meters of water available per year, compared with 1,614 cubic meters in India and as much as 9,943 cubic meters in the U.S., according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Nothing new really if you have been paying attention for the past few years. I really try very hard to keep this blog as technical as possible no matter how strong my emotions are to rant against the government and society in general, in this case I’ll venture a bit outside of the technical realm thanks to the above article mentioning Intel’s water intensive business.
Another water intensive business is data centers, perhaps one of the more extreme examples is the SuperNap outside Las Vegas, where one person is quoted as saying it will require millions of gallons of water per day:
“They’re in the middle of the desert and will need almost 3 million gallons of water per day for blowdown and evaporation for their 30,000 ton evaporative cooling plant.”
While I can’t vouch for the sources, just take a look at where some people think we are headed as far as global population growth is concerned, and notice similar trend lines from those that are in the global warming camp, and even more similar trend lines from those reporting on U.S. debt.
I’ll end the tangent here, but you can probably get an idea of where our civilization is headed.
May/100
Google out of gas?
TechOps Guy: Nate
I don’t know if it’s true or not, I certainly hope so. Indications point to them being out of gas as far as their big growth earlier this decade. I watched a report on CNBC about a week or two ago where a couple of analysts agreed that Google is going nowhere fast. I don’t pay that close attetion to them with whatever products they launch etc. But do feel a bit more at ease if Google has infact peaked. I know a lot of people believe that they pulled out of China to save face because they had trouble competing, which certainly sounds like a more plausable explanation than their official excuse.
It’s been a while since I blogged on anything and had this in my head since I saw it, so wanted to mention the report.
Apr/100
Violate Electrical specs for more servers?
TechOps Guy: Nate
As usual on big blog posts I often literally go back and re-read the post about 60 times and think about what I wrote.
Well I was reading my most recent post about Datacenter Dynamics specifically the stranded power section and the datacenter operators of hyperscale facilities wanting to draw every watt they can off the circuits to maximize efficiency and I got to thinking..
Would they go so far as to violate electrical specs by drawing more than 80% of the power for a particular circuit? I mean in theory at least if they construct the components properly they can probably do it fairly safely. I learned a few years ago from someone, that the spec in question is NEC Section 384-16(c). Which I think in part reads:
The NEC requires the branch circuit computed load for conductor sizing to be sized at 125% of the continuous load, plus the noncontinuous load (100%).
Which equates to 80% utilization. If you know your power usage levels that well, and your loads etc, do you think such hyperscale facilities would run at 85%? 90%? 95% of circuit load? Really with all of the other extreme measures being taken to maximize efficiency I wouldn’t put it past them. They’re going so far as to design special motherboards and have specific components down to the VRMs to lower power usage. I can see them investing in higher grade electrical gear allowing them to safely operate at higher circuit draws, especially when you take into account power capping as well. Afterall, if your spending the effort to shave literally single digit watt usage off your systems that extra 20% capacity on the circuit has to be very tempting to use.
I remember a few years ago doing a load test on one of the aforementioned lower quality power strips(they weren’t cheap, but the company’s QA wasn’t up to par), it was a 30A PDU. And I loaded it up with a bunch of systems, and walked away for a couple minutes and came back and was shocked to see the meter reporting 32A was being drawn. I immediately yanked some of the power cords out to get it back under 30A. After talking with the manufacturer (or maybe it was another manufacturer I don’t recall), they said that was not unexpected, the breaker has some sort of internal timer that will trip based on the amount of excess load on the circuit, so if your drawing 30A it probably won’t trip for a while, if your drawing 32A then it may trip after a few minutes, if you try to draw 40A it will likely trip immediately(I’m guessing here).
Mar/101
Frightened
TechOps Guy: Nate
Frightened. That was the word that first came to my mind when I read this article from our friends at The Register.
The report also says that 60 per cent of Google’s traffic is now delivered directly to consumer networks. In addition to building out a network of roughly 36 data centers and co-locating in more than 60 public exchanges, the company has spent the past year deploying its Google Global Cache (GGC) servers inside consumer networks across the globe. Labovitz says that according to Arbor’s anecdotal conversations, more than half of all consumer providers in North American and Europe now have at least one rack of Google’s cache servers.
Honestly, I am speechless beyond the word frightened, you may want to refer to an earlier blog post “Lesser of two Evils” for more details.
Dec/090
Lesser of two evils
TechOps Guy: Nate
Thanks to The Register for another interesting thing to write about.This time it’s about a Mozilla guy, who apparently was the one who wrote Firefox (I still miss Phoenix, it was really a light browser, unlike Firefox today) suggesting people should switch their search engines from Google to Bing because Bing has a better privacy policy.
So which is the lesser of the two evils? Microsoft or Google? For me at least for the moment it is Google, but with each passing day my distrust of them grows. I have never signed up for their services, I have never accepted their cookies, and while I do use their search engine it’s unlikely the searches I do provide much value to their advertisers. I used to use alltheweb.com as my search engine, I resisted Google for as long as I could. The thing that drove me away from alltheweb at the time was when they introduced banner ads. I even told them as much and they thanked me for the feedback and said they would take it under consideration for future improvements or something along those lines. I notice now they do not have banner ads.. I’m not against advertising myself,(I do not and never have used ad blocking browser plugins) but am against collection of data on me for that purpose. I don’t bother trying to opt out of such systems, because I don’t trust the opt out in the first place, would much rather take the time to block the data collection on my end(wherever possible). I’m sure I won’t get them all, but I’ll get most.
Anyways on the topic of privacy on the net. I’m probably one of the few that take it fairly seriously. That is I rarely sign up for any offers, I do create unique email addresses for each organization I have a relationship with(which as of last count is roughly 230 unique email addresses each with an associated inbox). I host my own email, DNS, and web services on a server I physically own at a local co-location facility that I pay for. I have hosted my own email+web+DNS for more than ten years now. This blog is not hosted there because it wasn’t setup by me, and there isn’t much private information here anyways.
On to web browsing. I have had my web browser prompt me for each and every web cookie that comes in for at least the last five years now(I do love that feature that saves the preferences for the site). Checking the sqlite database in Firefox reveals
- Reject cookies outright from 2,099 web sites
- Accept cookies from 216 web sites
- Accept cookies from 470 web sites for “session” only
I read recently that Flash cookies are becoming a more common means of tracking users as well, because they are more difficult to detect/delete. In fact I had no idea that there was such a thing as cookies in Flash until I read the article. (Thanks again to The Reg). I have been using the Prefbar Firefox plugin for years now(since Phoenix days I believe), that provides a couple of handy things for Flash, one is to enable/disable the plugin on demand, the other is to immediately kill all flash objects in the page. It works pretty well. I usually keep Flash off unless I specifically need it, not for privacy reasons but more so for performance and stability reasons(and most Flash advertisements are very annoying). I know there are more advanced plugins that deal with Flash and advertisements in general, I’m just too lazy to try them. I’ve used the same basic plugins for several years and haven’t really tried anything new.
I am becoming more convinced as time goes on that Google is nothing more than a front for the NSA/CIA or some other 3 letter organization that you’ve never heard of in order to try to get you to willingly give them all of your information, whether it is email, IM, DNS, or voice mail, phone calls, pictures, hell I can’t think of all of the services they offer since I don’t use them. I see comments on slashdot and am shocked to see people say things like they’d rather Google have their private data than their ISP. Me I’m the opposite. I’d rather have my ISP have my data, there’s a lot less chance they’ll have any interest in it, and even less of a chance they’ll be able to effectively use it against me than the data mining masterminds at Google.
I have (to put it mildly as anyone who knows me will attest) have a deep rooted mistrust for Microsoft as well, it has bonded with my DNA at this point, that is somewhat of a different post though.
I’m not quite to the point where I tunnel my internet traffic over a VPN to my co-located server but who knows, perhaps in a few years that’s what I will have to resort to. My DNS traffic is tunneled to my co-located server today, mainly because I host my own internal DNS and the master zones live on the other end of the connection so I rely on it for my internal + external DNS.
So, lesser of two evils, Microsoft or Google, tough choice indeed, perhaps the one or two readers of this blog can contribute links to other search engines, hopefully less obvious ones that might be worth while to use.
Aug/090
Know a Rockin’ SysAdmin?
TechOps Guy: Dave
Then enter them to be SysAdmin of the Year Here