CAWJames

Morning all, Does this work anymore? I have added the DNAME in DNS and it goes nowhere. Going to restrict.youtube.com in a browser gives a 404 broken robot. Thanks James

All I remember from the original series was flying motorbikes, but then again I was only born in '78, so can't have been that old when it was shown on uk tv

Last episode of Discovery from last week, not yesterdays(haven't seen that yet), amazing, some real didn't see that coming moments! Also Black Lightning on Netflix, actually not sucky.

That's how I sold the extra outlay to the powers that be, they will last longer, be quieter and use less electrickery. The 720's have been rock solid as hyper-v hosts in a 2 node cluster, but alas they have hit their 7 year prosupport cut off, and as of May can't/won't be supported, and that makes people twitchy here! The 2950 is 10 years old and as you say worthless really, it just has a crapload of storage that I can't find a use for, ie no live/production loads, and already have a test hyper-v system with oodles of storage and another 720 strapped to it. #firstworldproblems really!!

It all came in the low to mid 30's ex VAT, just over 10k a server. Only reason for 3 years is we can make a judgment in 3 years if we want to up or down the level of support, never know what is going to happen! SNLM is Share Nothing Live Migration, sort of like a cluster with no SAN, so you can still drain off VM's to the other host if needed, just not as quick. Our small servers will drain quickly, our file servers not so much! Will give it 2 10GBe pipes to play with and see how it goes! This still gives us the option of host maintenance with little to no downtime, which was one of the main reason for a SAN in the first place.

Afternoon all, As mentioned in my post about our new Hyper-v setup, I have found myself with a small heap of very expensive(well when it was new!), still working equipment that will just take up room in our warehouse, so apart from me running a 21TB SAN in my garage, what channels are there out there for monetising older equipment which is too good to recycle? Currently we have: Equalogic PS6100x with a full compliment of 900GB drives for 21TB RAW(5 years old) 2 x Dell 720's with 128GB of RAM and dual E5620's, some local storage, 4 x 600GB and 2 x 140GB, couple of extra 1GBe quad port card, one is iSCI skewed. Dell 2950 with dual E5420, 8GB of RAM and some local storage(2x300GB and 2 x 160GB), and an MD1000 drive-shelf with around 14TB of storage(4x2TB and 6 x 1TB) As you can imagine, there is no way I'm sending this to landfill or to a recycler who will think all his weekends have come at once! Any tips? (or offers!) Thanks James

Right, an update on this, we have finally pulled the trigger on a solution. We have opted for no SAN, and 3 servers. Servers 1 and 2 are Dell 740XD with 16 1.8TB 10K rusty drives, and 2 240GB SSD;s, dual Xeon Silver 4114 and 128GB of RAM. Server 3 is the same but with only 32GB of RAM. Both have Quad 10GBe cards in and 3 yrs 4hr prosupport Server 1 and 2 will be the Hyper-V hosts with a 10GBe crossover between them for SNLM Server 3 will be the new DPM backup server, it has the same amount of drives as the others, as DPM uses block level, whereas the others will use RAID 10, so effectively 14.4TB useable on each of the hosts and 28.8TB in a JBOD for the backup server. There will also be a 10GBe crossover from each host to the backup server, to create a dedicated backup network for the system. It has ended up costing more than we wanted, as we went for Dell with prosupport, but it is considerably less than a SAN based system. Now to try and monetise an Equalogic PS6100x with a full compliment of 900GB drives for 21TB RAW, 2 Dell 720's with 128GB of RAM and dual E5620's and a Dell 2950 with dual E5420, 8GB of RAM and an MD1000 drive-shelf with around 14TB of storage.

7yr and 2hr! Wow that will be for the supportable life of the server, they won't go over 7 years, unless they have changed that for newer revisions of the hardware. Bet that isn't cheap!!

I was being a bit glib with the 4hr comment, but SMT and my manager would want some external support and expedited hardware replacement warranty to be in place for such a integral system to our way of working. It all has to hit our DR plan. As you say, next day replacement of HW would be fine as VM's can be migrated/retrieved from backup quite quickly given enough bandwidth and fast storage.

Mainly Lenovo and Dell, The Dell 740 was coming out at £6k for a single Xeon Silver 4114 2.2G 10Core and 8 16GB RDIMMS and minimal storage. The Lenovo x3650 with a single E5-2630v4 2.2G 10Core but 8 x 32GB came out at slightly less than the Dell. I am sure shopping around I can get a similar server with dual procs for similar or less by visiting the supermicro builders dotted around! I would build my own, but management may frown if I can't provide 4hr response lol So builder with support offerings will be sought.

Hmmm, interesting on that pricing, although I can't hit that price point on the configurator! I am currently thinking, 2 hosts with 128GB RAM and around 8TB of usable storage after RAID, 5 should be fine, as the disadvantages of RAID 5 shouldn't be a problem with SSD's. Dual 10GBe, one for LAN, one for dedicated live migration/VM backup network. Then a 3rd server with good old fashioned rust drives with enough capacity to hold the contents of both hosts to capacity using DPM, which we use already for our backups to home site and trickle backup to our offsite DPM server. The simplicity is amazing lol but will fill all needs.

Interesting, this was sort of my original plan. I've got questions What do you use for VM backup? What is your total capacity after RAID for each server with those bad boys, that is if you are using RAID? How do you deal with a failed host and spinning them up on another host? Do you restore from backup, and if so, how long does it take? I know how longs a piece of string, but ball park per GB? What kind of SSD are you using? Enterprise stamped or just generic with good RAID My main reason for a SAN is really survive-ability of VM's across hosts for host maintenance and uptime. This kind of system running SSD's and mulitple 10GBe connections, even share nothing live migration could be a goer, I wonder what the drain time would be in that config! Currently my game plan is 2 hosts and 1 san, but 3 hosts would take the san and it's proprietary parts out of the picture, cheaper support too. hmmmmm

I got my Compellent quote and it is a LOT more than we paid for the Equallogic, even with 5 years of price changes(over £60K for Compellent and around £20k for the Equallogic including the vodka and tonic), it seems they(Dell) now have nothing in their portfolio that fits the "baby SAN" moniker that the small Equallogics filled. I've got EMC(wh coming into the mix tomorrow, but expecting that to be even higher... We did look into Storagespaces, but it still looked like new tech that wasn't quite proven in production, and we opted for better the devil you know

Thanks for all the replies, I haven't been ignoring, I am in an internet less wilderness after moving home, where there is no 3G let alone 4G and no broadband till the 5th! I will report back after a decision has been made, but I agree with chasing that last 0.1% never going to happen, I am happy with the redundancy(or lack of) that we have. Current have Dell looking to sell me a Compellent system to replace the Equallogic, but it sounds pricey already, and I haven't had pricing in yet!

Sure, current position is: We have looked at the solutions that would fit our use case, mainly: Shared Nothing Live Migration with 2 hosts each with it's storage - discounted due to the cost of doubling down on storage and speed of the migration Standalone hosts - Discounted due to inflexibility, lack of resilience, etc, etc Hyper-converged - While it would be nice to just add computer or storage nodes as when needed, for our use, the initial cost would be extreme overkill, and did I mention the cost? Good ol' SAN and hosts - Basically refresh like for like. This is the current step we are sitting on. I did my usual talk to vendors, ask for oak trees, offer peanuts, and waited for the quiet sniggering at the end of the line. Wants are 2 beefy hosts with 256GB and dual xeons and a SAN that can handle 20TB after RAID6, 10Gbe or other fast links, and we want to spend under £20k... We are still getting quotes in, but at least one of our vendors came back with a "no problem we can do that", I nearly fell off my chair. So that best quote, to paraphrase. has 2 servers with E5-2630v4 Xeons, 256GB DDR4 RAM, 2 x 300GB 10K 12Gbps SAS drives, Dual PSU, 10Gbe. And then a SAN with 16 x 1.8TB 10K SAS and 4 x 800GB SSD drives, an SSD tiering licence and 10Gbe connectivity for around our target figure, but I expect to beat the crap out of the price to get it to our preferred level. All hardware is Lenovo. That's not much more than what we paid for our Equalogic PS6110x 5 years ago on its own! We haven't made any hard decisions yet, but that might be a goer for us, we are still waiting for some more quotes and pricing to come in though. Hope that helps some? James

Mythbusters reboot...not half bad. They now have a MythDog Spoiler, no Jamie, no Adam

I liked Crusade...

Wuuh? New Babylon 5? I assume as above, new on the channel. If there was new Babylon 5, why don't I know about it and who do I need to kill for not telling me.

LoG so much love for that show, got me through my twenties lol "Perhaps you are a naturally slothful person, sluggish and indolent, a dawdling flaneur, content to waste his life spread eagled on pillows forever indulging himself in the ."

Wow, of course she is, I thought she looked familiar! I raise you "Deathstroke's a druid now?" or "Linda Park is the daughter of a druid, and probably a druid herself?" or "didn't I see that actor on Neighbours"

I think the move to Spike and more money has all been spent on fake blood, jebus there's a lot of killing!! Why knock someone out, when you can slit their throat!

Still a lot of big sweeping shots and plenty of CG, just more rusty pylon sets! My take is that S1 was a build up, introduce the characters and the world, save the Ellcrys, blah, blah. This season is focused so far on stopping the return of the Warlock Lord and the actual Shannara plus sword etc. Not much mention of the previous season really at all. Give it a go, if you can find a slot, they are releasing 2 episodes at a time "to create a more cinematic experience"

The Shannara Chronicles. I grew up with the Terry Brooks books, "adjusting" my chits from the housemaster so I could get them in hardback on release day from the town book shop, also remember getting a copy of the StarTrek:TNG Technical Manual for the NCC 1701-D but can't for the life of me remember what the hell I wrote on the original chit to be able to change it afterwards(different times!). This take on the Shannara books, I think focuses on the book "The Elfstones of Shannara". Second season is now in full swing, and seems a lot more post-apocalyptic than the first season, in fact I don't think the first season touched on that at all, now it's all old power stations and rusty metal everywhere. Quite enjoyable really, if you like that kind of thing.

I did 1 and a half episodes of legion or thereabouts, couldn't engage with it. Love the X-men movies though. Might give it a go

We have concurrent licensing for Horizon View 7 with ESXi 6, for our 1 hundred licenses. You need VMware Horizon View Edition - Concurrent Desktops License Academic x however many, we have a pack of 100 VMware Academic Basis SnS 1 Year No remote desktop licensing needed, at least for our Standard edition, uses its own technology, so no RDS involved. Then you will need SQL and Windows server licenses for your ESXi server(although a Datacenter license will cover all your Windows server instances) ESXi license is included in the View package, as is VMWare Workstation 12 Then for the endpoint, if its thin client, you need a VDA license per unit or if reusing old hardware to repurpose, then the OEM sticker is your VDA license. We also have GRID licencing from Nvidia, as we have 2 M10's in each server for the card, for the licensing, buy the card, useless without license