Just a place to braindump my thoughts, talk about IT and other random stuff.
As I finally got all the new parts for my Pc yesterday, including but not limited to 2 160Gb Intel Postville SSD's and 4 1Tb drives for data storage. I was finally going to build and the install my new Pc!
The idea was to make a RAID0 array of the 2 Intel SSD's for my Operating System (Windows 7) and applications and configure a RAID10 array to store profile settings and data with the 4 1Tb drives. After putting everything together and doing the usual BIOS/Firmware/Windows installation and driver updates I got to the part where I would move the profile directory folders off off the RAID0 array and onto the RAID10 array.
In Windows XP this was as simple as a few mouse clicks on your 'My Documents’ folder in Windows 7 on the other hand stuff was a lot more complex.
After some tinkering I found a simple solution. In Linux I often use symbolic links for a lot of stuff so why not just do this on Windows too? Long story short here is how to move your profile folders from your Operating System drive to another drive in Windows 7.
For me this works flawlessly, I now have my data safe on a redundant RAID10 array while my OS and applications are on a super fast RAID0 array. On top of that I do not wear out my SSD drives all that much and I do not have to worry about the minimal storage space on that array.
I came across a nifty little trick that is apparently used by Windows developers but might be appreciated by systems administrators as well. I call it the Windows system configuration folder.
Essentially you make a new folder anywhere on your hard drive and name it as you wish, behind the name you place a key like in the following example '[FolderNameHere].{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}'. Note the '.' as a separator between the folder name and the key.
This key will create a folder with all common system configuration settings one might need much like the configuration screen but with much more options easily accessible from one menu. Very handy when you make new installations all the time or are just testing stuff.
One thing I am getting more and more tired of on the web lately is the endless Operating System wars on tech sites I visit regularly. These debates go on and on endlessly about why one operating system is better than another. More often than not these debates are held by people without even the least amount of experience in real world IT environments bringing up moot arguments about why one operating system is better than the other. One such argument I see often is 'server uptime'. Server uptime is seen by some of this people as a measurement of operating system superiority. I do not see server uptime as a good argument or indication of one operating system being superior to another and neither should you.
So what is server uptime really and why should we not care about it all that much? Well server uptime is the time measured between operating system restarts. Usually the clock starts to tick when the operating system is loaded and resets to 0 when the operating system or server it runs on is restarted or shut down for whatever reason. In real enterprises we do not care much about server uptime because it is not an interesting statistic to look at. Your server can be online for 300 days for all I care, if the services it provides crash every other week the server is not really useful to end users.
This brings me to a more appropriate statistic to look at which is ‘service availability’. Service Availability is the total time in which a service was available and usable for end users during a certain timeframe, say a month or a year. This statistic is much more interesting than server uptime as it can usually be translated in user satisfaction. If a service that you provide to an end-user, let’s pick email as an example has a service availability of 100% in the month of January the user will be satisfied with the service you provide. If on the other hand you measure this in server uptime in which case the server is online for the whole month of January but the actual email server was unavailable for one day due to a crash you get a whole different picture and the actual uptime of the email service will not be 100% and will ultimately result in less satisfied users.
This is the reason why enterprises care so much about clustering and failover these days. Real enterprises do not count on just one single box with 300 days uptime to provide critical services to its end users. They use clusters of servers backed up with network failover features and redundant data storage to provide the highest possible service availability they can get. In this real world scenario it does not matter if one single node goes down for security updates or because it crashed as the other servers in the cluster and the services they provide will still be available.
In the real world operating system superiority is not based on server uptime. It is based on how easy they are to manage, how easy the services they provide are managed, how well those services scale and most importantly if the operating system provides the services the enterprise and its users need to get their job done.
Some time ago I did a review of my VPS host Pcextreme (dutch). Back then which is not even that long ago their VPS packages where based on the XEN hypervisor. Now they have migrated their VPS infrastructure to KVM, I was invited to their beta test about two months ago so I had some time to play with it. Now their full infrastructure has migrated to KVM and I thought a new review was appropriate.
The new KVM platform is hosted on the same hardware as the XEN platform was, using top of the line servers with dual Intel Xeon quad core CPU's, totaling 8 cores per physical server. All machines have 64 GB of ram and use 16 15000RPM SAS disks configured in raid 50 to guarantee both throughput and high availability. Each server also has dual 1Gbps uplinks to the backbone configured for failover in case a connection might fail.
Just as with their old XEN platform they offer customer controlled reboots, shutdowns and reinstalls. A very big plus is that it is now also possible for customers to have a real time view on their data usage, while they did sent an email on their old platform when you came close to your monthly bandwidth limit you can now see how much data your VPS used any time you want from the easy to use VPS-Shell. This has been one of my suggestions in the past and they seem to have implemented it showing that they listen to their customers.
While the data storage for most VPS packages are a bit small compared to other VPS providers. (Pcextreme usually only gives you half the amount of storage space other providers offer) They do offer two partitions with every VPS, a data partition with the size of your ordered package and a second partition that is twice the amount of your ram to be used as swap space. So while the data storage you get seems to be a bit limited at first, you can actually use everything of it to store well . . data! Most other VPS providers I have seen do not do this and in that case you have to give up some storage space for your swap partition. This seems like a small thing but it actually tells a lot about how Pcextreme thinks about stuff before implementing a solution and offering it to customers.
The new SSH-Shell now also supports key based authentication. This is really cool and I have not yet seen any other provider that does this. It.s the small things in IT that usually make your work a bit easier and more enjoyable. This is in my opinion one of those things.
Pcextreme also offers custom solutions at request. You want private interfaces between VPS servers, VPS servers on different physical nodes for load balancing or high availability? Just contact support before ordering and they will help you out. Their support people are friendly and willing to help even with more complex setups and requests.
If you administer mail servers you might know that anti spam packages are real resource hogs and often also take up a lot of time to configure and maintain. Pcextreme now offers their anti-spam services for free with every VPS. You can filter up to 3 domains for every VPS you rent from them. Saving you time and money in the long run.
On the old XEN platform you only had the option to have a pre configured operating system template and while you could reinstall the template itself if stuff went wrong there was no option for a real operating system installation. Also the choice of operating systems was a bit limited under the XEN platform. This improved a lot with the introduction of KVM as there are now a lot more operating systems available including a large scale of different flavors of Linux, FreeBSD and even Windows XP and Windows Server 2003! They do charge a small monthly fee for the last two though.
It is also a big relief that while there are still preconfigured templates available for beginners. You can now launch an expert installation from the SSH-Shell giving you the option to install and partition an operating system of your choice from scratch as if you were right behind the physical machine. This is done through a VNC console that gives you access to the console of your VPS.
While Pcextreme.s backup service is actually a service you have to order separately is nice to see they have integrated it into the new KVM platform. This means that if you also use their backup services you can make backups and snapshots of your running VPS right from the VPS SSH-Shell. You can also restore a backup from the backup service any time you want. While this is a simple thing it just makes your life as a sys admin easier.
As I helped beta test the new KVM platform I have a good view of the technical staff at Pcextreme. Overall they are helpful and simple bugs are solved within minutes. I really like the way they handle suggestions and it is fun to see that a lot of the suggestions I made where implemented before the KVM platform went live. Responses to emails are usually answered within a decent timeframe as well.
The new KVM VPS platform is everything their XEN platform was and more. There is a huge amount of extra options compared to XEN especially in the selection and installation of your VPS and I did not have to think twice about migrating my VPS when their KVM platform went live. Overall I am still really pleased with Pcextreme.s services and it is good to see that they develop solutions for a competitive price while still maintaining a decent level of customer support.
If you are looking for a competitive VPS provider with its datacenter located in the Netherlands give them a try. I am sure they won.t disappoint you.
The work just keeps on coming and the heap only seems to get bigger no matter how hard you work or how much hours you make a day (10 to 12 hours are certainly no exception) the work never seems to come to an end. At the end of the week you drop on the couch with a cold beer and some cheap movie and think 'tomorrow is another day to get done what I did not finish this week'. On your free day you VPN in to the corporate network and start doing the maintenance stuff that should have been done already.
The scenario sketched above is certainly no exception in the life of an IT professional and I know that many of us make long days and weeks to make sure the pile of work stays at an acceptable level. Even more worrying is the fact that managers and end users seem to expect us to work this long hours and take them for granted. Below are some tips and guidelines to schedule your work better, they do not necessarily shorten your workday but they keep you organized and focused and make you feel more relaxed during the week.
Start making a task list a day before going to work, make a note of the most important tasks you want to get done for that day. You can do this the evening before going to work or take 20 minutes before going home from work on a normal work day. You can also make a list for Monday on Sunday evening.
Schedule your most important work at the beginning of the day when you are still fresh and sharp and work trough your list of tasks from most important to less important. Also make sure to not over schedule. Keep some time in between tasks to relax or catch up on small stuff that comes to your desk during the day.
Like many other IT pros there was a time I did not eat in the morning, how tempting it might be do not do it! Eat something before you go to work or leave home earlier and eat something when you arrive at work. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, it helps wake you up and keeps you sharp during the day.
This is one of the most important things in getting work done. Stop checking your email every 15 minutes, if it is really important the right people can get a hold of you one way or another to inform you that one of your precious servers is burning down to the ground.
It is much more effective to handle email in batches than answer 1 or 2 email every 15 minutes. Set up a schedule for checking your email 3 times a day, once in the morning, just before lunch and just before the end of the day. You'll be surprised how much time you win during a work week if you do this.
Even if you do not eat anything during lunch make sure to use the time for a little break. Just 20 minutes of personal time can keep your head clear and focused the rest of the day. If you constantly get disturbed by colleagues that also have lunch and walk around the office go out of the building and take a walk, or grab a cup of your favorite coffee at Starbucks.
Meetings are dull and boring and planning them in the morning can keep you in that dull state the rest of the day influencing your performance. Also at the end of a day people tend to want to go home usually resulting in shorter and more to the point meetings. That is what we IT people like right?
However tempting it might be and however good you might be at it try to avoid it! Multitasking is nice but getting your job done is even better! Stay focused on one task at a time and finish the task before beginning another one. If you get disturbed a lot during work by colleagues let them know you are busy and ask them to come back later or send you an email with their problem or request. If you have a phone that supports it you can turn off the ringtone and set a .do not disturb, busy. message on your display.
Keep your day off your day off, do not do any work during your day off if you do not really have to. Just do something to relax, go to the beach, get a cup of coffee and sandwich at your favorite coffee shop or drink a beer with some friends. Try not to think about your workload too much. People need rest and working at home on your free day is not the best way to get it. It is much better to start fresh and organized the next day fully rested than tired of another day of work at home.
This are just some tips that might help you during your work day. Try them sometime and let me know if they worked for you!