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• Oracle VM RAC template - what it took

  - by wcoekaer

  In my previous posting I introduced the latest Oracle Real Application Cluster / Oracle VM template. I mentioned how easy it is to deploy a complete Oracle RAC cluster with Oracle VM. In fact, you don't need any prior knowledge at all to get a complete production-ready setup going. Here is an example... I built a 4 node RAC cluster, completely configured in just over 40 minutes - starting from import template into Oracle VM, create VMs to fully up and running Oracle RAC. And what was needed? 1 textfile with some hostnames and ip addresses and deploycluster.py. The setup is a 4 node cluster where each VM has 8GB of RAM and 4 vCPUs. The shared ASM storage in this case is 100GB, 5 x 20GB volumes. The VM names are racovm.0-racovm.3. The deploycluster script starts the VMs, verifies the configuration and sends the database cluster configuration info through Oracle VM Manager to the 4 node VMs. Once the VMs are up and running, the first VM starts the actual Oracle RAC setup inside and talks to the 3 other VMs. I did not log into any VM until after everything was completed. In fact, I connected to the database remotely before logging in at all. # ./deploycluster.py -u admin -H localhost --vms racovm.0,racovm.1,racovm.2,racovm.3 --netconfig ./netconfig.ini Oracle RAC OneCommand (v1.1.0) for Oracle VM - deploy cluster - (c) 2011-2012 Oracle Corporation (com: 26700:v1.1.0, lib: 126247:v1.1.0, var: 1100:v1.1.0) - v2.4.3 - wopr8.wimmekes.net (x86_64) Invoked as root at Sat Jun 2 17:31:29 2012 (size: 37500, mtime: Wed May 16 00:13:19 2012) Using: ./deploycluster.py -u admin -H localhost --vms racovm.0,racovm.1,racovm.2,racovm.3 --netconfig ./netconfig.ini INFO: Login password to Oracle VM Manager not supplied on command line or environment (DEPLOYCLUSTER_MGR_PASSWORD), prompting... Password: INFO: Attempting to connect to Oracle VM Manager... INFO: Oracle VM Client (3.1.1.305) protocol (1.8) CONNECTED (tcp) to Oracle VM Manager (3.1.1.336) protocol (1.8) IP (192.168.1.40) UUID (0004fb0000010000cbce8a3181569a3e) INFO: Inspecting /root/rac/deploycluster/netconfig.ini for number of nodes defined... INFO: Detected 4 nodes in: /root/rac/deploycluster/netconfig.ini INFO: Located a total of (4) VMs; 4 VMs with a simple name of: ['racovm.0', 'racovm.1', 'racovm.2', 'racovm.3'] INFO: Verifying all (4) VMs are in Running state INFO: VM with a simple name of "racovm.0" is in a Stopped state, attempting to start it...OK. INFO: VM with a simple name of "racovm.1" is in a Stopped state, attempting to start it...OK. INFO: VM with a simple name of "racovm.2" is in a Stopped state, attempting to start it...OK. INFO: VM with a simple name of "racovm.3" is in a Stopped state, attempting to start it...OK. INFO: Detected that all (4) VMs specified on command have (5) common shared disks between them (ASM_MIN_DISKS=5) INFO: The (4) VMs passed basic sanity checks and in Running state, sending cluster details as follows: netconfig.ini (Network setup): /root/rac/deploycluster/netconfig.ini buildcluster: yes INFO: Starting to send cluster details to all (4) VM(s)....... INFO: Sending to VM with a simple name of "racovm.0".... INFO: Sending to VM with a simple name of "racovm.1"..... INFO: Sending to VM with a simple name of "racovm.2"..... INFO: Sending to VM with a simple name of "racovm.3"...... INFO: Cluster details sent to (4) VMs... Check log (default location /u01/racovm/buildcluster.log) on build VM (racovm.0)... INFO: deploycluster.py completed successfully at 17:32:02 in 33.2 seconds (00m:33s) Logfile at: /root/rac/deploycluster/deploycluster2.log my netconfig.ini # Node specific information NODE1=db11rac1 NODE1VIP=db11rac1-vip NODE1PRIV=db11rac1-priv NODE1IP=192.168.1.56 NODE1VIPIP=192.168.1.65 NODE1PRIVIP=192.168.2.2 NODE2=db11rac2 NODE2VIP=db11rac2-vip NODE2PRIV=db11rac2-priv NODE2IP=192.168.1.58 NODE2VIPIP=192.168.1.66 NODE2PRIVIP=192.168.2.3 NODE3=db11rac3 NODE3VIP=db11rac3-vip NODE3PRIV=db11rac3-priv NODE3IP=192.168.1.173 NODE3VIPIP=192.168.1.174 NODE3PRIVIP=192.168.2.4 NODE4=db11rac4 NODE4VIP=db11rac4-vip NODE4PRIV=db11rac4-priv NODE4IP=192.168.1.175 NODE4VIPIP=192.168.1.176 NODE4PRIVIP=192.168.2.5 # Common data PUBADAP=eth0 PUBMASK=255.255.255.0 PUBGW=192.168.1.1 PRIVADAP=eth1 PRIVMASK=255.255.255.0 RACCLUSTERNAME=raccluster DOMAINNAME=wimmekes.net DNSIP= # Device used to transfer network information to second node # in interview mode NETCONFIG_DEV=/dev/xvdc # 11gR2 specific data SCANNAME=db11vip SCANIP=192.168.1.57 last few lines of the in-VM log file : 2012-06-02 14:01:40:[clusterstate:Time :db11rac1] Completed successfully in 2 seconds (0h:00m:02s) 2012-06-02 14:01:40:[buildcluster:Done :db11rac1] Build 11gR2 RAC Cluster 2012-06-02 14:01:40:[buildcluster:Time :db11rac1] Completed successfully in 1779 seconds (0h:29m:39s) From start_vm to completely configured : 29m:39s. The other 10m was the import template and create 4 VMs from template along with the shared storage configuration. This consists of a complete Oracle 11gR2 RAC database with ASM, CRS and the RDBMS up and running on all 4 nodes. Simply connect and use. Production ready. Oracle on Oracle.

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• Swap partition not recognized (The disk drive with UUID=... is not ready yet or not present)

  - by ladaghini

  I think I had an encrypted swap partition, because I chose to encrypt my home directory during the installation. I believe that's what the line with /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 ... in my /etc/fstab is all about. I did something to bork my swap because on the next boot, I got a message (paraphrased): The disk drive for /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 is not ready yet or not present. Wait to continue. Press S to skip or M to manually recover. (As a side note, pressing S or M seemed to do nothing different from just waiting.) Here's what I've tried: This tutorial on how to fix the swap partition not mounting. However, in the above, the mkswap command fails because the device is busy. So I booted from a live USB, ran GParted to reformat the swap partition (which showed up as an unknown fs type), and chrooted into the broken system to try that tutorial again. I also adjusted /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and /etc/fstab to reflect the new UUID generated from formatting the partition as a swap. That still didn't work; instead of /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 not present, "The disk drive with UUID=[swap partition's UUID] is not ready yet or not present..." So I decided to start afresh as though I never had created a swap partition in the first place. From the Live USB, I deleted the swap partition altogether (which, again showed up in GParted as an unknown fs type), removed the swap and cryptswap entries in /etc/fstab as well as removed /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and /etc/crypttab. At this point the main system shouldn't be considered broken because there is no swap partition and no instructions to mount one, right? I didn't get any errors during startup. I followed the same instructions to create and encrypt the swap partition, starting with creating a partition for the swap, though I think fdisk said a reboot was necessary to see changes. I was confident the 3rd process above would work, but the problem yet persists. Some relevant info (/dev/sda8 is the swap partition): /etc/fstab file: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda6 during installation UUID=4c11e82c-5fe9-49d5-92d9-cdaa6865c991 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /boot was on /dev/sda5 during installation UUID=4031413e-e89f-49a9-b54c-e887286bb15e /boot ext4 defaults 0 2 # /home was on /dev/sda7 during installation UUID=d5bbfc6f-482a-464e-9f26-fd213230ae84 /home ext4 defaults 0 2 # swap was on /dev/sda8 during installation UUID=5da2c720-8787-4332-9317-7d96cf1e9b80 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0 output of sudo mount: /dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755) none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880) none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) /dev/sda5 on /boot type ext4 (rw) /dev/sda7 on /home type ext4 (rw) /home/undisclosed/.Private on /home/undisclosed type ecryptfs (ecryptfs_check_dev_ruid,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs,ecryptfs_sig=cbae1771abd34009,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=7cefe2f59aab8e58) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/undisclosed/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=undisclosed) output of sudo blkid (note that /dev/sda8 is missing): /dev/sda1: LABEL="SYSTEM" UUID="960490E80490CC9D" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda2: UUID="D4043140043126C0" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda3: LABEL="Shared" UUID="80F613E1F613D5EE" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda5: UUID="4031413e-e89f-49a9-b54c-e887286bb15e" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sda6: UUID="4c11e82c-5fe9-49d5-92d9-cdaa6865c991" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sda7: UUID="d5bbfc6f-482a-464e-9f26-fd213230ae84" TYPE="ext4" /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: UUID="41fa147a-3e2c-4e61-b29b-3f240fffbba0" TYPE="swap" output of sudo fdisk -l: Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xdec3fed2 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 409599 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 409600 210135039 104862720 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 210135040 415422463 102643712 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 415424510 625141759 104858625 5 Extended /dev/sda5 415424512 415922175 248832 83 Linux /dev/sda6 415924224 515921919 49998848 83 Linux /dev/sda7 515923968 621389823 52732928 83 Linux /dev/sda8 621391872 625141759 1874944 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: 1919 MB, 1919942656 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 233 cylinders, total 3749888 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xaf5321b5 /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume file: RESUME=UUID=5da2c720-8787-4332-9317-7d96cf1e9b80 /etc/crypttab file: cryptswap1 /dev/sda8 /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 output of sudo swapon -as: Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 partition 1874940 0 -1 output of sudo free -m: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1476 1296 179 0 35 671 -/+ buffers/cache: 590 886 Swap: 1830 0 1830 So, how can this be fixed?

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• Best Practices - Dynamic Reconfiguration

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) Overview of dynamic Reconfiguration Oracle VM Server for SPARC supports Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), making it possible to add or remove resources to or from a domain (virtual machine) while it is running. This is extremely useful because resources can be shifted to or from virtual machines in response to load conditions without having to reboot or interrupt running applications. For example, if an application requires more CPU capacity, you can add CPUs to improve performance, and remove them when they are no longer needed. You can use even use Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) policies that automatically add and remove CPUs to domains based on load. How it works (in broad general terms) Dynamic Reconfiguration is done in coordination with Solaris, which recognises a hypervisor request to change its virtual machine configuration and responds appropriately. In essence, Solaris receives a message saying "you now have 16 more CPUs numbered 16 to 31" or "8GB more RAM starting at address X" or "here's a new network or disk device - have fun with it". These actions take very little time. Solaris then can start using the new resource. In the case of added CPUs, that means dispatching processes and potentially binding interrupts to the new CPUs. For memory, Solaris adds the new memory pages to its "free" list and starts using them. Comparable actions occur with network and disk devices: they are recognised by Solaris and then used. Removing is the reverse process: after receiving the DR message to free specific CPUs, Solaris unbinds interrupts assigned to the CPUs and stops dispatching process threads. That takes very little time. primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 1.0% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.9% 6h 59m primary # ldm set-core 5 ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.2% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 40 8G 0.1% 6h 59m primary # ldm set-core 2 ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 1.0% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.9% 6h 59m Memory pages are vacated by copying their contents to other memory locations and wiping them clean. Solaris may have to swap memory contents to disk if the remaining RAM isn't enough to hold all the contents. For this reason, deallocating memory can take longer on a loaded system. Even on a lightly loaded system it took several 7 or 8 seconds to switch the domain below between 8GB and 24GB of RAM. primary # ldm set-mem 24g ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.1% 6d 22h 36m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 24G 0.2% 7h 6m primary # ldm set-mem 8g ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.7% 6d 22h 37m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.3% 7h 7m What if the device is in use? (this is the anecdote that inspired this blog post) If CPU or memory is being removed, releasing it pretty straightforward, using the method described above. The resources are released, and Solaris continues with less capacity. It's not as simple with a network or I/O device: you don't want to yank a device out from underneath an application that might be using it. In the following example, I've added a virtual network device to ldom1 and want to take it away, even though it's been plumbed. primary # ldm rm-vnet vnet19 ldom1 Guest LDom returned the following reason for failing the operation: Resource Information ---------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- /devices/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@1 Network interface net1 VIO operation failed because device is being used in LDom ldom1 Failed to remove VNET instance That's what I call a helpful error message - telling me exactly what was wrong. In this case the problem is easily solved. I know this NIC is seen in the guest as net1 so: ldom1 # ifconfig net1 down unplumb Now I can dispose of it, and even the virtual switch I had created for it: primary # ldm rm-vnet vnet19 ldom1 primary # ldm rm-vsw primary-vsw9 If I had to take away the device disruptively, I could have used ldm rm-vnet -f but that could disrupt whoever was using it. It's better if that can be avoided. Summary Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides dynamic reconfiguration, which lets you modify a guest domain's CPU, memory and I/O configuration on the fly without reboot. You can add and remove resources as needed, and even automate this for CPUs by setting up resource policies. Taking things away can be more complicated than giving, especially for devices like disks and networks that may contain application and system state or be involved in a transaction. LDoms and Solaris cooperative work together to coordinate resource allocation and de-allocation in a safe and effective way. For best practices, use dynamic reconfiguration to make the best use of your system's resources.

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• #OOW 2012 @PARIS...talking Oracle and Clouds, and Optimized Datacenter

  - by Eric Bezille

  For those of you who want to get most out of Oracle technologies to evolve your IT to the Next Wave, I encourage you to register to the up coming Oracle Optimized Datacenter event that will take place in Paris on November 28th. You will get the opportunity to exchange with Oracle experts and customers having successfully evolve their IT by leveraging Oracle technologies. You will also get the latest news on some of the Oracle systems announcements made during OOW 2012. During this event we will make an update about Oracle and Clouds, from private to public and hybrid models. So in preparing this session, I thought it was a good start to make a status of Cloud Computing in France, and CIO requirements in particular. Starting in 2009 with the first Cloud Camp in Paris, the market has evolved, but the basics are still the same : think hybrid. From Traditional IT to Clouds One size doesn't fit all, and for big companies having already an IT in place, there will be parts eligible to external (public) cloud, and parts that would be required to stay inside the firewalls, so ability to integrate both side is key.  None the less, one of the major impact of Cloud Computing trend on IT, reported by Forrester, is the pressure it makes on CIO to evolve towards the same model that end-users are now used to in their day to day life, where self-service and flexibility are paramount. This is what is driving IT to transform itself toward "a Global Service Provider", or for some as "IT "is" the Business" (see : Gartner Identifies Four Futures for IT and CIO), and for both models toward a Private Cloud Service Provider. In this journey, there is still a big difference between most of existing external Cloud and a firm IT : the number of applications that a CIO has to manage. Most cloud providers today are overly specialized, but at the end of the day, there are really few business processes that rely on only one application. So CIOs has to combine everything together external and internal. And for the internal parts that they will have to make them evolve to a Private Cloud, the scope can be very large. This will often require CIOs to evolve from their traditional approach to more disruptive ones, the time has come to introduce new standards and processes, if they want to succeed. So let's have a look at the different Cloud models, what type of users they are addressing, what value they bring and most importantly what needs to be done by the  Cloud Provider, and what is left over to the user. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS : what's provided and what needs to be done First of all the Cloud Provider will have to provide all the infrastructure needed to deliver the service. And the more value IT will want to provide, the more IT will have to deliver and integrate : from disks to applications. As we can see in the above picture, providing pure IaaS, left a lot to cover for the end-user, that’s why the end-user targeted by this Cloud Service is IT people. If you want to bring more value to developers, you need to provide to them a development platform ready to use, which is what PaaS is standing for, by providing not only the processors power, storage and OS, but also the Database and Middleware platform. SaaS being the last mile of the Cloud, providing an application ready to use by business users, the remaining part for the end-users being configuring and specifying the application for their specific usage. In addition to that, there are common challenges encompassing all type of Cloud Services : Security : covering all aspect, not only of users management but also data flows and data privacy Charge back : measuring what is used and by whom Application management : providing capabilities not only to deploy, but also to upgrade, from OS for IaaS, Database, and Middleware for PaaS, to a full Business Application for SaaS. Scalability : ability to evolve ALL the components of the Cloud Provider stack as needed Availability : ability to cover “always on” requirements Efficiency : providing a infrastructure that leverage shared resources in an efficient way and still comply to SLA (performances, availability, scalability, and ability to evolve) Automation : providing the orchestration of ALL the components in all service life-cycle (deployment, growth & shrink (elasticity), upgrades,...) Management : providing monitoring, configuring and self-service up to the end-users Oracle Strategy and Clouds For CIOs to succeed in their Private Cloud implementation, means that they encompass all those aspects for each component life-cycle that they selected to build their Cloud. That’s where a multi-vendors layered approach comes short in terms of efficiency. That’s the reason why Oracle focus on taking care of all those aspects directly at Engineering level, to truly provide efficient Cloud Services solutions for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. We are going as far as embedding software functions in hardware (storage, processor level,...) to ensure the best SLA with the highest efficiency. The beauty of it, as we rely on standards, is that the Oracle components that you are running today in-house, are exactly the same that we are using to build Clouds, bringing you flexibility, reversibility and fast path to adoption. With Oracle Engineered Systems (Exadata, Exalogic & SPARC SuperCluster, more specifically, when talking about Cloud), we are delivering all those components hardware and software already engineered together at Oracle factory, with a single pane of glace for the management of ALL the components through Oracle Enterprise Manager, and with high-availability, scalability and ability to evolve by design. To give you a feeling of what does that bring in terms just of implementation project timeline, for example with Oracle SPARC SuperCluster, we have a consistent track of record to have the system plug into existing Datacenter and ready in a week. This includes Oracle Database, OS, virtualization, Database Storage (Exadata Storage Cells in this case), Application Storage, and all network configuration. This strategy enable CIOs to very quickly build Cloud Services, taking out not only the complexity of integrating everything together but also taking out the automation and evolution complexity and cost. I invite you to discuss all those aspect in regards of your particular context face2face on November 28th.

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• SQLIO Writes

  - by Grant Fritchey

  SQLIO is a fantastic utility for testing the abilities of the disks in your system. It has a very unfortunate name though, since it's not really a SQL Server testing utility at all. It really is a disk utility. They ought to call it DiskIO because they'd get more people using I think. Anyway, branding is not the point of this blog post. Writes are the point of this blog post. SQLIO works by slamming your disk. It performs as mean reads as it can or it performs as many writes as it can depending on how you've configured your tests. There are much smarter people than me who will get into all the various types of tests you should run. I'd suggest reading a bit of what Jonathan Kehayias (blog|twitter) has to say or wade into Denny Cherry's (blog|twitter) work. They're going to do a better job than I can describing all the benefits and mechanisms around using this excellent piece of software. My concerns are very focused. I needed to set up a series of tests to see how well our product SQL Storage Compress worked. I wanted to know the effects it would have on a system, the disk for sure, but also memory and CPU. How to stress the system? SQLIO of course. But when I set it up and ran it, following the documentation that comes with it, I was seeing better than 99% compression on the files. Don't get me wrong. Our product is magnificent, wonderful, all things great and beautiful, gets you coffee in the morning and is made mostly from bacon. But 99% compression. No, it's not that good. So what's up? Well, it's the configuration. The default mechanism is to load up a file, something large that will overwhelm your disk cache. You're instructed to load the file with a character 0x0. I never got a computer science degree. I went to film school. Because of this, I didn't memorize ASCII tables so when I saw this, I thought it was zero's or something. Nope. It's NULL. That's right, you're making a very large file, but you're filling it with NULL values. That's actually ok when all you're testing is the disk sub-system. But, when you want to test a compression and decompression, that can be an issue. I got around this fairly quickly. Instead of generating a file filled with NULL values, I just copied a database file for my tests. And to test it with SQL Storage Compress, I used a database file that had already been run through compression (about 40% compression on that file if you're interested). Now the reads were taken care of. I am seeing very realistic performance from decompressing the information for reads through SQLIO. But what about writes? Well, the issue is, what does SQLIO write? I don't have access to the code. But I do have access to the results. I did two different tests, just to be sure of what I was seeing. First test, use the .DAT file as described in the documentation. I opened the .DAT file after I was done with SQLIO, using WordPad. Guess what? It's a giant file full of air. SQLIO writes NULL values. What does that do to compression? I did the test again on a copy of an uncompressed database file. Then I ran the original and the SQLIO modified copy through ZIP to see what happened. I got better than 99% compression out of the SQLIO modified file (original file of 624,896kb went to 275,871kb compressed, after SQLIO it went to 608kb compressed). So, what does SQLIO write? It writes air. If you're trying to test it with compression or maybe some other type of file storage mechanism like dedupe, you need to know this because your tests really won't be valid. Should I find some other mechanism for testing? Yeah, if all I'm interested in is establishing performance to my own satisfaction, yes. But, I want to be able to compare my results with other people's results and we all need to be using the same tool in order for that to happen. SQLIO is the common mechanism that most people I know use to establish disk performance behavior. It'd be better if we could get SQLIO to do writes in some other fashion. Oh, and before I go, I get to brag a bit. Measuring IOPS, SQL Storage Compress outperforms my disk alone by about 30%.

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• What Counts for a DBA: Humility

  - by drsql

  In football (the American sort, naturally,) there are a select group of players who really hope to never have their names called during the game. They are members of the offensive line, and their job is to protect other players so they can deliver the ball to the goal to score points. When you do hear their name called, it is usually because they made a mistake and the player that they were supposed to protect ended up flat on his back admiring the clouds in the sky instead of advancing towards the goal to scoring point. Even on the rare occasion their name is called for a good reason, it is usually because they were making up for a teammate who had made a mistake and they covered up for them. The role of offensive lineman is a very good analogy for the role of the admin DBA. As a DBA, you are called on to be barely visible and rarely heard, protecting the company data assets tenaciously, even though the enemies to our craft surround us on all sides:. Developers: Cries of ‘foul!’ often ensue when the DBA says that they want data integrity to be stringently enforced and that documentation is needed so they can support systems, mostly because every error occurrence in the enterprise will be initially blamed on the database and fall to the DBA to troubleshoot. Insisting too loudly may bring those cries of ‘foul’ that somewhat remind you of when your 2 year old daughter didn't want to go to bed. The result of this petulance is that the next "enemy" gets involved. Managers: The concerns that motivate DBAs to argue will not excite the kind of manager who gets his technical knowledge from a glossy magazine filled with buzzwords, charts, and pretty pictures. However, the other programmers in the organization will tickle the buzzword void with a stream of new-sounding ideas and technologies constantly, along with warnings that if we did care about data integrity and document things, the budget would explode! In contrast, the arguments for integrity of data and supportability tend to be about as exciting as watching grass grow, and far too many manager types seem to prefer to smoke it than watch it. Packaged Applications: The DBA is rarely given a chance to review a new application that is being demonstrated for the enterprise, and rarer still is the DBA that gets a veto of an application because the database it uses has clearly been created by an architect that won't read a data modeling book because he is already married. More often than not this leads to hours of work for the DBA trying to performance-tune a database with a menagerie of rules that must be followed to stay within the  application support agreement, such as no changing indexes on a third party schema even though there are 10 billion rows instead of the 10 thousand when the system was last optimized. Hardware Failures: Physical disks, networking devices, memory, and backup devices all come with a measure known as ‘mean time before failure’ and it is never listed in centuries or eons. More like years, and the term ‘mean’ indicates that half of the devices are expected to fail before that, which by my calendar means any hour of any day that it wants to fail it will. But the DBA sucks it up and does the task at hand with a humility that makes them nearly invisible to all but the most observant person in the organization. The best DBAs I know are so proactive in their relentless pursuit of perfection that they detect many of the bugs (which they seldom caused) in the system well before they become a problem. In the end the DBA gets noticed for one of same two reasons as the offensive lineman. You make a mistake, like dropping a critical production database that had never been backed up; or when a system crashes for any reason whatsoever and they are on the spot with troubleshooting and system restoration plans that have been well thought out, tested, and tested again. Not because there is any glory in it, but because it is what they do.   Note: The characteristics of the professions referred to in this blog are meant to be overstated stereotypes for humorous effect, and even some DBAs aren't quite this perfect. If you are reading this far and haven’t hand written a 10 page flaming comment about how you are a _______ and you aren’t like this, that is awesome. Not every situation applies to everyone, but if you have never worked with a bad packaged app, a magazine trained manager, programmers that aren’t team players, or hardware that occasionally failed, relax and go have a unicorn sandwich before you wake up.

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• GRUB is not Booting Correctly

  - by msknapp

  I have a PC with three hard disks. Windows 7 is installed on the first, Ubuntu 14.04 is installed on the third. After I re-booted, it went straight to Windows 7. So I tried explicitly telling my PC to boot using the third hard disk, but that just takes me to the grub rescue prompt. I followed Scott Severence's instructions here to try and recover. Essentially, I updated grub, reinstalled grub, and then updated it again. After re-booting, absolutely nothing had changed. So instead I tried using the boot-repair tool. In the past it had failed for me, saying that I had programs running and it could not unmount drives, when I was running nothing. I never figured out how to solve that problem, but it went away when I bought another hard drive and used that for my Ubuntu installation, I don't know why. In any case, I ran the boot-repair tool and this time it said it was successful. First time for everything right? I re-booted, only to be taken straight to the grub rescue prompt. So I changed my BIOS settings to use the third hard disk for boot start up. That is the same hard drive where I have Ubuntu and grub installed, and the same one that the grub-repair tool told me to use. It still took me straight to the grub rescue prompt. So I went from not being able to boot Ubuntu, to not being able to boot either OS installed on my system. Thanks boot-repair! Boot repair gave me this URL for future troubleshooting: http://paste.ubuntu.com/8131669 When I try to boot from the third hard disk, this is my console: Loading Operating System ... error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'. Entering rescue mode... grub rescue> grub rescue> set cmdpath=(hd0) prefix=(hd0,gpt2)/boot/grub root=hd0,gpt2 grub rescue> ls (hd0) (hd0,gpt3) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt1) (hd1) (hd2) (hd2,gpt2) (hd2,gpt1) (hd3) Those values look correct to me. I have also experimented with changing some of those values, but 'insmod normal' always throws the same error. Somebody please tell me how to fix this. I have tried everything, reinstalling grub, and running boot-repair. =========================== Update: I think the problem might be that the ubuntu installer did not partition my hard disk correctly. I booted from live USB and then launched gparted and looked at how it partitioned things. This is what gparted says: Partition, File System, Size, Used, Unused, Flags /dev/sda1 (!), unknown, 1.00 MiB, ---, ---, bios_grub /dev/sda2, ext4, 2.71 TiB, 47.30 GiB, 2.67 TiB, /dev/sda3, linux-swap, 16.00 GiB, 0.00 B, 16.00 GiB, So that first line looks problematic. It is supposed to be the /boot partition. However, it was given only 1 MiB? I am assuming that MiB is actually supposed to mean megabyte, no idea why that 'i' is there. It also says the file system is unknown. I read the answer by andrew here, and he says he had to do a custom install, explicitly configuring the boot partition. So I think that maybe Ubuntu's installer has a bug in it, where it does not set up the boot partition correctly if you are not installing on the first hard disk in your computer. I am going to try reinstalling with a custom partition scheme. I read elsewhere (askubuntu won't let me post another link) that I don't even need a /boot partition any more. So instead of following Andrew's instructions ver batim, I'm first going to try having just two partitions: one for /, and another for my 16GB swap space. Both as primary partitions. The first will be formatted as ext4. If that doesn't work, I may try again using /boot. ======================== So I did my custom install with no /boot partition, and it did not work. When I rebooted, I had an error message saying that some address did not exist. So for the hundredth time, I booted from the live USB, and ran boot-repair. Now I get this message GPT detected. Please create a BIOS-Boot partition (>1MB, unformatted filesystem, bios_grub flag). This can be performed via tools such as Gparted. Then try again. I feel like I'm running in circles and nobody will help me.

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• Exiting a reboot loop

  - by user12617035

  If you're in a situation where the system is panic'ing during boot, you can use # boot net -s to regain control of your system. In my case, I'd added some diagnostic code to a (PCI) driver (that is used to boot the root filesystem). There was a bug in the driver, and each time during boot, the bug occurred, and so caused the system to panic: ... 000000000180b950 genunix:vfs_mountroot+60 (800, 200, 0, 185d400, 1883000, 18aec00) %l0-3: 0000000000001770 0000000000000640 0000000001814000 00000000000008fc %l4-7: 0000000001833c00 00000000018b1000 0000000000000600 0000000000000200 000000000180ba10 genunix:main+98 (18141a0, 1013800, 18362c0, 18ab800, 180e000, 1814000) %l0-3: 0000000070002000 0000000000000001 000000000180c000 000000000180e000 %l4-7: 0000000000000001 0000000001074800 0000000000000060 0000000000000000 skipping system dump - no dump device configured rebooting... If you're logged in via the console, you can send a BREAK sequence in order to gain control of the firmware's (OBP's) prompt. Enter Ctrl-Shift-[ in order to get the TELNET prompt. Once telnet has control, enter this: telnet> send brk You'll be presented with OBP's prompt: ok You then enter the following in order to boot into single-user mode via the network: ok boot net -s Note that booting from the network under Solaris will implicitly cause the system to be INSTALLED with whatever software had last been configured to be installed. However, we are using boot net -s as a "handle" with which to get at the Solaris prompt. Once at that prompt, we can perform actions as root that will let us back out our buggy driver (ok... MY buggy driver :-)) ...and replace it with the original, non-buggy driver. Entering the boot command caused the following output, as well as left us at the Solaris prompt (in single-user-mode): Sun Blade 1500, No Keyboard Copyright 1998-2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.16.4, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #53463393. Ethernet address 0:3:ba:2f:c9:61, Host ID: 832fc961. Rebooting with command: boot net -s Boot device: /pci@1f,700000/network@2 File and args: -s 1000 Mbps FDX Link up Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet 4000 1000 Mbps FDX Link up Requesting Internet address for 0:3:ba:2f:c9:61 SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118833-17 64-bit Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Booting to milestone "milestone/single-user:default". Configuring devices. Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information. Attempting to configure interface bge0... Configured interface bge0 Requesting System Maintenance Mode SINGLE USER MODE # Our goal is to now move to the directory containing the buggy driver and replace it with the original driver (that we had saved away before ever loading our buggy driver! :-) However, since we booted from the network, the root filesystem ("/") is NOT mounted on one of our local disks. It is mounted on an NFS filesystem exported by our install server. To verify this, enter the following command: # mount | head -1 / on my-server:/export/install/media/s10u2/solarisdvd.s10s_u2dvd/latest/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot remote/read/write/setuid/devices/dev=4ac0001 on Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969 As a result, we have to create a temporary mount point and then mount the local disk onto that mount point: # mkdir /tmp/mnt # mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /tmp/mnt Note that your system will not necessarily have had its root filesystem on "c0t0d0s0". This is something that you should also have recorded before you ever loaded your.. er... "my" buggy driver! :-) One can find the local disk mounted under the root filesystem by entering: # df -k / Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 76703839 4035535 71901266 6% / To continue with our example, we can now move to the directory of buggy-driver in order to replace it with the original driver. Note that /tmp/mnt is prefixed to the path of where we'd "normally" find the driver: # cd /tmp/mnt/platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/sparcv9 # ls -l pci\* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 288504 Dec 6 15:38 pcisch -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 288504 Dec 6 15:38 pcisch.aar -rwxr-xr-x 1 root sys 211616 Jun 8 2006 pcisch.orig # cp -p pcisch.orig pcisch We can now synchronize any in-memory filesystem data structures with those on disk... and then reboot. The system will then boot correctly... as expected: # sync;sync # reboot syncing file systems... done Sun Blade 1500, No Keyboard Copyright 1998-2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. OpenBoot 4.16.4, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #xxxxxxxx. Ethernet address 0:3:ba:2f:c9:61, Host ID: yyyyyyyy. Rebooting with command: boot Boot device: /pci@1e,600000/ide@d/disk@0,0:a File and args: SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118833-17 64-bit Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Hostname: my-host NIS domain name is my-campus.Central.Sun.COM my-host console login: ...so that's how it's done! Of course, the easier way is to never write a buggy-driver... but.. then.. we all "have an eraser on the end of each of our pencils"... don't we ? :-) "...thank you... and good night..."

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• How to make sure that grub does use menu.lst?

  - by Glen S. Dalton

  On my Ubuntu 9.04 ("Karmic") laptop I suspect grub does not use the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. What happens on boot is that I see a blank screen and nothing happens. When I press ESC I see a boot list which is different from what I would expect from the menu.lst file. The menu lines are different and when I choose the first entry it does not use the kernel options that are in the first entry in menu.lst. Where do the entries that grub uses come from? How can I find out what happens, is there a log? I could not find anything in /var/log/syslog or /var/log/dmesg about grub using a menu.lst. How can I set it to work like expected? Some Files: $ sudo ls -la /boot/grub/*lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1558 2009-12-12 15:25 /boot/grub/command.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 121 2009-12-12 15:25 /boot/grub/fs.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 272 2009-12-12 15:25 /boot/grub/handler.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4576 2010-03-19 11:26 /boot/grub/menu.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1657 2009-12-12 15:25 /boot/grub/moddep.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 62 2009-12-12 15:25 /boot/grub/partmap.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22 2009-12-12 15:25 /boot/grub/parttool.lst $ sudo ls -la /vm* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 2009-12-12 16:15 /vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-16-generic lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 2009-12-12 14:07 /vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic $ sudo ls -la /init* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 2009-12-12 16:15 /initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-16-generic lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 2009-12-12 14:07 /initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic The only menu.lst that I found: $ sudo find / -name "menu.lst" /boot/grub/menu.lst $ sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst # menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8) # grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8), # grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub # and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/. ## default num # Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and # the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used. # # You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry # is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'. # WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not use 'savedefault' or your # array will desync and will not let you boot your system. default 0 ## timeout sec # Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry # (normally the first entry defined). timeout 3 ## hiddenmenu # Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu) #hiddenmenu # Pretty colours color cyan/blue white/blue ## password ['--md5'] passwd # If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing # control (menu entry editor and command-line) and entries protected by the # command 'lock' # e.g. password topsecret # password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/ # password topsecret # examples # # title Windows 95/98/NT/2000 # root (hd0,0) # makeactive # chainloader +1 # # title Linux # root (hd0,1) # kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro # Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST ## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified ## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below ## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs ## ## Start Default Options ## ## default kernel options ## default kernel options for automagic boot options ## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z ## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted. ## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro ## kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro ## kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro # kopt=root=UUID=9b454298-18e1-43f7-a5bc-f56e7ed5f9c6 ro noresume ## default grub root device ## e.g. groot=(hd0,0) # groot=70fcd2b0-0ee0-4fe6-9acb-322ef74c1cdf ## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options ## e.g. alternative=true ## alternative=false # alternative=true ## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options ## e.g. lockalternative=true ## lockalternative=false # lockalternative=false ## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with the ## alternatives ## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5 ## defoptions=quiet splash # defoptions=apm=on acpi=off ## should update-grub lock old automagic boot options ## e.g. lockold=false ## lockold=true # lockold=false ## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option # xenhopt= ## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot option # xenkopt=console=tty0 ## altoption boot targets option ## multiple altoptions lines are allowed ## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options ## altoptions=(recovery) single # altoptions=(recovery mode) single ## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst ## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the ## alternative kernel options ## e.g. howmany=all ## howmany=7 # howmany=all ## specify if running in Xen domU or have grub detect automatically ## update-grub will ignore non-xen kernels when running in domU and vice versa ## e.g. indomU=detect ## indomU=true ## indomU=false # indomU=detect ## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option ## e.g. memtest86=true ## memtest86=false # memtest86=true ## should update-grub adjust the value of the default booted system ## can be true or false # updatedefaultentry=false ## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options ## can be true or false # savedefault=false ## ## End Default Options ## title Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic noresume uuid 70fcd2b0-0ee0-4fe6-9acb-322ef74c1cdf kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=9b454298-18e1-43f7-a5bc-f56e7ed5f9c6 ro quiet splash apm=on acpi=off noresume initrd /initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic title Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic (recovery mode) uuid 70fcd2b0-0ee0-4fe6-9acb-322ef74c1cdf kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=9b454298-18e1-43f7-a5bc-f56e7ed5f9c6 ro sing le initrd /initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic title Ubuntu 9.10, memtest86+ uuid 70fcd2b0-0ee0-4fe6-9acb-322ef74c1cdf kernel /memtest86+.bin ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST These are the choices that grub displays after i press ESC: Ubuntu, Linux 2-6-31-16-generic Ubuntu, Linux 2-6-31-16-generic (recovery mode) Ubuntu, Linux 2-6-31-14-generic Ubuntu, Linux 2-6-31-14-generic (recovery mode) Memory test (memtest86+) Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)

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• Why are my USB 2.0 devices hanging Windows XP?

  - by BenAlabaster

  Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a DFI CM33-TL/G ATX (identified using SiSoft Sandra) motherboard hosting an Intel Celeron 1.3GHz CPU, 768Mb PC133 SDRAM, a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board based on the NEC uPD720102 chipset containing 3 external and 1 internal USB sockets. It's also hosting a 1.44Mb floppy drive on FDD0, a new 80Gb Western Digital hard drive running as master on IDE0 and a Panasonic DVD+/-RW running as master on IDE1. All this is sitting in a slimline case running off a Macron Power MPT-135 135W Flex power supply. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS 05/24/2002-601T-686B-6A6LID4AC-00. Could this be updated? If so, from where? I've raked through the manufacturer's website but can't find any hint of downloads for either drivers or BIOS updates. The hard disk is freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional/Service Pack 3 and is up to date with all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 hangs the whole machine as soon as it starts up, requiring a hard boot to recover). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen hooked up to the on board VGA and COM1 sockets with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem: If I hook any devices to the USB 2.0 sockets, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. If I have any devices attached to the USB 2.0 sockets when I boot up, it hangs before Windows gets to the login prompt and I have to hard boot it to recover. Workarounds found: I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 sockets and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions: I've seen suggestions that this could be a power problem - that the PSU just doesn't have the wattage to drive these ports. While I'm doubtful this is the problem [after all the motherboard has the same standard connector regardless of the PSU wattage], I tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in what I'm sure is a futile attempt to reduce the power consumption... I also modified the ACPI and power management settings. It didn't have any noticeable affect, although it didn't do any harm either. Could the wattage of the PSU really cause this problem? If it can, is there anything I need to be aware of when replacing it or do I just need to make sure it's got a higher wattage than the current one? My interpretation was that the wattage only affected the number of drives you could hook up to the power connectors, is that right? I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself, and Windows says the card is installed and working correctly... right up until I connect a device to it. The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference - does anyone have any experience that would suggest this might work? Other thoughts/questions: Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question: Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine?

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• Get HDD (and NOT Volume) Serial Number on Vista Ultimate 64 bit

  - by TheAgent

  Hi all. I was once looking for getting the HDD serial number without using WMI, and I found it. The code I found and posted on StackOverFlow.com works very well on 32 bit Windows, both XP and Vista. The trouble only begins when I try to get the serail number on 64 bit OSs (Vista Ultimate 64, specifically). The code returns String.Empty, or a Space all the time. Anyone got an idea how to fix this? EDIT: I used the tools Dave Cluderay suggested, with interesting results: Here is the output from DiskId32, on Windows XP SP2 32-bit: To get all details use "diskid32 /d" Trying to read the drive IDs using physical access with admin rights Drive 0 - Primary Controller - - Master drive Drive Model Number________________: [MAXTOR STM3160215AS] Drive Serial Number_______________: [ 6RA26XK3] Drive Controller Revision Number__: [3.AAD] Controller Buffer Size on Drive___: 2097152 bytes Drive Type________________________: Fixed Drive Size________________________: 160041885696 bytes Trying to read the drive IDs using the SCSI back door Drive 4 - Tertiary Controller - - Master drive Drive Model Number________________: [MAXTOR STM3160215AS] Drive Serial Number_______________: [ 6RA26XK3] Drive Controller Revision Number__: [3.AAD] Controller Buffer Size on Drive___: 2097152 bytes Drive Type________________________: Fixed Drive Size________________________: 160041885696 bytes Trying to read the drive IDs using physical access with zero rights **** STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR for drive 0 **** Vendor Id = [] Product Id = [MAXTOR STM3160215AS] Product Revision = [3.AAD] Serial Number = [] **** DISK_GEOMETRY_EX for drive 0 **** Disk is fixed DiskSize = 160041885696 Trying to read the drive IDs using Smart Drive 0 - Primary Controller - - Master drive Drive Model Number________________: [MAXTOR STM3160215AS] Drive Serial Number_______________: [ 6RA26XK3] Drive Controller Revision Number__: [3.AAD] Controller Buffer Size on Drive___: 2097152 bytes Drive Type________________________: Fixed Drive Size________________________: 160041885696 bytes Hard Drive Serial Number__________: 6RA26XK3 Hard Drive Model Number___________: MAXTOR STM3160215AS And DiskId32 run on Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit: To get all details use "diskid32 /d" Trying to read the drive IDs using physical access with admin rights Trying to read the drive IDs using the SCSI back door Trying to read the drive IDs using physical access with zero rights **** STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR for drive 0 **** Vendor Id = [MAXTOR S] Product Id = [TM3160215AS] Product Revision = [3.AA] Serial Number = [] **** DISK_GEOMETRY_EX for drive 0 **** Disk is fixed DiskSize = 160041885696 Trying to read the drive IDs using Smart Hard Drive Serial Number__________: Hard Drive Model Number___________: Notice how much lesser the information is on Vista, and how the Serial Number is not returned. Also the other tool, EnumDisk, refers to my hard disks on Vista as "SCSI" as opposed to "ATA" on Windows XP. Any ideas? EDIT 2: I'm posting the results from EnumDisks: On Windows XP SP2 32-bit: Properties for Device 1 Device ID: IDE\DiskMAXTOR_STM3160215AS_____________________3.AAD___ Adapter Properties ------------------ Bus Type : ATA Max. Tr. Length: 0x20000 Max. Phy. Pages: 0xffffffff Alignment Mask : 0x1 Device Properties ----------------- Device Type : Direct Access Device (0x0) Removable Media : No Product ID : MAXTOR STM3160215AS Product Revision: 3.AAD Inquiry Data from Pass Through ------------------------------ Device Type: Direct Access Device (0x0) Vendor ID : MAXTOR S Product ID : TM3160215AS Product Rev: 3.AA Vendor Str : *** End of Device List

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• Good Secure Backups Developers at Home

  - by slashmais

  What is a good, secure, method to do backups, for programmers who do research & development at home and cannot afford to lose any work? Conditions: The backups must ALWAYS be within reasonably easy reach. Internet connection cannot be guaranteed to be always available. The solution must be either FREE or priced within reason, and subject to 2 above. Status Report This is for now only considering free options. The following open-source projects are suggested in the answers (here & elsewhere): BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, WinXX and MacOSX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. Storebackup is a backup utility that stores files on other disks. mybackware: These scripts were developed to create SQL dump files for basic disaster recovery of small MySQL installations. Bacula is [...] to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. In technical terms, it is a network based backup program. AutoDL 2 and Sec-Bk: AutoDL 2 is a scalable transport independant automated file transfer system. It is suitable for uploading files from a staging server to every server on a production server farm [...] Sec-Bk is a set of simple utilities to securely back up files to a remote location, even a public storage location. rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems. rbme: Using rsync for backups [...] you get perpetual incremental backups that appear as full backups (for each day) and thus allow easy restore or further copying to tape etc. Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. [...] uses librsync, [for] incremental archives Other Possibilities: Using a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) such as Git(/Easy Git), Bazaar, Mercurial answers the need to have the backup available locally. Use free online storage space as a remote backup, e.g.: compress your work/backup directory and mail it to your gmail account. Strategies See crazyscot's answer

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• Persistent (purely functional) Red-Black trees on disk performance

  - by Waneck

  I'm studying the best data structures to implement a simple open-source object temporal database, and currently I'm very fond of using Persistent Red-Black trees to do it. My main reasons for using persistent data structures is first of all to minimize the use of locks, so the database can be as parallel as possible. Also it will be easier to implement ACID transactions and even being able to abstract the database to work in parallel on a cluster of some kind. The great thing of this approach is that it makes possible implementing temporal databases almost for free. And this is something quite nice to have, specially for web and for data analysis (e.g. trends). All of this is very cool, but I'm a little suspicious about the overall performance of using a persistent data structure on disk. Even though there are some very fast disks available today, and all writes can be done asynchronously, so a response is always immediate, I don't want to build all application under a false premise, only to realize it isn't really a good way to do it. Here's my line of thought: - Since all writes are done asynchronously, and using a persistent data structure will enable not to invalidate the previous - and currently valid - structure, the write time isn't really a bottleneck. - There are some literature on structures like this that are exactly for disk usage. But it seems to me that these techniques will add more read overhead to achieve faster writes. But I think that exactly the opposite is preferable. Also many of these techniques really do end up with a multi-versioned trees, but they aren't strictly immutable, which is something very crucial to justify the persistent overhead. - I know there still will have to be some kind of locking when appending values to the database, and I also know there should be a good garbage collecting logic if not all versions are to be maintained (otherwise the file size will surely rise dramatically). Also a delta compression system could be thought about. - Of all search trees structures, I really think Red-Blacks are the most close to what I need, since they offer the least number of rotations. But there are some possible pitfalls along the way: - Asynchronous writes -could- affect applications that need the data in real time. But I don't think that is the case with web applications, most of the time. Also when real-time data is needed, another solutions could be devised, like a check-in/check-out system of specific data that will need to be worked on a more real-time manner. - Also they could lead to some commit conflicts, though I fail to think of a good example of when it could happen. Also commit conflicts can occur in normal RDBMS, if two threads are working with the same data, right? - The overhead of having an immutable interface like this will grow exponentially and everything is doomed to fail soon, so this all is a bad idea. Any thoughts? Thanks! edit: There seems to be a misunderstanding of what a persistent data structure is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure

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• MBR status confusion

  - by Ahmed Ghoneim

  EB 58 90 6D 6B 64 6F 73 66 73 00 00 02 08 20 00 02 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3E 00 83 00 00 00 00 00 94 88 7E 00 98 1F 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 29 A9 38 B1 34 57 61 76 65 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 0E 1F BE 77 7C AC 22 C0 74 0B 56 B4 0E BB 07 00 CD 10 5E EB F0 32 E4 CD 16 CD 19 EB FE 54 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 6E 6F 74 20 61 20 62 6F 6F 74 61 62 6C 65 20 64 69 73 6B 2E 20 20 50 6C 65 61 73 65 20 69 6E 73 65 72 74 20 61 20 62 6F 6F 74 61 62 6C 65 20 66 6C 6F 70 70 79 20 61 6E 64 0D 0A 70 72 65 73 73 20 61 6E 79 20 6B 65 79 20 74 6F 20 74 72 79 20 61 67 61 69 6E 20 2E 2E 2E 20 0D 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA Learning disk records, this is my USB MBR record viewed by bless on ubuntu formatted with disk utility as MBR table and FAT partition, referring to this Wiki of first record status (0x80 = bootable (active), 0x00 = non-bootable, other = invalid ) but my MBR shows first offset as EB. What's this record stands for ? also, can you provide me with good tables/images tutorials for MBR and other disks' records :)

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• SQL Server architecture guidance

  - by Liam

  Hi, We are designing a new version of our existing product on a new schema. Its an internal web application with possibly 100 concurrent users (max)This will run on a SQL Server 2008 database. On of the discussion items recently is whether we should have a single database of split the database for performance reasons across 2 separate databases. The database could grow anywhere from 50-100GB over 5 years. We are Developers and not DBAs so it would be nice to get some general guidance. [I know the answer is not simple as it depends on the schema, archiving policy, amount of data etc. ] Option 1 Single Main Database [This is my preferred option]. The plan would be to have all the tables in a single database and possibly to use file groups and partitioning to separate the data if required across multiple disks. [Use schema if appropriate]. This should deal with the performance concerns One of the comments wrt this was that the a single server instance would still be processing this data so there would still be a processing bottle neck. For reporting we could have a separate reporting DB but this is still being discussed. Option 2 Split the database into 2 separate databases DB1 - Customers, Accounts, Customer resources etc DB2 - This would contain the bulk of the data [i.e. Vehicle tracking data, financial transaction tables etc]. These tables would typically contain a lot of data. [It could reside on a separate server if required] This plan would involve keeping the main data in a smaller database [DB1] and retaining the [mainly] read only transaction type data in a separate DB [DB2]. The UI would mainly read from DB1 and thus be more responsive. [I'm aware that this option makes it harder for Referential Integrity to be enforced.] Points for consideration As we are at the design stage we can at least make proper use of indexes to deal performance issues so thats why option 1 to me is attractive and its more of a standard approach. For both options we are considering implementing an archiving database. Apologies for the long Question. In summary the question is 1 DB or 2? Thanks in advance, Liam

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• Week in Geek: USDA Chooses Microsoft for Cloud Services Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to create geeky LED holiday lights with old bottles, dig deeper in Windows Defrag via the command prompt, use Google Chrome’s drag/drop feature to upload files easier, find great gift recommendations by looking through the How-To Geek holiday gift guide, and have fun adding Merry Christmas fonts to our computers. Photo by ntr23. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week, so we have extra news link goodness with information that is good for you to know. USDA making the move to Microsoft The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that it has chosen Microsoft to host things like e-mail, instant messaging, and collaboration through the software giant’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Google says it was cut off from USDA project bid Google is claiming that it was not given a chance to bid on a cloud-computing project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for which the contract was awarded to rival Microsoft. Apache is being forced into a Java Fork When Oracle rolled over Apache and Google’s objections to its Java plans in December, the scene was set for Apache to leave and, eventually, force a Java code fork. Tumblr explains daylong outage After experiencing an outage that started on Sunday afternoon and stretched through most of the day yesterday, Tumblr has explained what happened. Google demos Chrome OS, launches pilot program During a press briefing this week in San Francisco, Google launched the Chrome application store and demonstrated Chrome OS, its browser-centric netbook operating system. Don’t expect Spotify in U.S. this holiday season As of last week, Spotify had yet to sign a single licensing deal with a major label, after spending more than a year negotiating, multiple music sources told CNET. December 2010 Patch Tuesday will come with most bulletins ever According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 17 Security Bulletins addressing 40 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, December 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day. Hacker plants back door in Symbian firmware Indian hacker Atul Alex has had a look at the firmware for Symbian S60 smartphones and come up with a back door for it. PC quarantines raise tough complexities The concept of quarantining PCs to prevent widespread infection is “interesting, but difficult to implement, with far too many problems”, said security experts. Symantec: DDoS attacks hard to defend It has surfaced that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Visa and MasterCard Web sites on Wednesday were carried out by a toolkit known as low orbit ion cannon (LOIC). Web Sockets and the risks of unfinished standards Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support. Internet Explorer 9 to get tracking protection Microsoft is making changes to Internet Explorer 9’s security features that will better enable users to keep sites from tracking their activity across browsing sessions. NASA sold PCs with sensitive data NASA failed to remove sensitive data from computers that it sold, according to an audit report released this week. Cybercrooks create fake Amazon receipts The bad guys have created yet another online scam, this one involving fake Amazon receipts. World of Warcraft character move fees waived Until December 22, Blizzard will allow free realm transfers from 25 highly populated servers to alleviate log-in queues or performance issues. (The free transfers are one-way and one-time only.) SpaceX Dragon reaches orbit atop a Falcon with a fiery tail The Space Exploration Technologies corporation has become the first nongovernmental entity to put a vehicle into low Earth orbit. Geek Video of the Week If birds have wings, then why are the Angry Birds using slingshots? Photo by Dorkly Bits. Wait… Birds have Wings, Why are the Angry Ones Using Slingshots? Sysadmin Geek Tips How To Setup Email Alerts on Linux Using Gmail or SMTP Linux machines may require administrative intervention in countless ways, but without manually logging into them how would you know about it? Here’s how to setup emails to get notified when your machines want some tender love and attention. Random TinyHacker Links Red Panda Webcam Support Firefox and the Knoxville Zoo’s Red Panda program. Christmas Icons (Icons we like) Superb set of holiday icons by lgp85 at deviantArt. Download the .zip and use as .png or convert to .ico at Convertico.com or with tiny app Imagicon. Super User Questions Enjoy reading the great answers to this week’s popular questions from Super User Useful USB boot disks? DVD/CD burning .zip: is it more reliable, faster, longer lasting to burn a zip of files rather than the files as a folder? What are other ways to backup my files if I do not have an external drive? Anti virus what is the difference between these all? How can I block all Facebook elements/content? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Have you had a busy week between work and preparing for the holidays? Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles of the week. 20 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? How to Use and Customize Google Chrome Web Apps One Year Ago on How-To Geek This week’s batch of retro geeky goodness is all about customizing Windows 7. ClassicShell Adds Classic Start Menu and Explorer Features to Windows 7 Get an Aero-Styled Classic Start Menu in Windows 7 Customize the Windows 7 Logon Screen Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7 How To Enable Check Boxes for Items In Windows 7 The Geek Note We would like you to join us in welcoming Jason Fitzpatrick to the writing staff here at How-To Geek. He started with us this past week, so take some time to read through his articles about the Wii, Kindle, & PlayStation 2 Peripherals and leave a friendly comment to say “Hi”! Got a great tip to share? Make sure to send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by real00. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Settle into Orbit with the Voyage Theme for Chrome and Iron Awesome Safari Compass Icons Set Escape from the Exploding Planet Wallpaper Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress Pytask is an Easy to Use To-Do List Manager for Your Ubuntu System Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox

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• Week in Geek: FBI Back Door in OpenBSD Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to migrate bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo, fix annoying arrows, play old-school DOS games, schedule smart computer shutdowns, use breaks in Microsoft Word to better format documents, check the condition of hard-disks using Linux disk utilities, & what the Linux fstab is and how it works. Photo by Jameson42. Random Geek Links Another week with extra news link goodness to help keep you up to date. Photo by justmakeit. Report of FBI back door roils OpenBSD community Allegations that the FBI surreptitiously placed a back door into the OpenBSD operating system have alarmed the computer security community, prompting calls for an audit of the source code and claims that the charges must be a hoax. Fortinet: Job outlook improving for cybercrooks In an ironic twist in the job market, more positions will open up for developers who can write customized malware packers, people who can break CAPTCHA codes, and distributors who can spread malicious code, according to Fortinet. Enisa: Malware for smartphones is a ’serious risk’ Businesses and consumers are at risk of data breaches through smartphone use, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency. The trick with the f: Google and Microsoft web sites distribute malware Last week, Google’s DoubleClick advertising platform and Microsoft’s rad.msn.com online ad network briefly distributed malware to other web sites in the form of advertising banners. New scam tactic: Fake disk defraggers It would appear that scammers are trying out new programs to see which might best confuse potential victims and evade detection by legitimate antivirus software. Microsoft closes IE and Stuxnet holes As previously announced, Microsoft has released 17 security updates to close 40 security holes. All four Windows holes so far disclosed in connection with Stuxnet have now been closed. Microsoft Offers H.264 Support to Firefox on Windows via Add-On The new HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in add-on from Microsoft offers users that are running Firefox on Windows 7 H.264 support for HTML5 video playback. Google proclaims Chrome business-ready Google has announced that Chrome is ready for corporate use. Microsoft Tells Exchange Customers to Think Twice Before Opting for Google Message Continuity This week, Microsoft is telling companies still running Exchange 2010’s precursors that they should carefully consider the implications of embracing Google Message Continuity. Who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS users Steven Vaughan-Nichols explains why he feels that Chrome OS will be ideal for either office-workers or people who need a computer, but do not know the first thing about how to use one safely. Oracle takes office suite to the cloud Oracle has introduced Cloud Office 1.0, a cloud-based version of its office suite, which is aimed at web and mobile users. Mozilla pays premiums for reports of vulnerabilities The Mozilla Foundation has followed Google’s example by expanding its rewards program for reports of vulnerabilities in its Web applications. Who bought those 882 Novell patents? Not just Microsoft The mysterious CPTN Holdings — the organization that bought the 882 Novell patents as part of the terms of the Attachmate acquisition of Novell – has been unmasked (Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle). Appeals court: Feds need warrants for e-mail Police must obtain search warrants before perusing Internet users’ e-mail records, a federal appeals court ruled today in a landmark decision that struck down part of a 1986 law allowing warrantless access. Geek Video of the Week What happens when someone plays a wicked prank by shoveling crazy snow paths that lead to dead ends or turn back on themselves? Watch to find out! Photo by CollegeHumor. Janitor Snow Shoveling Prank Random TinyHacker Links The Oatmeal on Cat vs Internet What lengths will our poor neglected kitty hero have to go to in order to get some attention? Guide On Using JoliCloud With Windows JoliCloud is a nifty operating system that’s made for people who need a light-weight OS that’s mostly cloud based. Check this guide on using it with Windows. Use Cameyo to Easily Create Portable Programs Here’s a nifty tool to make portable apps out of programs in Windows. Check out the guide to do it. Better Family Tech Support A nice new site by Google to help members of family understand how computers work. Track Your Stolen Mobile Phone With F-Secure A useful anti-theft tool for your mobile phone. Super User Questions Another week with great answers to popular questions from Super User. What Chrome password manager fits my requirements? What’s the best way to be able to reimage windows computers? Could you suggest feature-rich disk-based personal backup program for linux (and I’ve seen a few)? What is IPv6 and why should I care? Is there any way to find out what programs are trying to connect to Internet on windows? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Here are our hottest articles full of geeky goodness from this past week at HTG. 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Kills Viruses Dead. Download It Now. Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.? The Twelve Days of Geekmas One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through our latest batch of retro-geek goodness from one year ago. Macrium Reflect is a Free and Easy To Use Backup Utility How To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd How To Restore Windows 7 from a System Image How To Manage Hard Drive Space Used by Windows 7 Backup and Restore How To Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week, so see you back here again after the holidays! Got a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by mitjamavsar. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Deathwing the Destroyer – WoW Cataclysm Dragon Wallpaper Drag2Up Lets You Drag and Drop Files to the Web With Ease The Spam Police Parts 1 and 2 – Goodbye Spammers [Videos] Snow Angels Theme for Windows 7 Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser

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• Remote Desktop to Your Azure Virtual Machine

  - by Shaun

  The Windows Azure Team had just published their new development portal this week and the SDK 1.3. Within this new release there are a lot of cool feature available. The one I’m looking forward to is Remote Desktop Access to your running Windows Azure Virtual Machine.   Configuration Remote Desktop Access It would be very simple to make the azure service enable the remote desktop access. First of all let’s create a new windows azure project from the Visual Studio. In this example I just created a normal MVC 2 web role without any modifications. Then we right-click the azure project node in the solution explorer window and select “Publish”. Then let’s select the “Deploy your Windows Azure project to Windows Azure” on the top radio button. And then select the credential, deployment service/slot, storage and label as susal. You must have the Management API Certificates uploaded to your Windows Azure account, and install the certification on you machine before in order to use this one-click deployment feature. If you are familiar with this dialog you will notice that there’s a linkage named “Configure Remote Desktop connections”. Here is where you need to make this service enable the remote desktop feature. After clicked this link we will set the configuration of the remote desktop access authorization information. There are 4 steps we need to do to configure our access. Certificates: We need either create or select a certificate file in order to encypt the access cerdenticals. In this example I will use the certificate file for my Management API. Username: The remote desktop user name to access the virtual machine. Password: The password for the access. Expiration: The access cerdentals would be expired after 1 month by default but we can amend here. After that we clicked the OK button to back to the publish dialog.   The next step is to back to the new windows azure portal and navigate to the hosted services list. I created a new hosted service and upload the certificate file onto this service. The user name and password access to the azure machine must be encrypted from the local machine, and then send to the windows azure platform, then decrypted on the azure side by the same file. This is why we need to upload the certificate file onto azure. We navigated to the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN"” from the left panel and created a new hosted service named “SDK13” and selected the “Certificates” node. Then we clicked the “Add Certificates” button. Then we select the local certificate file and the password to install it into this azure service.   The final step would be back to our Visual Studio and in the pulish dialog just click the OK button. The Visual Studio will upload our package and the configuration into our service with the remote desktop settings.   Remote Desktop Access to Azure Virtual Machine All things had been done, let’s have a look back on the Windows Azure Development Portal. If I selected the web role that I had just published we can see on the toolbar there’s a section named “Remote Access”. In this section the Enable checkbox had been checked which means this role has the Remote Desktop Access feature enabled. If we want to modify the access cerdentals we can simply click the Configure button. Then we can update the user name, password, certificates and the expiration date.   Let’s select the instance node under the web role. In this case I just created one instance for demo. We can see that when we selected the instance node, the Connect button turned enabled. After clicked this button there will be a RDP file downloaded. This is a Remote Desctop configuration file that we can use to access to our azure virtual machine. Let’s download it to our local machine and execute. We input the user name and password we specified when we published our application to azure and then click OK. There might be some certificates warning dislog appeared. This is because the certificates we use to encryption is not signed by a trusted provider. Just select OK in these cases as we know the certificate is safty to us. Finally, the virtual machine of Windows Azure appeared.   A Quick Look into the Azure Virtual Machine Let’s just have a very quick look into our virtual machine. There are 3 disks available for us: C, D and E. Disk C: Store the local resource, diagnosis information, etc. Disk D: System disk which contains the OS, IIS, .NET Frameworks, etc. Disk E: Sotre our application code. The IIS which hosting our webiste on Azure. The IP configuration of the azure virtual machine.   Summary In this post I covered one of the new feature of the Azure SDK 1.3 – Remote Desktop Access. We can set the access per service and all of the instances of this service could be accessed through the remote desktop tool. With this feature we can deep into the virtual machines of our instances to see the inner information such as the system event, IIS log, system information, etc. But we should pay attention to modify the system settings. 2 reasons from what I know for now: 1. If we have more than one instances against our service we should ensure that all system settings we modifed are applied to all instances/virtual machines. Otherwise, as the machines are under the azure load balance proxy our application process may doesn’t work due to the defferent settings between the instances. 2. When the virtual machine encounted some problem and need to be translated to another physical machine all settings we made would be disappeared.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Monitor your Hard Drive’s Health with Acronis Drive Monitor

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you worried that your computer’s hard drive could die without any warning?  Here’s how you can keep tabs on it and get the first warning signs of potential problems before you actually lose your critical data. Hard drive failures are one of the most common ways people lose important data from their computers.  As more of our memories and important documents are stored digitally, a hard drive failure can mean the loss of years of work.  Acronis Drive Monitor helps you avert these disasters by warning you at the first signs your hard drive may be having trouble.  It monitors many indicators, including heat, read/write errors, total lifespan, and more. It then notifies you via a taskbar popup or email that problems have been detected.  This early warning lets you know ahead of time that you may need to purchase a new hard drive and migrate your data before it’s too late. Getting Started Head over to the Acronis site to download Drive Monitor (link below).  You’ll need to enter your name and email, and then you can download this free tool. Also, note that the download page may ask if you want to include a trial of their for-pay backup program.  If you wish to simply install the Drive Monitor utility, click Continue without adding. Run the installer when the download is finished.  Follow the prompts and install as normal. Once it’s installed, you can quickly get an overview of your hard drives’ health.  Note that it shows 3 categories: Disk problems, Acronis backup, and Critical Events.  On our computer, we had Seagate DiskWizard, an image backup utility based on Acronis Backup, installed, and Acronis detected it. Drive Monitor stays running in your tray even when the application window is closed.  It will keep monitoring your hard drives, and will alert you if there’s a problem. Find Detailed Information About Your Hard Drives Acronis’ simple interface lets you quickly see an overview of how the drives on your computer are performing.  If you’d like more information, click the link under the description.  Here we see that one of our drives have overheated, so click Show disks to get more information. Now you can select each of your drives and see more information about them.  From the Disk overview tab that opens by default, we see that our drive is being monitored, has been running for a total of 368 days, and that it’s health is good.  However, it is running at 113F, which is over the recommended max of 107F.   The S.M.A.R.T. parameters tab gives us more detailed information about our drive.  Most users wouldn’t know what an accepted value would be, so it also shows the status.  If the value is within the accepted parameters, it will report OK; otherwise, it will show that has a problem in this area. One very interesting piece of information we can see is the total number of Power-On Hours, Start/Stop Count, and Power Cycle Count.  These could be useful indicators to check if you’re considering purchasing a second hand computer.  Simply load this program, and you’ll get a better view of how long it’s been in use. Finally, the Events tab shows each time the program gave a warning.  We can see that our drive, which had been acting flaky already, is routinely overheating even when our other hard drive was running in normal temperature ranges. Monitor Acronis Backups And Critical Errors In addition to monitoring critical stats of your hard drives, Acronis Drive Monitor also keeps up with the status of your backup software and critical events reported by Windows.  You can access these from the front page, or via the links on the left hand sidebar.  If you have any edition of any Acronis Backup product installed, it will show that it was detected.  Note that it can only monitor the backup status of the newest versions of Acronis Backup and True Image. If no Acronis backup software was installed, it will show a warning that the drive may be unprotected and will give you a link to download Acronis backup software.   If you have another backup utility installed that you wish to monitor yourself, click Configure backup monitoring, and then disable monitoring on the drives you’re monitoring yourself. Finally, you can view any detected Critical events from the Critical events tab on the left. Get Emailed When There’s a Problem One of Drive Monitor’s best features is the ability to send you an email whenever there’s a problem.  Since this program can run on any version of Windows, including the Server and Home Server editions, you can use this feature to stay on top of your hard drives’ health even when you’re not nearby.  To set this up, click Options in the top left corner. Select Alerts on the left, and then click the Change settings link to setup your email account. Enter the email address which you wish to receive alerts, and a name for the program.  Then, enter the outgoing mail server settings for your email.  If you have a Gmail account, enter the following information: Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com Port: 587 Username and Password: Your gmail address and password Check the Use encryption box, and then select TLS from the encryption options.   It will now send a test message to your email account, so check and make sure it sent ok. Now you can choose to have the program automatically email you when warnings and critical alerts appear, and also to have it send regular disk status reports.   Conclusion Whether you’ve got a brand new hard drive or one that’s seen better days, knowing the real health of your it is one of the best ways to be prepared before disaster strikes.  It’s no substitute for regular backups, but can help you avert problems.  Acronis Drive Monitor is a nice tool for this, and although we wish it wasn’t so centered around their backup offerings, we still found it a nice tool. Link Download Acronis Drive Monitor (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Change Monitor Timeout From Command LineAnalyze and Manage Hard Drive Space with WinDirStatMonitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersDefrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In WindowsFind Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer

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• Is Berkeley DB a NoSQL solution?

  - by Gregory Burd

  Berkeley DB is a library. To use it to store data you must link the library into your application. You can use most programming languages to access the API, the calls across these APIs generally mimic the Berkeley DB C-API which makes perfect sense because Berkeley DB is written in C. The inspiration for Berkeley DB was the DBM library, a part of the earliest versions of UNIX written by AT&T's Ken Thompson in 1979. DBM was a simple key/value hashtable-based storage library. In the early 1990s as BSD UNIX was transitioning from version 4.3 to 4.4 and retrofitting commercial code owned by AT&T with unencumbered code, it was the future founders of Sleepycat Software who wrote libdb (aka Berkeley DB) as the replacement for DBM. The problem it addressed was fast, reliable local key/value storage. At that time databases almost always lived on a single node, even the most sophisticated databases only had simple fail-over two node solutions. If you had a lot of data to store you would choose between the few commercial RDBMS solutions or to write your own custom solution. Berkeley DB took the headache out of the custom approach. These basic market forces inspired other DBM implementations. There was the "New DBM" (ndbm) and the "GNU DBM" (GDBM) and a few others, but the theme was the same. Even today TokyoCabinet calls itself "a modern implementation of DBM" mimicking, and improving on, something first created over thirty years ago. In the mid-1990s, DBM was the name for what you needed if you were looking for fast, reliable local storage. Fast forward to today. What's changed? Systems are connected over fast, very reliable networks. Disks are cheep, fast, and capable of storing huge amounts of data. CPUs continued to follow Moore's Law, processing power that filled a room in 1990 now fits in your pocket. PCs, servers, and other computers proliferated both in business and the personal markets. In addition to the new hardware entire markets, social systems, and new modes of interpersonal communication moved onto the web and started evolving rapidly. These changes cause a massive explosion of data and a need to analyze and understand that data. Taken together this resulted in an entirely different landscape for database storage, new solutions were needed. A number of novel solutions stepped up and eventually a category called NoSQL emerged. The new market forces inspired the CAP theorem and the heated debate of BASE vs. ACID. But in essence this was simply the market looking at what to trade off to meet these new demands. These new database systems shared many qualities in common. There were designed to address massive amounts of data, millions of requests per second, and scale out across multiple systems. The first large-scale and successful solution was Dynamo, Amazon's distributed key/value database. Dynamo essentially took the next logical step and added a twist. Dynamo was to be the database of record, it would be distributed, data would be partitioned across many nodes, and it would tolerate failure by avoiding single points of failure. Amazon did this because they recognized that the majority of the dynamic content they provided to customers visiting their web store front didn't require the services of an RDBMS. The queries were simple, key/value look-ups or simple range queries with only a few queries that required more complex joins. They set about to use relational technology only in places where it was the best solution for the task, places like accounting and order fulfillment, but not in the myriad of other situations. The success of Dynamo, and it's design, inspired the next generation of Non-SQL, distributed database solutions including Cassandra, Riak and Voldemort. The problem their designers set out to solve was, "reliability at massive scale" so the first focal point was distributed database algorithms. Underneath Dynamo there is a local transactional database; either Berkeley DB, Berkeley DB Java Edition, MySQL or an in-memory key/value data structure. Dynamo was an evolution of local key/value storage onto networks. Cassandra, Riak, and Voldemort all faced similar design decisions and one, Voldemort, choose Berkeley DB Java Edition for it's node-local storage. Riak at first was entirely in-memory, but has recently added write-once, append-only log-based on-disk storage similar type of storage as Berkeley DB except that it is based on a hash table which must reside entirely in-memory rather than a btree which can live in-memory or on disk. Berkeley DB evolved too, we added high availability (HA) and a replication manager that makes it easy to setup replica groups. Berkeley DB's replication doesn't partitioned the data, every node keeps an entire copy of the database. For consistency, there is a single node where writes are committed first - a master - then those changes are delivered to the replica nodes as log records. Applications can choose to wait until all nodes are consistent, or fire and forget allowing Berkeley DB to eventually become consistent. Berkeley DB's HA scales-out quite well for read-intensive applications and also effectively eliminates the central point of failure by allowing replica nodes to be elected (using a PAXOS algorithm) to mastership if the master should fail. This implementation covers a wide variety of use cases. MemcacheDB is a server that implements the Memcache network protocol but uses Berkeley DB for storage and HA to replicate the cache state across all the nodes in the cache group. Google Accounts, the user authentication layer for all Google properties, was until recently running Berkeley DB HA. That scaled to a globally distributed system. That said, most NoSQL solutions try to partition (shard) data across nodes in the replication group and some allow writes as well as reads at any node, Berkeley DB HA does not. So, is Berkeley DB a "NoSQL" solution? Not really, but it certainly is a component of many of the existing NoSQL solutions out there. Forgetting all the noise about how NoSQL solutions are complex distributed databases when you boil them down to a single node you still have to store the data to some form of stable local storage. DBMs solved that problem a long time ago. NoSQL has more to do with the layers on top of the DBM; the distributed, sometimes-consistent, partitioned, scale-out storage that manage key/value or document sets and generally have some form of simple HTTP/REST-style network API. Does Berkeley DB do that? Not really. Is Berkeley DB a "NoSQL" solution today? Nope, but it's the most robust solution on which to build such a system. Re-inventing the node-local data storage isn't easy. A lot of people are starting to come to appreciate the sophisticated features found in Berkeley DB, even mimic them in some cases. Could Berkeley DB grow into a NoSQL solution? Absolutely. Our key/value API could be extended over the net using any of a number of existing network protocols such as memcache or HTTP/REST. We could adapt our node-local data partitioning out over replicated nodes. We even have a nice query language and cost-based query optimizer in our BDB XML product that we could reuse were we to build out a document-based NoSQL-style product. XML and JSON are not so different that we couldn't adapt one to work with the other interchangeably. Without too much effort we could add what's missing, we could jump into this No SQL market withing a single product development cycle. Why isn't Berkeley DB already a NoSQL solution? Why aren't we working on it? Why indeed...

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• Guide to Downloading Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Products

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  IntroductionThe idea of writing a blog about downloading software seems a bit strange .. right? After all, surely just give me the web download link and away I go!? Unfortunately, life is not so simple if you are a DBA or Systems Administrator tasked with staging Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g products for your chosen business technology stack. Here are the challenges: Oracle Fusion Middleware is not a single product, it is a family of products - a media pack with many many "disks" - which ones do I pick? Are the products I pick certified / supported on my chosen platform? Which download site do I use? I need to be on the latest and greatest - how do I get hold of the latest product patch set? The purpose of this blog is to give you a roadmap to get you through these challenges. Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g - A Product SuiteThe first thing to appreciate is that Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g is not a single product. It is a product suite, an umbrella label for many products. Typically you don't download the whole media pack - well not unless you want to stage 124 Parts - a total of 68 Gig  - instead you pick the pieces that are required for your chosen Middleware solution. Therefore, you need to research / understand which products are required to build your solution. In this respect, before you go looking for the software pick and persue the product guide from the table below which matches your situation:  Installing a New / Vanilla FMW 11g architecture Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide 11g  Upgrading Oracle Application Server 10g to FMW 11g Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Planning Guide 11g  Patching an existing FMW 11g architecture Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide 11g Certification Information Ok, so now you have an idea of what Fusion Middleware products you need. It's time to check whether these products are certified against your chosen platform. There are two places to find this information:My Oracle Support Certification Tab PageFigure 1.1 My Oracle Support Certification Tab Page - "Search on SOA Suite" Figure 1.2 My Oracle Support Certification Tab Page - "SOA Suite Search Result" The FMW 11g Certification Central Hub (in the format of xls spreadsheet)Figure 2: Screenshot of FMW 11g Release 1 Certification xls spreadsheet Hints / Tips: Fusion Middleware 11g certification information has only recently been added into the Certification Tab page and I think it is the more friendly way to access the information. However, due to some restrictions with the Certification Tab page interface some of the more, let's say obscure certification information, is still to be only found in the Certification spreadsheet. Be aware that to find certification information via the My Oracle Support Certification Tab page you must enter the FMW 11g product name e.g. "Oracle SOA Suite". Do NOT enter "Oracle Fusion Middleware". The certification information does not exist at this product suite level.  For example, if you are building a solution which includes Oracle SOA Suite Oracle WebCenter then you will have to look up the certification information for each product in turn.After choosing the product name, select the latest patch set version. This will not only tell you whether your chosen product is available at that patch set version but provide the certification information relevant to that version.  If the product is not available under the latest patch set version, seek the information under previous patch set versions. Important: Make a careful note of the Oracle WebLogic Server version which is certified with your chosen product and patch set version. Oracle WebLogic Server is the core component of a Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g home. It is important therefore to ensure later on that you download the version of Oracle WebLogic Server which is compatible and certified with your chosen product and patch set version.Also - sorry to state the obvious, but please do not take certification information from the screenshots above. The screenshots are only good for the time they were entered into the blog. To ensure you have the latest information, interactively look up the certification details. For more information about finding certification information, bookmark and readMy Oracle Support Certification Tool for Oracle Fusion Middleware Products [Doc ID 1368736.1]How to Find Certification Details for Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g [Doc ID 431578.1] Downloading the Software Now you should be ready to download the software. There are two download locations Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (formerly known as E-Delivery)Figure 3 - Screenshot of Fusion Middleware Download from Delivery CloudOracle Fusion Middleware Download Page on Oracle Technology NetworkFigure 4 - Screenshot of OTN Product Download Screen Hints / Tips: Your choice of download location should be primarily driven by your licensing needs. Take note of the wording on the OTN site - to quote:"The downloads below are provided for evaluators under the OTN License Agreement. Licensed customers should download their software via our Oracle Software Delivery Cloud site, which offers different license terms."However, it has to be said that the presentation of the most of the product download pages on OTN does make the job easier. The Software Delivery Cloud provides you with a flat list of the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g media pack. You have to know what you are looking for and pick out the right pieces :-( The OTN product download pages present not only the download for the product you want but also its dependencies such as WebLogic Server and Repository Creation Utility. So, even if your licensing requirements drive you towards the cloud, it is still worthwhile checking the OTN pages if only as a guide to what you need to pick out from the flat list found on the cloud site. Latest Patch Set This is an area which may cause you confusion - especially if you are more familiar with the Oracle Application Server 10g patching story. From Patch Set 11.1.1.6 and higher, the majority of FMW 11g products (N.B there are exceptions) provide installers which can be used both to update existing FMW 11g product installs or build brand new ones. This is good news because, unless you are dealing with one of the exceptions, it means you do not have to download base software and a patch set. At the time of the writing, the two significant exceptions are: Portal/Forms/Reports/Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.x) Identity Access Management 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.x) The other key message here is ensure you are grabbing a version of Oracle WebLogic Server which is compatible with your chosen product patch set version. Get this wrong and you will hit errors / problems at AS Instance Configuration Time.The go to place is this document - Oracle Fusion Middleware Download, Installation, and Configuration Readme FilesIn fact, this README document pretty much takes you through what I have blogged above. The only thing is you need to know which README to choose, and that's why planning your FMW 11g technology stack and viewing certification information comes into play beforehand. And Finally As the Oracle Fusion Middleware Download, Installation, and Configuration Readme Files states don't forget to check FMW 11g System Requirements FMW 11g Product Interoperability

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• SQL Monitor’s data repository

  - by Chris Lambrou

  As one of the developers of SQL Monitor, I often get requests passed on by our support people from customers who are looking to dip into SQL Monitor’s own data repository, in order to pull out bits of information that they’re interested in. Since there’s clearly interest out there in playing around directly with the data repository, I thought I’d write some blog posts to start to describe how it all works. The hardest part for me is knowing where to begin, since the schema of the data repository is pretty big. Hmmm… I guess it’s tricky for anyone to write anything but the most trivial of queries against the data repository without understanding the hierarchy of monitored objects, so perhaps my first post should start there. I always imagine that whenever a customer fires up SSMS and starts to explore their SQL Monitor data repository database, they become immediately bewildered by the schema – that was certainly my experience when I did so for the first time. The following query shows the number of different object types in the data repository schema: SELECT type_desc, COUNT(*) AS [count] FROM sys.objects GROUP BY type_desc ORDER BY type_desc;  type_desccount 1DEFAULT_CONSTRAINT63 2FOREIGN_KEY_CONSTRAINT181 3INTERNAL_TABLE3 4PRIMARY_KEY_CONSTRAINT190 5SERVICE_QUEUE3 6SQL_INLINE_TABLE_VALUED_FUNCTION381 7SQL_SCALAR_FUNCTION2 8SQL_STORED_PROCEDURE100 9SYSTEM_TABLE41 10UNIQUE_CONSTRAINT54 11USER_TABLE193 12VIEW124 With 193 tables, 124 views, 100 stored procedures and 381 table valued functions, that’s quite a hefty schema, and when you browse through it using SSMS, it can be a bit daunting at first. So, where to begin? Well, let’s narrow things down a bit and only look at the tables belonging to the data schema. That’s where all of the collected monitoring data is stored by SQL Monitor. The following query gives us the names of those tables: SELECT sch.name + '.' + obj.name AS [name] FROM sys.objects obj JOIN sys.schemas sch ON sch.schema_id = obj.schema_id WHERE obj.type_desc = 'USER_TABLE' AND sch.name = 'data' ORDER BY sch.name, obj.name; This query still returns 110 tables. I won’t show them all here, but let’s have a look at the first few of them:  name 1data.Cluster_Keys 2data.Cluster_Machine_ClockSkew_UnstableSamples 3data.Cluster_Machine_Cluster_StableSamples 4data.Cluster_Machine_Keys 5data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Capacity_StableSamples 6data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Keys 7data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Sightings 8data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_UnstableSamples 9data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Volume_StableSamples 10data.Cluster_Machine_Memory_Capacity_StableSamples 11data.Cluster_Machine_Memory_UnstableSamples 12data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Capacity_StableSamples 13data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Keys 14data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Sightings 15data.Cluster_Machine_Network_UnstableSamples 16data.Cluster_Machine_OperatingSystem_StableSamples 17data.Cluster_Machine_Ping_UnstableSamples 18data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Instances 19data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Keys 20data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Owner_Instances 21data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Sightings 22data.Cluster_Machine_Process_UnstableSamples 23… There are two things I want to draw your attention to: The table names describe a hierarchy of the different types of object that are monitored by SQL Monitor (e.g. clusters, machines and disks). For each object type in the hierarchy, there are multiple tables, ending in the suffixes _Keys, _Sightings, _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples. Not every object type has a table for every suffix, but the _Keys suffix is especially important and a _Keys table does indeed exist for every object type. In fact, if we limit the query to return only those tables ending in _Keys, we reveal the full object hierarchy: SELECT sch.name + '.' + obj.name AS [name] FROM sys.objects obj JOIN sys.schemas sch ON sch.schema_id = obj.schema_id WHERE obj.type_desc = 'USER_TABLE' AND sch.name = 'data' AND obj.name LIKE '%_Keys' ORDER BY sch.name, obj.name;  name 1data.Cluster_Keys 2data.Cluster_Machine_Keys 3data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Keys 4data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Keys 5data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Keys 6data.Cluster_Machine_Services_Keys 7data.Cluster_ResourceGroup_Keys 8data.Cluster_ResourceGroup_Resource_Keys 9data.Cluster_SqlServer_Agent_Job_History_Keys 10data.Cluster_SqlServer_Agent_Job_Keys 11data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_BackupType_Backup_Keys 12data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_BackupType_Keys 13data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_CustomMetric_Keys 14data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_File_Keys 15data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Keys 16data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Table_Index_Keys 17data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Table_Keys 18data.Cluster_SqlServer_Error_Keys 19data.Cluster_SqlServer_Keys 20data.Cluster_SqlServer_Services_Keys 21data.Cluster_SqlServer_SqlProcess_Keys 22data.Cluster_SqlServer_TopQueries_Keys 23data.Cluster_SqlServer_Trace_Keys 24data.Group_Keys The full object type hierarchy looks like this: Cluster Machine LogicalDisk Network Process Services ResourceGroup Resource SqlServer Agent Job History Database BackupType Backup CustomMetric File Table Index Error Services SqlProcess TopQueries Trace Group Okay, but what about the individual objects themselves represented at each level in this hierarchy? Well that’s what the _Keys tables are for. This is probably best illustrated by way of a simple example – how can I query my own data repository to find the databases on my own PC for which monitoring data has been collected? Like this: SELECT clstr._Name AS cluster_name, srvr._Name AS instance_name, db._Name AS database_name FROM data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Keys db JOIN data.Cluster_SqlServer_Keys srvr ON db.ParentId = srvr.Id -- Note here how the parent of a Database is a Server JOIN data.Cluster_Keys clstr ON srvr.ParentId = clstr.Id -- Note here how the parent of a Server is a Cluster WHERE clstr._Name = 'dev-chrisl2' -- This is the hostname of my own PC ORDER BY clstr._Name, srvr._Name, db._Name;  cluster_nameinstance_namedatabase_name 1dev-chrisl2SqlMonitorData 2dev-chrisl2master 3dev-chrisl2model 4dev-chrisl2msdb 5dev-chrisl2mssqlsystemresource 6dev-chrisl2tempdb 7dev-chrisl2sql2005SqlMonitorData 8dev-chrisl2sql2005TestDatabase 9dev-chrisl2sql2005master 10dev-chrisl2sql2005model 11dev-chrisl2sql2005msdb 12dev-chrisl2sql2005mssqlsystemresource 13dev-chrisl2sql2005tempdb 14dev-chrisl2sql2008SqlMonitorData 15dev-chrisl2sql2008master 16dev-chrisl2sql2008model 17dev-chrisl2sql2008msdb 18dev-chrisl2sql2008mssqlsystemresource 19dev-chrisl2sql2008tempdb These results show that I have three SQL Server instances on my machine (a default instance, one named sql2005 and one named sql2008), and each instance has the usual set of system databases, along with a database named SqlMonitorData. Basically, this is where I test SQL Monitor on different versions of SQL Server, when I’m developing. There are a few important things we can learn from this query: Each _Keys table has a column named Id. This is the primary key. Each _Keys table has a column named ParentId. A foreign key relationship is defined between each _Keys table and its parent _Keys table in the hierarchy. There are two exceptions to this, Cluster_Keys and Group_Keys, because clusters and groups live at the root level of the object hierarchy. Each _Keys table has a column named _Name. This is used to uniquely identify objects in the table within the scope of the same shared parent object. Actually, that last item isn’t always true. In some cases, the _Name column is actually called something else. For example, the data.Cluster_Machine_Services_Keys table has a column named _ServiceName instead of _Name (sorry for the inconsistency). In other cases, a name isn’t sufficient to uniquely identify an object. For example, right now my PC has multiple processes running, all sharing the same name, Chrome (one for each tab open in my web-browser). In such cases, multiple columns are used to uniquely identify an object within the scope of the same shared parent object. Well, that’s it for now. I’ve given you enough information for you to explore the _Keys tables to see how objects are stored in your own data repositories. In a future post, I’ll try to explain how monitoring data is stored for each object, using the _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples tables. If you have any questions about this post, or suggestions for future posts, just submit them in the comments section below.

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• What are the pitfalls of hardlinked files on my desktop PC?

  - by MountainX

  All the identical-content files on my PC are now hardlinked. (My data is completely de-duplicated. It is a consequence of the way I copied my data from my old computer.) What pitfalls do I need to be aware of now that certain actions on one file could silently affect a number of other files? I know that deleting the file I'm working on is not a problem (assuming I deleted it on purpose). It doesn't affect any of the other hardlinked files and I don't see that the delete action would lead to unexpected side effects. Moving or renaming the file is not a problem. I don't see any unexpected consequences. I don't think copying hardlinked files is a problem, but I'm not as confident about any unexpected consequences in this regard. What I have seen is that making a copy (to the same disk) of a hardlinked file with cp keeps the copy hardlinked (i.e., inode number doesn't change in the copy). Copying to another filesystem obviously breaks the hardlink. (I guess one pitfall is forgetting this fact, given that my PC has 3 hard disks.) Changing permissions does affect all linked files. So far this has proven handy. (I made a large number of the hardlinked files read-only.) None of the operations above seem to produce any major unexpected consequences. However, as was pointed out to me by Daniel Beck in a comment, editing or modifying a file can sometimes be a problem. It depends on the tool and maybe the type of edit. (For example, editing small text files using sed seems to always break the link while using nano doesn't.) This introduces the chance that editing one file could affect all the hardlinked files (i.e., alter the original inode). My proposed solution to this is to make all hardlinked files read-only (and that is already mostly the case). If I can't do that for some files, I will unlink those particular files. Is there any problem with this read-only approach? I'm assuming that if I go to edit a file and find it to be read-only, I'll remember to unlink that filename while making it writable. So one pitfall might be forgetting this rule. In that case, I'll have to rely on my backups. Am I correct in the above statements? And what else do I need to know? BTW, I'm running Kubuntu 12.04. I'm also using btrfs. (I have 2 SSD's and 1 HDD in the PC. I will also be adding an external USB HDD. I'm also connected to a network and I mount some NFS shares. I don't assume any of these last bits are relevant to the question, but I'm adding them just in case.) BTW, since I have more than one drive (with separate file systems), to unlink any file all I have to do is copy it to another drive, then move it back. However, using sed also works (in my testing). Here's my script: sed -i 's/\(.\)/\1/' file1 Surprisingly, this even unlinks zero byte files. In my testing it also appears to work on non-text files without any special options. (But I understand that the --binary option might be needed on Windows, MS-DOS and Cygwin.) However, copying to another disk and moving back may be the best way to unlink. For my use-case, unlink command doesn't really "unlink", rather it "removes".

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• Determining cause of high NFS/IO utilization without iotop

  - by Matt

  I have a server that is doing an NFSv4 export for user's home directories. There are roughly 25 users (mostly developers/analysts) and about 40 servers mounting the home directory export. Performance is miserable, with users often seeing multi-second lags for simple commands (like ls, or writing a small text file). Sometimes the home directory mount completely hangs for minutes, with users getting "permission denied" errors. The hardware is a Dell R510 with dual E5620 CPUs and 8 GB RAM. There are eight 15k 2.5” 600 GB drives (Seagate ST3600057SS) configured in hardware RAID-6 with a single hot spare. RAID controller is a Dell PERC H700 w/512MB cache (Linux sees this as a LSI MegaSAS 9260). OS is CentOS 5.6, home directory partition is ext3, with options “rw,data=journal,usrquota”. I have the HW RAID configured to present two virtual disks to the OS: /dev/sda for the OS (boot, root and swap partitions), and /dev/sdb for the home directories. What I find curious, and suspicious, is that the sda device often has very high utilization, even though it only contains the OS. I would expect this virtual drive to be idle almost all the time. The system is not swapping, according to "free" and "vmstat". Why would there be major load on this device? Here is a 30-second snapshot from iostat: Time: 09:37:28 AM Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util sda 0.00 44.09 0.03 107.76 0.13 607.40 11.27 0.89 8.27 7.27 78.35 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 sda2 0.00 44.09 0.03 107.76 0.13 607.40 11.27 0.89 8.27 7.27 78.35 sdb 0.00 2616.53 0.67 157.88 2.80 11098.83 140.04 8.57 54.08 4.21 66.68 sdb1 0.00 2616.53 0.67 157.88 2.80 11098.83 140.04 8.57 54.08 4.21 66.68 dm-0 0.00 0.00 0.03 151.82 0.13 607.26 8.00 1.25 8.23 5.16 78.35 dm-1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 dm-2 0.00 0.00 0.67 2774.84 2.80 11099.37 8.00 474.30 170.89 0.24 66.84 dm-3 0.00 0.00 0.67 2774.84 2.80 11099.37 8.00 474.30 170.89 0.24 66.84 Looks like iotop is the ideal tool to use to sniff out these kinds of issues. But I'm on CentOS 5.6, which doesn't have a new enough kernel to support that program. I looked at Determining which process is causing heavy disk I/O?, and besides iotop, one of the suggestions said to do a "echo 1 /proc/sys/vm/block_dump". I did that (after directing kernel messages to tempfs). In about 13 minutes I had about 700k reads or writes, roughly half from kjournald and the other half from nfsd: # egrep " kernel: .*(READ|WRITE)" messages | wc -l 768439 # egrep " kernel: kjournald.*(READ|WRITE)" messages | wc -l 403615 # egrep " kernel: nfsd.*(READ|WRITE)" messages | wc -l 314028 For what it's worth, for the last hour, utilization has constantly been over 90% for the home directory drive. My 30-second iostat keeps showing output like this: Time: 09:36:30 PM Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util sda 0.00 6.46 0.20 11.33 0.80 71.71 12.58 0.24 20.53 14.37 16.56 sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 sda2 0.00 6.46 0.20 11.33 0.80 71.71 12.58 0.24 20.53 14.37 16.56 sdb 137.29 7.00 549.92 3.80 22817.19 43.19 82.57 3.02 5.45 1.74 96.32 sdb1 137.29 7.00 549.92 3.80 22817.19 43.19 82.57 3.02 5.45 1.74 96.32 dm-0 0.00 0.00 0.20 17.76 0.80 71.04 8.00 0.38 21.21 9.22 16.57 dm-1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 dm-2 0.00 0.00 687.47 10.80 22817.19 43.19 65.48 4.62 6.61 1.43 99.81 dm-3 0.00 0.00 687.47 10.80 22817.19 43.19 65.48 4.62 6.61 1.43 99.82

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• SPARC T4-4 Beats 8-CPU IBM POWER7 on TPC-H @3000GB Benchmark

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server delivered a world record TPC-H @3000GB benchmark result for systems with four processors. This result beats eight processor results from IBM (POWER7) and HP (x86). The SPARC T4-4 server also delivered better performance per core than these eight processor systems from IBM and HP. Comparisons below are based upon system to system comparisons, highlighting Oracle's complete software and hardware solution. This database world record result used Oracle's Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays (rotating disk) connected to a SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 demonstrating the power of Oracle's integrated hardware and software solution. The SPARC T4-4 server based configuration achieved a TPC-H scale factor 3000 world record for four processor systems of 205,792 QphH@3000GB with price/performance of $4.10/QphH@3000GB. The SPARC T4-4 server with four SPARC T4 processors (total of 32 cores) is 7% faster than the IBM Power 780 server with eight POWER7 processors (total of 32 cores) on the TPC-H @3000GB benchmark. The SPARC T4-4 server is 36% better in price performance compared to the IBM Power 780 server on the TPC-H @3000GB Benchmark. The SPARC T4-4 server is 29% faster than the IBM Power 780 for data loading. The SPARC T4-4 server is up to 3.4 times faster than the IBM Power 780 server for the Refresh Function. The SPARC T4-4 server with four SPARC T4 processors is 27% faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server with eight x86 processors on the TPC-H @3000GB benchmark. The SPARC T4-4 server is 52% faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server for data loading. The SPARC T4-4 server is up to 3.2 times faster than the HP ProLiant DL980 G7 for the Refresh Function. The SPARC T4-4 server achieved a peak IO rate from the Oracle database of 17 GB/sec. This rate was independent of the storage used, as demonstrated by the TPC-H @3000TB benchmark which used twelve Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays (rotating disk) and the TPC-H @1000TB benchmark which used four Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array devices (flash storage). [*] The SPARC T4-4 server showed linear scaling from TPC-H @1000GB to TPC-H @3000GB. This demonstrates that the SPARC T4-4 server can handle the increasingly larger databases required of DSS systems. [*] The SPARC T4-4 server benchmark results demonstrate a complete solution of building Decision Support Systems including data loading, business questions and refreshing data. Each phase usually has a time constraint and the SPARC T4-4 server shows superior performance during each phase. [*] The TPC believes that comparisons of results published with different scale factors are misleading and discourages such comparisons. Performance Landscape The table lists the leading TPC-H @3000GB results for non-clustered systems. TPC-H @3000GB, Non-Clustered Systems System Processor P/C/T – Memory Composite(QphH) $/perf($/QphH) Power(QppH) Throughput(QthH) Database Available SPARC Enterprise M9000 3.0 GHz SPARC64 VII+ 64/256/256 – 1024 GB 386,478.3 $18.19 316,835.8 471,428.6 Oracle 11g R2 09/22/11 SPARC T4-4 3.0 GHz SPARC T4 4/32/256 – 1024 GB 205,792.0 $4.10 190,325.1 222,515.9 Oracle 11g R2 05/31/12 SPARC Enterprise M9000 2.88 GHz SPARC64 VII 32/128/256 – 512 GB 198,907.5 $15.27 182,350.7 216,967.7 Oracle 11g R2 12/09/10 IBM Power 780 4.1 GHz POWER7 8/32/128 – 1024 GB 192,001.1 $6.37 210,368.4 175,237.4 Sybase 15.4 11/30/11 HP ProLiant DL980 G7 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon X7560 8/64/128 – 512 GB 162,601.7 $2.68 185,297.7 142,685.6 SQL Server 2008 10/13/10 P/C/T = Processors, Cores, Threads QphH = the Composite Metric (bigger is better) $/QphH = the Price/Performance metric in USD (smaller is better) QppH = the Power Numerical Quantity QthH = the Throughput Numerical Quantity The following table lists data load times and refresh function times during the power run. TPC-H @3000GB, Non-Clustered Systems Database Load & Database Refresh System Processor Data Loading(h:m:s) T4Advan RF1(sec) T4Advan RF2(sec) T4Advan SPARC T4-4 3.0 GHz SPARC T4 04:08:29 1.0x 67.1 1.0x 39.5 1.0x IBM Power 780 4.1 GHz POWER7 05:51:50 1.5x 147.3 2.2x 133.2 3.4x HP ProLiant DL980 G7 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon X7560 08:35:17 2.1x 173.0 2.6x 126.3 3.2x Data Loading = database load time RF1 = power test first refresh transaction RF2 = power test second refresh transaction T4 Advan = the ratio of time to T4 time Complete benchmark results found at the TPC benchmark website http://www.tpc.org. Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server 4 x SPARC T4 3.0 GHz processors (total of 32 cores, 128 threads) 1024 GB memory 8 x internal SAS (8 x 300 GB) disk drives External Storage: 12 x Sun Storage 2540-M2 array storage, each with 12 x 15K RPM 300 GB drives, 2 controllers, 2 GB cache Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition Audited Results: Database Size: 3000 GB (Scale Factor 3000) TPC-H Composite: 205,792.0 QphH@3000GB Price/performance: $4.10/QphH@3000GB Available: 05/31/2012 Total 3 year Cost: $843,656 TPC-H Power: 190,325.1 TPC-H Throughput: 222,515.9 Database Load Time: 4:08:29 Benchmark Description The TPC-H benchmark is a performance benchmark established by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) to demonstrate Data Warehousing/Decision Support Systems (DSS). TPC-H measurements are produced for customers to evaluate the performance of various DSS systems. These queries and updates are executed against a standard database under controlled conditions. Performance projections and comparisons between different TPC-H Database sizes (100GB, 300GB, 1000GB, 3000GB, 10000GB, 30000GB and 100000GB) are not allowed by the TPC. TPC-H is a data warehousing-oriented, non-industry-specific benchmark that consists of a large number of complex queries typical of decision support applications. It also includes some insert and delete activity that is intended to simulate loading and purging data from a warehouse. TPC-H measures the combined performance of a particular database manager on a specific computer system. The main performance metric reported by TPC-H is called the TPC-H Composite Query-per-Hour Performance Metric (QphH@SF, where SF is the number of GB of raw data, referred to as the scale factor). QphH@SF is intended to summarize the ability of the system to process queries in both single and multiple user modes. The benchmark requires reporting of price/performance, which is the ratio of the total HW/SW cost plus 3 years maintenance to the QphH. A secondary metric is the storage efficiency, which is the ratio of total configured disk space in GB to the scale factor. Key Points and Best Practices Twelve Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays were used for the benchmark. Each Sun Storage 2540-M2 array contains 12 15K RPM drives and is connected to a single dual port 8Gb FC HBA using 2 ports. Each Sun Storage 2540-M2 array showed 1.5 GB/sec for sequential read operations and showed linear scaling, achieving 18 GB/sec with twelve Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays. These were stand alone IO tests. The peak IO rate measured from the Oracle database was 17 GB/sec. Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 required very little system tuning. Some vendors try to make the point that storage ratios are of customer concern. However, storage ratio size has more to do with disk layout and the increasing capacities of disks – so this is not an important metric in which to compare systems. The SPARC T4-4 server and Oracle Solaris efficiently managed the system load of over one thousand Oracle Database parallel processes. Six Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays were mirrored to another six Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays on which all of the Oracle database files were placed. IO performance was high and balanced across all the arrays. The TPC-H Refresh Function (RF) simulates periodical refresh portion of Data Warehouse by adding new sales and deleting old sales data. Parallel DML (parallel insert and delete in this case) and database log performance are a key for this function and the SPARC T4-4 server outperformed both the IBM POWER7 server and HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server. (See the RF columns above.) See Also Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Home Page Ideas International Benchmark Page SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Sun Storage 2540-M2 Array oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement TPC-H, QphH, $/QphH are trademarks of Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). For more information, see www.tpc.org. SPARC T4-4 205,792.0 QphH@3000GB, $4.10/QphH@3000GB, available 5/31/12, 4 processors, 32 cores, 256 threads; IBM Power 780 QphH@3000GB, 192,001.1 QphH@3000GB, $6.37/QphH@3000GB, available 11/30/11, 8 processors, 32 cores, 128 threads; HP ProLiant DL980 G7 162,601.7 QphH@3000GB, $2.68/QphH@3000GB available 10/13/10, 8 processors, 64 cores, 128 threads.

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