Free utility: MC-WOL
Very nice, this tool will be a great addition for our Altiris admin. Now we just have to make sure WOL is enabled in the bios of our Dell machines.
This small command line utility makes possible to switch on a computer from a second one by sending a "Magic Packet". Both of computers can be located on the same LAN or on the different LAN segments.
http://www.matcode.com/wol.htm
Free utility: MC-WOL
rodtrent
Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:08:20 GMT
Popularity: 3% [?]
Tags: altiris, dell, freeware, lan, wolRelated posts
December 17, 2007 No Comments
Calculating VMware HA Failover Capacity
Our new ESX cluster has 3 Dell 2950 Servers with 12,16, and 32 GB of ram. From this article I need to look into making them all 32GB.
Most readers probably know that VMware High Availability (or VMware HA) is the feature of VMware Infrastructure 3 that allows for virtual machines (VMs) to be rebooted on another available host in the event of an unexpected host failure. In these types of scenarios, a physical host goes down unexpectedly, typically due to hardware failure, and with it go a bunch of VMs. With VMware HA, these downed VMs will reboot on a different physical server in the HA cluster, thus minimizing downtime.
I had always considered that the “failover capacity,” i.e., how the number of VMs that could be supported in an HA cluster with a failed host, was calculated by VMware HA in an intelligent fashion similar to that used by VMware Distributed Resource Scheduling (VMware DRS). In other words, VMware HA would look at the needs of the downed VM, consider what is available across the various hosts, and then place virtual workloads accordingly. Sadly, that is not the case.
This article, titled HA Failover Capacity, by a VMware technical support engineer—“VMwarewolf”—provides more detailed information on how failover capacity is actually calculated. What actually happens is that VMware HA calculates a number of “slots” based on the least amount of RAM installed in a server in the cluster divided by the most amount of RAM configured for any VM in the cluster. In the article, the example is given of a server that has 16GB with at least one VM that is configured for 2GB of memory. That would create 8 slots (16GB / 2GB =
for VMware HA.
That in and of itself is bad enough, since not all VMs will require 2GB, but here’s where it gets worse. After calculating the number of “slots” available on the smallest server in the cluster, it then extrapolates the total number of slots in the cluster using the number from that smallest server. So if one server in the HA cluster has 16GB but the remaining three have 64GB, all four servers will be treated as having only 16GB for the purposes of calculating HA “slots”. So, instead of the three bigger servers coming up with 32 slots, they’ll show up as having 8 slots. Ouch!
Be sure to keep this in mind when creating VMware HA clusters and planning for fault tolerance.
Also, if you aren’t reading VMwarewolf’s stuff, you may want to start. He (or perhaps she?) is posting some good stuff.
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Related Articles at blog.scottlowe.org:ESX Server and the Native VLAN My First Articles! Using scponly on ESX Server When an OS is not an OS Full VM Recovery with NetApp Snapshots VM File-Level Recovery with NetApp Snapshots
Calculating VMware HA Failover Capacity
slowe
Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:02:22 GMT
Popularity: 4% [?]
Tags: dell, vmwareRelated posts
December 5, 2007 3 Comments
WUBI help
I installed WUBI on my Dell Latitude D820. But I can’t get the wireless card to work. It looks like the card is installed, but I’m using WPA for wireless at home and WPA is not a option.
I just downloaded WUBI so its the latest version.
That’s for the help in advance
jb
Popularity: 3% [?]
Tags: dell, help, linux, wireless, WPA, wubiRelated posts
November 11, 2007 3 Comments
Dell purchases Equalogic
Wow, I’m really surprised about this. Concerning the Dell/EMC partnership, equalogic competes with EMC in the small and midsize markets.
Here’s links to more details about the deal:
http://esgblogs.typepad.com/steves_it_rants/2007/11/dell-just-bough.html
http://esgblogs.typepad.com/stor_wars/2007/11/dells-logic—t.html
http://storagemojo.com/2007/11/05/dell-wins-equallogic-emc-loses/
Popularity: 3% [?]
Tags: dell, emc, equalogic, storageRelated posts
November 7, 2007 No Comments
First Snow
Today we got the first snow of the year. I didn’t even think about all the schools that where closed today when I took my daughter to daycare, but they where closed because of the weather. So I got to stay home with her today and work from home as much as she let me 
Melissa went to work and said the roads where awful, you would think for a winter storm that was all over the news the night before that the plow trucks would be out in the morning. But nope, and from the radio is sounds like there where lots of accidents.
This weekend we are moving our SQL server from so REALLY old HP servers to virtual machines. Atleast until we have the money next year to move to new dell servers.
Enjoy the snow
jb
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tags: AD, dell, IT, mac, money, News, radio, servers, sql, workRelated posts
December 1, 2006 No Comments
The Best Time To Buy Everything
Here’s my tip, buy a car at the end of a quarter not just the end of a month. This allows loads true for Dell computers. Buy at the end of the quarter.
Here are two different viewpoints on ‘The best time to buy everything’, one from SmartMoney and the other from CNN Money. Some excerpts are below, see the articles for more.
Airline tickets
SmartMoney and CNN agree: Buy on a Wednesday, about 21 days (or just a couple of days earlier) before your flight. This is when airlines release their available seats for the upcoming weekend and the weekend after.Televisions
SmartMoney: Six to 12 months after a particular model is launched.
CNN: While the blowout sales on electronics tend to cluster around the holidays, even cheaper deals on TVs can be found in the spring beginning in April, after the end of the fiscal year in Japan.(…)
Read the rest of The Best Time To Buy Everything (67 words)
Source: The Best Time To Buy Everything
Originally published on Sat, 16 Sep 2006 07:10:01 GMT
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tags: AD, blog, dell, IE, IM, money, tv, word, WPRelated posts
September 17, 2006 No Comments
Stupid back plane
I’m finally leaving work today. I got called at 7:30 because users couldn’t connect to our ERP system. I remoted in and the server looked fine. So I called the database guy. He made a change and the users could connect.
At about 1PM I get a call from the database guy that he was in looking at the server and saw I bunch of “failure to write” errors. (I didn’t see anyting when I looked in the morning) At this time I’m shopping about 30 minutes away. I ask if production is still running. Not sure, I get called back at 2:30 (still shopping) production is running and database is down.
So at 3 I come in and take a look, amber lights on the mirrored set that is the c: drive….not good. I reboot the server and the lights turn green, hooray. I still call dell and ask them to ship the parts.
Well the parts finally arived and where installed. All the hardware seems to be up, I emailed the dba and I’m going home.
later,jb
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: AD, database, dell, email, IM, IT, lan, workRelated posts
June 10, 2006 No Comments
Busy week, not many posts
Let’s see Monday started by having the drive our exchange logs on fill up. Yeah….who would have thought we could have 3GB of changes to the database over a weekend…..exeutil is your friend…
The rest of the week, we’ve had an onsite vmware workshop. We installed 3 Dell blades with ESX onto our SAN and we now have VCenter and Vmotion. This stuff ROCKS!!! VCenter is SO MUCH better than the MUI you get when you only have ESX. The workshop runs one more day. Only a few more things to clear up and then it’s time to move about 15 machines to the new virtual server farm.
This Saturday we have family coming for a Christmas party and if the weather is good enough we are heading to Detroit Sunday for the Lions game. You can’t beat free tickets!!!!
later,jb
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tags: AD, database, dell, esx, exchange, free, IE, IM, IT, lions, mac, site, vcenter, vmotion, vmware, workRelated posts
December 14, 2005 No Comments
What a week.
Wednesday morning 5am, I get a call that nothing it working at work. On my drive in I call our desktop support person to see what he can access….Nothing. The server room is dark. Not good.
We had storms Tuesday night, but we have a huge UPS and a generator…..yah…
I get into work, into the server room…The UPS is off!!! it has power its just off…..Once I turn it on.. all the servers and network equipment power up. I spend the rest of the morning cleaning up errors from the equipment going down hard.
Now I need to findout why the UPS was off. We call the vendor in and all they can do is gather logs and get back to me.
[Read more →]
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tags: AD, admin, china, dell, friday, IE, IT, mac, network, servers, work, XPRelated posts
November 12, 2005 No Comments
Palm and Verizon to unveil Treo 700w on Monday
I know more than a few people at work that will be calling verizon for this phone. Even though my boss has the 600 and hates it. He complains the phone part of the device doesn’t work well at all. I’ve heard the same thing from my Dell rep, that the phone part on his 650 sucks.
Hopefully due in no small part to our exclusive first
look, Palm, Verizon, and Microsoft will be holding a joint press conference on Monday; we can only presume it’s to
(officially) announce the new Windows Mobile-powered
Treo 700w. If our pic gallery wasn’t
enough to satisfy your Treo-jones, you still have the whole weekend to Photoshop some press credentials and book a
flight over to San Francisco. The fun begins at 9 A.M. in the Twin Peaks conference room at the Palace Hotel.[Via mobileread, thanks to everyone who
sent this in]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.
[Via Engadget]
Popularity: 2% [?]
Tags: AD, blog, cisco, comments, dell, email, IE, IT, microsoft, News, photos, photoshop, search, windows, workRelated posts
September 25, 2005 No Comments
