May15th2008
Published by richard May 15th, 2008
in Uncategorized.
In the middle of putting out a proposal for a very large client/tender at the moment. Well over a life time’s earnings in servers and an as yet un calculated retainer and service rate at this stage – electricity and bandwidth and human hours all cost money.
I always try to get the best prices within the scope of common sense for clients. Mainly because as a integrated stack vendor, the pricing on one component can blow out the total price of the whole stack. And hardware is the first place to start (given an understanding of the management systems and risk credentials of the project at hand already).
One thorn in my side is mandated “Installation and Configuration” charges. Which are basically extortion attempts.
Continue reading ‘Nickel and Dimming Vendor Olympics?’
Yay!
Go read www.beijinglug.org for more.
Now if only IDG could put on a half decent Linux World instead of the token crap they excrete out like a constipated hippo.
Feb13th2008
Published by richard February 13th, 2008
in FOSS/GNU/Linux.
Wow! What a great discussion tonight at the BLUG!
Sorry if I talked too much. Sorry if the other Aussies did like wise. It is very Australian to just tell it how it is and not filter for PC or sensitivities.
Anyway, here is an excellent read from Cory Doctorow that I recently read. No wonder none of his books are on audible!
Corey Doctorow’s speach at Microsoft
Software as a service. Sounds nice doesn’t it? How about utility computing or computing as a service?
Well it is not until you actually start to UNDERSTAND it – that you get to appreciate it. All too often the pundits of tech in society (as nice as they are), like twit.tv, cnet.com and zdnet.com – have a great habit of talking about tech and service – but never having actually done it themselves or can appreciate it at a deeper and more sophisticated level.
Case in point, is the fact that many people go on about “I want a real app, not some web app”. Or, I need to have connectivity while I am in a cross country flight, etc. To me it just seems that some people can’t get with the times from either a tech standpoint, or even from another perspective, say costs.
Continue reading ‘Software as a Service, ASPing, ESPing, ISPing and many more “SP’s”’
Jan9th2008
I read this entry over on David Wolf’s blog before my recent trip back down under about power usage and IT infrastructure.
Silicon Hutong
And the topic did strike a “Hey this is real man!!!” kind of chord with me. A cathartic resonance that shall never come from me with respect to the greater greenhouse effect crap while the infallible science is still not in. Nor came to me for any other “agenda” or “crusade of the world” that seemed to so very trouble all those students over in the Arts and Law faculties. That seemed to have so much time on their hands, relative to us poor saps in Engineering and Business school.
Politics aside, wastage for the sake of wastage though is not very good. And I have a rather poignant insider’s look at this issue that also manages (in my mind at least) to cross paths with this issue about China’s talent gap, or indeed this also about the talent gap.
What does resource wastage and power requirements have to do with a talent gap, or as they lament now in overly taxed and anti-entrepreneurial Australia – the “Brain Drain”?
Allow me to explain.
Continue reading ‘China an inefficient truth’
Published by richard January 9th, 2008
in China and Tech Horizon.
I was making a surprise visit to our data centre today to see if the mice were at play while yours truly, the big cat was away.
Out the front I saw all these boxes being unloaded by the truckload. I asked what they were all for and was told that this is for the Wimax deployment. Wimax which is pronounce “Tian Xian” in Chinese or literally “Sky Line”, sky as in that sometimes blue thing above us and line as in cable. Our data centre has already been running trials for the past 2 years and I have peeked at their equipment with much excitement.
It turns out that the trials were a success and the stuff is being fully deployed now!
And yes, the mice were quite well behaved. 
Jan2nd2008
Published by richard January 2nd, 2008
in Business Development and China.
This is a new initiative from Google in China. They contacted our LUG to see if there was any interest. To quote from El Presidente Fred:
“I am reaching out for people with skills and/or interest in system or network administration. Google is starting a community around this theme and we were asked for the few of us interested to join”
It went down on the 18th of December at “Taihe Caoben Chafang”, 1/F, Block 17, Wanda Guangchang.
Name in Chinese: 万达广场17号楼，太和草本茶坊
I wonder what they were up to? Maybe some of my fellow bluggers who read my blog can chime in and update us all? I would have gone, but hey I had a visit to sunny Australia to take care of!
Published by richard December 3rd, 2007
in FOSS/GNU/Linux.
Ever had a situation like this:
Select from database ID where name = RICHARD;
Returns and ID of 55 for example.
Then go and do a query like this:
Select * from some_other_table where ID = 55;
Returns, “Sorry does not exist, time to die…..”
Well apparently indexes when corrupt – which is NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN – can cause PostgreSQL to go all stupid and not do a table lookup for real. This happened to me. So I found this:
PlanetPostgresql
Turns out that a reindex and a full vacuum can do wonders – even though a full vacuum is not needed with autovacuum and indexes can’t get corrupted…..or so they say.
I have now added a system wide reindex maintenance plan for PostgreSQL every night. I know that MS-SQL server has an option for this with their maintenance jobs inside enterprise manager. Maybe someone should make an enterprise manager for PostgreSQL too?
Nov18th2007
Published by richard November 18th, 2007
in Uncategorized.
During a recent test run to see if a new PostgreSQL back end server would hasten things up in a main cluster – that has now become CPU bound and NOT IO…… the wizardry of that I will blog about later.
In any case, the short of it is, that we were juggling PERC4 cards around servers (PCI-X here, PCIe there..) and also complete raid 1 and raid 10 arrays too. The cards are supposed to “detect” the correct array type from the drives if the firmware was missing. Anyway, through a comedy of errors, it worked exactly 1/3 times. The other times we had to remember the exact settings of our arrays (stripe, etc) and how it was structured. So we could clear PERC cards and then recreate the arrays – taking special care to not initalise the new arrays.
So in the end, you can move arrays and channels about. And with LVM, even designations like /sda /sdb reording is also not an issue. However you should rely on good old fashioned hand held way of doing things. Before you start write down all the salient details of your arrays first.
Published by richard November 17th, 2007
in Uncategorized.
My hosting manager found out this cool info recently. DRAC cards are a pain when they do not work – which is not rare. They are very important and are only needed in rare circumstances. However if those circumstances arise – these cards MUST perform. I must say that the PE1800 and DRAC4 that we have, has been nothing but problems over the years. Other DRAC’s and other servers, no issues at all. We have even had this DRAC replaced twice already and it is still playing funny buggers.
DRAC RESET
Nov15th2007
Published by richard November 15th, 2007
in Business Development and China.
For part one, go here: http://www.utilitycomputing.com.cn/?p=41
I hate to bitch. And I hate to appear as if I am drumming up business or trying to screw other businesses. I am just trying to call it as I see it as a public service.
We get maybe 3-4 clients a week transfer to us from a very prominent and large Chinese domain registrar and hoster, I won’t say the name. But your guess is probably correct.
Apart from the issues mentioned above, the latest fiasco involves again transferring domain names AND DNS.
Continue reading ‘Chinese Registrars Redux’
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