Talon’s (Micah) Blog

I jumped on a good deal from dell this week.  If you configured a server with $2600 or more before adding it to the cart, it took $750 off the top instantly.  I was able to get the following server for $2200 after shipping and tax and an additional $700 from newegg to buy the 16GB (4×4GB) ram and 2 WD 1TB SATA’s.

Dell 1950 III 1u server
dual 2.5ghz E5420 Quad cores with 12MB caches each, 1333fsb, 80 watt
16GB PC5300 667mhz FB ECC Ram (4 slots free to be able to push it to 32 or 48GB)
Dual 670w hot swappable power supplies
Dual hot swappable 1TB 7.2k Sata Drives, 32mb caches
PERC6i dedicated PCIE-8x array controller with 256MB accelerator cache with Battery backup
DRAC5 remote access card
Rail kit with cable management arm
3 Year warranty and NBD hardware response
Will be running VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 3

Should be here mid Jan and I’ll get it racked in Feb with fishcomputers in Dallas Colocation 1/3 rack we’re renting.

My new job has been going really good.  I am still on contract but should be going full time hire very soon.  I’m thier only linux guy right now so I’m being looked to, to do anything with linux until they can hire a linux engineer.  Even after they hire a linux engineer its still going to be a lot of work on my end because I’ll be the tech implimenting everything and get first crack at troubleshooting issues before escalating to the engineer.  I’ll also have to train the rest of the team I work with on linux and I imagine at least for a while I’ll be on 24/7 call if a linux system has an issue until the rest of the team is up to speed on the OS.

I havent posted in a few months.  I’ve been really busy with a ton of stuff.  Left my job at microsoft, I was there 10 months and a senior tech, pulling at least 50 hr weeks avg a week ( in a 4 day work day).

Went to Apple Cyder Press in Cashmere WA youth rally in October.  It was a blast.

I went to the eye doctor and didnt realize how bad my vision was, so I got glasses now.

I started my new job at World Technology Solutions (WTS) as a Tier 3 windows support technician.  We’re getting ready to impliment large scale VMware with SAN mesh and oracle on linux systems which makes me the linux guru and expert on the team.  Good possibility I may assume the role of Linux administrator.

I fired my AR-15 a few times at the range and its sweet, very accurate and fun to take people shooting.

Unfortunately Obama was elected president…. this country is going downhill fast, corruption, greed, imorality and whatever else.  We know from historical times and the bible, that times like this have come and gone, during bibilcal times it was 10 times worse that it is now, and every time the nations collapsed and started over.  We’re in for some scary times with Obama/Democrates having majority.

I picked up a AR-15 today.  A Rock River Arms entry tactical model.  With a quad rail, surefire G2 mount, EoTech Holo Sight and tactical handle with deployable bipod.  Its a .223 rem AR-15 with a 1/9 twist and foldable front sight.

I must say the EoTech is really cool but it was pricy.  I’ll go to the rifle range next weekend and shoot it.  Here are some Pics:

Yep, my new job search is over.  I interviewed for and accepted and will sign the contract on Tuesday for a Tier 2 Server/systems support/administration for a small Data Center, just a few doors down from the Microsoft DC’s.  I start on the Oct 20th for 3 months of contract work and then Lord willing, hired Full Time, I’m will be working M-F 8-5.  I’ll have my evenings and weekends back

We’ve got ACP coming up and my last day at the Microsoft DC will be Oct 9th, as I’ll be leaving for ACP on the 10th.

So you know how you get all those career builder match emails suggesting jobs for you to apply to based off key words? Well I look at those and I found a job that says “System administrator (Gaming)”. How perfect is that.

The job add pretty much is what I do now, being a small time system admin of gaming servers and a small farm. Hosting several high traffic websites off the server farm, email systems and DNS. I’ve already implemented a CIFS file system cluster to link all the server boxes together with soft mounted file shares onto the local linux file systems for various file storage and backup storage. Plus with my experience and best practices while working as a Server tech at the Microsoft datacenter and my knowledge of the latest server hardware I could really be an asset to this company if they decide to hire me.

I know the pains and struggles of trying to run game server boxes and doing tech support to support those boxes all the time. Plus I’d be an awesome liaison with a 3rd party data center. When I mentioned I work at Microsoft as a server tech my data center makes my stuff highest priority and gets it done immediately for a fellow DC server tech. I know what being a DC server tech is like first hand (I’ve done it for 8 months now) and know how to talk tech talk to DC people to get stuff done fast and right (either for CLI linux systems or windows).

That and I’m always willing to pull extra hours and work late to get stuff done, skip lunch to work on things. For the better of the clients and company. That and I know how to do stuff on a tight budget and get the best bang for the buck, either buying a sever from a vendor or building 1 off newegg. The scripting I’ve done could also help out the company and clients, plus I have experience with firedameon for windows based game servers.

Well after a lot of playing around, bench marking I decided to go with a 6 disk raid 0+1 instead of raid 5. The raid on the mobo is pretty much junk and performance on the raid 5 was ~12MB/sec read and write. I wasnt expecting great performance for the integrated fake raid but not that bad. I debated to either just take the bite and go with a 6x 500gig raid 0+1 with 1.5TB usable space or spend $250 on a HighPoint rocket card with 8 Sata ports PCI-E card.

The performance on the integrated mobo raid on 0+1 is around 25MB/sec write, 80MB/sec read, which is fine with me, I’d rather not spend a ton of money to just get another 300gigs gain going to a raid 5.

I’m constantly bouncing on less than 10% free space on my file server. And I’ve got 1.3TB’s of usable space (850gigs is actual raid 1 space). So I just ordered a new mobo with 6 sata ports and onboard nvidia raid 5 (I know its cheap and fake raid, I wont get much performance and it will use CPU cycles for data transfer but I just need a raid 5).

Bought 3 more 500gig sata hard drives (to go with the 3 already in it). 1 will remain out of the server as a stand by spare in case 1 fails I can slap in a new 1 immediately to rebuild the array.

So after format size, raid 5 I should have 1.9TB of usable space, more than doubling my raid storage space and being relieved 350gigs of it will be fault tolerant instead of running on a single 500gig drive with no backup.

The hypernauts episodes are back up on my website under the “downloads” page.