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  • resize image without image quality reduction

    - by ali
    In web design , it's usually needed to design an image for example in Photoshop and then use multiple sizes of it. but I don't understand something here : When I resize the image (PNG or JPG) and reduce the dimensions of that in Photoshop , the image quality extremely gets reduced and the edges become messy while resizing the image in a simple software like Microsoft Paint gives a really better output! So what's the reason ? Is there a trick in Photoshop for image resizing which I've missed? Thanks for your help. UPDATE: I resize in this way : image image size , then enter new dimensions , all of checkboxes are checked , and have tried all of resample modes including Bicubic sharper

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  • Free Cloud Mind Map Solution

    - by Zekta Chan
    As a Software Engineer we had a lot of discussion on SE design. Although we sync every document on the development process on Google Doc, mind map just didn’t fit in Google doc yet. The best we can do is to store a copy and share it online. To me, Mind map is an ir-replaceable piece of tools (yet) as agile note taking tools. And an eFormat is even greater than a paper one, due to the portability and extensibility. Does anyone have a good solution on “cloud-sharing” mind map? (We are using FreeMind at the moment) Thanks

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  • Agile Development

    - by James Oloo Onyango
    Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table.   His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts.   "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere.   "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months."   "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon."   Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!"   You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do.   Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress.   After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus.   At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard.   You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is.   Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents.   While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked.   The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom.   On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens.   **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing."   As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.)   As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you.     The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude.   You slog your way through them.   On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand.   ****   Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design!   Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka.   **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it."   ****   The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time?   Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!"   You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek.   Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give.    On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1."   As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head.   A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy.   In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off.     Rupert Industries: Project Alpha   Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity."   "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit."   Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product.   * * *   "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing.   During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed.   At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system."   A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true.   The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation.   As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost.   At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning.   * * *   The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it."   Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them."   You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release."   "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get."   So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards.   Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one."   "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays."   One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can.   The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks.   Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board.   "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well.   So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones.   The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."   In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks.   And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements,   Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour.   "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration."   * * *   The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!"   "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code."   "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case.   As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team.   Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized.   The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case.   Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?"   You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration."   Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones."   You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit."   "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either.   Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something."   Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration.   By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more.   The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed.   The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner.   Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment.   Indeed, things are looking up!

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  • Where's my MD.070?

    - by Dave Burke
    In a previous Blog entry titled “Where’s My MD.050” I discussed how the OUM Analysis Specification is the “new-and-improved” version of the more traditional Functional Design Document (or MD.050 for Oracle AIM stalwarts). In a similar way, the OUM Design Specification is an evolution of what we used to call the Technical Design Document (or MD.070). Let’s dig a little deeper…… In a traditional software development process, the “Design Task” would include all the time and resources required to design the software component(s), AND to create the final Technical Design Document. However, in OUM, we have created distinct Tasks for pure design work, along with an optional Task for pulling all of that work together into a Design Specification. Some of the Design Tasks shown above will result in their own Work Products (i.e. an Architecture Description), whilst other Tasks would act as “placeholders” for a specific work effort. In any event, the DS.140 Design Specification can include a combination of unique content, along with links to other Work Products, together which enable a complete technical description of the component, or solution, being designed. So next time someone asks “where’s my MD.070” the short answer would be to tell them to read the OUM Task description for DS.140 – Design Specification!

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  • Decentralized synchronized secure data storage

    - by Alberich
    Introduction Hi, I am going to ask a question which seems utopic for me, but I need to know if there is a way to achieve what I need. And if not, I need to know why not. The idea Suppose I have a database structure, in MySql. I want to create some solution to allow anyone (no matter who, no matter where) to have a synchronized copy (updated clone) of this database (with its content) Well, and it is not going to be just one synchronized copy, it could (and should) be a multiple replication (supposing the basic, this means, for example, ten copies all over the world) And, the most important thing: It must be secure. By secure I mean only real-accepted transactions will be synchronized with all the others (no matter how many) database copies/clones. Note: Since it would be quite difficult to make the synchronization in real-time, I will design everything to make this feature dispensable. So it is not required. My auto-suggestion This is how I am thinking to manage it: Time identifiers and Updates checking: Every action (insert, update, delete...) will be stored as the action instruction itself, associated to the time identifier. [I think better than a DATETIME field, it'll be an INT one, with the number of miliseconds passed from 1st january 2013 on, for example]. So each copy is going to ask to the "neighbour copy" for new actions done since last update, and execute them after checking they are allowed. Problem 1: the "neighbour copy" could be outdated too. Solution 1: do not ask just one neighbour, create a random list with some of the copies/clones and ask them for news (I could avoid the list and ask ALL the clones for updates, but this will be inefficient if clones number ascends too much). Problem 2: Real-time global synchronization is not active. What if... Someone at CLONE_ENTERPRISING inserts a row into TABLE. ... this row goes to every clone ... Someone at CLONE_FIXEMALL deletes this row. ... and at the same time, somewhere in an outdated clone ... Someone at CLONE_DROPOUT edits this row (now inexistent at the other clones) Solution 2: easy stuff, force a GLOBAL synchronization before doing any new "depending-on-third-data action" (edit, for example). This global synch. will be unnecessary when making an INSERT, for instance. Note: Well, someone could have some fun, and make the same insert in two clones... since they're not getting updated in real-time, this row will exist twice. But, it's the same as when we have one single database, in some needed cases we check if there is an existing same-row before doing the final action. Not a problem. Problem 3: It is possible to edit the code and do not filter actions, so someone could spread instructions to delete everything, or just make some trolling activity. This is not a problem, since good clones will always be somewhere. Those who got bad won't interest anymore. I really appreciate if you read. I know this is not the perfect solution, it has possibly hundred of holes, but it is my basic start. I will now appreciate anything you can teach me now. Thanks a lot. PS.: It could be that all this I am trying already exists and has its own name. Sorry for asking then (I'd anyway thank this name, if it exists)

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  • How do I test is storage-conf is being loaded in Cassandra 0.7.3?

    - by user657253
    I have installed Cassandra and gotten it working on two machines. I have followed the instructions to hook them up to each other by configuring the storage-conf.xml files. Both machines respond well to thrift and to command line cassandra. This is tutorial I used to setup the storage-conf.xml files. The tutorial says that if I run netstat, I should NOT see Cassandra bound to 127.0.0.1 on my seed node. I should see it bound to my internal IP, which I have configured in the storage-conf.xml file. I have rebooted the servers and relaunched cassandra. Still, I see the localhost address insead of the correct internal IP address. Is it that my .yaml file is overriding the storage-conf.xml file? If so, how do I delete the appropriate things in the .yaml? Or how do I tell Cassandra to look for my storage-conf.xml file? A few things I have tried: renaming the cassandra.yaml file. What happens is that cassandra will not load. If i rename the storage-conf.xml, cassandra does load. When I installed Cassandra, it did not come with a storage-conf.xml file. I had to grab it off the apache wiki.

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  • Dynamic Multiple Choice (Like a Wizard) - How would you design it? (e.g. Schema, AI model, etc.)

    - by henry74
    This question can probably be broken up into multiple questions, but here goes... In essence, I'd like to allow users to type in what they would like to do and provide a wizard-like interface to ask for information which is missing to complete a requested query. For example, let's say a user types: "What is the weather like in Springfield?" We recognize the user is interested in weather, but it could be Springfield, Il or Springfield in another state. A follow-up question would be: What Springfield did you want weather for? 1 - Springfield, Il 2 - Springfield, Wi You can probably think of a million examples where a request is missing key data or its ambiguous. Make the assumption the gist of what the user wants can be understood, but there are missing pieces of data required to complete the request. Perhaps you can take it as far back as asking what the user wants to do and "leading" them to a query. This is not AI in the sense of taking any input and truly understanding it. I'm not referring to having some way to hold a conversation with a user. It's about inferring what a user wants, checking to see if there is an applicable service to be provided, identifying the inputs needed and overlaying that on top of what's missing from the request, then asking the user for the remaining information. That's it! :-) How would you want to store the information about services? How would you go about determining what was missing from the input data? My thoughts: Use regex expressions to identify clear pieces of information. These will be matched to the parameters of a service. Figure out which parameters do not have matching data and look up the associated question for those parameters. Ask those questions and capture answers. Re-run the service passing in the newly captured data. These would be more free-form questions. For multiple choice, identify the ambiguity and search for potential matches ranked in order of likelihood (add in user history/preferences to help decide). Provide the top 3 as choices. Thoughts appreciated. Cheers, Henry

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  • Backup data rate on Raspberry Pi maxing out at 5 Mb/s. Why?

    - by bastibe
    I set up my Raspberry Pi as a Time Machine, as documented here. At the moment, the Raspberry Pi is connected to my MacBook Pro using a direct Ethernet cable. Also, an external hard drive (laptop drive) is connected to the Raspberry Pi using the USB port. However, backups are pretty slow. Activity Monitor claims that the Network is transferring a very steady 5 Mb/s, where my Time Capsule is transferring up to 8 Mb/s with a lot of fluctuation. The Raspberry Pi self-reports (top) that its CPU is only half-used, with about equal parts afpd, usb-storage and jbd2/sda1-8. Thus, I think that the processing power of the Raspberry Pi does not seem to be the problem here. To me, this looks like there is some kind of bottleneck that maxes out at 5 Mb/s thus potentially having my backups run at less than their potential speed. To the best of my knowledge, this might be the afp-daemon, the usb-bus or the external hard drive. So, my question is, how could I identify the true culprit and what can I do about it?

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  • VMWare Newbie - looking for hardware recommendations and help :) [closed]

    - by Dan
    I am looking for some hardware recommendations on an upcoming virtualization project. We are a small company (80 users - 25 in site 1, 55 in site 2) currently using Windows Server 2003 - no VM servers yet. Our AD is setup where site 1 is the root domain and site 2 is a subdomain/subnet - connected by T1 and VPN for failover. The current DC's also server as file servers, print servers, AntiVirus servers. Email is in the cloud. Additionally then in site 1 we have 3 additional member servers - one running IBM Websphere for a customer specific app, one running Infor PowerLink (no real heavy load) and another that we use for Virtual Studio apps and also runs DirSync for Exchange Online. No heavy workloads on any of these machines really. We also have an AS400 box that we run ERP/CRM software on that site 2 connects to over the WAN link. In site 2 we also have a SQL machine that runs on Win2K server. Database files are not large less than 5 GB. Light to Medium workload on this machine. File servers in each site store less than 500 GB data and probably won't grow to more than 1TB in the next 5 years. I am looking to go to VMWare in both sites and virtualize all servers. What recommendations do you have for server, storage hardware? Is it safe to virtualize all of your DC's? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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  • Is current SATA 6 gb/s equipment simply unreliable?

    - by korkman
    I have a 45-disk array of Seagate Barracuda 3 TB ST3000DM001 (yes these are desktop drives I'm aware of that) in a Supermicro sc847 JBOD, connected via LSI 9285. I have found a solution for the problem description below by reducing speed via MegaCli -PhySetLinkSpeed -phy0 2 -a0; for i in $(seq 48); do MegaCli -PhySetLinkSpeed -phy${i} 2 -a0; done and rebooting. The question remains: Is this typical for current 6 gb/s equipment? Is this the sad state of SATA storage? Or is some of my equipment (the sff-8088 cables come to mind) bad? The Problem was: Synchronizing HW RAID-6, disks kept offlining. Fetching SMART values reveiled that those which offlined did not increase powered-on hours anymore. That is, their firmware (CC4C) seems to crash. Digging into the matter by switching to Software RAID-6, with the disks passed-through, I got tons of kernel messages scattered across all disks, with 6 gb/s: sd 0:0:9:0: [sdb] Sense Key : No Sense [current] Info fld=0x0 sd 0:0:9:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: No additional sense information And finally, when a disk offlines: megasas: [ 5]waiting for 160 commands to complete ... megasas: [35]waiting for 159 commands to complete ... megasas: [155]waiting for 156 commands to complete ... megaraid_sas: pending commands remain after waiting, will reset adapter. Ugly controller reset here, then minutes later: megaraid_sas: Reset successful. sd 0:0:28:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery ... sd 0:0:28:0: [sdu] Unhandled error code sd 0:0:28:0: [sdu] Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK sd 0:0:28:0: [sdu] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 23 21 2f 40 00 00 70 00 sd 0:0:28:0: [sdu] killing request Reduced speed to 3 gb/s like written above, all problems vanished.

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  • Performance associated with storing millions of files on NTFS

    - by Tim Brigham
    Does anyone have a method / formula, etc that I could use - hopefully based on both current and projected numbers of files - to project the 'right' length of the split and the number of nested folders? Please note that although similar it isn't quite the same as Storing a million images in the filesystem. I'm looking for a way to help make the theories outlined more generic. Assumptions I have 'some' initial number of files. This number would be arbitrary but large. Say 500k to 10m+. I have considered the underlying physical hardware disk IO requirements that would be necessary to support such an endeavor. Put another way As time progresses this store will grow. I want to have the best balance of current performance and as my needs increase. Say I double or triple my storage. I need to be able to address both current needs and projected future growth. I need to both plan ahead and not sacrifice too much of current performance. What I've come up with I'm already thinking about using a hash split every so many characters to split things out across multiple directories and keeping the trees even, very similar as outlined in the comments in the question above. It also avoids duplicate files, which would be critical over time. I'm sure that the initial folder structure would be different based on what I've outlined, and depending on the initial scale. As far as I can figure there isn't a one size fits all solution here. It would be horrendously time intensive to work something out experimentally.

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  • Best way to attach 96 tb to workstation

    - by user994179
    I'm running a workstation with dual xeon 5690's (12 physical/24 logical cores), 192 gb of ram (ie, maxed-out), Windows 7 64bit, 5 slots for adapter cards, and 1 tb of internal storage, with 5 more internal bays available. I have an app that creates data files totaling about 88 tbs. These are written once every 14 months, and the rest of the time the app only needs to read them; and 95% of the reads are sequential reads of huge chunks of data. I have some control over how big the individual files are, but ideally they would be between 5 and 8 tbs. The app will be reading from only one drive at a time, and the nature of the data is such that if (when) a drive dies I can restore the data to a new disk from tape. While it would be nice to be able to use the fastest drive/controllers available, at this point size matters more than speed. After doing lots of reading, I am leaning toward buying a bunch of cheap 2tb drives and putting them into a bunch of cheap enclosures. All this stuff is going into my home office, so I need to avoid the raised floor/refrigerated approach. My questions: Is the cheap drive/enclosure solution the best one for this situation? Given the nature of the app and the way the data is used, does RAID make sense? If so, which one? For huge sequential reads, would Usb 3.0 and eSata be a wash performance-wise? For each slot available on the workstation, can I hook up an enclosure that can hold multiple drives? Or is it one controller per drive? If I can have multiple drives on one controller, am I essentially splitting the bandwidth (throughput)? For example, if I have a 12 bay enclosure, is the throughput of the controller reduced by a factor of 12? Are there any Windows 7 volume/drive/capacity limits I should be aware of? Thanks

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  • Disaster recovery backup of files/photos for personal use

    - by Renesis
    I'm looking for the best method to store a backup of important files and 5+ years of digital photos that is safe from some type of fire/flood disaster in my home. I'm looking for: Affordable: Less than $100/yr or first-time cost. Reliable: At least a smaller chance of failing than there is of fire or flood Easy for initial backup and to add to, and at least semi-easy to recover. I recently purchased a small home safe for physical vitals. It was inexpensive, solid, and is fire/water safe. If I had a physical copy of the digital files, the safe would work fine for this, but I don't know what to store in it that adequately meets the requirements above. Hard drive - I read that the danger of it not spinning up makes a hard drive a bad choice for this type of storage, although it was my first thought and would definitely be the simplest choice - very easy to take out once a month and add files to. DVDs - Way too much of a hassle for both backup and restore. Tape - No idea on the affordability of this option Online - Given that I have at least 300GB already and ever-increasing megapixels means ever-bigger files, and my ISP upload is about 2Mb at the best, this just doesn't sound like a good option for me, but I could be convinced. Other - Have I missed something? Also, I'm already covered both for sync between computers (Dropbox) and a nightly backup of these files (External HDD). The problem with the nightly backup is obviously that it's always with the computer and in a disaster would be destroyed along with it. Is anyone else doing something similar? Is the HDD as poor of a choice as I read, or is it a feasible option? Maybe two to reduce the likelihood of failure?

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  • Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive not recognized by Linux, causes fdisk to hang

    - by MountainX
    I'm running Kubuntu 12.04. I have a brand new, never used Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive. It's an internal drive. I installed it in a USB enclosure. When I connect it to my PC, nothing happens automatically. When I run sudo fdisk -l, fdisk hangs (without reporting this drive) until I disconnect this drive from the USB port. blkid won't report it either. I tried connecting it to both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports on my PC. I got the same result either way. I tried two different USB enclosures with the same result. If I take the same drive, same enclosure and connect it to a Windows 7 laptop, it is recognized automatically as a USB mass storage device. I want to format the drive (probably ext4) and copy files to it. I have another drive, also in a USB enclosure, that is connected via USB 3.0 to this PC and it works fine. It's a 2.0 TB Samsung HDD. I plan to copy files from the 2TB to the 3TB drive, once I get this issue resolved. My motherboard is an Asus Asus P8B WS LGA1155/ Intel C206/ Quad CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&2GbE/ ATX. What is the resolution?

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  • Solid State Drive Occasionally Freezes For A Minute While OS Is "Beach Balling"

    - by Boris_yo
    Almost a month ago I bought Intel 330 128GB solid state drive, migrated my data with Intel branded limited-feature Acronis from old HDD to new SSD, optimized with Intel Toolbox and started using it. Occassionally I get close to 1 minute freezes while seeing operating system "beach balls" and animations still work, I can interact and click on something but nothing responds, nothing loads. Recently a couple of such freezes occurred in shorter amount of time in a row. I have noticed that if I stop interacting with laptop, the freeze lasts less time than if I was interacting with laptop. But the bigger problem is when freeze just does not end and computer keeps being stuck unlil it is more than half hour and I run out of patience to keep waiting and feeling I need to restart the system because I am not getting anywhere. Such freeze happened while laptop was cold booting into Windows 7. This is when freeze hang occurred and I had to restart, only later to be greeted with Windows recovery screen stating something about faiure of boot sector and asking to insert Windows repair CD. But after I restarted, Windows booted successfully and all was well. I have filmed video of freeze hang occurring in cold boot which you can see here (on video page look below for description): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7MQlcDTUs As I have mentioned in the beginning, the SSD is less than a month old but here is S.M.A.R.T statistics just in case (TRIM is enabled btw according to CrystalDiskInfo): I want to emphasize that this SSD is the only drive I have, yet it is working in RAID mode (it was enabled initially in BIOS by previous laptop's owner) on Intel Rapid Storage drivers. I am contemplating about switching to AHCI mode but want to be sure this won't cause data loss. Additionally, the stock firmware is the only firmware available currently, yet Intel does not respond to my posts in their community board. If anyone here has this SSD model or generally has experience with SSD drives, I would love to know your thoughts.

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  • linux: mount old ATA disk to USB adapter

    - by 130490868091234
    I am trying to recover data from an old Linux that was installed in a computer on an ATA hard drive. I found a ScanLogic Corp. SL11R-IDE IDE Bridge (04ce:0002), an ATA adapter to USB 1.0 like the one in the picture: and after switching it on, I plugged it into a laptop with Ubuntu 12.04. I am used to the drives being automatically mounted, but this one doesn't show up in /media. After doing a dmesg, all I got is this: [215298.671924] usb 2-1.1: new full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd [215298.767330] scsi19 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0 [215299.841701] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd [215300.017258] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd [215300.197050] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd [215300.372730] usb 2-1.1: reset full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd I tried plugging in the adapter to the three different USB ports in my laptop (one of them USB 3.0), but got no luck with any of them. I get different devices under, for example: /dev/bus/usb/003/002 or /dev/bus/usb/002/004, but I don't get any /dev/sdbN links. The output blkid -o list -c /dev/null is just the laptop's partitions. I have tried taking out the jumper, putting it as master and as CS Enabled, but didn't change the result. Any ideas?

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  • Could hybrid SSD + HDD be made with fixed internal partitions?

    - by Aaron
    I was pretty close to getting Seagate's Momentus XT but have been scared off by the many problems reported on forums and feedback sites, especially in Mac Book Pros. So I'm waiting for mk 2 with some extra flash and better reliablilty I'm assuming will come out this year. What would suit me better though is a 32+500 hybrid drive where I have more control over what is on the flash drive and what is on the disk drive. So there are 2 physical partitions within the one 2.5" hard drive enclosure which use different media internally (32GB for core files and 500GB for data and multimedia). The partitions would be locked so they can't be changed. - Or even better, the disk driver just makes them appear as two disks to the OS that share the same bus... Perhaps it's ok if the bios just sees the first drive until the OS is loaded. Is either of it technically possible? Obviously difficult to market outside of the enthusiast market. The SSD memory modules can be pretty small right, so they could even make them a card that plugs into a secondary connection on the enclosure. That would be good for computer builders as well as for upgrading and recoverability. Then future operating systems could recognise these system SSD drives and automatically install the OS + swap files on it. While placing document libraries on the larger data drive. While in the longer term HDD will probably disapear there will always be a trade off between speed, storage size and expense.

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  • Generalized strategy for file server virtualization in Xenserver

    - by Jamie
    I'm not shopping as much as I'm looking for some guidance on good idea / bad idea strategies. I'm sure I'm not in the "best practices" budget range. Currently, I have 3 dell poweredges running xenserver in a pool. Each node has a ubuntu file server, serving about 6TB. One is the primary, the other two are rsync targets for backup. The 6TB is stored on their respective local storage disks as an LVM of 3x2tb virtual disks. The fileserver VM disks are also stored on the node local disks. Each node also runs a smattering of light-weight VMs for web, development, windows VMs, and stuff like that. Several of those VM's disks reside on a QNAP NAS to play with live migration. These VM's are often clients of the primary file server (like all the mail, web content, user files are stored on the file server, not on the mail, web, and samba VMs). This all works fine, and is a major step up for us. The downside is that the QNAP is a single point of failure. And the only thing the QNAP is doing is serving migratable VM images, not client data. Someday the poweredge local arrays will be full, and we will have to reinvent ourselves again. Is it wise to have heavywieght vms (like the fileserver, with its 6+ TB disks) on a SAN or NAS? Would it be better to keep the VMs lightweight, have the VM images on a SAN or NAS, and use 2 or more NAS act as NFS-serving file appliances? A hybrid SAN/NAS that can serve iscsi for images and NFS for the client vms? It seems like live-magration would be a misnomer if you have to migrate a fileserver with its entire 6+ TB disk. I recognize there are plenty of ways to skin the cat. We've already skinned it a few ways. What makes sense?

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  • What is the max supported number of SATA devices (using cable adapters) on a Dell SAS 6/iR adapter?

    - by Zac B
    I've got a Dell SAS 6/iR PCI-E adapter. I don't have a multiplier backplane. I'm planning on connecting SATA (non SAS) drives. If I buy cable adapters only (ones that split a SAS connector on the card to a certain number of SATA cables), how many drives can I connect to this card? The way I see it, there are two limitations: a limitation imposed by the theoretical max number of devices supported on the card (which I've dug through the specs to find, but haven't seen yet), and a limitation imposed by the number of SAS plugs on the card multiplied by the number of SATA cables that come out of the highest-multiplying splitter I can buy. The answer to my question would be the minimum of those two limitations. I've seen 4x SATA coming out of some splitters; are there any that have more? Alternatively, if this is an RTFM question, does anyone have a good link to a "this is how SAS works, this is how you figure out the max number of devices, and this is how the concepts of 'ports', 'lanes', 'endpoint devices', and 'connectors' all relate in SAS-land" document? I've looked around on the Dell docs, but haven't found anything that explains this to someone at my level of understanding of SAN/enterprise storage technologies. Cheers!

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  • How to set up Windows 7 Professional as a NAS

    - by Enyalius
    I searched and didn't find any answers, so please forgive me if this is a repeat. Anyway, I have an older computer that I'm using as an HTPC, and I was hoping that I could use it as a NAS/multimedia server, as well. My primary uses would include accessing content on my PS3 (same LAN), accessing content from other computers on my home network and (if I can) accessing content from my Android phone over the internet. I have used SubSonic to stream music to my Android phone and other computers before, but I would really like to find a way to do this natively if possible. I know that I can buy external hard disk cases that can plug in the USB port of my router, that I can get a Drobo or other network storage solution, but I would really just rather not spend the money (especially considering that I already have a computer that I should be able to use). Hardware involved: Apple AirPort Extreme base station router (most recent revision) Home Theater Personal Computer: Core 2 Duo @ 2.4GHz, 8GB DDR2 RAM, ~3.5TB hard drive space Sony Playstaiton 3 Thin 120GB HTC Thunderbolt (I have 4G coverage) rooted and running Android 2.2.1 Various Apple laptops Various Windows 7 desktops/laptops Thanks in advance! Note- I have looked at open source NAS software but I would like to preserve the Windows Media Center functionality in Windows 7, so other NAS software is not an option for me currently. .

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  • One Way Sync with Dropbox?

    - by user244805
    Is there any way I can mirror a dropbox folder to my C drive by just running a portable file? Extra background information because I know you guys hate it when you don't get the entire situation: I go back to University in fall and I need a new storage solution. I decided to use DropBox to sync my tiny University files (< 5 MB). I need to access these files from 4 machines: Windows 7 Home machine Windows 7 University A machine Windows 7 University B machine Android tablet 1 and 4 are a non-issue. The problem lies with 2 and 3. I want to be able to edit my files on 2 and 3 but those machines are not mine. There is an easy fix. Run a portable version of the DropBox syncer on a USB drive. But the problem is that I don't want to carry a USB drive around with me all the time. In that case, I can just run the small portable DropBox syncer off the internet. But where will it to store the files? A temporary directory on the C drive. There is only one issue left: there are hundreds of machines that I will randomly use that fit in categories 2 and 3. My portable DropBox syncer will notice that the temporary directory is empty on each new PC I use and instead of downloading my DropBox folder to the machine, it syncs the other way around i.e. it deletes my entire DropBox. The solution is to mirror my DropBox onto the temporary directory before running the DropBox syncer.

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  • RAIDs with a lot of spindles - how to safely put to use the "wasted" space

    - by kubanczyk
    I have a fairly large number of RAID arrays (server controllers as well as midrange SAN storage) that all suffer from the same problem: barely enough spindles to keep the peak I/O performance, and tons of unused disk space. I guess it's a universal issue since vendors offer the smallest drives of 300 GB capacity but the random I/O performance hasn't really grown much since the time when the smallest drives were 36 GB. One example is a database that has 300 GB and needs random performance of 3200 IOPS, so it gets 16 disks (4800 GB minus 300 GB and we have 4.5 TB wasted space). Another common example are redo logs for a OLTP database that is sensitive in terms of response time. The redo logs get their own 300 GB mirror, but take 30 GB: 270 GB wasted. What I would like to see is a systematic approach for both Linux and Windows environment. How to set up the space so sysadmin team would be reminded about the risk of hindering the performance of the main db/app? Or, even better, to be protected from that risk? The typical situation that comes to my mind is "oh, I have this very large zip file, where do I uncompress it? Umm let's see the df -h and we figure something out in no time..." I don't put emphasis on strictness of the security (sysadmins are trusted to act in good faith), but on overall simplicity of the approach. For Linux, it would be great to have a filesystem customized to cap I/O rate to a very low level - is this possible?

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