Posts made by PhlipElder

@jaredbusch said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@fiyafly said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

Drove by this going to/from Vegas. Finally looked in to it. Pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Woah … $2.2B cost.

Ya insane, and it's not even producing close to the output they planned for.

Maybe dust and stuff... Both times we drove past, it seemed like it was very hazy, I'm guessing dust and sand in the air. It was very windy.

I've asked both inside the industry and government for the numbers for the windmill farms that are being put up around the province. No one will come clean about install and maintenance costs. :S

I did a rough calculation based on the Wikipedia article that ~640GW/h per year is $12M and ~336GWh is $6M in annual revenue based on the cited $200/MWh per year number? So, $18M/Year on a $2.2B "investment" am I on or off with the numbers?

Then, there's the stats that blew me away on the volume of natural gas the plant consumes to heat things up prior to producing solar energy.

One has to wonder if there was ever a plan for the plant to be profitable.

If you want to hear some interesting facts about clean energy, really look into nuclear. It is, hands down, the cleanest and most efficient energy we have today. Those images and such you see of clouds of smoke coming out of them? That's steam.
As far as I can tell, there are only two things keeping us from using nuclear more. Waste disposal, and people's fear of it.

The costs of nuclear are not as low as people try to paint it.

Waste disposal is a huge cost and when added in properly to the calculations does make it not as affordable.

The other large cost is disaster cleanup. A single plant failure can easily have a cleanup that runs into decades and cost trillions.

Nuclear Fusion will be a big game changer as it is cleaner and safer compared to Fission. But nothing is cost effective with Fusion yet.

Lockhead Martin has been getting closer and even had a public patent submitted back in March.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/08/01/will-lockheed-martin-change-the-world-with-its-new-fusion-reactor/#2a434da4c49f

Obviously, if they are far enough for a patent to get submitted and made public, they are fairly confident in what they are doing.

Just saw this.

@fiyafly said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

Drove by this going to/from Vegas. Finally looked in to it. Pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Woah … $2.2B cost.

Ya insane, and it's not even producing close to the output they planned for.

Maybe dust and stuff... Both times we drove past, it seemed like it was very hazy, I'm guessing dust and sand in the air. It was very windy.

I've asked both inside the industry and government for the numbers for the windmill farms that are being put up around the province. No one will come clean about install and maintenance costs. :S

I did a rough calculation based on the Wikipedia article that ~640GW/h per year is $12M and ~336GWh is $6M in annual revenue based on the cited $200/MWh per year number? So, $18M/Year on a $2.2B "investment" am I on or off with the numbers?

Then, there's the stats that blew me away on the volume of natural gas the plant consumes to heat things up prior to producing solar energy.

One has to wonder if there was ever a plan for the plant to be profitable.

If you want to hear some interesting facts about clean energy, really look into nuclear. It is, hands down, the cleanest and most efficient energy we have today. Those images and such you see of clouds of smoke coming out of them? That's steam.
As far as I can tell, there are only two things keeping us from using nuclear more. Waste disposal, and people's fear of it.

The CanDu Heavy Water Reactor is probably one of the most energy efficient setups out there. Plus, it's a lot safer than the tech being used in the US and elsewhere in the world. It's another example, like the Avro Arrow, of Canada dropping the ball on marketing an awesome product. It's also a lot less expensive dollar and environment wise than the mainstream tech being used in the US today.

Folks tout Hydro as the best but seem to forget that the environmental impacts can be just as extreme depending on the habitats and ecosystems upstream from the dam.

There's a lot of tinfoil hattage around fusion, but the fusion donuts seem to be one of the best ways to move forward if the brains behind the research can figure out how to make it work consistently.

Cavium over Chelsio any day if considering iWARP RDMA. Intel would be a distant second to Cavium.

The RJ45/SFP+ really depends on needs. If there are enough fibre runs to complete the setup then SFP+ would be the direction for top of rack (TOR) and/or aggregation.

For non-RDMA enabled networks we use RJ45 based setups for the NICs (Intel X540/X557 10GbE). For RDMA we use RoCE 10GbE/25GbE/40GbE/50GbE/100GbE via Mellanox NICs and switches which are SFPx based.

Intel 7xx series NICs utilize iWARP and SFPx and may be an option depending on server vendors and switch setup.

Performance wise, depending on network type and whether RDMA is present or not 10GbE should be around the numbers mentioned by @NashBrydges.

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@phlipelder said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

Drove by this going to/from Vegas. Finally looked in to it. Pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Woah … $2.2B cost.

Ya insane, and it's not even producing close to the output they planned for.

Maybe dust and stuff... Both times we drove past, it seemed like it was very hazy, I'm guessing dust and sand in the air. It was very windy.

I've asked both inside the industry and government for the numbers for the windmill farms that are being put up around the province. No one will come clean about install and maintenance costs. :S

I did a rough calculation based on the Wikipedia article that ~640GW/h per year is $12M and ~336GWh is $6M in annual revenue based on the cited $200/MWh per year number? So, $18M/Year on a $2.2B "investment" am I on or off with the numbers?

Then, there's the stats that blew me away on the volume of natural gas the plant consumes to heat things up prior to producing solar energy.

One has to wonder if there was ever a plan for the plant to be profitable.

@obsolesce said in What Are You Currently Reading Outside of Tech:

Drove by this going to/from Vegas. Finally looked in to it. Pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Woah … $2.2B cost.

Check the Remote Desktop services to see what account type they are using to log on and startup type.

@black3dynamite said in Firewall rules for outgoing traffic:

Block all DNS servers except for the one you provide via DHCP?

Correct.

If a SPAMbot get's in and tries to run itself independent of the production network it can't.

@travisdh1 said in Risks to Geo Blocking:

@phlipelder said in Firewall rules for outgoing traffic:

We saw a situation where the perps were definitely Russian and the IPs they were operating out of were definitely Russian but the edge had no ability to Geo Block. This would have been a classic case and point.

So what about the hundreds of people you unintentionally block because the GeoIP service you use put them in Russia instead of eastern Europe? Which is worse, purposely loosing business, or having to block malicious IP addresses (which should be automatic)?

@scottalanmiller This one. I must have goofed on the QUOTE step ...

@travisdh1 This has to do with traffic leaving the corporate/production network.

I don't see how this is applicable since folks looking to do business would be browsing an Internet based site outside those limits as well as emailing and/or phoning from outside of the business?

We saw a situation where the perps were definitely Russian and the IPs they were operating out of were definitely Russian but the edge had no ability to Geo Block. This would have been a classic case and point.

Create a new folder in the root of the data partition being used, if any, and call it something like Hyper-V-2018.

Copy the VHDX file(s) from their current location to that (assuming there is enough space to do so).

Run the following in an elevated PowerShell where X is the destination partition:

Set-VMHost -VirtualHardDiskPath "X:\Hyper-V-2018\Virtual Hard Disks" –VirtualMachinePath "X:\Hyper-V-2018"
Get-VMHost | fl VirtualHardDiskPath,VirtualMachinePath

Create a new VM and configure its settings using the existing OS VHDX. After that is complete, open the VM's properties and add the second VHDX if it exists.

Try and start the VM. If it starts, it will require some tweaking at the network level as the vNIC's GUID and MAC will be different.

@jmoore PCIe Gen3 @ 1x is 985MB/Second throughput. SATA SSDs can put out a maximum of about 500MB/Second. As far as IOPS go there's no comparison. Plus, most SATA SSDs can't reach the 500MB/Second real throughput level without significant cost.

There are some modern motherboards and hybridized RAID controllers (Tri-Mode) that can do RAID with NVMe but expect a steep premium to do so.

Our main desktop system here in the shop has a part's bin setup for the needed speed. A pair of RAID 1 Intel SSD DC S3500 series for the OS and data that needs to stay relatively secure and an Intel RS2 series PCIe RAID controller (I don't remember what it is and it's a generic MegaRAID in Device Manager) with a bunch of Intel SSD 320 series and earlier SSDs strung together in RAID 0. This setup gets used to slipstream Cumulative Updates and sometimes drivers into Windows Server then create a new .ISO file as well as spool up VMS and/or labs and/or client green field deployments.

Deny All by default.
If on-premises Exchange server then SMTP 25 TLS 587 only from there.
DNS UDP/TCP queries to the local DC(s) only.
HTTP/HTTPS global allow.

• Edge should support subnet/IP/Country and other forms of blacklist blocking.

AD based Group permissions at the edge if required.
WiFi/WAPs all on separate subnet and VLAN with DHCP handled by the controller or edge.

We find out really quick if there are any vendors asking for alternate port access to their "services". One example is the copier provider's reports that need to be "filed" once a month at a client site. Kludge system using old tech.

We had an absentminded owner click on a link with the baddie being blocked at the edge because it was trying to download via alternate port.

Those are the basics. One can tailor to the client's specific needs.

@scottalanmiller said in Use Hyper-V to replicate Linux vm file share:

@phlipelder said in Use Hyper-V to replicate Linux vm file share:

Hyper-V Replica would work in this situation with a few caveats.

There is a 15 second limit on replication cycles. If the VMs are running database/active services this could be a problem.

That would be handled earlier in the process by the backup job. If the backup is good, the replication won't cause an issue. If the backup is bad, the replication can't fix it, of course, but will replicate the bad backup. But the only place that this can be addressed is in the backup step, the replication is of backup files, so not at a point in the process where it matters.

"Garbage in garbage out" never seems to go away. It's been the bane of our existence since the switch to image/block based backups. :S

Hyper-V Replica would work in this situation with a few caveats.

There is a 15 second limit on replication cycles. If the VMs are running database/active services this could be a problem.

Site link would be key relative to the amount of data changing on those VMs.

If Site A gets flattened then spooling the VMs up at Site B may require some tweaks if Site-to-Site VPN was being used and thus different subnets.

Then there's the need to either shift WAN IP(s) to Site B or flip DNS.

One of our hyper-converged labs:

The build process from the back:

Our secondary lab:

A pair of converged clusters being prepped for a client. One to Edmonton and one to the US:

While the secondary lab is sitting on a pallet in our shop area all of our in-production systems and our primary labs are set up in racks in a properly cooled room.

A friend of mine's home lab setup: JTPedersen.com Home Lab.

My point being: Rack it and tie it up nice.

@pete-s said in VM host: dual CPU vs single CPU - same CPU performance rating:

@coliver said in VM host: dual CPU vs single CPU - same CPU performance rating:

How often are people adding CPUs to servers? Is that something that generally happens? Of course @JaredBusch was faster then I was.

Probably very seldom. But if you want to upgrade the memory you might have to install the second CPU just to get access to the rest of the memory slots. So if a dual CPU system have 16 memory slots you can only populate 8 of them if you only have one CPU.

This is a test system using older refurbished hardware so it might be more likely for me to add things as I go.

There is that. Some of the PCIe slots on the server board are not active unless there is a CPU in the second socket.

@pete-s said in VM host: dual CPU vs single CPU - same CPU performance rating:

Thanks guys.

I decided to go with the single 10-core CPU in this case as it would leave open the possibility of adding another CPU and set of memory if needed.

No licensing to consider in this particular case.

Keep in mind that the SL code of the existing CPU should be recorded as when it comes time to add the second CPU the same SL code CPU would need to be acquired.

There's a reason why Tier 1 charges huge coin to add a second CPU at a later date. They need to keep them on the shelf.

We've sent a lot of the Asus USB 3 MB168/9B series DisplayLink monitors plus I use one with my Tecra Z50-A series laptop. Together they weigh very little and it's neat to see the suits look over at the dual monitor setup while I'm waiting for a flight. ;0)

Both laptop and monitor have the same resolution which I find to be best as mousing about between two different resolution monitors can be a bit of a pain.

I'm looking to replace the Z50 at some point preferably with a 15" Surface Book series. But, they are quite pricey here in Canada so I'll stretch my Z50 out a bit longer.

I replaced the spinner with an Intel SSD DC S3520 800GB SSD. That was like being handed an entirely new machine!

I keep a 600GB Intel DC S3500 series SSD in a StarTech USB3 2.5" enclosure to provide added storage and for all of my demo VMs. The laptop, the Asus MB168B+, and the external SSD are about the best package I could and still can get for the money.

@scottalanmiller said in Ms licensing for a windows jump server:

@travisdh1 said in Ms licensing for a windows jump server:

@kris_k said in Ms licensing for a windows jump server:

@scottalanmiller The reason for having a jump server not connected to AD is to reduce the attack surface if the jump server gets compromised.

If I was in front of a computer right now instead of my phone, I'd insert a facepalm.

In what possible way could running RDS not joined to a domain make any difference security wise? If users are going to access any resources on the domain, it's just making life harder on IT for zero benefit. The only way this makes sense it's if someone doesn't trust the security of the authentication mechanism already in use, which is a whole other can of worms to open.

There are benefits to it being on a DIFFERENT domain. But not to having no domain at all.

Concur.