The Lone Sysadmin

I’m glad to see the iPad is announced. It looks like an interesting device, not quite a notebook, not quite an iPhone. I, however, don’t see how it’s anything beyond a portal to give Apple more money.

Please, if you see I’ve made an error here let me know in the comments. Thank you!

1. AT&T. Seriously, a “breakthrough” deal with AT&T is like being the fastest reader in remedial reading class. You’re still in remedial reading class.

2. No Flash. It’s astonishing how much stuff I watch in Flash on my laptop, and it being missing on this device is going to be a big hole. Lots of stuff is in YouTube, but not everything, and HTML5 isn’t going to solve this problem for quite a while, either.

3. You still need a desktop to dock this thing to, for anything beyond basic downloading or web browsing. Despite what some apps can do (including iWork), it really is just a standalone viewer of content.

4. The dock and keyboard setup is a kludge. It appears clunky, certainly not easily portable, and looks like it’ll fall over when you try to click on something by touching it. I’m skeptical. I think a netbook or cheap laptop will continue to smoke the iPad for anybody who needs to type anything. Heck, you can add an external USB keyboard and a mouse to a netbook.

5. E-books with DRM. There is no mention of being able to use anything but EPUB format books. I’d like to be able to read things from Project Gutenberg, for example, or anything that an independent party might like to push out. Furthermore, it looks as if EPUB doesn’t work well for technical books or books that need precision graphics placement (comic books, for example).

6. No user-replaceable batteries, though it’s not a huge deal because you can charge just about anywhere. If their battery life figures aren’t inflated it should be enough for a day’s use. Plus, with a tablet I’m anticipating third-party form-fitting add-ons that boost battery life. I worry about wear on the battery, though — after a year or so of daily charging batteries lose significant capacity.

7. It is still tied to the draconian App Store policies. Apple still controls who can put what on this device, and their policies are not consumer-friendly. Take Google Voice as an example. Maybe Apple should watch their first commercial, “1984,” and see what their message was then.

8. No multitasking. On a real computing device you can switch between apps and not lose your place. I understand the implications for battery life and whatnot, but I’d like the option to quickly switch between apps, like an SSH client and a web browser, and keep my sessions.

Looking at Apple’s list of things they think the iPad can do better:

Browsing: netbooks for the win. A netbook has Flash and can run any web browser, not just the Apple-prescribed browser and technologies.

Email: netbooks for the win. The external keyboard is a kludge, not portable, and I’m guessing they added it because typing on the screen sucks.

Photos: I’ve changed this based on new information in the comments. I didn’t realize that the iPad had a camera connector, so I’ll dub this a tie. Netbooks are more flexible and can run more software packages, but the display & interface on the iPad will likely smoke a netbook’s. What does remain to be seen is if iPhoto or something like it will be ported to Windows. If that happens it’s iPad FTW.

Video: netbooks for the win. Aside from the lack of Flash on the iPad, which disables most Internet video players, you are only able to watch video encoded with Apple-prescribed codecs.

Music: iPad. The iPod is the standard, and the iPad will draw on that heritage.

Games: iPad. The games for the iPhone and iPad are so-so, but netbooks really don’t have the ability or interface to play anything.

eBooks: libraries for the win. A paperback book doesn’t take any power, can be read in many differing conditions, isn’t made of toxic waste, isn’t locked to a carrier, doesn’t have a monthly fee (though one would argue your library has a fee in the form of taxes), can be loaned to your cousin, is available at millions of locations, has an easy-to-use interface, can be dropped on the floor or crushed in your luggage, and can be donated to or borrowed from a library or a book swap when you’re done with it.

I think, for now, I’ll stick with a netbook and a paperback.

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“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”  — Robert McCloskey

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Rod Gabriel’s tweet clued me in that my latest work for TechTarget, VMware vSwitch vs. Cisco Nexus 1000V, is up, wherein the inimitable David Davis and I take opposing stances on VMware virtual networking. In true sysadmin form we’re both right and both wrong, of course, because it always depends on the situation, but I like the article.

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My favorite question from manager types is:

“How many more VMs can we run before we have to expand?”

I can never answer this without someone sticking it to me later. I always do end up answering it, and my answer is always wrong because it’s based on averages and the very little I’m told about future projects, upcoming P2Vs, server replacements, etc. We aren’t going to get 25 more 1.28 vCPU/2.398 GB of RAM VMs, though. It’s like having 1.75 kids — it just doesn’t work that way. I could try to tell them that we have 108 GB of RAM available, but that isn’t what they want, either. They want a concrete number they can multiply by our chargeback rates and put in the budget.

It’s hard to explain the problem with all of this, though, and I’ve been searching for a good analogy to make people realize why I’m so cagy about an answer. My awesome financial analyst, Michelle Fritze, just came up with it:

“How many boxes fit in your office?”

I can’t wait to ask my CIO that.

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WebEx and Microsoft Windows 7 don’t seem to get along 100% quite yet. If you are using WebEx on Windows 7 it’ll disable Aero during your session. However, if your session is over and you don’t get Aero back here’s how to fix it without rebooting:

1. Make sure you’ve closed/exited all WebEx components.

2. Right click on Windows Menu->All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt and choose “Run as administrator.” You will need to accept a User Access Control warning about this.

3. Issue the commands:

net stop uxsms

net start uxsms

That should fix it.

Alternately (and potentially easier): you could restart the “Desktop Window Manager Session Manager” service via the Services administrative tool.

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It’s been a while in the making, but I finally started consolidating all my Linux VM tuning notes into a single document for all to read: Linux Virtual Machine Tuning Guide.

Please take a look at it, and if there are corrections or additions to be made let me know. I know there is a lot to be done with network stack tuning, which will be added to a future revision when I get my notes sorted out.

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I have a Dell PowerEdge R610 in one of my VMware vSphere clusters that has been reporting memory errors. In fact, the machine wouldn’t boot, and the front panel suggested I reseat all the RAM. Okay…

0. Reseat all the RAM. Didn’t work, as expected.

1. Pull all twelve DIMMs out, put four back in. That worked, machine comes up.

2. Put four more DIMMs back. That worked, machine comes up.

3. Put last four DIMMs in. Machine doesn’t boot, same original error.

4. Pull last set of DIMMs out. Boot machine. Notice that BIOS is really old. Upgrade BIOS, thinking this is some stupid BIOS bug. Machine continues to boot.

5. Put last four DIMMs back in. New BIOS actually tells me what DIMMs are bad. Nice, except it says that A1 and A4 are bad. Two DIMMs? Yeah, not likely.

6. Order single replacement DIMM from Dell, decide to play Mastermind with RAM.

7. Replace DIMM A1. Machine switches to saying DIMMs B3 and B5 are bad. Really? DIMM banks B are on the other CPU.

8. Stifle disbelief, take loose DIMM from A1 and replace B3.

9. Machine switches to saying DIMM B5 is bad.

10. Take loose DIMM from B3 and replace B5. Machine likes that, has all of its RAM again, and I probably have the offending DIMM out now. Probably.

Lessons here: A) physical hardware sucks. B) linear troubleshooting rules. C) keep your firmware up to date.

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“I’m filling out a survey. Can you tell me if we have a cloud?”

“Yes, we do,” I reply.

“We do?”

“Absolutely.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’d know — I built it.”

“You built it? No, I think the survey wants to know if we have a real cloud.” Well, thanks a lot.

“We do have a real cloud, and it’s the same one I’m talking about. In fact, we have two clouds, in two different locations. They’d probably be best described as ‘private clouds.’”

“Well, there isn’t an option for private clouds, so I’ll just say no.”

ARGGGH. Ten minutes pass…

“Hey, I’ve got another question. Do we use virtualization software?”

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