@networknerd said in SAN vs vSAN in a brownfield environment:

Be careful of trying brownfield VMware vSAN. The vSAN HCL is something you must adhere to when choosing hardware to use to set yourself up for success (i.e. controller is super important - look at the HBA330 instead of a PERC, need to choose the proper drives for cache and capacity, etc.).

So if you do roll with VMware vSAN or use Starwind, I would still look at a DR cluster. You can do a 2-node vSAN cluster but need a witness running somewhere else.

Thanks, this is a very useful observation.

@hobbit666 said in SAN vs vSAN in a brownfield environment:

@francesco-provino Why are they looking at changing?

Because of a licensing problem that took the ERP down after a CPU failure in a host. The license of a plugin was binded to a physical CPU. We are migrating away from this software in months, so it should not be an issue anymore.

@hobbit666 said in SAN vs vSAN in a brownfield environment:

@francesco-provino said in SAN vs vSAN in a brownfield environment:

The manager of a 25 people company was reccommended by an external consultant about moving from a two-nodes, local-storage r740 (very fast SAS ssd latest gen with more than enough capacity, fast cpu, tons of ram) VMware environment

Is is what they got now, or is that an option? If it's what they got now and there's plenty of growth in it, why are they looking at replacements?

This is what they already have, in production. I forgot, 2x14 cores CPUs per machine.

The manager of a 25 people company was reccommended by an external consultant about moving from a two-nodes, local-storage r740 (very fast SAS ssd latest gen with more than enough capacity, fast cpu, tons of ram) VMware environment to a more complex SAN environment with two replicated SAN (EMC 300) and the aforemention servers… the first configuration is using Veeam replication between nodes and can adopt VMware vSAN or StarWind for a fraction of cost.

The two SAN configuration was justified with arguments like “that’s how the enterprises do” and “this will dramatically increase reliability and availability”.

What do you think about it?

You could go a lot lower using LXD/LXC for many workloads, the tech is very mature. Use full VM only when you need to test a VM peculiar issue.

@tim_g said in Fitness and Weightloss:

@s-hackleman said in Fitness and Weightloss:

Just my 2 cents, but we need to be clear when we define what we are trying to say when we talk about health on this thread. Health and nutrition is very complicated and there is no best practice defined, it isn't like IT. I think for arguments sake we need to say if our goal in a suggestion is to loose weight, build muscle, run for distance, live longer, or what. As a culture especially in the US we see marathon runners and weight lifters and think, now that is healthy, but the reality is the runners and weight lifters who preform at the top level, die really young. Even if we post the magical formula of what is "healthy", it doesn't work for everyone. Some people at a genetic level do not thrive on the same diet and habits as another human. So be careful when talking about what is "best" for "health" and be clear what your goals are in making any change to your routine. Lastly, there are some things that are agreed upon. Being obese is bad, and it will kill you, so eat a little better, and try to maintain a decently healthy lifestyle. and let's not get stuck in the weeds about what is the best way to do it.

I'm always speaking in the context of better health overall, which is a good balance of everything, where the below IS a best practice (to your best ability):

• Diet
  • Avoid processed foods and drinks
  • Avoid added sugars
  • Avoid bad carbs (breads, potato, white rice, pastries, cereals, etc)
  • Go for unprocessed, more natural foods: (natually a more healthy choice by default)
    • walnuts, pecans, peanuts, etc.
    • peas, broccoli, spinach, etc.
    • avocado, sweet potato / yam, whole oats, etc.
    • tuna, salmon, turkey, black beans, etc.
    • banana, dates, berries, etc.
• Sleep
  • 8.5 hours "in bed"
  • 7-8 hours of actual sleeping
    • if this is difficult, try "sleep compression"
• Exercise
  • Strength Training (muscle, bone, heart, lung health)
  • Cardio (heart and lung health)

Well… for diet, you miss the first and most important point, the energy balance. You have to eat the right amount of calories per day, that’s the foundamental point. You can get this amount eating junk food or good stuff, but they are still calories.

@tim_g for less than 100Tb, you could still use a traditional file server and a CBT backup like Veeam on VMware. Over 100Tb, you should really look into object storage.

VMware all the way. It’s a largely superior product, period.

@aaronstuder what is a “kvm template”?

Just script your virt-install and use a script to clone the base image.

@aaronstuder said in Managing KVM via the Command Line:

Anyone have any good resources to learn to manage KVM via the Command Line?

Of course. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Doc, section Virtualization.

Another vote for optiplex micro, very nice built and quiet machines.

@jblaze no way with more than 1Tb of litlle files.
The dropbox client at startup can get a modern i5 with a good ssd to it’s knee at every user login.
The smart sync feature looks useful, but many software doesn’t work giod with that. Either, re-sync a big file often can be painful for your wan connection.
You can drop smart sync but then you need 1-2 tb of good storage PER CLIENT to match the performance of a simple fileserver…

I've been a great fan of the idea of lanless-SaaS everything, but for most of the environment it would simply not work. A great clustered SMB share, with branchecache etc will do the job better than everything else, if your stuff is massive.

@jblaze I've been on Dropbox enterprise for one year... and now we are back to traditional SMB shares (latest SMB 3 with encryption etc, but still SMB).

For us it didn't work well. If you have a big amount of files (over 100Gb of active stuff), in my opinion it's not gonna work.

@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:

@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:

@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:

@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:

@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:

For example, drinking alcohol might be bad for you alone, but might encourage more social behaviour or happen coincidentally with more social behaviour, which might lead to better health. It's not the alcohol doing it, but the things associated with the alcohol like social or food choices might outweight the alcohol risks making it background noise.

I'd think logic says that the mindset of not drinking alcohol promotes better health habits.

Logic might say that, but if that is the case (I don't agree) then it suggests that it is the alcohol itself creating the healthy benefits!

No, it's the awareness of alcohol being bad. Alcohol itself no. If you know it's bad, then you are more likely to be health conscious, as you are purposely taking steps to be healthier. Such as taking other steps or actions in addition to alcohol abstinence.

If you drink alcohol, you're more likely to care less about health... I can name so many examples.

I feel like that's more an American concept. I think a lot of the healthy world, whether European or Asian or whatever, tend to spend less time worried about health options. Like in Italy, I never met people worried about getting healthy food, yet ate realy healthily all the time because their food options were good and their food traditions were insanely healthy compared to what we get in the US. but there weren't "organic sections" at the grocery stores, but all the food was super healthy.

Mmh, in truth there are organic sections in smkt and organic shops in the whole country, we own some of them! We also are productors of organic vegetables.

You’ll be surprised, but there is a big market of organic/healthy food in Italy… also, I don’t think our diet is a lot better than other countries. Too much carbs!

@matteo-nunziati said in server barebones: asrock, gigabyte, tyan, intel, chenbro. Opinions?:

@scottalanmiller I know. I always prefer postgres when available. but there is a chicken-egg problem: small companies buy software from small devel companies which - for whatever reason I don't know- develop only in .NET with MS SQL.
there is a claer trend here in Italy. Therefore you have to bump the specs for the oversized framework.

Same experience. 99% ERP for SMB are made with MS SQL. Usually they are pretty crap. Some stuff from walter kluwers is getting better, though.

@matteo-nunziati said in server barebones: asrock, gigabyte, tyan, intel, chenbro. Opinions?:

@bbigford my curiosity comes from the following fact:
A dual proc with 128gb ram, raid controller and 4 big 3.5 sata disks, no redundant p. supply comes in at 5000€ involving nbd for 5 years.

Nbd and no redundant supply along w/ sata is basically shit. If you want proper support redundancy and perf you go in the 10000€ ballpark.

If a vendor was available with 24h spare delivery an 36/60 months warranty, it would be interesting to evaluate its costs.

I'm almost sure if you go higher in specs it doesn't worth, but under a certain spec you really feel robbed.

Go with Dell. You can get their machine for half the price they listed it, if you spend some time in the negotiations.
I’ve took two r740 with 2x 14cores, 11 1tb sas 3 ssd, the best perc available, 578 Gb of ram, idrac enteprise, sd module, 4hr mission critical support and a lot of 10-25gbit ports (I’m sure I’m forgetting something like radyrails) for ~24k each. They were listed over 50k…

@scottalanmiller I manage an environment with SAP B1, but I don't know the answer. It used to be a very bad, clunky and slow software, now is getting a little better.

@stacksofplates said in Back to Active Directory, Route 53 DNS:

However I do see a big plus. If you’re using something like ZeroTier now all of your mobile devices can resolve DNS names, since you can’t control the phones DNS on cellular.

That’s exactly what we do now.

@scottalanmiller said in Back to Active Directory, Route 53 DNS:

I agree with the idea of still using local DNS on the AD server(s) and then just having that copy up to Route 53. The only downside is that it would be really cumbersome to make DNS changes if the local AD was down. But would you want to make changes during that period anyway?

This is a no-issue, our DNS config is almost static.