But, seriously, I'm still running Tiger so this would give me an opportunity to try developing for the iPhone / iPad. I've been sweating the upgrade to Snow Leopard because this is my primary machine, my hard drive's almost full and I would need to purchase upgrades for several apps. I've thought about purchasing a new HD then using CarbonCopyCloner or similar software to image it and copy it over. It all seems like a lot of work though...
The biggest reasons are the primary systems we want to virtualize are RHEL5, so I want to stick with an RHEL5 host; and ESXi only uses 4 cores, which is not enough for our terminal servers... our uses are starved for CPU time while the blade itself is only partially utilized. In general ESXi has been great until we get a heavy load, then there are issues. Other reasons -- relayed to me by my VM sysadmin; I'm just the Linux guy -- include the need to re-convert to copy a VM and its reliance on a proprietary filesystem which makes getting those images out a bit difficult. With RHEL you can just copy it wherever.
While ESXi looks nice and is a great free solution, we have grown more and have reached the point where we need to either go full vSphere ($$ for software to manage the 10-12 blades) or some other solution.
The hardest part will be migrating the ESXi VMs to Red Hat. Right now there's no "official" way to do that although you can find tips using Google. I'm told that's forthcoming this winter.
The Red Hat solution isn't trouble-free: its built-in tools lack the GUI management and monitoring prettiness and simplicity of ESXi. (16-core machines appear as 4 or 5 screens wide using System Monitor and can't be made less wide, so you have to install kdebase and all its stuff to use KSysGuard and then customize it pretty heavily. Disk stats are ugly and by default the VM adapters are vnet0, vnet1 etc so make sure you change that in the VM config files so you can track what's happening. GUI tools and virsh sometimes gets out of sync although it's better than in 5.4 and prior.) Lots of other little things that need to be worked around, but when it's setup correctly it works great. Even on a test desktop-class machine (running Werewolf of all things) where we made a VM of a Windows 2000 DC, it worked well.
We (very briefly) looked into the Red Hat hypervisor version, thinking (like you) that a small easily installed host would be ideal for DR. But it still uses a Windows server (!!) to manage them. We want a single solution from a single vendor and basically asked them to let us know when that's ready so we can review it.
Do you have servers that are handling thousands/millions of transactions per day? Or are you just running a departmental webserver with just a few users?
Since we're using RHEL AS, which starts at $1500 per year, it's not a departmental webserver.
When we started testing KVM in the initial RHEL 5 release, KVM setup was needlessly difficult -- both Xen and KVM were installed, a Xen kernel was selected by default, and dom0 was setup and started automatically. You can imagine my confusion as a new KVM user.
Now it's just the opposite, as of 5.5 it appears that KVM is the simpler choice. It also seems to be much faster -- although there was a tweak to our network cards that I discovered during KVM testing that I hadn't applied during Xen testing.
Since support is important to us, we definitely don't want to go with a vendor-obsoleted track. In our world, this first Red Hat hosted production VM is running POS software that everyone in the company touches. Providing the Windows server testing continues to go well, we are planning to transition up to 10 or 11 other blades to RHEL AS also.
Yes there is always new shiny and at some point everything is always replaced -- BUT when your vendor is telling you "don't implement this, it's already being phased out" you'd be silly to ignore that. For an org of our size, that action would be deemed irresponsible.
Arrrgh... Please ignore parent (my) post. I have multiple Fedora/RHEL posts going and I thought I was responding to a different one.
We use Fedora rather than CentOS so that we can try out new features ahead of their implementation in RHEL. For instance we tried out virtualization in Fedora 12 to compare with RHEL 5. These are just fileservers and that functionality is pretty basic stuff.
Support. I can pick up a phone and make a call and I'm almost immediately connected with someone who, even if they can't immediately solve the problem, can open a ticket and start that process.
Of course if it's a "server down" type of issue I can call 24/7 and get someone immediately. We're a large enough company that production OS's are expected to have support.
There's another side of it too though -- if you want the field to keep innovating, you have to fund someone. Red Hat happens to be one of the larger Linux OS companies with paid developers on staff. CentOS, while giving some marketing share for RHEL-compatible systems, gives nothing back to the community unless you're also donating somehow.
We recently purchased RHEL 5 Advanced Server after a few months of trying out Red Hat's virtualization options. One of the questions we had was whether Xen or KVM was the right tool to use going forward -- because we didn't want to adopt something then have it be replaced by new shiny almost immediately afterwards. We want to use a single virtualization platform for all our servers which means a migration from ESXi. I had already setup Xen and was starting to benchmark it.
We were emphatically told by several people at Red Hat (2 salespeople, our dedicated support engineer, and 2 other support staff) that Xen was the wrong direction and that only KVM would be supported in the future AND that existing support for Xen was being phased out.
Yes I know Fedora isn't RHEL -- I've used Red Hat since 5.2 (way before Fedora Core). But this is just confusing and reminds me of the days when Red Hat Workstation was marketed.
We use RHEL for production servers that do real work, and Fedora for fileservers. We prefer using Fedora because the interface and management tools are similar to RHEL.
But, yeah, if I were using this as a desktop system I'd probably go with something else.
OK, another solution is to install the drives on a more modern machine and use them for a network fileserver. I realize with some old DOS games this means loading network drivers. If your particular network card isn't supported, the old 3Com 3C509C's had very good support and should still be available cheap.
If that causes problems with not enough memory, you could always load an old version of DOS with QEMM to manage memory and keep as much of the 640K area free.
If this were only true, I'd ask you to please download more Britney Spears. And rap. Hell, download the whole top 40 so we can start over. Finally I will want to listen to the radio again!
If Republicans spent less time beating a bible and more time thinking -- really thinking about anything -- we wouldn't be in the shape we're in. It's like having our very own Taliban in our backyard, with the Republicans' many divisions sowing discord: their crazed birthers, their TV hate- and panic-mongerers preaching destruction and vitriol, their just-so-fucking-crazy-there's-no-excuse crowd, all frothing at the mouth.
You can take Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh -- and Sarah Palin while you're at it, please -- and shove them up Rosanne Barr's ass.
(Not that I hate Rosanne Barr or anything, I just think there's room / she wouldn't mind.)
The Republicans are what got us into this mess to start with. But that's OK, they believe their god will help them get through it. They're fine with screwing Americans because they think a rapture is going to come and fix it all for them. That would be typical of their religion, err political view. No need to let things like freaking logic or science get in the way, whack it with a bible and make it better.
You know, maybe the whole 2-party system is responsible. See, with only 2 parties one can always be the opposite of the other, and with enough issues you can muddy the waters enough that both look good. With 3 or more parties, you have to actually grow some balls and take a stand as a party. You have to define yourself by what you believe, not "the opposite of <the other party>". Wouldn't that be nice?
The system America has right now sucks, and the regression we continue to see will result in even more Americans detached from the political process. I'm disgusted by it, nothing gets done except finger-pointing like little babies.
Saying "I love you" while getting kicked in the shins shows desperation on Adobe's part. They can see their world crumbling.
Adobe, just fix the problems with Acrobat Reader and Flash. I'm tired of hearing the whining, just solve the problem and this could all go away. Apple would change their mind if the technical reasons weren't there (although there may still need to be some apologies and releases of 64-bit Adobe products for OS X to help fix things).
Or, we could say that maybe there is something about native apps that users prefer and are even willing to pay a few dollars for in order to enjoy the privilege of using a natively written app.
Very good point. I know my USAA app remembers my login information and lets me access my accounts with just a PIN. My Facebook for iPhone app lets me easily see Slashdot news without having to visit Slashdot directly. The TV Guide app, even with its problems, gives me quicker access to what's on TV than visiting a website, and everything is enlarged and easy to read. My other banking apps are all easier to read via the app than visiting a website, although some of them don't tell me things like whether a charge is pending or whether it's finalized (restaurant and some other charges often appear as a $1 charge or do not include the tip until they finalize). ABC News and USA Today are also much easier to consume as apps. Although all of these I mentioned are currently free, I would be willing to pay $1 each to keep them.
If you don't like it -- don't like the pricing, don't like the machines, don't like the color of the cases then fine, don't use it. This system doesn't allow just anybody to do just anything, which conflicts with some people's sensitivities. Personally I just want something that works reliably, and if the system is a little harder for devs to navigate then so be it.
Look at it this way -- maybe a system is $1500 for you to be able to develop, and another $99 per year. Ultimately a lot of people have made serious amounts of money through these little apps... not just one or two people either, but mobs of them. You have a chance to reach a HUGE segment quickly, without servers on your end or high bandwidth connections, or renting a colo etc. It's a little bit of money upfront to get started, so what? I can't create a product and market it using Google for such a low price, or send flyers, or any other method. Put it on the App Store and people may find it. Maybe get a review. But jeez, it's such a low cost that if I had the time to play with it I probably would. Such an opportunity!
Mod parent up. I'm assuming we're talking about new or enhanced functionality, NOT stuff that should have worked to begin with. Often the solution given by a vendor is "upgrade to the most recent version, and let us know if you still have problems." There's nothing wrong with that in most situations. Often you can only backport solutions so far, and one of the main reasons to upgrade is (you guessed it) new and/or enhanced functionality. When a customer costs more to support simply because of their unwillingness to upgrade they are no longer profitable.
Of course, if the problem was something broken in the product you sold them -- some feature that doesn't work as advertised -- it's YOUR deal to make it right. That may mean backporting, it may mean giving them a complimentary upgrade, it may mean sending a tech to their site to debug the issue. In THAT case -- regardless of how profitable the customer is -- you need to do the right thing.
I'm not so sure that physical vs mental makes long hours any better. There are many days I go home with a ringing head and blurry eyes because I've been staring at a screen for hours and in meetings with people who all want a different outcome (thus no solution is acceptable to all).
One of my first jobs was very physical, and although I went home with tired arms and back and sore hands, there was something numbing about that which I found pleasant.
I think the difference between long hours depends on how hard you're working -- whether physical or mental -- vs those who just get by, whose days come easily to them because they are not challenged or do not challenge themselves.
My daughter loves flash games, and there are several relatively large sites we visit. Even though I have the latest & greatest FireFox they cause all kinds of problems... problems that I don't see when I'm not going to these kinds of sites. For most of my day I'm on random sites and with NoScript and AdBlock Plus enabled I don't see most of the Flash content (obviously I have the flash game sites we visit whitelisted, and that's where I see the issues).
Issues include random intermittent freezing, huge memory usage, huge CPU usage (my fans go from 4000rpm to almost 6000rpm), and mouse lagging. On occasion the entire system freezes and I have to reboot. Except for the system freeze, exiting out of the site returns everything to normal in a few seconds. I am on a MacBook Pro dual core 2.4 using OS X 10.4.11 with 4 GB RAM.
Slashdot Mirror
<head explodes>
But, seriously, I'm still running Tiger so this would give me an opportunity to try developing for the iPhone / iPad. I've been sweating the upgrade to Snow Leopard because this is my primary machine, my hard drive's almost full and I would need to purchase upgrades for several apps. I've thought about purchasing a new HD then using CarbonCopyCloner or similar software to image it and copy it over. It all seems like a lot of work though...
The biggest reasons are the primary systems we want to virtualize are RHEL5, so I want to stick with an RHEL5 host; and ESXi only uses 4 cores, which is not enough for our terminal servers... our uses are starved for CPU time while the blade itself is only partially utilized. In general ESXi has been great until we get a heavy load, then there are issues. Other reasons -- relayed to me by my VM sysadmin; I'm just the Linux guy -- include the need to re-convert to copy a VM and its reliance on a proprietary filesystem which makes getting those images out a bit difficult. With RHEL you can just copy it wherever.
While ESXi looks nice and is a great free solution, we have grown more and have reached the point where we need to either go full vSphere ($$ for software to manage the 10-12 blades) or some other solution.
The hardest part will be migrating the ESXi VMs to Red Hat. Right now there's no "official" way to do that although you can find tips using Google. I'm told that's forthcoming this winter.
The Red Hat solution isn't trouble-free: its built-in tools lack the GUI management and monitoring prettiness and simplicity of ESXi. (16-core machines appear as 4 or 5 screens wide using System Monitor and can't be made less wide, so you have to install kdebase and all its stuff to use KSysGuard and then customize it pretty heavily. Disk stats are ugly and by default the VM adapters are vnet0, vnet1 etc so make sure you change that in the VM config files so you can track what's happening. GUI tools and virsh sometimes gets out of sync although it's better than in 5.4 and prior.) Lots of other little things that need to be worked around, but when it's setup correctly it works great. Even on a test desktop-class machine (running Werewolf of all things) where we made a VM of a Windows 2000 DC, it worked well.
We (very briefly) looked into the Red Hat hypervisor version, thinking (like you) that a small easily installed host would be ideal for DR. But it still uses a Windows server (!!) to manage them. We want a single solution from a single vendor and basically asked them to let us know when that's ready so we can review it.
Do you have servers that are handling thousands/millions of transactions per day? Or are you just running a departmental webserver with just a few users?
Since we're using RHEL AS, which starts at $1500 per year, it's not a departmental webserver.
When we started testing KVM in the initial RHEL 5 release, KVM setup was needlessly difficult -- both Xen and KVM were installed, a Xen kernel was selected by default, and dom0 was setup and started automatically. You can imagine my confusion as a new KVM user.
Now it's just the opposite, as of 5.5 it appears that KVM is the simpler choice. It also seems to be much faster -- although there was a tweak to our network cards that I discovered during KVM testing that I hadn't applied during Xen testing.
Since support is important to us, we definitely don't want to go with a vendor-obsoleted track. In our world, this first Red Hat hosted production VM is running POS software that everyone in the company touches. Providing the Windows server testing continues to go well, we are planning to transition up to 10 or 11 other blades to RHEL AS also.
Yes there is always new shiny and at some point everything is always replaced -- BUT when your vendor is telling you "don't implement this, it's already being phased out" you'd be silly to ignore that. For an org of our size, that action would be deemed irresponsible.
Arrrgh... Please ignore parent (my) post. I have multiple Fedora/RHEL posts going and I thought I was responding to a different one.
We use Fedora rather than CentOS so that we can try out new features ahead of their implementation in RHEL. For instance we tried out virtualization in Fedora 12 to compare with RHEL 5. These are just fileservers and that functionality is pretty basic stuff.
Support. I can pick up a phone and make a call and I'm almost immediately connected with someone who, even if they can't immediately solve the problem, can open a ticket and start that process.
Of course if it's a "server down" type of issue I can call 24/7 and get someone immediately. We're a large enough company that production OS's are expected to have support.
There's another side of it too though -- if you want the field to keep innovating, you have to fund someone. Red Hat happens to be one of the larger Linux OS companies with paid developers on staff. CentOS, while giving some marketing share for RHEL-compatible systems, gives nothing back to the community unless you're also donating somehow.
We recently purchased RHEL 5 Advanced Server after a few months of trying out Red Hat's virtualization options. One of the questions we had was whether Xen or KVM was the right tool to use going forward -- because we didn't want to adopt something then have it be replaced by new shiny almost immediately afterwards. We want to use a single virtualization platform for all our servers which means a migration from ESXi. I had already setup Xen and was starting to benchmark it.
We were emphatically told by several people at Red Hat (2 salespeople, our dedicated support engineer, and 2 other support staff) that Xen was the wrong direction and that only KVM would be supported in the future AND that existing support for Xen was being phased out. Yes I know Fedora isn't RHEL -- I've used Red Hat since 5.2 (way before Fedora Core). But this is just confusing and reminds me of the days when Red Hat Workstation was marketed.
We use RHEL for production servers that do real work, and Fedora for fileservers. We prefer using Fedora because the interface and management tools are similar to RHEL.
But, yeah, if I were using this as a desktop system I'd probably go with something else.
They were going to give him a wedgie if he didn't add them.
I think I threw up in my mouth a little.
Hard drive manufacturers have long used the 1000 instead of the 1024 measurement, so your former guess is most likely correct.
OK, another solution is to install the drives on a more modern machine and use them for a network fileserver. I realize with some old DOS games this means loading network drivers. If your particular network card isn't supported, the old 3Com 3C509C's had very good support and should still be available cheap.
If that causes problems with not enough memory, you could always load an old version of DOS with QEMM to manage memory and keep as much of the 640K area free.
If this were only true, I'd ask you to please download more Britney Spears. And rap. Hell, download the whole top 40 so we can start over. Finally I will want to listen to the radio again!
If Republicans spent less time beating a bible and more time thinking -- really thinking about anything -- we wouldn't be in the shape we're in. It's like having our very own Taliban in our backyard, with the Republicans' many divisions sowing discord: their crazed birthers, their TV hate- and panic-mongerers preaching destruction and vitriol, their just-so-fucking-crazy-there's-no-excuse crowd, all frothing at the mouth.
You can take Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh -- and Sarah Palin while you're at it, please -- and shove them up Rosanne Barr's ass.
(Not that I hate Rosanne Barr or anything, I just think there's room / she wouldn't mind.)
The Republicans are what got us into this mess to start with. But that's OK, they believe their god will help them get through it. They're fine with screwing Americans because they think a rapture is going to come and fix it all for them. That would be typical of their religion, err political view. No need to let things like freaking logic or science get in the way, whack it with a bible and make it better.
You know, maybe the whole 2-party system is responsible. See, with only 2 parties one can always be the opposite of the other, and with enough issues you can muddy the waters enough that both look good. With 3 or more parties, you have to actually grow some balls and take a stand as a party. You have to define yourself by what you believe, not "the opposite of <the other party>". Wouldn't that be nice?
The system America has right now sucks, and the regression we continue to see will result in even more Americans detached from the political process. I'm disgusted by it, nothing gets done except finger-pointing like little babies.
Saying "I love you" while getting kicked in the shins shows desperation on Adobe's part. They can see their world crumbling.
Adobe, just fix the problems with Acrobat Reader and Flash. I'm tired of hearing the whining, just solve the problem and this could all go away. Apple would change their mind if the technical reasons weren't there (although there may still need to be some apologies and releases of 64-bit Adobe products for OS X to help fix things).
Isn't the Apple camera adapter like $30? You need a better example.
Or, we could say that maybe there is something about native apps that users prefer and are even willing to pay a few dollars for in order to enjoy the privilege of using a natively written app.
Very good point. I know my USAA app remembers my login information and lets me access my accounts with just a PIN. My Facebook for iPhone app lets me easily see Slashdot news without having to visit Slashdot directly. The TV Guide app, even with its problems, gives me quicker access to what's on TV than visiting a website, and everything is enlarged and easy to read. My other banking apps are all easier to read via the app than visiting a website, although some of them don't tell me things like whether a charge is pending or whether it's finalized (restaurant and some other charges often appear as a $1 charge or do not include the tip until they finalize). ABC News and USA Today are also much easier to consume as apps. Although all of these I mentioned are currently free, I would be willing to pay $1 each to keep them.
It's OK for you to come out of the closet... we won't judge you.
If you don't like it -- don't like the pricing, don't like the machines, don't like the color of the cases then fine, don't use it. This system doesn't allow just anybody to do just anything, which conflicts with some people's sensitivities. Personally I just want something that works reliably, and if the system is a little harder for devs to navigate then so be it.
Look at it this way -- maybe a system is $1500 for you to be able to develop, and another $99 per year. Ultimately a lot of people have made serious amounts of money through these little apps... not just one or two people either, but mobs of them. You have a chance to reach a HUGE segment quickly, without servers on your end or high bandwidth connections, or renting a colo etc. It's a little bit of money upfront to get started, so what? I can't create a product and market it using Google for such a low price, or send flyers, or any other method. Put it on the App Store and people may find it. Maybe get a review. But jeez, it's such a low cost that if I had the time to play with it I probably would. Such an opportunity!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?
Mod parent up. I'm assuming we're talking about new or enhanced functionality, NOT stuff that should have worked to begin with. Often the solution given by a vendor is "upgrade to the most recent version, and let us know if you still have problems." There's nothing wrong with that in most situations. Often you can only backport solutions so far, and one of the main reasons to upgrade is (you guessed it) new and/or enhanced functionality. When a customer costs more to support simply because of their unwillingness to upgrade they are no longer profitable.
Of course, if the problem was something broken in the product you sold them -- some feature that doesn't work as advertised -- it's YOUR deal to make it right. That may mean backporting, it may mean giving them a complimentary upgrade, it may mean sending a tech to their site to debug the issue. In THAT case -- regardless of how profitable the customer is -- you need to do the right thing.
I'm not so sure that physical vs mental makes long hours any better. There are many days I go home with a ringing head and blurry eyes because I've been staring at a screen for hours and in meetings with people who all want a different outcome (thus no solution is acceptable to all).
One of my first jobs was very physical, and although I went home with tired arms and back and sore hands, there was something numbing about that which I found pleasant.
I think the difference between long hours depends on how hard you're working -- whether physical or mental -- vs those who just get by, whose days come easily to them because they are not challenged or do not challenge themselves.
FF 3.6.4 here on OSX 10.4 and 3 seconds is about all it usually takes, although you're apt to see the spinning beach ball in the meantime.
I'm a diabolical genius and 3am is my usual maintenance window, you insensitive clod!
My daughter loves flash games, and there are several relatively large sites we visit. Even though I have the latest & greatest FireFox they cause all kinds of problems... problems that I don't see when I'm not going to these kinds of sites. For most of my day I'm on random sites and with NoScript and AdBlock Plus enabled I don't see most of the Flash content (obviously I have the flash game sites we visit whitelisted, and that's where I see the issues).
Issues include random intermittent freezing, huge memory usage, huge CPU usage (my fans go from 4000rpm to almost 6000rpm), and mouse lagging. On occasion the entire system freezes and I have to reboot. Except for the system freeze, exiting out of the site returns everything to normal in a few seconds. I am on a MacBook Pro dual core 2.4 using OS X 10.4.11 with 4 GB RAM.