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September 7, 2010

All I want is a DB9

Filed under: linux,Random Thought — Tags: laptops, linux, random, tecra, toshiba, ubuntu — Nate @ 10:25 pm

Ok maybe that’s not all I want, but it’s a good start.

I got a new laptop recently, a Toshiba Tecra A11, really nice laptop. A couple of jobs ago I had a Toshiba Tecra M5 and liked it a lot, it had a couple glitches with Linux but for the most part it worked well. The Tecra A11 by contrast, no glitches with Linux, at least not yet. I’ve been using it about three weeks now, everything from wireless, to audio, to 3D,Â microphone(first time I’ve ever used a microphone in linux, first time in easily ten years I’ve used a microphone on a PC period), and even webcam worked. And most importantly, suspend/resume has been 100% reliable. Really nice to see. It is certified with Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit which is what I’m running.

But that’s not really what this post is about, I wasn’t expecting it, so didn’t look for it, but was overjoyed when I looked and saw that this brand new business laptop had a DB9 serial port, a REAL serial port! Woohoo! I mean my M5 had one too and that was great, I just thought Toshiba had jumped on the train of let’s get rid of serial ports.

What a sight to see. I mean what Linux/Unix/Network geek in their right mind can get by without a serial port? Yeah I know you’ve been able to get those piece of crap USB serial adapters for some time, but I’ll take a DB9 any day! Especially when my favorite network gear uses native DB9 on their stuff too.
(Sorry couldn’t resist getting some purple in there, not enough color on this blog)

I was a fan of the IBM Thinkpad T-series for the longest time, until Lenovo bought them, was introduced to Toshiba a few years ago and they are by far my favorite laptop. If it’s going to be my main machine for work, then it’s gotta be something good. The Tecra line is it, the new T series for me.

Laptop specs:

IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ i7-620M Processor 2.66 GHz (3.33 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 4MB Cache,
Genuine WindowsÂ® XP Professional, SP3 with WindowsÂ® 7 Professional Recovery Media,
8GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM (4096MBx2)
320GB HDD (7200rpm, Serial ATA),
NvidiaÂ® NVSâ„¢ 2100M with 512MB DDR3
Keyboard without 10-key numeric pad (black)
15.6″ Diagonal Widescreen HD+ (1600×900) TFT LCD display,
Dual Point pointing device (Accupoint + Touchpad) and Media Control Buttons
Integrated Webcam and Microphone
BluetoothÂ® Version 2.1 +EDR
Toshiba 4-Year On-Site Repair + 4th Year Extended Service Plan

Customized pretty good they built it special for me! Mainly the “non standard” but “reccomended” keyboard(and custom matte LCD I hate the reflective screens). At first I was kind of upset they only offered ground shipping, I would be willing to pay more for faster shipping, but turns out it wasn’t ground after all, and they shipped it directly from China. Once it shipped it got here in about 4 days I think, through Alaska, then somewhere out midwest at which point I thought it was going to be put on a truck and driven back to Seattle only to find it hopped on another plane and flew to me instead.

Comments (1)

August 28, 2010

What a mouthful

Filed under: Networking,Random Thought — Tags: force10, random — Nate @ 9:25 am

I’ve thought about this off and on and I better write about it so I can forget about it.

I think Force10 is way too verbose in choosing the phrase to describe their company, it’s quite a mouthful –

Force10 Networks, Inc., a global technology leader that data center, service provider and enterprise customers rely on when the network is their business[..]

I like Force10, I have been watching them for five years now, I just think any phrase you choose to describe your company should be short enough to say it in one (casual) breath.

How about “Force10 Networks Inc., a global networking technology leader”.

Force10’s marketers are very nice folks I’ve sent them two corrections over the years to their web site(one concerning the number of ports a competitor offers in their products, the other with a math error in a graphic showing much you can save on their products), they were very kind and responsive(and fixed both problems pretty quickly too). This one I won’t send to them directly since it’s more than a cosmetic change 🙂

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April 30, 2010

Violate Electrical specs for more servers?

Filed under: Datacenter,General,Random Thought — Tags: random — Nate @ 8:46 pm

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).