Archive for the ‘ Storage ’ Category

Will a cheap solid state disk make your old laptop faster? Yes.

  • September 3rd, 2010
  • Posted in Storage

I have an older HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC.  I like it.  If you’ve never used a tablet before, where you can opt to use a pen for input, you should try one.  It’s great for applications that are primarily mouse click driven, like browsing the Intertubes or doing practice exams. I recently reloaded mine with [ READ MORE ]

Beginner’s guide to iometer – real world disk benchmark

  • July 10th, 2010
  • Posted in Storage

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks statistics.” I often get asked about disk performance.  I often use iometer — a well known disk benchmark.  I usually use it on Windows.  It’s pretty easy to set up, although it does have a lot of configuration options.  I wrote up a quick [ READ MORE ]

Nexenta QuickTip: Get a real root shell

The Nexenta folks have spent a lot of energy making Nexenta “idiot-proof”.  You really can do almost everything you need from the web based GUI.  There’s a few more things you can do from the character based Nexenta Management Console (NMC).  Sometimes, though, you may want a shell… [ READ MORE ]

ZFS? Why you should care about ZFS?

There’s a lot of buzz about the Zettabyte File System from Sun Oracle, which has been included for a while in both Solaris and OpenSolaris.  (Distributions based on Opensolaris like Nexenta have it.  Also some BSD distributions have it). In general, file systems are not exactly glamorous.  HFS?  UFS? VxVM?  Who cares.  It’s a file system, [ READ MORE ]

More on Nexenta

Here’s my $0.02 on Nexenta. (Based on my use of the free NexentaStor Community Edition, 3.0.2. To summarize: Good stuff!  If you are looking for storage appliance software, try Nexenta first. Maybe you’ll luck out and Nexenta will like your hardware. If not, run Openfiler. The Nexenta Community Edition is free to use. They do make [ READ MORE ]

Filers? We don’t need no stinkin’ filers….

  • April 23rd, 2010
  • Posted in Storage

I know that it seems sometimes like adding filers to the mix may be extra complication, but it really does add a lot of value.  There’s good reasons that enterprise shops don’t do local storage. Basically in ‘real’ businesses, they don’t buy servers with hard drives in them.  At all.  No drives at all.  They do [ READ MORE ]

Need inexpensive iSCSI? Try NexentaStor!

  • April 15th, 2010
  • Posted in Storage

I’ve been using Openfiler for a long time now, but I’m always open to alternatives.  Recently I stumbled across NexentaStor, which is a software product you can load on your servers to make them into filers, like Openfiler.  NexentaStor is available both in an Community Edition, as well as a relatively inexpensive Enterprise Edition, which [ READ MORE ]

How to make a volume in Openfiler larger

If there’s one things that disks do well, it’s fill up and run out of room.  My Openfiler iSCSI volumes always seem to be filling up as the virtual machines that live in them grow or I make snapshots. If there is free room in the volume group that a volume is housed in, it’s very [ READ MORE ]

Openfiler reboot issue

A default install of Openfiler 2.3 has an issue when rebooted.  On a default installation of Openfiler 2.3, clients cannot use iSCSI target disks after a reboot.  In other words, it’ll work fine until you reboot it.  This has been discussed at some length in Openfiler forums, and has an open bug filed against it. Also [ READ MORE ]

Openfiler holds its own in tests against dedicated storage appliances

I have access to a couple of different storage arrays, so I decided to see if Openfiler lags them significantly in performance.  Turns out Openfiler does just fine.  In fact, against a Dell/Equallogic PS5000E entry level array, my Openfiler install (running on a Dell 6950) is faster serving up storage for XenServer storage repositories.  It’s [ READ MORE ]

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© 2009 Gregory L. Porter.

Disclaimer

This is *MY* blog, not my employer's. I pay for the hosting. Any opinions expressed here are my own. Your mileage may vary. Don't take the red pill. Do not meddle in the affairs of system administrators, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
"The [atomic] bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.