The Comms Room

jscott

15:01

@BartSilverstrim Potentially, this Memorial weekend, I'll be riding down to Milton, DE, by way of Downingtown, PA... Plan on visiting Victory Brewery and then Dogfish Head.. Still in the route-planning phase.

pauska

I didn't know stack exchange users were this young..

Dan

@Chopper3 Oof!

MDMarra

@pauska Dude, link to the actual question please

Dan

@Chopper3 Do you what effect capping the power on a 360 would have?

pauska

6

Q: What's the thing between the pant legs?

What is the piece that holds the pant legs together called? Is there an "official1" name? Or is there just a commonly agreed on term? 1Official meaning something mentioned, even in passing, by Lego in some way.

hahah the gravatar image couldn't fit better

Bart Silverstrim

15:03

@jscott Wife wants to go up to Victor to the mall now :-)

jscott

@BartSilverstrim Oh dear.. :)

I don't shop there, I'm not a mall guy... But the place is pretty "fancy" for a mall. imho.

Dan

@Chopper3 Should expand, should I see power capping as essentially limiting performance? Or is it likely to cause unexpected issues, etc? To me, it's basically saying "Throttle the CPU/RAM when it starts pulling >x power"

ewwhite

ProLiant power capping?

Bart Silverstrim

The little guy might like to go shopping at the Lego store.

Dan

@ewwhite Yeah

Journeyman Geek

15:07

hm

Dan

@ewwhite DL360's in particular, byt I gather its similar accross others

jscott

@BartSilverstrim You've probably already found the site but: eastviewmall.com

ewwhite

@Dan On blades or individual servers?

Journeyman Geek

reads up and wonders if he's the only one who appreciates the good ol british style plug ;p

Dan

@ewwhite Individual servers

ewwhite

15:08

@Dan There's a difference. I have capped power on blade enclosures because of data center power caps...

Bart Silverstrim

"You have five updates available." Click link. "security update for .NET..." all of them. sigh

ewwhite

For individual servers, why do you need to cap?

Dan

@ewwhite Same reason :)

jscott

I love .NET updates! gacutil running for like 15 minutes, each update, to rebuild the caches! Yay!

Bart Silverstrim

that's okay. Windows Update failed because it's "already installing other updates." ...no, it's not.

ewwhite

15:09

@Dan Maybe I'm really bad about this, but, my servers rarely consume max power. My G6 and G7 proliants dont usually break 400 watts...

How are you sizing?

Bart Silverstrim

So I hear the town of F*cking, Austria is looking at changing its name.

Chopper3

@Dan switches on all the CPU power management so that'll cost you around 15% overall performance under load - spins down disks and fans much earlier too, don't know the 360 that well compared to blades and 380's but it may slow memory a step when it can too

ewwhite

Yeah, that's why I'm curious why he's limiting... what's the constraint?

Dan

Constraint is the data centre as said, we're trying to get max server density

But are quite constrained on power usage per rack

ewwhite

And do you have a read on REAL server usage? Or are you sizing based on published limits?

Chopper3

15:17

@Dan you're right, that's all it is, though it does actually cap things from the start, not just under load

Dan

Bit of both, really. We have a real world test system, but I dont' currently have a way to test real world load

@Chopper3 Okay, that's quite interesting

Bart Silverstrim

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAASABI

Chris S

@BartSilverstrim Probably tired of people stealing their "Welcome to F*cking" signs.

ewwhite

@chopper3 Wouldn't you agree that it's common to oversubscribe power?

Chopper3

@Dan max server density is my world :) blades are the way

Bart Silverstrim

15:18

@ChrisS From the story I heard the "last straw" were harassing phone calls.

The signs have been stolen since forever even though they're welded and concreted to the ground.

Chopper3

@ewwhite hell yes, routinely pull 10k in an 8k rack :)

Bart Silverstrim

But the local businesses capitalize on the town name.

Dan

@Chopper3 As you know, that's normally our route. I'm not actually sure what's different with this project, but there must be a good reason

Bart Silverstrim

So they're hesitant to let it go.

Chris S

@BartSilverstrim Phone calls? really?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised...

ewwhite

15:19

@Dan what is the power limit per rack?

Bart Silverstrim

@ChrisS abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/04/…

Adrian

Somebody mentioned WinTPC. Got a link for technical details behind that?

Dan

@Chopper3 Okay, just found out the reasons on this and it's fair enough with no real way round it. Involves legalese :(

@ewwhite 16A per rack I think

Adrian

My boss will probably jump on that like a pack of lions on a cubic metre of steak.

tombull89

@Adrian microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/enterprise/…

Meant for running Windows 7 on lower-end devices, it's cut down compared to other Windows 7 roles.

Adrian

15:23

@tombull89 OK. That's what I found this morning too. We have nearly 300 of these GX260/280 units out there, and that might work well.

ewwhite

@Dan and the systems will be running at 20% load or lower, right?

@tombull89 I was just pricing this out...

Chopper3

@Dan 2 x 16a?

tombull89

@ewwhite yeah it gets a bit interesting

Dan

@Chopper3 Yeah, redunancy

@ewwhite No, some of the servers may get pushed at times

ewwhite

@tombull89 (I was hoping it'd be more affordable or FREE)

tombull89

15:26

@ewwhite haha, no such luck there.

ewwhite

@Dan But even pushing a server, the regular usage won't be that high, right? What's the application/OS?

MDMarra

@ewwhite Observium does look nice, but the Debian only aspect of it is a no-go for me

We're standardized on RHEL/CentOS here

ewwhite

I installed it on CentOS.

@MDMarra observium.org/wiki/RHEL_SVN_Installation

tombull89

I was looking at that for PXE-boot windows enviroments but it doesn't work like that, you need Windows 7 Embedded (I think, anyway) and that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Dan

@ewwhite Well, some of them may. We basically have 3 different server roles - two will be pretty flat, but one will certainly hit the ceiling fairly often so I guess it's a case of measuring what real world impact a cap would have

Bart Silverstrim

15:28

@MDMarra Debian only?

MDMarra

There's a wiki and docs for it, but it's all unofficial and they really seem to push people to Ubuntu/Debian

Dan

(Trying not to pass out much info here, so sorry for coming across as awkward @ewwhite)

Bart Silverstrim

UBUNTU! :-)

Adrian

I'd not even call it very THIN either, considering that it requires a manual install process instead of PXE.

ewwhite

@MDMarra I didn't even notice it. It's fine on CentOS and RHEL.

Bart Silverstrim

15:29

@Adrian complaints, complaints.

MDMarra

I started playing with cacti a bit and I can see why you like observium's graphs better

ewwhite

@mdmarra It's a pretty manual installation, but there are no daemons or anything. They give you a cron.d entry, and that's it.

Adrian

@MDMarra I'm really getting tired of these single distro projects. Been seing that more frequently lately.

ewwhite

[root@xt /etc/cron.d]# cat observium
33  */6   * * *   root    cd /opt/observium/ && ./discovery.php -h all >> /dev/null 2>&1
*/5 *   * * *   root    cd /opt/observium/ && ./discovery.php -h new >> /dev/null 2>&1
*/5 *   * * *   root    cd /opt/observium/ && ./poller.php -h all >> /dev/null 2>&1

That's all it has.

MDMarra

yeah, similar to cacti

tombull89

15:31

@Adrian It can be deployed with WDS.

Bart Silverstrim

Like I said...duct tape and tacky glue.

0

Q: How to mirror FROM Windows 7 to an Apple TV

We are a school district and are in the middle of deploying ~800 iPads, one for every teacher. Next year we'll probably be installing an Apple TV in every room to mirror the iPads wirelessly to the classroom projectors. I would love to use Apple TV as our standard to mirror all our Windows7 lap...

windows-7

Adrian

@tombull89 Ok. I'm going to have to get used to the way MS stuff is written & designed. I keep expecting my docs to just TELL me how to do it the proper way.

Chris S

@BartSilverstrim You can't blame people for wanting to visit and the occasional snicker. But harassing calls and property destruction are another thing entirely.

Bart Silverstrim

@ChrisS Of course.

MDMarra

I've got cacti up and running. I might toy with Observium a bit, but I'm kind of afraid what would happen down the road with it based on that warning

Bart Silverstrim

15:33

It sounds like there are those in the town making money off it, and there are those that are tired of it.

ewwhite

@MDMarra Go through the install. There's nothing Ubuntu-specific. I think that's just a lazy developer's warning.

MDMarra

lazy developers are what worry me :p

ewwhite

And the things that do require support are independent of the OS.

They are very responsive on items like MIBs and answering the support forum. Plus, they're on IRC

I have my graphs working again. Can I show a sample?

Chris S

@BartSilverstrim We just got a couple StarTech.com IPUSB2HD2. Little app on people's computers, connect to this and it plugs in via HDMI. Even the Pointy Hairs love it.

jscott

@BartSilverstrim 800 iPads! I hope they got something like JAMF Casper...

Dan

15:36

Whoa, 1636 - gotta run!

Thanks @Chopper3 and @ewwhite

Joel

@jscott Can someone explain the push of iPads into education? How does it enhance the learning process in the slightest?

Bart Silverstrim

@jscott The phenomena I see is people/departments buying iPads and throwing them into classrooms like shiny toys..."Find a use for them" type things.

ewwhite

@Joel It's a status symbol. Districts brag about it.

Bart Silverstrim

@Joel Special Ed groups like them because some kids are drawn to the iPad and makes them more "interactive".

Joel

@BartSilverstrim Yes exactly, they don't fit into any actual learning framework. They're just teacher bait to keep them from getting a job that pays a reasonable wage

ewwhite

15:38

Although, textbook releases on iPad are here... it's interesting.

MDMarra

@Joel If the iBooks2 stuff takes off with high school texts and the schools are issuing them to the kids, then yeah thats fucking awesome

Bart Silverstrim

like most initiatives it's more like spending money on grants and finding a way to fit it in after the fact, no plan going into it of what to do.

Chris S

Lunch time!!

MDMarra

If a bunch of teachers have them and they're the only ones, then it's a waste of money

Joel

The only thing that ever made a damn difference when I was learning something was the teacher

Bart Silverstrim

15:38

@Joel It's rarely the teachers having any say.

sam

They'd be much better spending the money on Promethean kit

jscott

@Joel I, uh, I'm on the IT side, so pedagogy/curriculum is just not my decision -- rightfully so...

sam

We used to have it in every classroom, it was awesome

Joel

@sam I'd rather buy an actual good teacher

Bart Silverstrim

Yay. Whiteboard for people to play with.

Yippee.

sam

15:40

@Joel Well yeah, that's a start, but if you've determined to spend money on IT, better off spending it on something useful

@Joel But we had awesome teachers too, so that probably helps

Joel

@sam Yes like raspberry pis for every student. You can't graduate without writing a program

Bart Silverstrim

How about having kids that actually have a culture where they want to learn something? Bet that could enhance schools.

Most IT dollars spent on schools seems to go to waste, it seems.

MDMarra

@BartSilverstrim It takes money. If you have a poor school, you have no resources. You have old books, old technology, bad teachers, etc

sam

@BartSilverstrim But that's always going to be hard to do. There are so many reasons for kids not to be motivated, pour as much money as you want into schools, it's not going to help things like parents telling their kids not to bother etc.

jscott

@Joel Yeah, I don't know. I hated school, barely managed to stay enrolled and not drop out.... Never finished college as I wasn't digging it, and found a decent paying job...

MDMarra

15:43

No one wants to learn in an environment like that

Bart Silverstrim

@MDMarra No amount of money gets over parents that treat education as a badge of embarrassment.

@MDMarra You can take me to the most advanced, prestigious baseball stadium in the world for the biggest game of the season. I'm still not going to care about baseball.

MDMarra

Yeah, but that's not the norm.

I'd imagine most parents don't actively discourage their children from learning

Bart Silverstrim

We spend five figures on a new cart of laptops for a classroom. Students use it to make duckfaces into Photo Booth.

@MDMarra they tacitly discourage it by not reading, for example. Even not having books in the house. Not placing value on learning.

jscott

@BartSilverstrim Don't work, they do the same thing with the Lenovo laptop carts, it just costs less. :)

Bart Silverstrim

The Macs were better at the time for the promise of making videos and presentation projects.

But they're aged. And the kids waste resources no matter what.

pauska

15:48

@BartSilverstrim We spend six figures on laptops in one of the sister companies.. all the students do is surf youtube/spotify/funnyordie etc

but I'm preparing my hammer of wrath.. squid+dansguardian

Bart Silverstrim

Then again the Internet held a lot of promise as an educational tool. Most use it for duckfaces on Facebook and telling what they had for lunch on Twitter.

ewwhite

@pauska Cough - barracuda.

:)

pauska

It will be fun to see our sustained internet traffic go down from 60mbps to.. 2-3

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim Half my kid's Xmas presents each year are books. Ender's Game, Wrinkle in Time, and Tolkein this past year.

Bart Silverstrim

@Adrian Then you're rare.

pauska

15:49

@ewwhite not a chance in hell, we don't get educational rebates (we're not K-12 or whatever you call it in US)

Bart Silverstrim

Rarer still are parents that visit brick and mortar bookstores.

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim Trying to balance out his mother, who's a TV addict. I decided that I didn't want to put such trash in my head anymore and quit watching it.

Thankfully he thinks it's trash too.

MDMarra

@pauska K-12 is basically all grades/years leading up to college

ewwhite

@pauska Of all of the products I've sold, the Barracuda Web Filter is the easiest to get approved by decision makers (as long as you let them have unrestricted access to the internetz)

Adrian

@ewwhite How much administrative overhead on that?

Bart Silverstrim

15:51

iPads for textbooks I'm leery of. I hate the battery load.

I wish Amazon had done more for that...

I just managed to get a Kindle to fall into my lap. I still need more books for it, since I have a shelf of unread titles still to go through.

ewwhite

@Adrian Very little after the initial installation.

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim There aren't many left. Most I find are consignment stores.

@ewwhite Ok. I'll keep that mind if the boss' ideas around m86 fall through.

Bart Silverstrim

@Adrian No Barnes and Noble where you are?

I love going there.

ewwhite

@Adrian My wife just got one at her firm... she spends maybe 15 minutes/week on it.

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim Yes, but they so rarely have what I'm looking for that I don't bother.

The boss is on an out-sourcing kick lately, so anything that we don't have to buy devices for makes him happy.

Bart Silverstrim

15:53

@Adrian 8e6 filter?

O_O

RUN AWAY

what...the... hell?

That's neat.

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim I won't have to manage it. Not my problem.

sam

We used to use OpenDNS (We were only a small school). And make sure you block port 53 outbound =)

Bart Silverstrim

Boss imaged a hard disk with a drive duplicator...said he had some problems, had to limit it somehow so it didn't "image" the last sectors or something. I managed to get the duplicated system to boot up and run Win7 updates, but thought I'd check with a Linux boot disk just to see if the partition needs a resizing or something to get things in line.

Adrian

The McAfee/MXLogic setup works so well for us that he's perfectly willing to try similar services first for any given need.

Bart Silverstrim

gparted says the partition doesn't exist. 75 gig unallocated.

O_0

So...I'm booting a nonexistent system :-)

MikeyB

16:02

Mac OS Xsan support: "Why are you even using zoning on that [Fibre Channel] switch? And why aren't [the switches] linked together?"

84104

@BartSilverstrim Gumdrops and unicorn farts for everyone?

jscott

@MikeyB Are you saying it doesn't Just Work?

MikeyB

@jscott Idiots.

It seems as though OS X will not load balance across multiple paths to the same primary controller, but support can't understand that when I articulate it. "You need to hook both switches together." Me: "That won't make a difference to what OS X sees! Not at all!"

Bart Silverstrim

@84104 It's magic.

@MikeyB First level support?

I've got a dell first level support that wants me to run their diags ten times in a row then see if Windows starts because of an intermittent bootup problem...

just replace the bloody motherboard you !%^(

Adrian

Sounds to me like somebody's L1 Support team got whacked in the teeth for sending too high of a % of their calls up to L2/L3.

And L1 being what it is, they don't know enough to throw in the towel on things they're not going to be able to fix.

Bart Silverstrim

16:15

The first call, they wanted me to update the BIOS and Windows video drivers. Which was kind of stupid. At least the Windows side.

jscott

@BartSilverstrim ?!!?10x?!?! F that.

Bart Silverstrim

Maybe two times a week (according to user) the laptop's screen is black when she starts it. nothing comes up. But the power light and HD lights are on.

She forces it to power down, turn on again, works fine.

No shutdowns, no corruption, nothing.

jscott

@BartSilverstrim have you accidental coverage?

Bart Silverstrim

First thing in the morning once or twice a week it fails to boot.

@jscott: implying replacement if it were run over by a school bus?

jscott

@BartSilverstrim Or the like :)

Bart Silverstrim

16:17

They just didn't get it understood that if the screen doesn't show the BIOS boot, updating Windows drivers won't help...

external monitor, when this boots blank, is also black...

And running their full on-board diag says everything's hunky dory.

Updated BIOS, the next week, she said it booted black again.

Contact Dell support, they want us to run diags ten times to see if it still boots. I think they're trying to be stingy with parts now.

Running your extended diags ten time won't prove anything if it's a rare intermittent issue, first thing in the morning...there's no corrupt windows boot files

BUT I'll do this. I will do this because I'm getting close to the point where I'm going to fly to India on the next failed troubleshoot and shove the laptop up someone's arse.

pauska

@ewwhite "With no client software to install and no modifications required to your network, the Barracuda Web Filter is easy to deploy." Wow, it haz magicks!!!!!

ewwhite

@pauska It does! It's an inline filter, so it sits between firewall and core switch.

Joel

@pauska You don't even have to plug in a network cable!

@ewwhite Sounds like modifying the network to me

ewwhite

It's a hard bypass. No change to your firewall.

but yes, they make it sound magical

Joel

@ewwhite Suppose I don't have a firewall per se, but a fancy-pants Cisco 3945 ISR

would I go core switch -> Barracuda -> ISR?

ewwhite

16:24

Yes.

pauska

and like me, I have 86 remote connections arriving at two ridiculously expensive cisco routers, going through a stack switch and then going through our firewall

ewwhite

Or you can run it as a forward proxy, but that requires policy/config changes on your clients.

pauska

should I put the filter between my switch and my firewall?

MikeyB

@BartSilverstrim No, their engineers.

pauska

I'm only pulling your hair here.. yeah, I get it, it's a L7 filtering bridge

MikeyB

16:26

Seriously, fucking Apple is telling me that "load balancing for FC only works when all ports are connected to the same switch."

pauska

It's just that those are so extremely hard to implement correctly when you have hundreds of networks and a complex internal routing structure

several firewall interfaces, link nets etc

Adrian

@pauska Not quite "pull my hair and tell me you love me", but close enough. =)

Joel

@pauska Why so many networks?

pauska

@Joel I'm at the HQ, we have ~80 remote locations, each with 2 subnets

big ass MPLS thingy

Joel

@pauska Good ol' mipples

84104

16:28

@BartSilverstrim It's not that it doesn't boot. It's that it fails to POST.

Or rather fails its POST, but whatever.

Joel

@84104 Throw it out

I never thought I'd say this, but I like Backup Exec

ewwhite

But look at Barracuda's target clients... small businesses. I seriously question anyone who gets their $34k Barracuda 910

Joel

@ewwhite At this point wouldn't most enterprises set up a DMVPN

pauska

@ewwhite I just glanced at their products, and we would need the 810

but bleh, I'm going to use squid and dansguardian just to block out the most bandwith consuming stuff

ewwhite

geez, yeah, there has to be a better solution than that :)

I only sell the 310

Bart Silverstrim

16:33

@84104 Right, but from what she said it will also have Windows say it failed to start up properly at the next boot after forcing a powerdown.

I suspected loose LCD connection to motherboard at first.

pauska

@ewwhite 10 mbps?

84104

@BartSilverstrim Oh so it is passing POST. Interesting. Does windows have anything like kern.log?

ewwhite

SMALL businesses :)

84104

@BartSilverstrim I'm really just curious. If I'm pressing to much just tell me.

Bart Silverstrim

@84104 Maybe.

I haven't dug into the logs.

After seeing that the external monitor was blank at start (when it does the bootup misbehavior) and the extended diags said all was fine, the boss was like, "Call dell, replace the parts."

Usually it's just contact them, they send a guy or send the parts. replace motherboard. I think I also reseated memory...

I could sort of see the upgrade to BIOS...it was two revisions out of date.

Joel

16:39

@BartSilverstrim I'd do the BIOS first as a CYA

SmallClanger

God Damn ipsec and or iOS, whichever is to blame...

Bart Silverstrim

But the second call should have gotten some parts. Instead they're asking to re-run diags...I'm like, the damn thing boots fine the second time, isn't crashing or locking up afterwards, it happens intermittently a few times a week. To me at this point it's probably the mobo. They should replace it just to keep us with less hassle and more happy.

@Joel BIOS was flashed to latest version.

Did that first, waited a week and got a report that it happened again.

Joel

@BartSilverstrim At that point I'd push for a replacement as well.

voretaq7

r0ar

Bart Silverstrim

@voretaq7 !

YOU... LIVE

voretaq7

16:45

@BartSilverstrim That's a FILTHY LIE!

Joel

I'm proud that my "software that sucks dicks" comment got 5 stars.

Bart Silverstrim

@voretaq7 You died?

Joel

Now he's Voretaq the White

David

hello

Adrian

guten morgen

David

16:58

whats cool for server08 r2 backups

2 disks, one off-site one on-site, rotated weekly

voretaq7

@BartSilverstrim Actually, yeah - once, a long time ago.

@Adrian Guten Worgen?

@Joel I prefer "The Pasty-White"

Adrian

@voretaq7 Hey. I'm an American. I'm not supposed to be able to spell worth a damn.

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