As previously discussed, we recently purchased an MD3000i iSCSI SAN from Dell. We are running the “free” VSphere ESXi 4 on 3 hosts. That’s right, no VCenter, no VCB, no VMotion, no SVM. So, how does one best approach moving these VM guests from local storage to our new lovely SAN? Well, we looked into the following possibilities: Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 29% [?]
Well, the time finally came. We bit the bullet and purchased a new Dell PowerEdge R710 and an MD3000i SAN for the office. The R710 will be a new VSphere ESXi 4 host that will take on a bulk of the production VM’s while one of the remaining 2950’s will remain a smaller production host and the third 2950 will be a test and development box.
So you can see the MD3000i with the faceplate off directly below the new R710. I’m tempted to leave the faceplate off so that the executives and visitors see more lights when they look in. For some reason, non-technical people tend to have a first reaction to hardware such that more lights is mo’ better. 
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Popularity: 18% [?]
On February 8th, 2010 Linode.com announced the availability of StackScripts. The StackScripts are described as:
StackScripts™ provide a flexible way to customize our distribution templates. They’re very easy to use — find a StackScript, answer its questions, and click deploy. When the deployment is first booted, the script is executed and does its thing. You can even watch its progress by viewing the console.
Popularity: 9% [?]
We have a few sites that exist on a MediaTemple DV 3.5 server. We’ve long been concerned about the lack of performance we are getting on this DV versus sites on a smaller Linode.com DV. We are not here to debate that today.
What we have done is to install APC on the MediaTemple DV in order to improve performance to some degree by taking advantage of op_code caching. Now, this is not a silver bullet for performance folks. This is just one piece of a total tuning exercise. Be forewarned.
Popularity: 10% [?]
We recently began testing the installation profile for Drupal called OpenPublish. The good folks at Phase 2 Technology have opened this installation profile (distribution) up for all to use with some key features for the semantic web. This post is not to go over or compares features with other similar distributions. Instead this is more about how to get the parent feed title into the template for a node created from a feed-item with the feedapi module.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Today’s SSWUG.org newsletter contained a great few paragraphs regarding what you look for in a new hire. As a hiring manager at various levels over my career, I have often asked myself, in self-reflection, such questions.
I believe that beyond the specific technical skill sets you are looking, there are some other specific characteristics you want to find. In particular I look for a candidate that shows the following characteristics:
Popularity: 3% [?]
Are you a tattler? No, not the kind mom told you not to be, but rather the Tattler application from Phase2 Technology.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Phew. For someone who’s corporate OS deployment experience has purposefully not included Vista, Windows 7 poses some challenges and a need to re-learn some things. Recently, one of our users brought us their machine that they recently had the hard drive replaced by a helpful soul. Unfortunately, the helpful soul returned the machine with Windows 7 RC rather than Windows XP Professional and our user has been using it for several weeks already. (Yes, I know this is not really the type of work I do, but hey, when folks are out of the office in a small organization, everyone pitches in.)
Popularity: 100% [?]
