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Back in December I just came across this article for an AMD RoC (RAID-on-Chip) that will be embedded into servers to provide uninterrupted RAID functionality. A quick question came to mind as I was reading this: “Considering today’s storage capabilities and low cost equipment, who will be using this?” And honestly I was not able to come up with an answer.

In an earlier blog post I had mentioned the rise in usage of software RAID. Small to Medium sized Business (SMB) have been running to these low cost solutions. And why not? You are able to get more bang for your buck. For instance, by running OpenSolaris, one is able to use the redundancy of the ZFS file system (with single/double parity or mirrored RAID), file system level snapshot, data deduplication, and more. On top of that, there is a checksum calculator to ensure that all data corruption (noisy and silent) are never a threat. Take these ZFS pools and share them via NFS/CIFS, over ftp/http to even mapping them over iSCSI, Fibre Channel, AoE or FCoE protocols. The operating system (with all bells and whistles) is freely distributed under the CDDL license. The only costs will be the hardware equipment (a server or two and if external storage is needed, a JBOD) and the storage administrator. For years, servers have been equipped with LSI Logic (or other) RAID controllers that have proven to be just as efficient as anything else to handle local storage. Now when you look at larger enterprise scale companies, they are not going to want a server to manage their RAID. Instead they will keep the external storage managed externally with special purpose RAID controllers managing hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of data storage and apart from all the nodes in a cluster accessing that equipment.

But going back to the server, how practical is it to have an implemented RoC? With today’s level of high speed computing, does it make that much of a difference if the RAID is accomplished on the chipset as opposed to the operating system? If so how easy is it to recover from data corruption or any other error? Unless you are setting up a small home or small business server, what if you wanted additional functionality such as snapshots, data deduplication and checksum validation? You still have to go to the operating system and have some sort of volume manager on top of the RoC grouped volumes. No offense to Dot Hill even though they were a direct competitor to one of my previous employers (Xyratex). According to their numbers posted on Google Finance, financially they have been struggling for at least the past 5 to 6 years and this is a great opportunity for them. Although it is in my opinion that this would have been a valid technology back in 2001 and not 2010.

It is hard to believe that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still has the majority of market share in the web browser world (62.12%). I am just glad to see the rising popularity of Mozilla Firefox (24.43%), Google Chrome (5.22%) to even others such as Apple Safari (4.53%), Opera (2.38%), etc. Whenever I spend time to do various Javascript to even CSS development for various dynamic webpages, I am always held back by the non-compliant Internet Explorer. Today I will be picking IE8 as it is the latest and greatest from Microsoft.

For instance, I was doing some Javascript development earlier in the day yesterday morning and IE8 would fail on the following code:

<script language=“javascript” type=“text/javascript”>
    grabURL=window.location.href.split(”?”);
    if(grabURL[1] == null)
        window.location = ‘error.html’;

    [ ... ]

</script>

Specifically it would fail on the line of code changing the window’s location. I am not looking for any answers or workaround in this blog entry. I am merely venting off some frustration. Why does Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari not see any problems with this perfectly legal piece of code and Internet Explorer errors on it? Also, the error never gives a detailed enough reason as to what it had a problem with exactly.

I come across this kind of thing all the time. The above sample of code is one of many I have had to hack around for IE. It becomes very difficult to take the browser seriously but at the same time it is hard not to since they still own a good chunk of browser share.

I was just having a conversation with a colleague when we had gotten to the topic of the disposable PC.  If you are not familiar with the concept, this post will highlight the details below. When I first dabbled with computers back in the late 80’s, it was an Apple. We didn’t own it. It was available at the local school in the school’s computer lab of no more than 25-30 computers. They were running the Apple IIe and even though they were outdated at the time, they didn’t have the finances to upgrade the systems. By the time the 90’s hit I was already well acquainted with Macintosh line of PCs but again our family didn’t own any. All computers were just too expensive. At around 1995 (maybe a little earlier) our family dropped nearly $2,000 (USD) into a Packard Bell (rated as one of the worst PCs of all time). I am going off of memory but it ran no more than 70 MHz (Intel Pentium) and had no more than 8 or 16 MBytes of EDO RAM. I don’t remember the hard drive space, although I believe it was 2 GBytes supplied from one of the old school big foot drives. The PC came with Windows 3.11 but was soon later upgraded to Windows 95.

Note that I still use those big foot drives. I actually have a few scattered around the house and are used as door stops. It is all about recycling old computer equipment.

So there you have it, that is what almost $2000 bought you. So when you had a problem with your PC, you spent the money to fix. That is you bought all the necessary software or paid the appropriate technicians to handle all of the work. The PC was an investment and you were not going to drop it for anything else.

Flash forward to the year 2001, when Windows XP was released. A decent computer could be purchased as low as $700 USD. That included a licensed copy of Windows XP. Flash forward to the present when mobility is a constant demand, and a decent notebook or even netbook could be purchased at $500 USD. Obviously thanks to manufacturers such as Intel, AMD among others, the prices for hardware components have dropped significantly. It is very affordable to acquire the necessary equipment and has gotten easier to set it up in a home or anywhere else.

When I write about the disposable PC, blame for the creation and maintaining of such a culture does not belong to a single entity. It has gotten to the point where hardware has become so cheap that whenever someone who lacks any real technical knowledge comes across a computing problem (whether it be hardware or software related) has no problem running out and purchasing a new replacement. Microsoft and retail stores add to this culture.

For instance, what happens when you (a non-technical person) are prompted with a bunch of error dialog boxes, a virus or a system crash? If you do not personally know anybody who can fix it, you will take it in to a retail store that offers PC repair services, such as Best Buy. The only reason why I pick on Best Buy is not because I harbor any negative feelings toward them (they are a business selling services and products) but instead because in the late 90’s to around 2001/2 I used to work for them and was familiar with the processes and routines when it came to PC repair.

Note that prices may have changed since then.

To diagnose a PC, it was $60. We would not have repaired the PC, even if the problem was apparent unless this diagnostics fee was paid in full. This $60 was never applied toward any other repairs either. So if we came back saying that your hard drive went bad and you need to replace it and reinstall the OS, you looked at spending another $120 for a hard drive, $60 to re image Windows followed by another $20 or more to install all Windows Updates and/or any other applications or device drivers. Add another $60 if we were able to salvage data from your old hard drive and transfer it to the new one. At times you were looking to spend over $320 for repairing a PC. This could have been more than half the price of buying a new PC. So why invest into something that is already outdated? And if the service prices have increased since then, then what is the point when you can spend $400 or less and get a netbook with a Linux distribution or Windows 7 pre-installed?

Some of you may be asking: how does Microsoft fit into this? Deep down, I believe that more than half of the problems in Windows are intentional primarily because Microsoft (and good for them) is a money making machine. In order for them to make money, the people that sell and repair their products have to make money. I am pretty sure that if Microsoft wanted to invest the time and money to create the most secure and stable operating system, they could. They don’t have idiots working for them. I think it is that “if you scratch my back, I will scratch yours mentality.” It also doesn’t help that whenever a call is placed to a support center or when a PC is brought into a repair shop, the solution usually given by the technician is to re-image Windows. If I have a virus, why can’t you just remove the virus and I will be on my way?

I, as many of my readers, on the other hand know better and choose to rely on something a lot more stable and secure with (insert flavor of Linux or UNIX here). Why be bothered with constantly having to maintain or repair your OS. Sometimes you just need things to work. Maybe that is why you read stories about how repair shops such as Best Buy’s will refuse the repair of a computing device if you are not running a version of Windows. They probably don’t see any money it.

Well, it has been 23 days or so since my last update. Things have been a bit hectic. For instance, I am spending all of my free time in a start-up company intended to cater to the data storage industry. My business partner and I have a few commitments with a couple of technology partners to deliver a data storage management suite. Other time is being spent in writing a book for No Starch Press on OpenSolaris. The book is outlined for 12 chapters and the first 3 have already been submitted to the publisher.

Some other exciting stuff taking up free time is that my wife is expecting our first born this January. Between now and then, our baby daughter can show up into this world, so we are on high alert. Although so far, all is looking well.

I have also spent some time playing around with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. It had been installed on my wife’s laptop and we have yet to see any problems or concerns. It was a brand new Sony Vaio laptop and all hardware was recognized without an issue. The operating system runs extremely quick and very smooth. Note that she is coming from the LTS Hardy Heron release, so there are some noticeable changes to her.

I must admit that Canonical is doing a great job with this distribution and I look forward to the next LTS release. I am even thinking of making a permanent switch from Fedora Linux to Ubuntu Linux. Please do not misunderstand me. I enjoy Fedora and have always been a fan. The thing with Fedora is that it is a bleeding edge technology distribution and things have a tendency to break every now and then. I have found myself with less time to go in and address those issues. Although it will not stop me from running a stable installation of RHAS on my Intel servers.

Going back to Ubuntu 9.10, while I find the integration of Plymouth a bit redundant in splash screens (one traditional and one in X; the second after an early initialization into X), one thing that I am really impressed and intrigued by is the integration of Upstart. Upstart reminds me so much of the Service Management Facility (SMF) found in Solaris/OpenSolaris as it shares some of the same basic functionality. It is Upstart that helps to speed up the boot process while also offering a nice and uniform service manager to replace the traditional init daemon. It is just amazing to see my wife’s laptop get to the desktop within 25 seconds from post. Some other positives I saw were in the addition of the Ubuntu Software Center and Ubuntu One cloud-based storage service.

Most of my recent computing hours have been spent in OpenSolaris anyways. Most of it is in development of the earlier mentioned application suite while also using it for the OpenSolaris book. The 2010.02 release is really looking good as I have been playing with build 128. It is currently installed on my Asus Eee 901 and also running on one of my 1U Sun Fire Intel servers. I even took the time to really tune the OS on the netbook and it is running fairly well. That includes, disabling unnecessary services, customizing the CPU configuration (modify the cpupm option to read the following in the /etc/power.conf file: cpupm enable poll-mode) file to utilize less power, enable ZFS compression and disabling ZFS atime updates. I even took the time to enable a RAM-based mounted file system for Firefox caching.

Nothing else new to really report but I am looking forward to the coming year and the future of some of these open source projects. Part of that is the excitement is Linux in the mobile computing industry. Linux had always had a good market share in the mobile industry. There just seems to be more excitement around Google’s Android and in turn Chrome OS.

Earlier today I came across this interesting article on tuning your SSD drive to achieve greater performance. It is worth noting that this article is intended for Linux and when it mentions setting your file systems mount options with noatime, this too is relevant for file systems that support such an option.

I would also take the time to read the comments. There are some distribution specific responses to the author’s notes.

I just stumbled onto this blog entry on the implementation of data deduplication into the Sun Microsystem’s ZFS file system. It is implemented in such a nice and clean way, I am looking forward to testing it. For instance, just like any other feature of the ZFS file system, data dedup can be enabled disabled at any path from the ZFS root mount point. Examples taken from Jeff Bonwick’s blog post cited above:

It is that simple (man 1 zfs).

On 23 October, 2009 it was announced on MacOSForge that Apple had decided to discontinue any and all development on the porting of the ZFS file system. I know that I am not the only one to say this but I am not surprised. Supposedly there were legal reasons behind this action but in the end, who cares? They are the ones losing out to continue with an out dated and still limiting file system.

Now Apple has recently been hiring file system developers to develop a next generation file system to replace the traditional HFS+ but (as Robin Harris has previously stated) how long will it take before it becomes stable and accepted by the general public? Traditionally it takes 5+ years before a file system is considered somewhat stable and ready for production use. It wasn’t until recently that ZFS was starting to make its impact in the enterprise scene. Though my question is, to whom will this next generation file system cater to? I am to assume that it will be for the general end user utilizing Mac devices that “don’t require the weight of the ZFS features and functionality” ; or so it has been said regarding the topic of Apple abandoning the ZFS project. If that is the case and is the primary focus of the new file system, how will this impact their server market share? We already know that there is no such thing as a perfect file system that will perform ideally in every arena it is thrown into. Some will excel more than others and is entirely dependent on its implementation and workload.

In past posts, I have always stressed the importance of the file system and what is integrated within the file system. I routinely point out the numerous drawbacks and limitations of the NTFS driver. Sure, Microsoft compensates for the “lack of features” with applications, services and additional APIs to fill in all those gaps. A good example is VSS (shadow copy). This can impact performance as it is taking file system concepts out from kernel mode and into user land and consuming user mode resources. All these feature should and need to be incorporated into the file system driver. That way we can ensure that there is stability and consistency with all functions the file system performs. Even the general layout is not ideal for traditional computing over large storage media; as the fragmented large seeks between the MFT and the file data can put a lot of stress on the magnetic device. Going back to HFS+ and sort of on the same topic (although the concept is a bit different), the same could be said about Apple’s Time Machine and it running as an application on top of the driver.

One thing that I hold to heart when it comes to file systems is the ability and flexibility to tune it even without taking the mounted device(s) off-line. Most modern UNIX and Linux file systems offer a lot of tunable features (built into the driver!). For instance (through the ZFS character device node) I can dynamically alter file system variables (man 1 zfs). For this example I will focus on access times. Let us say I am using an SSD and decide that it would be more cell friendly and better performing to disable file access times on the root mount.

To view current settings and disable this feature you would type the following in the command-line terminal:

I just hope that Apple is prepared for the journey they are about to embark on. They obviously have file system development experience, and I have no doubts that they have the talent. Do they have the patience and time to invest?

Linked off of www.linuxleak.com, today I found this interesting article on “Linux Tuning The VM (memory) Subsystem.” The author also offers some suggestions for a more efficient computing environment.

According to the H Open Source website, Sun just recently announced the availability of Solaris 10 Update 10/9.

Read more here and here. You can download the OS release here.

Linked from linuxtoday.com, I found an interesting article posted on FlexTk regarding NAS Performance Comparisons between Linux, Windows and OpenSolaris. The results are very interesting. Under each category, comparisons are drawn between:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (64-bit)
• Ubuntu Server 9.04 (64-bit)
• OpenSolaris 2009.06 (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2003 (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 (64-bit)
• Windows Storage Server 2008 (64-bit)

I assume that each operating system is utilizing the default file systems with default settings for that specific release. Red Hat and Ubuntu should be using Ext3-fs, Windows obviously uses NTFS while OpenSolaris is built on top of ZFS. The CIFS/NFS exported share(s) in turn are running on top of these defaulted file systems. Either way, with average overall performance, OpenSolaris seemed to really shine. It also did well in some of the other categories which made sense when knowing the design of the ZFS file system.