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A bit off-topic…I came across G-Fox: the mascot for Firefox China. It’s so cute that I might convert.

Found here: http://www.mozillaonline.com/products/gfox/

I bet everyone knows where to download Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Posted By Chris in General
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Ridata announced three new SSDs today (Ultra-S Plus Series) in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models.

The new drives utilize the multi-level cell technology - resulting in lower cost, but also slower speed. The drives will have a nominal read speed of 128MB/s and a write speed of 80MB/s. The drives will retail for $170, $295 and $538 US respectively.

Although choosing these drives for speed is ultimately a poor decision due to the availability of inexpensive SATA/SAS RAID configurations, there is simply no denying the amazing access times - 0! ms. These SSDs are fantastic for IO performance. They are well suited for database servers that are small in size but handle above average volumes of requests.

http://www.ritekusa.com/pressrelease.asp?pressreleases_id=54

Posted By Chris in General, Hardware
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With the release of Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7, Microsoft has included PHP5 FASTCGI support. ISAPI is still faster in my opinion, and if used correctly, very stable. PHP uses a 32-bit DLL so it will not work with an x64 system. There are several ports of PHP to x64, but all have proved to be unstable. Below I will outline the steps to install PHP 32-bit on Windows 2008 x64 (and have it stable).

1. Install the PHP4 or PHP5 package (32-bit) in C:\PHP or wherever you like. Only use the Windows installer from php.net if you do not need any extensions. I would recommend downloading the PHP zip package. 
2. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. 
3. Double-click “Handler Mappings” from the main IIS screen.
4. Click on “Add Script Map.”
5. Set up the handler mapping for c:\PHP\php5isapi.dll with extension *.php and check to allow the ISAPI extension and execution of scripts.
6. Double-click “ISAPI & CGI Restrictions” on the main IIS screen. Right-click on PHP and select “Edit Feature Settings” and check “Allow unspecified ISAPI modules.”  
7. Right-click on the Default Application Pool (or the one you want to use if more than one) and select “Advanced Settings.” 
8. Change the “Enable 32-bit Applications” to True. Click OK. This spawns the App Pool in 32-bit mode, so if you have other modules that need to be run in 64-bit mode, best to separate the website into two App Pools: one 32-bit and one 64-bit.
9. Restart the server.

Posted By Chris in General, Internet Information Server, PHP, Windows
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I’ll be honest…and I’m sure no one will believe me, but I have not snooped on anyone in my organization on purpose, but I have come across privileged information by accident. I do believe the 33% that said they snooped did not look at anything overly sensitive. I would hope 1/3 of IT staff are not that dishonest.

What would you do if one of your superiors asked to keep logs / screenshots of everything you did, so as to be sure you didn’t abuse your power?

How many IT admins have access to their superior’s confidential files and emails?

How many IT admins would hold their company ransom for a raise? threaten to quit? How many have hindered their company’s network when they quit or were fired?

Posted By Chris in General, Rants
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Here are the Dell MD1000 Direct Attached Storage Benchmarks I had promised earlier. The performance is not bad. I’m trying to squeeze some more MB/s out of the read performance. I’ve also included performance / disk. Looks as though 4x and 8x disks in RAID10 have the best performance per disk. All the disks are 73 GB Seagate 15K SAS.

Posted By Chris in Exchange Server, General, Hardware
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I purchased the Dell MD1000 15 disk Direct Attached Storage Array in November. The enclosure itself is a JBOD system (Just a Bunch of Disks) because the controller inside does not support RAID. The RAID functionality of the system is achieved through implementing a PERC 5/e or 6/e controller in the server itself. The MD1000 can be daisy-chained for a total of three units supporting 45 disks. The MD1000 has dual controllers and dual power supplies for redundancy - something that should be expected in an expensive (albeit inexpensive in enterprise terms) product.

I have it hooked up to a PERC 5/e dual SAS (x4-type external) controller that supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50. Dell says you can configure the controller through pressing CTRL-R after the BIOS, but the tools are lackluster at best. Be sure to download Dell’s OpenManage system.

Below is my final configuration for my database and file server.

1. 1 – “hot-spare” 73GB (SAS 15K Seagate)
2. 4 – RAID 10 – 73 GB (SAS 15K Seagate)
3. 10 – RAID 10 – 750 GB (SATA 7.2K Seagate)
4. 2 – “cold-spare” 750 GB (SATA 7.2K Seagate)

Why not RAID 5? I don’t want the write-penalty that RAID 5 comes with, especially on a database server with the 4 SAS drives. The SATA array is cheap enough at $160 CDN per 750GB drive.

Overall I am satisfied with the system. The main concern was reliability. When a friend of mine brought up the fact that he could have done it less expensively with a computer in a large case and a bunch of drives, I agreed. With the MD1000 you get dual controllers, dual power supplies, and the ability to connect to two servers, which also helps if you are in a cluster. If you need network storage, definitely get a SAN array (not to be confused with NAS).

I have a decent crop of benchmarks of the test system before I finalized my configuration. I’ll post it later today once I get to a computer with Excel (or OpenOffice) to do some graphs.

Posted By Chris in Exchange Server, General
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With some of the servers I maintain, prisoner.iana.org shows up as a DNS entry in the system logs. Because of the name, it “looks” suspicious. It is nothing to worry about: there are no hackers, and something isn’t wrong with your system.

IANA was the name of the organization that was responsible for handing out IP address blocks back in the day.

There was a need for a placeholder zone for the three blocks of non-routable addresses, so IANA setup three DNS servers: blackhole-1.iana.org, blackhole-2.iana.org and prisoner.iana.org.

If a system with the address range: 192.168.XXX.XXX tries to register its PTR record without a local DNS server, it will try to register with prisoner.iana.org. Obviously prisoner.iana.org will reject the request. Hence the many instances of this address in the DNS logs / Event Viewer.

Posted By Chris in General, Internet Information Server, Windows
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1.       I listen to my users. I listen to what they are saying and how they say it. I understand their frustration and try to empathize with their problems. I try place myself in their situation and thus have a better idea of the urgency of their issue.

2.       I speak in terms they can understand. If there is no way to ‘dumb it down’ I tell them an anecdote or story that has similar structure, causes or outcomes that relates to their issue.  Ex. Telling them this particular issue happened last year to so-and-so and explained how everything was ok (or not).

3.       I make daily backups on tape, twice daily hard drive images of all servers, hourly backups of databases, remote to ftp backups, etc. I have a chart with the type of failure and the recommended action should I be inaccessible or recently deceased. NOTE: This is a serious issue. What happens if you are the only system administrator and you die in a car accident on the way to work? It is unlikely you can be replaced so soon, and even if you are, a new sys admin may not know the entire structure of your systems in time before a catastrophe happens. I had a system fail on me the FIRST day of work at a new job. I was being introduced to people in the office when it happened; I hadn’t even taken my coat off. Luckily the previous administrator had a somewhat planned system in place so I didn’t appear inept.

4.       I ask others what they want. Someone needs a new keyboard, I ask what they want! They want a dvorak or a qwerty keyboard, one of those angled ergonomic ones, who cares, they are all the same price. It pays off to have the user happy.

5.       I try my best to no make people feel dumb.

6.       I continue my education.

7.       I bite my lip when people are frustrated and take it out on me (see previous post). I realize computers are a big part of most businesses, and if they do not work properly or at all, users get very frustrated. Sometimes they cannot help becoming irritated. I tolerate a certain level of dissent, but I’m not a pushover either. A support role or service role requires a higher than average tolerance for confrontation.

8.       I don’t use TLAs in the presence of non-techies. (TLA = Three Letter Acronym)

9.       I try to standardize my equipment for ease of replacement.

10.   I give users the option of teaching them how to fix an issue, or just to have me fix it. Some people like to learn.

11.   I am firm about policy when I need to be.

12.   I hold all users to the same standard, regardless of place in the company. Watch out for this: you may get fired. But the reasoning is because if I let certain people get away with certain things, it may cause irreparable damage to the entire system. If I let management get away with downloading torrents of something, and they open a file up and it wipes their hard drive, it’s my butt on the line. Sometimes a good scare will get these free-willing people in line.

13.   I love my career.

Posted By Chris in General, Rants
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