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11:17
Word of the day: cockwomble
11:40
Upvoting, only because I don't understand what is being asked...
1
Q: How to reliably map vSphere disks <-> Linux devices

brianmcgeeTask at hand After a virtual disk has been added to a Linux VM on vSphere 5, we need to identify the disks in order to automate the LVM storage provision. The virtual disks may reside on different datastores (e.g. sas or flash) and although they may be of the same size, their speed may vary. So...

@ewwhite would that not be a case for voting to close as "not a real question" rather than an upvote?
I'm not asking how to install it... I'm asking how to-- oh whatever, I got a CD drive. — rtainc 13 hours ago
@syneticon-dj I sense that they're trying to do something interesting... but I don't know exactly what.
Did they confuse UUIDs and WWNs?
Oh, I suppose they want some kind of auto-provisioning toolkit. Add a disk to a VM in vSphere and have it added to the Linux guest's LVM config in one step
although I do wonder why one would mess with LVM in virtual machines in the first place
@syneticon-dj "because we always use LVM, that's why". Actual quote from actual coworker.
@JennyD that's the attitude. At least things are kept at a familiar level this way.
Unless you try to resize the underlying physical volumes that is
11:47
@syneticon-dj so you can grow your vm's without reinstalling
@DennisKaarsemaker Um. I do grow my VMs without reinstalling all the time. And LVM is nothing but an obstacle in the process.
@syneticon-dj There is an advantage to familiarity and keeping stuff as similar as possible, especially if you are having trained monkeys do routine maintenance tasks. But I'd like to see some actual thought put into whether this particular instance is one where it's valuable enough to do something that's otherwise of little inherent value.
"trained monkeys" in our case is staff that's not really very experienced with unix but reasonable able to follow a step-by-step list
I always considered LVM a good fit for local, physical storage where LVM can make up for the deficiencies. With virtualized storage (be it a virtual disk or a SAN LUN) I still have to find a good, generic use case.
Dan
Dan
@ewwhite I was kind of the same. I get the theory, but I'm wondering what information they're hoping to gain from the guest OS. I don't know how you could ever have it auto detect the storage profile, for example
Right.
I don't like LVM in VMs either. Redundant... but I have a NOC staff that only knows how to use LVM...
And customers who don't know their sizing requirements...
12:01
so the NOC staff would know how to
1. create an additional virtual disk and attach it to the VM
2. fdisk it to create an LVM-type partition
3. pvcreate the partition
4. add it to the volume group
5. resize the logical volume
6. resize the included partition
7. resize the file system
...
but would not know how to
1. resize the virtual disk
2. resize the partition
3. resize the file system
?!
1.1 rescan the LUN to get the updated size
Basically...
They didn't know how to do the fdisk side of it...
delete partition... especially in an extended partition scenario... recreate with new endpoint. partprobe... resize2fs, etc.
With LVM they don't use partitions within the logical volumes?
@ewwhite I wish I could say I'm surprised that they can do a complex task that they've done many times but not a less complex one that they haven't done before... The ones that do understand how to switch contexts between physical and virtual servers are the ones that move out of NOC into sysadminning, leaving the NOC staffed with the less competent ones.
Very true.
But remember, I'm old-school... I've come here for LVM help because I've only worked with raw partitions.
@ewwhite AOL. And I'm regrettably familiar with being extremely confused about which HW path on the server is which disk on whatever is handing out disks.
12:07
@ewwhite you should have asked the NOC people.
psssh...
@ewwhite the other day I scrolled through your flickr stream I noticed that you have been to Germany. Did you do a Europe tour on holidays or did you visit for a conference?
@syneticon-dj I worked for a trading firm that was Frankfurt-based.
My sis-in-law lives in Frankfurt.
I like trains...
2
and I bought my BMW in Munich.
So I'm in Germany 2-3 times per year.
I See ;) Kind of a long way to travel for a car. Don't you have the same model lines in the US?
Same trading firm also had a branch in Honolulu... and I have produce clients there... so I travel to odd places... NY, LA, Hawaii and Germany.... on a loop, it seems.
12:15
Odd to read the four named on the same line.
@syneticon-dj It's the US model, but it's a little cheaper to buy in Germany/Euro-delivery.
I mean, they put the car on the showroom floor and gave a big presentation...
@syneticon-dj London used to be in the mix, too... but not much anymore
Sounds nice. But how could they do differently if you were flying all the way over the pond just to get it.
@syneticon-dj the car never enters the US dealer's inventory, so they have no incentive to markup the price.
shipping is $400
So we picked it up in Munich and drove to Switzerland.
$400?! To the U.S.?
dropped it off in Zurich and saw it a couple of weeks later in the US
12:20
@syneticon-dj I was just thinking the same
yeah, that's the shipping cost... so if you buy a car in the US, that cost is embedded in the price.
@ewwhite and part of the markup
right...
how much did you save ?
it was funny... once the car hits the US, they swap out the airbags, and make some other modifications to meet North American standards.
even the first-aid kit is different
@Iain maybe $8k
12:22
Um. If you buy a German car in Germany, there is a conveyance charge somewhere around 150 € - 350 €, depending on where you live. I am really surprised shipping to the states would be done for $400.
Morning
wearing sunglasses at night, @cole?
so I can, so I can...
@syneticon-dj it's a structured program. BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Saab... all have Euro-delivery programs. And they're meant to keep you hooked... because of the experience
@syneticon-dj shipping to the US would be in a vessel made for shipping vehicles + containers, and the car companies usually have really good shipping rates. The overland shipping is generally the most expensive part. (My first sysadmin gig was at a shipping company :-)
12:25
I just shipped my pants
2
I also had a little accident in a parking lot in Füssen...
The car was repaired by the time it reached New Jersey.
@ewwhite that must feel great when you got the car a few hours ago
Dan
Dan
@ewwhite Is that a 5 series estate?
12:28
@Dan yes.
Dan
Dan
@ewwhite Nice cars - I like big cars, though I think I'd be happy with the 3 series
535XI - all-wheel-drive, blah, blah
Dan
Dan
All wheel drive BWM, may aswell buy an Audi Quattro :D
so, not a Hippy Wagon then
They stopped bringing them to North America in 2010, I think...
so there's no nice wagon option from BMW in the US now
Dan
Dan
12:30
I may be wrong, btu I guess they don't appeal to the US market that much
BMW replaced it with:
I like some of the Audi wagons
Dan
Dan
@ewwhite Not keen on that
There were DOZENS sold in the US
total failure
Dan
Dan
:D
12:33
Okay, 720... the first year.
Anyway, that's when I was a superstar sysadmin. Back to reality :)
Had lunch with a hedge fund friend yesterday... and his firm's 2000+ servers all run Ubuntu. Made me cry.
Eh. Could be worse.
Almost.
NASDAQ uses a customised Gentoo. Doin' It Right.
because, Gentoo is basically whatever you want it to be
in The Bridge, 1 min ago, by LessPop_MoreFizz
user image
there better be a YouTube video of that
pics or it didn't happen
2
12:38
unless Phelps sued it off already
he's a piece of shit, but he's also a very competent Lawyer
lawsuits is their main source of income, right?
@Olipro Only for their matching engine... and they have a finely-controlled setup.
right, as you'd expect
The Swedish domain name registry is going to allow registration of domains that have been blocked, e.g. 2-letter domains that match state names, and so on. I want to see the bidding for ar.se.
@JennyD considering all the expense in labour and material needed (get to coast, build ship, produce oil, load, travel 6000 km, unload), I would suspect the usual distortion by demand and supply, it seems to be sold way below the regular cost.
12:45
@Olipro Well, quick search of Youtube gives us this: youtube.com/watch?v=KzvIuIW7FmE
@syneticon-dj Economies of scale. It's not like this was a one-off shipment. They send lots of cars this way.
(Speaking of Naked Man Tackling David Phelps)
"Leviathan! Leviathan!"
@JennyD let's do a flutter on what is going to be the content of ar.se
@syneticon-dj Most car shipping actually just buys a spot on an existing boat, instead of building a new one. Strange but true!
@JennyD strange indeed
@JennyD wouldn't it be ... dirty because it has been used so many times before?
@ewwhite ordering a server from the U.S. would cost me around $250 in shipping charges. Where's the scale?
12:48
@syneticon-dj I actually was on one of those ships once. They're floating skyscrapers. We had to take an elevator 20 floors up to get to the bridge, and all those 20 floors were full of cars and trailers...
and they had a crew of twelve people to run the whole ship.
BTW: a trip from Nice to Corse (about 140 km through the mediterranean sea) with a light vehicle and a handful of passengers is around $200 one-way. The ferry is not too small either (not to compare with a container ship of course, but impressive nonetheless).
And driving the aforementioned BMW from Munich to Zurich (~300 km) would be around $50 in fuel costs alone.
ferries are expensive because they can be. There's not enough competition, plus they need to have facilities for passengers (though that usually includes very expensive shops...). Container/RORO ships have heavier competition and they don't need all those facilities. The competition for transatlantic shipping is really fierce.
sup noobs
sup d00d
@ewwhite I want a X6 so bad
12:59
@MDMarra I'm pissed at you. You never told me of SCUP 2011. I had to dig through the MMS2013 videos you provided to "discover" it. :)
SCUP?
Word SCUP.
2
@JennyD "ar" in Sweden? Arlanda?
Ahh Update Publisher
@pauska that domain has so far been blocked from being sold, but IIS are planning on releasing it and a lot of other blocked domains.
Most swedish companies seem to want horrendously long domain names. I do not understand this.
13:02
morning
@Cole I only knew about the OSS "hack" version of local update publisher. SCUP is exactly what I'd wanted for a while -- a supported MS product for 3rd party updates. Adobe even provides their update catalog as a SCUP subscription.
@JennyD yeah but where in Sweden was "ar" reserved for?
@jscott !
Seriously?!
@jscott that's pretty sweet - we don't have that here. (big surprise)
@pauska it wasn't reserved for anything, they just blocked all 2-letter domain names. There's a list of blocked domain names, it just says "blocked - country code".
serverfault.com/questions/500174/… - made me think of a guy at the uni, who edited someone else's .kshrc so the last line read 'echo "sleep 1" >> .kshrc' Took a while for the victim to figure that out...
13:09
Oh boy, Google Apps is crapping it self. Sweet.
Mail, Drive and the admin API so far...
@jscott yikes
Let the phones begin ringing...
I had issues with my phone saying my Gmail accounts had the wrong password....yet I was still getting email in the Mailbox app but the Mail app was like LOLWRONGPASSWORD
@jscott I didn't actually watch those haha
although isn't SCUP part of SCCM anyway?
@MDMarra nein
free download, but only allowed to use if you have a SCCM license
13:18
I think it's part of SCCM 2012
@MDMarra Negative.
It's just a role you install through the SCCM sites hierarchy thing
hm
@MDMarra I'm not a SCCM2012 pro by any stretch, but I cannot find it in there. There's a download for SCUP on the MS site.
Ah I was thinking of SUP
I, also, am not a SCCM pro
Alright @MDMarra - I'm prepping my design and looking to pull the trigger in May. We are going to be going the Office 365 route WITHOUT AD integration. We aren't a stable company yet and MS tells us that "once you go with dirsync and ADFS you can't go back". That said, it looks like we are going to do the E3 plan with Intune. So, this means we are going to stay 100% cloud. The good thing with not doing ADFS is that we aren't reliant on local authentication at all...
in case something breaks or the network connectivity to a DC is down completely.
13:26
I think I'm going to learn how to conduct a train.
They just upped the bonus this year- 4000$ if I get certified by the fall
@TheCleaner Intune!
@Basil - first step...overalls.
@TheCleaner s/overalls/hat
Let me know how it does. I demoed it for the MDM capabilities
13:26
I didn't think customers like you existed that would use the non-MDM parts :)
I've been a conductor, but only for loading/unloading... :)
@TheCleaner They want us to be able to run the operations should one of our unions strike
And I'd get to brag to @ewwhite that I can drive a train
Today's straw poll shows 38/50 (76%) of the most recent questions are from people who would not naturally call themselves Sysadmins. 37/38 have more rep on SO than anywhere else on SE, 1/38 SU.
@MDMarra - will do...and the MDM/byod stuff might help too with FDA regulations.
@Basil CHOO CHOO BASIL'S RUNNING TRAIN
13:28
Shit, the conductors are striking. Quick, throw that storage guy on a train, the HDS shelves can run themselves!
@TheCleaner No iOS VPP sideloading of apps through intune though :(
glaring hole there
@Basil - well mine was a steam loco...yours is probably a real biz/train operation. :)
After having a completely full and eventful day (for once) at work yesterday, now - nothing.
@MDMarra - :) we wouldn't pay for apps for employees phones...
A lot of places want to buy like 100 licenses of Pages and push them out so people can word process wherever
And then reclaim those licenses with device retirement when employees leave
@MDMarra Yeah, I wonder whos fault is that..
13:30
Microsoft
Casper, Airwatch, MAAS360 all do it
that's what they'll get and they'll like it!
haha
but you can't give them all Angry Birds Space for Christmas!
13:32
true
@Basil - nice...you can be Denzel....or maybe the fat guy that forgot to throw the switch?
@TheCleaner I used to know that fat guy (Ethan Suplee)
driving a train is apparently easy, it's stopping it that's hard...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21088672
@TheCleaner haha, that movie is awesome.
@JennyD I'm fascinated by train braking- they actually only use brakes for the last little bit, normally. The vast majority is done with frictionless "dynamic braking", basically using the locomotive to run the electric motors backward, making them into generators.
@Basil That's really cool
@JennyD If only there were a battery light enough to capture all that electricity- right now, we literally vent it as heat.
13:38
If you ever do get to drive the train...be sure and block a major intersection at rush hour, going back and forth a few times just as the end of the train is in sight.
@Basil how far out do they start the dynamic braking ?
I looked into the math, and the current density of electrical storage (in terms of weight per unit of energy storage) makes it not worth having any batteries
@Iain It takes a long ass time to stop a train, even with real brakes. Dynamic brakes only use the wheels on the locomotives... so as far out as possible
@Basil I'd guess the time is not that far off when those batteries will be worth it
the farther, the better
@JennyD I'm hoping so. That or some sort of fuel cell that can be reversed
we use diesel engines now, but there's a prototype that uses liquid natural gas in a diesel engine
Just energize the tracks with all that extra. :)
13:39
@jscott electric tracks are rare, outside cities
I'm driving a Prius; it does store at least some of the waste energy in batteries so the gas engine gets less use
although it's not as cool as driving a train, I have to admit
@JennyD yeah, the principle is the same. The challenge for cars is actually switching to dual or electric motors. We already have them. Our challenge is in scale
Yep. Next car will be a prius with charger.
They still can't be used with trailers though, so I still need a second car for that.
A 4 mile train filled with coal takes so much power to start and generates equivalently large amounts of heat stopping
The Cleaner: Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?

Basil: Hey, hey, hey! Keep rolling. Keep rolling there.

[Cleaner raises the camcorder]

Basil: No, no, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
2
13:41
@JennyD The thing with the current methods of electricity storage is that it's actually almost as bad for the environment as burning fuel- battery manufacturing deposits a lot of really bad shit into the environment
@TheCleaner haha
@Basil here we feed the generated electricity back to the overhead wire
Everything's electric here
@DennisKaarsemaker commuter trains, sure. You can't do that for the mainline though
@Basil yes - but it's a process of R&D that needs customers in order for it to get better
Not sure what you mean with mainline
13:44
All passenger trains are electric. Freight much less
hundreds of thousands of miles of track
in the north of Sweden we have ore train that takes tens of kilometres to brake, you hear them from a great distance...
definitely not electric ones :-)
@Basil ns.nl/cgi-bin/spoorkaart/spoorkaart a mere hundreds of thousands of meters of railway :)
The only trains I generally come in contact with are coal. It rather makes me sad.
@DennisKaarsemaker heh yeah, Europeans have it good for rail
@ScottPack we move a hell of a lot of it. We also move a hell of a lot of other stuff
Intermodal traffic can be anything that goes into a shipping container
13:49
correction: the ore trains actually are electric. Like these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iore
68 cars long, weight of 8600 tonnes...
@Basil I just wish I could see more passenger. I understand there's more of it in New England, but large swaths of abandoned track around here is being pulled up and turned into foot/bike path.
So...I applied to a company in Boston that develops/hosts a gay dating site...and I have a phone call with the CTO tomorrow. This shall be interesting.
Does anybody here know of a company where you can rent a server with reliable IPv6 connectivity somewhere in Africa? Country doesn't matter, but it should be on the continent, not e.g. on the Canary islands.
My colleague from South Africa is off today, I'll ask him when he's back
@ScottPack Passenger is not that profitable these days- people prefer flying. That said, there's been a revival since passenger started offering things like wifi, but now premium air travel offers that too
13:59
@DennisKaarsemaker Thanks!
@Basil Oh sure. I find myself mostly annoyed that the majority of my travel is between places that are reasonably close, <4hrs drive, and used to be connected by passenger rail. Hell, the nearest commercial airport is 1.5 hours.
Why the crap can't the RI.gov website tell me how to update my birth certificate
@Basil - the family and I are planning to take one of the Amtrak cross country train trips...I think it'll be fun personally. The wife isn't that thrilled yet, but I think she'll change her mind.
@TheCleaner Long train trips are not very universally convenient- they are as expensive as a flight, and a little less convenient for people. Of course, some people will have non-convenience reasons for liking that kind of thing (like being afraid of flying or loving trains), but there's not enough of them to make it a big industry.
@JennyD I've seen a 2 mile train with intermodal containers stacked double tall.
oh sure...this was more of a "do it once vacation". Figure the kids will have fond memories and who knows if passenger trains will even be around when they grow up.
14:06
@Basil CN only has a little bit of passenger? And CP has none any more, right?
@TheCleaner You should take them on the trans-Siberian railway
Or the orient express
Does anyone have recommendations on office networking setup? We're moving to new office and need to support 50 devices and then able to support 100 in the long term.
@lamp_scaler get a few cisco 3750's and build yourself a stack. Unless you have security requirements to do otherwise, just leave them all in the same /24
And get a cabling contractor to do the wiring to the wall/floor outlets
@DennisKaarsemaker and for the love of god label that shit
14:11
@Tanner neh, not if it all just goes to interchangable desktops in the same /24
lldp/cdp win over labeling
10GIG FIBER TO EVERYTHING. EVEN DESKTOPS, ILO, AND THE FRIDGE.
4
@DennisKaarsemaker I think he meant wall jacks/patch panels
new office = wireless for 90% IMO...802.11ac...unless everyone is desktops.
@MDMarra likewise. Just install a cdp/lldp agent on all desktops.
ac isn't even a real thing yet, though
@DennisKaarsemaker yuck
14:12
802.11ac == wifi via the airconditioning?
7
@tombull89 okay now I'm starring that...
@DennisKaarsemaker - it includes air conditioning fans in the AP
@MDMarra There's pre-draft hardware though.
Look how well that worked out for a lot of the pre-draft N equipment :)
"We'll fix it in software" :)
14:20
Plus, you run into chicken+egg scenerios with all wireless setups. Like imaging
You can't image someone where it is with wireless
You'd need to bring it to a technician's area
...yet
Although I think wifi-PXE would be a hilariously insane idea.
right, but I mean eventually we'll all be able to press a button and transport to wherever we're going in under a second. That doesn't mean that I'm going to start leaving for work at 8:59:59 until then
@jscott I believe there are machines with boot from wifi...buggered if I know how it would work though.
I just called my local Representative. It's an odd feeling calling someone and telling them how I'd like them to vote.
For anyone in the US: The House votes on CISPA on Friday. Please contact your Representative and tell them to vote NO eff.org/r.2bJf
14:39
Asking to get screwed...
1
Q: HP 4TB SATA Midline in D2600 - what disk make is HP using & why WD RE4 don't work?

robin HDoes anyone know what make of disk HP are using in their 4TB SATA Midline & why WD RE4 don't work? So we use D2600 crates with HP 2TB disks, and just buy WD2003FYYS - pop them in old HP caddies. bonus: 5yr warranty, half price of HP. We just tried a set of 4TB disks WD4000FYYZ, and each time th...

Would YOU guys use 4TB disks today?
@ewwhite I would put one in my Time Capsule.
@jscott For realz... but not your enterprise server.
@ewwhite I use them
for exchange
@Basil With support and manufacturer blessing, right?
@ewwhite yeah
14:45
Not some disks from Best Buy stuffed in HP carriers.
cheapest price per TB
@jscott Can you do that
@ewwhite Ah, that's correct. Not that.
@MDMarra Idk, haven't tried yet -- I know lots of people "upgraded" the 1TB models with new drives. Not sure what the limits are.
@ewwhite Sure, for archival and scratch disks
14:48
@ChrisS I s'pose...
I'd hesitate to use them in production systems.... Definitely wouldn't use NewEgg supplied disks in a Production system
But to each their own...
I'm all about that dual-ported thing.
@MDMarra how's that new job going?
It's good
@DennisKaarsemaker those cisco 3750s are expsensive!
lots of new stud to digest
@lamp_scaler No one ever got fired for buying Cisco
14:51
And answer this: Sometime when I open powershell on a Windows 2008 system, no prompt appears. Why is that?
this is my own company
we are a startup
so budget is a factor
@ewwhite Stuck loading your profile? Does ctrl+c do anything?
@jscott Not sure. I close and reopen.
@ewwhite How long are you letting it sit there? It could be messed up profiles like @jscott says
i was thinking along the lines of having a entry level small business router and then a few unmanaged switches.
14:53
@lamp_scaler I don't think you're going to get much agreement out of that decision here, but you've got to do what you've got to do.
I also notice the "(2)" there in the title -- is this a VMware-customized image? Did you launch Powershell from the taskbar?
@MDMarra I'm on a Windows server I've never touched before... I can understand it happening to systems I build because I'm probably doing something wrong...
hahahaha
but my main contention is, what is the difference between small business routers and home routers? im mainly concentrating on stability and reliability of the network
@lamp_scaler What are you looking for?
@jscott yes... and most Windows systems I encounter are VMware.
14:55
well, we will be pulling 20M internet lines into the office. and then have a router then a few switches distributed out for each department.
@lamp_scaler Reliability, scalability, throughput, size of the routing table, features, etc
although we just got an order for 30 Windows 2003 systems on HP G7 Proliants.
mostly hoping to have 50-100 people having stable internet connection
@ewwhite wat
and not having the router glitch up
14:55
@lamp_scaler Multiple lines, add an Elfiq load balancer up front.
feature wise, need to have basics such as restricting access to certain sites. but nothing too fancy
@MDMarra Yep... Biiiig new deal.
@ewwhite I've noticed all our VMware-customized servers also display the "(2)" in the title (Powershell, cmd) as if the shortcuts pinned were a duplicate. Just an odd side effect I guess.
@ewwhite It froze the screen while you're highlighting text... Pushing Enter should get the screen back
@ChrisS Does not.
I wasn't highlighting anything... launched from taskbar.
maybe it's a Mac RDP thing
14:57
if i have 100 devices connected to the internet, what type of router would i need at the very minimum?
@ewwhite 2003 is EoS next year
@ChrisS That would prefix the title with "Select" when that happens.
@lamp_scaler .router or firewall?
i thought a router comes with a firewall feature
@MDMarra tell this large well-known corporation
14:57
@jscott Yes
@lamp_scaler At minimum, a $650 Cisco ASA 5505 Unlimited bundle.
@ewwhite what's your logic there for that suggestion?
@lamp_scaler ASA5505 or a pfSense boxen
@lamp_scaler The ASA5505 is crazy popular and zillions of people know how to configure them
@lamp_scaler These are tough, resilient boxes, have an enterprise feature set, don't require much support, Cisco has good mindshare and it works.
For quantities of "zillions" in the tens of thousands anyway.
14:59
Plus, it can be a VPN endpoint...
i see.
+1 for ASA 5505, we've got the ASA5510 here.

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