Amen. When I was in Iwakuni we had three flying coffins, if I recall correctly, and none of them were ever air-worthy and functioning at the same time.
As a former active duty Marine I'll admit that some take the AD versus the weekend warrior a bit too far. But you also have to realize that behind a lot of stereo-types there's a grain of truth: many reservists only perform their MOS skills for the Marines, the bulk of their time as a civilian is spent doing something unrelated. For that reason it's only logical that you're safer with a full timer than a reservist.
You may be the exception of the rule, but you need to temper your attitude with some recognition of the practical reality.
A good attitude, even under less than ideal circumstances, goes far in the Marines. Like your SSGT, I earned commendations for writing software to aid job functions. Everyone will get their chance to perform, but you have to be patient, keep a good attitude, and stay ready to take advantage of the opportunities as they come. Or you can just be blind lucky, like I was.
The Marine Corps is the finest institution on the planet. Let's not get blinders over every minor flaw an inconvenience. Everyone on this thread joined for some reason, and it certainly wasn't for the pay.
No offense, but you sound like a boot. I served in the active duty Marine Corps and I can honestly say that the most valuable lessons I learnt had nothing to do with my MOS (5938 & 6493). The downside is that I didn't truly understand the purpose and meaning of those lessons until years after I got out.
My point: suck it up. Do whatever the Corps asks of you, and do it gladly. You'll end learning a lot more down the road, even if you don't see the value now. Also: you're a boot. Just because you think you know better doesn't mean you actually do. Of course, we're all that way when we're young & dumb. We think we know everything. I'm older now, and the older I get the more I realize how little I actually know.
Hard to believe that they wrote an article that even mentioned virtualization on mainframes, and didn't think to mention IBM's pSeries solution with runs both AIX & Linux. I ended up going that route over blade servers because it was simply cheaper to implement without sacrificing hardware robustness and redundancy. Not to mention the flexibility of a SAN-backed server....
Hogwash. The reality is that even with technologies like DWDM, you still have to have fiber that has sufficient reflective qualities along the walls of the fiber across a broader range of frequency. Yes, most fiber these days are adequate to one extent or another for DWDM, but you can't safely make that assumption when you're budgeting a project of this scale, can you? I thought not.
Futhermore, a cable like GCI's, which lays in the ocean, requires repeaters at given intervals. Each repeater is designed to operate over a specific range of frequencies, so one again, you have no guarantees that they're already prepared to do heavy DWDM. As I recall, when they laid their cable, DWDM was still in the early stages in the industry, and didn't have the acceptance levels they do today.
In short, don't think you can solve all of your problems by whipping some magic fiber-fairy out of your ass. Alaska is *not* the most well connected state on the Internet, and that *has* to be a consideration for any Alaskan-based data center.
As an additional side note, did you know that Alaska wastes an incredible amount of bandwidth to the lower 48 just to view Alaskan web sites? The lack of a peering agreement between the two biggest players, ACS & GCI, forces any subscriber on one to send all of their traffic through Seattle, WA, just to visit a site on the other. It's things like that which should illuminate the somewhat ludicrous bandwidth predicaments we find ourselves in up here.
Having lived up here in Alaska since '96, *and* having worked for one of the major telecoms up here that own some of the fiber going down to the lower 48, all I can say is WTF?
This is the most near-sighted view of the project to date. These nitwits are focusing on temperature, power, and security, forgetting that all the while that if people can't get to your service, they're not going to use it. No, I'm not talking about physically, but do any of you people realise what Alaska's bandwidth situation is?
Right now, we have three companies that own fiber that will sell you bandwidth (one, Alaska Fiber Star, can't seem to give you a quote on provisioning to save their life, though--*&)(&*^(*&% sales people!). The remaining companies, ACS & GCI both have sold a good chunk of what they have, but neither of them are sitting on so much bandwidth that they can afford to provide the needs of a datacenter on that scale with any kind of real redundancy.
In short, I think this is ill-concieved, and not very well thought out. People will very likely want to move a tremendous amount of data in an out of this facility on a regular basis, and I haven't heard anyone involved in this project consider this critical access issue.
We've all seen the quote by Lars that claims he's disgusted to see their music traded as a commodity, instead of the art that it is. So let me get this right: Instead of the appreciation of the listener, it's now whether the listener *paid* for it that makes it 'art'? Isn't demanding money for it in the first place making it a commodity (albeit, a valuable one)?
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The Marines take pride in that. We do more with less than any other branch of the service. Born out of necessity, and bred into a hallmark of service.
Amen. When I was in Iwakuni we had three flying coffins, if I recall correctly, and none of them were ever air-worthy and functioning at the same time.
As a former active duty Marine I'll admit that some take the AD versus the weekend warrior a bit too far. But you also have to realize that behind a lot of stereo-types there's a grain of truth: many reservists only perform their MOS skills for the Marines, the bulk of their time as a civilian is spent doing something unrelated. For that reason it's only logical that you're safer with a full timer than a reservist.
You may be the exception of the rule, but you need to temper your attitude with some recognition of the practical reality.
A good attitude, even under less than ideal circumstances, goes far in the Marines. Like your SSGT, I earned commendations for writing software to aid job functions. Everyone will get their chance to perform, but you have to be patient, keep a good attitude, and stay ready to take advantage of the opportunities as they come. Or you can just be blind lucky, like I was.
The Marine Corps is the finest institution on the planet. Let's not get blinders over every minor flaw an inconvenience. Everyone on this thread joined for some reason, and it certainly wasn't for the pay.
No offense, but you sound like a boot. I served in the active duty Marine Corps and I can honestly say that the most valuable lessons I learnt had nothing to do with my MOS (5938 & 6493). The downside is that I didn't truly understand the purpose and meaning of those lessons until years after I got out.
My point: suck it up. Do whatever the Corps asks of you, and do it gladly. You'll end learning a lot more down the road, even if you don't see the value now. Also: you're a boot. Just because you think you know better doesn't mean you actually do. Of course, we're all that way when we're young & dumb. We think we know everything. I'm older now, and the older I get the more I realize how little I actually know.
Hard to believe that they wrote an article that even mentioned virtualization on mainframes, and didn't think to mention IBM's pSeries solution with runs both AIX & Linux. I ended up going that route over blade servers because it was simply cheaper to implement without sacrificing hardware robustness and redundancy. Not to mention the flexibility of a SAN-backed server....
Hogwash. The reality is that even with technologies like DWDM, you still have to have fiber that has sufficient reflective qualities along the walls of the fiber across a broader range of frequency. Yes, most fiber these days are adequate to one extent or another for DWDM, but you can't safely make that assumption when you're budgeting a project of this scale, can you? I thought not.
Futhermore, a cable like GCI's, which lays in the ocean, requires repeaters at given intervals. Each repeater is designed to operate over a specific range of frequencies, so one again, you have no guarantees that they're already prepared to do heavy DWDM. As I recall, when they laid their cable, DWDM was still in the early stages in the industry, and didn't have the acceptance levels they do today.
In short, don't think you can solve all of your problems by whipping some magic fiber-fairy out of your ass. Alaska is *not* the most well connected state on the Internet, and that *has* to be a consideration for any Alaskan-based data center.
As an additional side note, did you know that Alaska wastes an incredible amount of bandwidth to the lower 48 just to view Alaskan web sites? The lack of a peering agreement between the two biggest players, ACS & GCI, forces any subscriber on one to send all of their traffic through Seattle, WA, just to visit a site on the other. It's things like that which should illuminate the somewhat ludicrous bandwidth predicaments we find ourselves in up here.
Having lived up here in Alaska since '96, *and* having worked for one of the major telecoms up here that own some of the fiber going down to the lower 48, all I can say is WTF? This is the most near-sighted view of the project to date. These nitwits are focusing on temperature, power, and security, forgetting that all the while that if people can't get to your service, they're not going to use it. No, I'm not talking about physically, but do any of you people realise what Alaska's bandwidth situation is? Right now, we have three companies that own fiber that will sell you bandwidth (one, Alaska Fiber Star, can't seem to give you a quote on provisioning to save their life, though--*&)(&*^(*&% sales people!). The remaining companies, ACS & GCI both have sold a good chunk of what they have, but neither of them are sitting on so much bandwidth that they can afford to provide the needs of a datacenter on that scale with any kind of real redundancy. In short, I think this is ill-concieved, and not very well thought out. People will very likely want to move a tremendous amount of data in an out of this facility on a regular basis, and I haven't heard anyone involved in this project consider this critical access issue.
We've all seen the quote by Lars that claims he's disgusted to see their music traded as a commodity, instead of the art that it is. So let me get this right: Instead of the appreciation of the listener, it's now whether the listener *paid* for it that makes it 'art'? Isn't demanding money for it in the first place making it a commodity (albeit, a valuable one)?