Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Cheap Disk

My buddy was talking about a low cost SAN like solution based on Linux called CORAID.  Looks like good stuff.  Basically you buy the1U, 3U or tower shell and add your own SATA(I or II) disks.  It used a layer 2 protocol called AoE (ATA over Ethernet) which they claim is better then iSCSI because it doesn't have to deal with the overhead of TCP/IP.  At 64 cents/GB it sure looks like something I'm gonna have to try at some point.  Looks like it would make a great target for secondary storage for disk to disk backups or an imaging project.  The OS is based on Linux and all recent Linux kernels already support AoE so that's cool.  Good Stuff.

sr421 SR421                sr1521SR1521

 

                   coraid

 

Friday, June 06, 2008

"Scotty, I need more power!"

Ok...maybe I don't need more power I just need to know what I'm using.  That's always a pain in the butt.  Even with a degree in Electrical Engineering I don't get too excited about monitoring what each device uses for power but it really needs to be done if you wanna get an understanding over your overall consumption needs.

I found this little dealio on the web and bought one:

image

It's the Kill-A--WattEZ  power monitor.  What makes this gadget dope is that it will spit out all the normal stuff (volts, amps, etc.) but it also tells you Watts, VA, Power Factor and KWH.  If you drop in what your  pay rate is for electricity it will even calculate how much it costs per hour, day, week and year to keep a device running.  Good stuff.  Only limitation I've seen is that it's strictly a 120VAC device so big honking stuff you need to do the old fashioned way with a volt meter, calculator and cursing.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Newsletter Rant

<begin Rant>
Vendors that send newsletters marked as Important emails should be shot. I say this because I have all critical/important emails automatically forwarded to my phone as a text message. Yes I have a Blackberry (actually a Samsung BlackJack with Goodlink), but to separate the wheat from the chaff I use Exchange Rules to forward specific messages as text messages to my phone....messages from the boss, the managing partner, loss of Internet access, etc.  As I pay for only 200 text messages a month, having newsletters forwarded is a real costly pain. 

Newsletters are bathroom reading people...they are not and have never been important reading. 
<end Rant>