Hmm... SATA Really *IS* Slower than Fibre Channel

Friday 28 December 2007 at 1:20 pm I said in an earlier post that we were using CentOS5 with a Sun Storedge 3511 SATA Array to serve up NFSv4 home directories to Linux clients and SAMBA home directories to Windows users. In benchmarks this setup proved faster. But the stuff hit the fan when the quarter started and the users started pounding on it... (more)

I Haven't Died....

Thursday 16 August 2007 at 7:30 pm

Or anything... It's just been busy, really busy at work. But we have gotten:

• Fedora 7 and CentOS 5 to authenticate against Active Directory
• A CentOS 5 linux server to serve up home directories (including roving profiles) to Linux, Unix, and Windows clients with AD Kerberos
• Sun Ray Server Software (running Sun Ray thin clients) on CentOS 5 working with AD and Linux NFS home directories

And you know what? CentOS 5, serving NFS home directories off of a SATA array, is between 6 and 20 times faster than our (decent) Solaris SPARC servers with fibre channel array using Solaris 10. They were here before I was, but they're only like 10 months old. They should be *FASTER* than Linux.

More soon.

Sun 3510 and 3511 Disk Arrays

Thursday 02 August 2007 at 1:51 pm We have 2 Sun StorEdge 35XX disk arrays. Two Solaris hosts are directly attached to a Sun StorEdge 3510 Fibre Channel Array. One linux host has a similar Sun StorEdge 3511 Fibre Channel Array. The 3510 uses 10K RPM FC disks (fast), the 3511 uses slower (but larger) 7.2K RPM SATA disks. Other than that, the arrays are very similar. I didn't think much of them (why don't we have a *REAL* SAN?) but they are decent little arrays... (more)

Sun Ray Server Software 4, Beta Update 2 - running on CentOS

Thursday 19 July 2007 at 8:32 pm Here's my quick notes on getting SRSS 4, Beta Update 2 (the latest) running on Centos 4.4. (more)

Clustering: Don't turn the Rocks firewall off unless you know what you're doing...

Tuesday 17 July 2007 at 08:16 am Recently Professor Diana Franklin was awarded an NSF grant to build a small high performance computing cluster here on campus. As the "friendly neighborhood system administrator" I volunteered to help build and run it. We chose UCSD's Rocks Linux based clustering software for it. Rocks comes"out of the box" with most thing installed and configured correctly, even complicated things like Ganglia, a cluster monitor, or Sun Grid Engine, a job scheduler. Rocks makes it easy. Having said that, however, don't tinker with Rocks components unless you know what you are doing... (more)

Unix - Active Directory Integration

Tuesday 10 July 2007 at 09:39 am Currently I support thousands of users on hundreds of machines in a mixed Unix and Windows environment. The legacy environment has 2 separate systems to administer user accounts. On Unix, we still (!?!) use plain old NIS. For Windows, we use Windows Server 2003 R2 with Active Directory (AD). AD can theoretically support Unix authentication, and promises to offer a "one stop shop" for integrated account management. Does it really work? Read more to find out... (more)

Monitor your stuff: Nagios

Monday 25 June 2007 at 8:54 pm Nagios is a system monitoring tool that runs on Unix/Linux platforms, but will monitor practically anything - Unix, Windows, databases, environmental/HVAC, you name it. Nagios is good, and works well - but it isn't easy to configure. (more)

Not-So-Ancient History: Hewlett Packard Unix Servers

Sunday 24 June 2007 at 09:41 am

We replaced the U5000's with Hewlett Packard 9000 Unix servers. Wow, an actual TCP/IP stack. Along the way I wrote a number of how-to's, notes etc.

An explanation of HP firmware (PDC and ISL) and how a HP boots. May be of use to someone, especially someone trying to load linux on HP hardware.

How to load HP-UX 11.00. Explains how to load HP-UX 11.00, step by step. Intended for newbies.

How to install MirrorDiskU/X. MirrorDisk is HP's implementation of software mirroring, which I believe they basically licensed from Veritas. This guide takes you through setting up mirroring step-by-step. Intended for newbies.

How to update HP firmware. If you ever have to do this, it's nice to have someone hold your hand.

Ancient History: Sperry/Unisys 5000 Unix Servers

Sunday 24 June 2007 at 09:21 am

When I started actually getting paid to be a computer geek, I started as a system administrator/database administrator on Sperry/ Unisys 5000 mini-computers. These were about the size of a small refrigerator, and were designed for mostly serial I/O with dozens up to hundreds of serial ports in the back. They were based on 40 MHz 68040 CPUs and ran a proprietary port of ATT System V Unix. We used Oracle version 6.0.36 (and later Oracle 7) on them with our own proprietary character based financial, logistical, and personnel applications. If you want to see what one of those looked like, enter the U5000 Memorial.

System Acceptance

Sunday 24 June 2007 at 08:50 am

This is a very funny and very true article by Gene Woolsey on how systems are accepted in the workplace. If you have ever tried to implement new automation, you'll know what he is talking about.