Re: [BLUG] storage options

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Mark Krenz <mark@slugbug.org> wrote:
>  If you care about your warranty and issues like having a Dell
> consultant visit your site, you might want to think twice about using
> components that you didn't buy from them. They won't support you if you
> use non-certified components.

That's worth mentioning.

If we needed that sort of help from Dell, though, we would probably
not be balking at paying $9,000 for a file server.

We're running Ubuntu Linux on the hardware anyhow, so we wouldn't be
able to get any "tech support" from them.

The only time we use their support is for hardware failure replacement
when things are still under warranty, and even then they like to make
a big deal about how it's a Bad Idea to run Ubuntu and how they won't
be able to help us "when there's a problem".

Never had a Dell guy come visit our site, for consulting or service,
that I know of, and probably never will.

Take care!

Simón

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Re: [BLUG] storage options

Mark Krenz wrote:
>
> Let me suggest to everyone reading this that its really worthwhile to
> learn how to install computer hardware yourself. From the case,
> motherboard, CPU all the way up to the hard drive and installing the OS,
> you will save LOTS of money. And its really not that hard once you learn
> some of the basics. Maybe there should be a BLUG meeting on how this
> works. Anyone putting a workstation together sometime soon?

I know you're referring to higher end stuff, but I build all the
workstations at my little workplace -- 8-10 over the last three years --
with entry level consumer grade components from NewEgg or TigerDirect.
Cost around $250 each. Never had one problem with any of them. <knock wood>

--

Mark Warner
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Re: [BLUG] storage options

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 06:24:11PM GMT, Simón Ruiz [simon.a.ruiz@gmail.com] said the following:
>
> I was able to get the MD1000 with 10 15k 450GB SAS disks plus
> PowerEdge R200 servers (w/memory and processor slightly bumped from
> the default) for about $7,500 a piece, not $3,500.

Ah, that sounds more realistic. Ironically though, A 66% discount
would bring Dell equipment more inline with normal prices.

> It was then quoted to us by our education sales rep at $9,000
> initially, including the server. I sent a second "Request For Quote",
> mentioning we're needing to upgrade two campuses, indicating that
> $18,000 was a little more than we were hoping to spend, and asking her
> if she could get us a deal.
>
> She replied with a quote at about $15,000.

Such a huge discount just reinforces the fact that their stuff is
grossly overpriced. Hard drives that they quote on their site as
costing $600 are actually $150 elsewhere. I've been told by people from
Dell that those drives are specially certified, but they aren't anything
special. If they don't last longer than the same model hard drive
bought someplace else, then they aren't worth 4 times the cost.

Where I work during the day, we bought a large SAN (7 figures) and
bought a bunch of drives for $1500 each. They are just 146GB SAS drives
that you could buy for like $300-$400 off CDW at the time. Dell and EMC
are really good at ripping off large enterprises. Support isn't a
factor in that pricing either because every time we've had someone from
Dell come over, its been at extra cost.

Let me suggest to everyone reading this that its really worthwhile to
learn how to install computer hardware yourself. From the case,
motherboard, CPU all the way up to the hard drive and installing the OS,
you will save LOTS of money. And its really not that hard once you learn
some of the basics. Maybe there should be a BLUG meeting on how this
works. Anyone putting a workstation together sometime soon?

> When I went back to ask to buy some of the drive enclosures so we
> could put some SATA disks into the array (wanted to add a cheaper,
> slower, less redundant backup partition) they informed us that Dell
> does not sell those pieces of plastic and steel that way; that we
> would need to buy the hard disks from them in order to get the little
> box that holds them right for insertion into the array.
>
> As they charge way too much for the hard drives, I went and found out
> I can get those enclosures on eBay and such for $20-$40, and go buy my
> own RAID-level SATA drives from newegg or wherever and save at least
> 50% over the Dell price in some cases.

If you care about your warranty and issues like having a Dell
consultant visit your site, you might want to think twice about using
components that you didn't buy from them. They won't support you if you
use non-certified components.

> P.S. The array seems to be able to be plugged into two separate RAID
> controller cards on two separate servers at the same time. Joe
> mentioned something about sharing the storage across boxes; I didn't
> know if you meant just over the LAN or with something like this or a
> SAN.

Its been a while since I've worked with one of those enclosures, but I
think you can only hook one side (left or right 7 drives) into one
computer and hook the other side into a second computer. But like I
said, its been a while so they might have made them work better for
shared situations. They probably expect you to buy a NAS or SAN if you
want to share RAID groups.

Another thing that annoys me about Dell servers is that their
motherboard revisions are really specific. Even if you have a specific
CPU socket on your motherboard, the motherboard revision (not BIOS) may
not support a newer CPU like quad core or something. They expect you to
buy a whole new motherboard for like $1200. Meanwhile, the Supermicro
servers I use at my business happily support most CPUs I would care to
upgrade to within the same socket category.

Supermicro makes great servers and they are reasonably priced. You
could actually buy a 24 SAS drivebay Supermicro server with plenty of
RAM and 10 450GB SAS drives 3ware RAID controller for less than $8000.
And that would be much more than just a drive enclosure and could be
expanded to 24 drives. And then just run FreeNAS on it as someone else
mentioned.

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/

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Re: [BLUG] storage options

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Mark Krenz <mark@slugbug.org> wrote:
>  May I ask exactly what storage array you bought?  Was it a MD1000?
> A new MD1000 array with 10 15k 400GB SAS disks costs $10,000.

Let me see...yeah.

You're right, I screwed up my figures. Thanks for the note.

I was able to get the MD1000 with 10 15k 450GB SAS disks plus
PowerEdge R200 servers (w/memory and processor slightly bumped from
the default) for about $7,500 a piece, not $3,500.

It's actually the 450GB SAS disks that we got, so after taking 2 out
for hotswapping, we've got (8 * 450 / 2) or 1800 GB of theoretically
super-fast storage space in the pool.

I priced it at somewhere around $10,000 on their site, as you say.

It was then quoted to us by our education sales rep at $9,000
initially, including the server. I sent a second "Request For Quote",
mentioning we're needing to upgrade two campuses, indicating that
$18,000 was a little more than we were hoping to spend, and asking her
if she could get us a deal.

She replied with a quote at about $15,000.

I don't know how much is that we're a school, how much is that we
asked as a crucial sales quota deadline approached, or how much is
that we actually *asked* for a deal, but we managed to get an okay
price on that, overall.

*HOWEVER*

When I went back to ask to buy some of the drive enclosures so we
could put some SATA disks into the array (wanted to add a cheaper,
slower, less redundant backup partition) they informed us that Dell
does not sell those pieces of plastic and steel that way; that we
would need to buy the hard disks from them in order to get the little
box that holds them right for insertion into the array.

As they charge way too much for the hard drives, I went and found out
I can get those enclosures on eBay and such for $20-$40, and go buy my
own RAID-level SATA drives from newegg or wherever and save at least
50% over the Dell price in some cases.

Explaining the economic incentives at play didn't help the sales rep
get me any better of a deal that time, though; in fact, he simply did
not even reply to my asking.

> --
> Mark Krenz

Simón

P.S. The array seems to be able to be plugged into two separate RAID
controller cards on two separate servers at the same time. Joe
mentioned something about sharing the storage across boxes; I didn't
know if you meant just over the LAN or with something like this or a
SAN.

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Re: [BLUG] storage options

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 05:13:17AM GMT, Simón Ruiz [simon.a.ruiz@gmail.com] said the following:
>
> I went to Dell and spec'ed out a brand new external RAID enclosure
> that connects via some PCI-e RAID controller card, with 10 15k RPM SAS
> drives in (the fastest drives available for the array) providing 2TB
> of reasonably redundant (RAID 10 + a couple of hotswaps sitting on
> standby) storage. I'm also hoping for a little bit of a boost during
> read operations, theoretically, from the RAID config.
>
> Oh, and we had to buy a brand new server so we could connect the
> enclosure to something. I just picked the cheapest rack-mount Dell had
> that would connect to that enclosure, and tweaked the config slightly.
>
> Because we caught them at the end of their sales quota time period,
> and because we bought two identical setups, we were able to get them
> for about $3,500 a piece.
>

May I ask exactly what storage array you bought? Was it a MD1000?
A new MD1000 array with 10 15k 400GB SAS disks costs $10,000.

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/

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Re: [BLUG] storage options

I should also add that one downside of UFS as provided by FreeNAS is
that I'd have to give up LVM. Since I plan to run several servers that
would share this same storage it would be nice to put each of these disk
images in their own growable partitions, or at least have this available
as an option.

Joe Auty wrote:
> Lord Drachenblut wrote:
>> On Sunday 27 September 2009 3:37:10 am Joe Auty wrote:
>>> Hey Guys,
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm looking for some perspectives on the storage options available
>>> today, and on the horizon...
>>>
>>>
>>> Specifically, I'm thinking about something that would be a little
>>> handier and more future proof for my servers I run. Specifically, I run
>>> VMWare Server on Linux and several virtual machines all on the same
>>> hardware.
>>>
>>> There are several different variables and technologies at this point:
>>>
>>> - direct attach w. software or hardware RAID
>>>
>>> - file systems such as ZFS and BTRFS and the cool stuff you can do with
>>> them
>>>
>>> - NAS
>>>
>>> - external RAID arrays
>>>
>>> - iSCSI
>>>
>>> - getting higher quality disks such as SCSI and solid state drives
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In a perfect world, here is what I'd like:
>>>
>>>
>>> - A storage device not tethered to my servers so that I can add more
>>> storage as needed without planning for downtime and running dd, and
>>> upgrade server hardware without having to reinvest in storage.
>>>
>>> - Fast I/O suitable for running VMs. There are tricks that can be
>>> employed which will help one get by with SATA, but you still have to be
>>> careful not to do heavy disk operations on the host as to render the
>>> guests unresponsive. This is a nuisance, and of course makes
>>> hypothetically backing up complete VM disk images difficult.
>>>
>>> - Disk redundancy, i.e. some sort of RAID configuration.
>>>
>>> - Some sort of solution somewhere between Cletus the Slackjaw Yokel's
>>> Windows XP box and high level enterprise stuff. I like the idea of
>>> spreading out the I/O demand across several cheap disks, adding more
>>> disk as needed, replacing failed disks as necessary. I don't need crazy
>>> fast I/O, I just need something a little more than a single SATA disk.
>>> So, enterprise level technology is not what I'm after here, just
>>> convenience and decent performance.
>>>
>>> - Something that will be relatively future proof and not cost me a
>>> fortune :)
>>>
>>> - I'm using nearly 250 gig right now so my capacity needs are not
>>> tremendous, but it would cost me a lot more than what I'm paying now to
>>> run within a VPS provider such as Linode or Slicehost, and I'd rather
>>> not get into the position where my costs grow significantly just to add
>>> a modest amount of disk space. My storage needs don't warrant an
>>> expensive SAN such as the ones that are no doubt in use by these
>>> providers, one of my VMs is running Windows, and I like the control I
>>> have now and I like working with my server provider. So, I'm not really
>>> keen on moving my eight servers to VMs provided by one of these
>>> companies
>>>
>>> - A way to backup all of this data (snapshots), preferably via the same
>>> overall design so that I have something I can test with and perhaps even
>>> fail over to in the event of an emergency. I know that offsite
>>> redundancy is the golden egg for many companies, but hey, this is a
>>> perfect world type wishlist! :) I use Amazon S3 for an offsite backup in
>>> addition to my current backup to backup my most important data, but to
>>> keep my costs to a minimum I'd prefer to just stay with rsync to
>>> multiple cheap disks.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm interested in learning more about iSCSI, and am fascinated with
>>> BTRFS and ZFS. Do any of you have any experience with any of this, have
>>> any general recommendations, thoughts, predictions, anything? I don't
>>> need to buy anything tomorrow, I'm just thinking that it would be nice
>>> to think ahead a little.
>>>
>>> It seems like I'm kind of stuck in between not needing to invest heavily
>>> in storage like a big company would, yet I'm pushing the limits of
>>> run-of-the-mill consumer grade direct attach SATA type stuff - the kind
>>> of solution that would be great for using with Time Machine to store
>>> pictures of your kids.
>>>
>>
>> You might try looking into using freenas. it can do alot of the things
>> you
>> are looking for and has support for zfs and iscsi at this point.
>>
>
> Thanks for the idea!
>
> I've looked at FreeNAS in the past, and it is an interesting option and
> seemingly useful to me since I use FreeBSD a lot, but what about the
> hardware end of things? What would host the disks that FreeNAS would
> manage and make available?
>
>
>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> BLUG mailing list
>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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Re: [BLUG] storage options

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 8:44 PM, Joe Auty <joe@netmusician.org> wrote:
> Lord Drachenblut wrote:
>> You might try looking into using freenas.  it can do alot of the things you
>> are looking for and has support for zfs and iscsi at this point.
>
> Thanks for the idea!
>
> I've looked at FreeNAS in the past, and it is an interesting option and
> seemingly useful to me since I use FreeBSD a lot, but what about the
> hardware end of things? What would host the disks that FreeNAS would
> manage and make available?

Well, that really depends on what your standards are/how much you're
willing to pay.

We serve several hundred people at a time, all of their workstation
files (Windows's Desktop, My Documents, ApplicationData and such
folders) accessed directly from one Samba file server. We're feeling a
pretty hard crunch—painful amounts of wait states, file operations
taking too long or failing—so we decided to upgrade.

I went to Dell and spec'ed out a brand new external RAID enclosure
that connects via some PCI-e RAID controller card, with 10 15k RPM SAS
drives in (the fastest drives available for the array) providing 2TB
of reasonably redundant (RAID 10 + a couple of hotswaps sitting on
standby) storage. I'm also hoping for a little bit of a boost during
read operations, theoretically, from the RAID config.

Oh, and we had to buy a brand new server so we could connect the
enclosure to something. I just picked the cheapest rack-mount Dell had
that would connect to that enclosure, and tweaked the config slightly.

Because we caught them at the end of their sales quota time period,
and because we bought two identical setups, we were able to get them
for about $3,500 a piece.

Then, when one of the two (redundant, hotswappable) power supplies was
DOA and I called to get a new one, they seriously insisted on knowing
what O/S I was planning on installing (Ubuntu Linux), "Oh, well, we
can never know what strange problems can happen with that; I really
must suggest you use Red Hat Linux." *ahem* "The 'my power supply is
dead' indicator light is flashing, and the RAID enclosure is not even
connected to the server, which has a blank hard disk. Are you
seriously suggesting this is a software compatibility issue?"

Tune in after we get things setup for how well it works as a solution
to our crunch...

Simón

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Re: [BLUG] storage options

Lord Drachenblut wrote:
> On Sunday 27 September 2009 3:37:10 am Joe Auty wrote:
>> Hey Guys,
>>
>>
>> I'm looking for some perspectives on the storage options available
>> today, and on the horizon...
>>
>>
>> Specifically, I'm thinking about something that would be a little
>> handier and more future proof for my servers I run. Specifically, I run
>> VMWare Server on Linux and several virtual machines all on the same
>> hardware.
>>
>> There are several different variables and technologies at this point:
>>
>> - direct attach w. software or hardware RAID
>>
>> - file systems such as ZFS and BTRFS and the cool stuff you can do with
>> them
>>
>> - NAS
>>
>> - external RAID arrays
>>
>> - iSCSI
>>
>> - getting higher quality disks such as SCSI and solid state drives
>>
>>
>>
>> In a perfect world, here is what I'd like:
>>
>>
>> - A storage device not tethered to my servers so that I can add more
>> storage as needed without planning for downtime and running dd, and
>> upgrade server hardware without having to reinvest in storage.
>>
>> - Fast I/O suitable for running VMs. There are tricks that can be
>> employed which will help one get by with SATA, but you still have to be
>> careful not to do heavy disk operations on the host as to render the
>> guests unresponsive. This is a nuisance, and of course makes
>> hypothetically backing up complete VM disk images difficult.
>>
>> - Disk redundancy, i.e. some sort of RAID configuration.
>>
>> - Some sort of solution somewhere between Cletus the Slackjaw Yokel's
>> Windows XP box and high level enterprise stuff. I like the idea of
>> spreading out the I/O demand across several cheap disks, adding more
>> disk as needed, replacing failed disks as necessary. I don't need crazy
>> fast I/O, I just need something a little more than a single SATA disk.
>> So, enterprise level technology is not what I'm after here, just
>> convenience and decent performance.
>>
>> - Something that will be relatively future proof and not cost me a
>> fortune :)
>>
>> - I'm using nearly 250 gig right now so my capacity needs are not
>> tremendous, but it would cost me a lot more than what I'm paying now to
>> run within a VPS provider such as Linode or Slicehost, and I'd rather
>> not get into the position where my costs grow significantly just to add
>> a modest amount of disk space. My storage needs don't warrant an
>> expensive SAN such as the ones that are no doubt in use by these
>> providers, one of my VMs is running Windows, and I like the control I
>> have now and I like working with my server provider. So, I'm not really
>> keen on moving my eight servers to VMs provided by one of these companies
>>
>> - A way to backup all of this data (snapshots), preferably via the same
>> overall design so that I have something I can test with and perhaps even
>> fail over to in the event of an emergency. I know that offsite
>> redundancy is the golden egg for many companies, but hey, this is a
>> perfect world type wishlist! :) I use Amazon S3 for an offsite backup in
>> addition to my current backup to backup my most important data, but to
>> keep my costs to a minimum I'd prefer to just stay with rsync to
>> multiple cheap disks.
>>
>>
>> I'm interested in learning more about iSCSI, and am fascinated with
>> BTRFS and ZFS. Do any of you have any experience with any of this, have
>> any general recommendations, thoughts, predictions, anything? I don't
>> need to buy anything tomorrow, I'm just thinking that it would be nice
>> to think ahead a little.
>>
>> It seems like I'm kind of stuck in between not needing to invest heavily
>> in storage like a big company would, yet I'm pushing the limits of
>> run-of-the-mill consumer grade direct attach SATA type stuff - the kind
>> of solution that would be great for using with Time Machine to store
>> pictures of your kids.
>>
>
> You might try looking into using freenas. it can do alot of the things you
> are looking for and has support for zfs and iscsi at this point.
>

Thanks for the idea!

I've looked at FreeNAS in the past, and it is an interesting option and
seemingly useful to me since I use FreeBSD a lot, but what about the
hardware end of things? What would host the disks that FreeNAS would
manage and make available?

>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
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Re: [BLUG] storage options

On Sunday 27 September 2009 3:37:10 am Joe Auty wrote:
> Hey Guys,
>
>
> I'm looking for some perspectives on the storage options available
> today, and on the horizon...
>
>
> Specifically, I'm thinking about something that would be a little
> handier and more future proof for my servers I run. Specifically, I run
> VMWare Server on Linux and several virtual machines all on the same
> hardware.
>
> There are several different variables and technologies at this point:
>
> - direct attach w. software or hardware RAID
>
> - file systems such as ZFS and BTRFS and the cool stuff you can do with
> them
>
> - NAS
>
> - external RAID arrays
>
> - iSCSI
>
> - getting higher quality disks such as SCSI and solid state drives
>
>
>
> In a perfect world, here is what I'd like:
>
>
> - A storage device not tethered to my servers so that I can add more
> storage as needed without planning for downtime and running dd, and
> upgrade server hardware without having to reinvest in storage.
>
> - Fast I/O suitable for running VMs. There are tricks that can be
> employed which will help one get by with SATA, but you still have to be
> careful not to do heavy disk operations on the host as to render the
> guests unresponsive. This is a nuisance, and of course makes
> hypothetically backing up complete VM disk images difficult.
>
> - Disk redundancy, i.e. some sort of RAID configuration.
>
> - Some sort of solution somewhere between Cletus the Slackjaw Yokel's
> Windows XP box and high level enterprise stuff. I like the idea of
> spreading out the I/O demand across several cheap disks, adding more
> disk as needed, replacing failed disks as necessary. I don't need crazy
> fast I/O, I just need something a little more than a single SATA disk.
> So, enterprise level technology is not what I'm after here, just
> convenience and decent performance.
>
> - Something that will be relatively future proof and not cost me a
> fortune :)
>
> - I'm using nearly 250 gig right now so my capacity needs are not
> tremendous, but it would cost me a lot more than what I'm paying now to
> run within a VPS provider such as Linode or Slicehost, and I'd rather
> not get into the position where my costs grow significantly just to add
> a modest amount of disk space. My storage needs don't warrant an
> expensive SAN such as the ones that are no doubt in use by these
> providers, one of my VMs is running Windows, and I like the control I
> have now and I like working with my server provider. So, I'm not really
> keen on moving my eight servers to VMs provided by one of these companies
>
> - A way to backup all of this data (snapshots), preferably via the same
> overall design so that I have something I can test with and perhaps even
> fail over to in the event of an emergency. I know that offsite
> redundancy is the golden egg for many companies, but hey, this is a
> perfect world type wishlist! :) I use Amazon S3 for an offsite backup in
> addition to my current backup to backup my most important data, but to
> keep my costs to a minimum I'd prefer to just stay with rsync to
> multiple cheap disks.
>
>
> I'm interested in learning more about iSCSI, and am fascinated with
> BTRFS and ZFS. Do any of you have any experience with any of this, have
> any general recommendations, thoughts, predictions, anything? I don't
> need to buy anything tomorrow, I'm just thinking that it would be nice
> to think ahead a little.
>
> It seems like I'm kind of stuck in between not needing to invest heavily
> in storage like a big company would, yet I'm pushing the limits of
> run-of-the-mill consumer grade direct attach SATA type stuff - the kind
> of solution that would be great for using with Time Machine to store
> pictures of your kids.
>

You might try looking into using freenas. it can do alot of the things you
are looking for and has support for zfs and iscsi at this point.
--
PGP e-mail is welcome! Get my 1024 bit signature key from:
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x00D1EABB>

[BLUG] storage options

Hey Guys,

I'm looking for some perspectives on the storage options available
today, and on the horizon...

Specifically, I'm thinking about something that would be a little
handier and more future proof for my servers I run. Specifically, I run
VMWare Server on Linux and several virtual machines all on the same
hardware.

There are several different variables and technologies at this point:

- direct attach w. software or hardware RAID

- file systems such as ZFS and BTRFS and the cool stuff you can do with
them

- NAS

- external RAID arrays

- iSCSI

- getting higher quality disks such as SCSI and solid state drives

In a perfect world, here is what I'd like:

- A storage device not tethered to my servers so that I can add more
storage as needed without planning for downtime and running dd, and
upgrade server hardware without having to reinvest in storage.

- Fast I/O suitable for running VMs. There are tricks that can be
employed which will help one get by with SATA, but you still have to be
careful not to do heavy disk operations on the host as to render the
guests unresponsive. This is a nuisance, and of course makes
hypothetically backing up complete VM disk images difficult.

- Disk redundancy, i.e. some sort of RAID configuration.

- Some sort of solution somewhere between Cletus the Slackjaw Yokel's
Windows XP box and high level enterprise stuff. I like the idea of
spreading out the I/O demand across several cheap disks, adding more
disk as needed, replacing failed disks as necessary. I don't need crazy
fast I/O, I just need something a little more than a single SATA disk.
So, enterprise level technology is not what I'm after here, just
convenience and decent performance.

- Something that will be relatively future proof and not cost me a
fortune :)

- I'm using nearly 250 gig right now so my capacity needs are not
tremendous, but it would cost me a lot more than what I'm paying now to
run within a VPS provider such as Linode or Slicehost, and I'd rather
not get into the position where my costs grow significantly just to add
a modest amount of disk space. My storage needs don't warrant an
expensive SAN such as the ones that are no doubt in use by these
providers, one of my VMs is running Windows, and I like the control I
have now and I like working with my server provider. So, I'm not really
keen on moving my eight servers to VMs provided by one of these companies

- A way to backup all of this data (snapshots), preferably via the same
overall design so that I have something I can test with and perhaps even
fail over to in the event of an emergency. I know that offsite
redundancy is the golden egg for many companies, but hey, this is a
perfect world type wishlist! :) I use Amazon S3 for an offsite backup in
addition to my current backup to backup my most important data, but to
keep my costs to a minimum I'd prefer to just stay with rsync to
multiple cheap disks.

I'm interested in learning more about iSCSI, and am fascinated with
BTRFS and ZFS. Do any of you have any experience with any of this, have
any general recommendations, thoughts, predictions, anything? I don't
need to buy anything tomorrow, I'm just thinking that it would be nice
to think ahead a little.

It seems like I'm kind of stuck in between not needing to invest heavily
in storage like a big company would, yet I'm pushing the limits of
run-of-the-mill consumer grade direct attach SATA type stuff - the kind
of solution that would be great for using with Time Machine to store
pictures of your kids.

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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[BLUG] 3.5"/5.25" drive brackets

Off topic, but people on here are likely to have some. I used to have
like 20 pairs of 3.5" to 5.25" drive brackets and they would just get in
the way, now I can't find any and I need some. Does anyone have a pair
of them or preferably 3 pairs? Please e-mail me directly. Thanks.

Mark

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] IPtables (don't forget IPv6!)

If you're using iptables by hand, you need to either (1) block all IPv6
traffic, or (2) perform similar blocks on the IPv6 side.

I'm a big fan of using other products to make it more painless to manage
firewalls. (There's a potential replacement to iptables *and* iptables6,
and if/when things change I don't want to deal with it.)

I've been just disabling IPv6, but that was purely a short-term solution
until the firewall product I use supported IPv6.

My product of choice is currently Shorewall. It has the advantage of
also running on my Linksys wireless router. Current versions support
both IPv4 and IPv6.

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 02:56:08PM +0000, Mark Krenz wrote:
>
> I've never done any tests to see what is most efficient, but if you
> have a large number of drops for a specific port, it might be useful to
> send a single port to its own chain, then deal with the drops for more
> specific hosts and networks in that chain. So if you had a seperate
> chain for port 80, packets destined for port 25 or whatever would skip
> over checking all the port 80 rules.
>
> So something like this:
>
>
> /sbin/iptables -N port80
> /sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 64.1.2.3/32 -d 0/0 -j DROP
> /sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 24.5.6.0/24 -d 0/0 -j DROP
> /sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -d 0/0 -j DROP
> /sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 0/0 -d 0/0 -j ACCEPT
>
> /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 --dport 80 -j port80
> /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 --dport 25 -j ACCEPT
> /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 -j DROP
>
>
>
> So I think now that port 25 packets will only have to check 2 rules
> instead of 5 because they won't have to go through the chain of port 80
> rules. Now I'm curious to see how much of a difference it makes. I'll
> have to test it.
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 02:23:10PM GMT, Scott Blaydes [sblaydes@gmail.com] said the following:
> > Okay, I am starting to get into some really long DROP lists in my
> > IPtables config and was wondering what others on the list thought
> > about best placement of the DROPs vs ACCEPTs. Do you have your drops
> > early in the file so that they blocks IPs get denied as quickly as
> > possible or do you have your allows earlier in the file?
> >
> > Is one way really more efficient than the other?
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Scott Blaydes

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Re: [BLUG] IPtables

I've never done any tests to see what is most efficient, but if you
have a large number of drops for a specific port, it might be useful to
send a single port to its own chain, then deal with the drops for more
specific hosts and networks in that chain. So if you had a seperate
chain for port 80, packets destined for port 25 or whatever would skip
over checking all the port 80 rules.

So something like this:

/sbin/iptables -N port80
/sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 64.1.2.3/32 -d 0/0 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 24.5.6.0/24 -d 0/0 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -d 0/0 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A port80 -s 0/0 -d 0/0 -j ACCEPT

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 --dport 80 -j port80
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 --dport 25 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 0/0 -d 0/0 -j DROP

So I think now that port 25 packets will only have to check 2 rules
instead of 5 because they won't have to go through the chain of port 80
rules. Now I'm curious to see how much of a difference it makes. I'll
have to test it.

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 02:23:10PM GMT, Scott Blaydes [sblaydes@gmail.com] said the following:
> Okay, I am starting to get into some really long DROP lists in my
> IPtables config and was wondering what others on the list thought
> about best placement of the DROPs vs ACCEPTs. Do you have your drops
> early in the file so that they blocks IPs get denied as quickly as
> possible or do you have your allows earlier in the file?
>
> Is one way really more efficient than the other?
>
> Thank you,
> Scott Blaydes
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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[BLUG] IPtables

Okay, I am starting to get into some really long DROP lists in my
IPtables config and was wondering what others on the list thought
about best placement of the DROPs vs ACCEPTs. Do you have your drops
early in the file so that they blocks IPs get denied as quickly as
possible or do you have your allows earlier in the file?

Is one way really more efficient than the other?

Thank you,
Scott Blaydes
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Re: [BLUG] tracking downloads of a single file

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 10:46:04AM -0400, Ben Shewmaker wrote:
> Second, what stats program(s) do others on the list use?* I like Google
> Analytics, but I'm curious if there are other notable programs that run
> locally vs. a tracking service in the cloud.* Any good open source ones?*
> I've been using Analog and Google so far. . .

Just an FYI...

I run my system with cookies disabled for Google Analytics. It's like
opting out of the Google Analytics program. Don't trust the numbers.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that runs things like that. Plus, you're
talking about downloads of specific files. `wget` and the like will
ignore cookies.

Cheers,
Steven Black

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Re: [BLUG] tracking downloads of a single file

Let me prelude this by saying that I normally use webalizer, awstats
and even some web analysis software I wrote myself, but num-utils is
also another method I use when I want some quick flexibility and for
general command line use.

One of the reasons why I wrote the num-utils set of programs was for
doing special analytics like this when other programs weren't easy to
use for the same thing. Particularly, I found it crazy that the
standard set of unix tools didn't have a program for just summing up
numbers easily and for "greping numerically" instead of lexically.

http://suso.suso.org/xulu/Num-utils

Its also available in some distributions, like Debian, Ubuntu and
Gentoo. I haven't maintained it in a while though so if you find a bug,
let me know.

Here are some examples of how you could use the programs in real world
situations. All these use Apache common log format.

1) A simple example to start with is where you want to know what the
total number of bytes downloaded from your website. The bytes
column is the 10th column.

cat access_log | awk {'print $10'} | numsum

2) Now let's say you want to only add up the total bytes consumed by
people downloading large files, like over 1MB

cat access_log | awk {'print $10'} | numgrep /1048576../ | numsum

3) Now the same thing, but only files that are mp3 files.

cat access_log | grep "\.mp3 HTTP/1\." | awk {'print $10'} | numgrep /1048576../ | numsum

The HTTP/1\. is part of the expression just to help ensure that only
the right lines are matched.

4) You can also use for loops to do things like display request traffic by day.

for day in `numrange /01..31/` ; do echo -n "$day: " ; grep " \[$day/Aug/2009:" access_log.2009.08 \
| wc -l ; done

Or the same, but for byte traffic per day.

for day in `numrange /01..31/` ; do echo -n "$day: " ; grep " \[$day/Aug/2009:" access_log.2009.08 \
| awk {'print $10'} | numsum ; done

You can also use the seq program to generate the range, but numrange
has the added benefit that it auto zeropads numbers for you, which
would be important for the regex used to match the date used in the logs.

Note: I wrote all these out without testing them so I may have goofed on
one of the examples.

Some of these things can be done with the stats software that is out
there, but this method will give you more flexibility if you need to
do something unique. If you could email me what exactly you are trying
to find or what problem you are facing that requires this information, I
may be able to explain how to get the results.

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 02:46:04PM GMT, Ben Shewmaker [ben@shewbox.org] said the following:
> Two part question really:
>
> One, is there an easy way to track downloads of individual files on my
> website? I have a few files in particular I would like stats on, and I
> don't seem to have a way to do that at the moment. (I'm a bit clueless on
> this subject actually)
>
> Second, what stats program(s) do others on the list use? I like Google
> Analytics, but I'm curious if there are other notable programs that run
> locally vs. a tracking service in the cloud. Any good open source ones?
> I've been using Analog and Google so far. . .
>
> Ben

> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] tracking downloads of a single file

On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 10:46 -0400, Ben Shewmaker wrote:
> Two part question really:
>
> One, is there an easy way to track downloads of individual files on my
> website? I have a few files in particular I would like stats on, and
> I don't seem to have a way to do that at the moment. (I'm a bit
> clueless on this subject actually)
>

Sure, do this:

gunzip -fc <whatever your log file(s) are called> | grep "whatever the
filename you're tracking is" | wc -l

> Second, what stats program(s) do others on the list use? I like
> Google Analytics, but I'm curious if there are other notable programs
> that run locally vs. a tracking service in the cloud. Any good open
> source ones? I've been using Analog and Google so far. . .
>

We're using awstats here. In another job we used webalyzer. I like
webalyzer better. Of course, grep + wc is really handy for ad-hoc
stuff.

Brian

> Ben
> _______________________________________________
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> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

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Re: [BLUG] tracking downloads of a single file

We used to use awstats (pretty sure that is what it was called) to do
our own local tracking. We used it in combo with Google Analytics.

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Ben Shewmaker<ben@shewbox.org> wrote:
> Two part question really:
>
> One, is there an easy way to track downloads of individual files on my
> website?  I have a few files in particular I would like stats on, and I
> don't seem to have a way to do that at the moment. (I'm a bit clueless on
> this subject actually)
>
> Second, what stats program(s) do others on the list use?  I like Google
> Analytics, but I'm curious if there are other notable programs that run
> locally vs. a tracking service in the cloud.  Any good open source ones?
> I've been using Analog and Google so far. . .
>
> Ben
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>

--
Kirk Gleason

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[BLUG] tracking downloads of a single file

Two part question really:

One, is there an easy way to track downloads of individual files on my website?  I have a few files in particular I would like stats on, and I don't seem to have a way to do that at the moment. (I'm a bit clueless on this subject actually)

Second, what stats program(s) do others on the list use?  I like Google Analytics, but I'm curious if there are other notable programs that run locally vs. a tracking service in the cloud.  Any good open source ones?  I've been using Analog and Google so far. . .

Ben

[BLUG] *Free "Art of Community" Book*

Hello, all!

As one of the Indiana LoCo's Local Contacts, I've received some news
that could be really cool and interesting for some of you:

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu's Community Manager and probable holder of a
Guiness record for the most uses of the word "community" in a single
sentence, has written a book on managing them for O'Reilly. I don't
know of anyone in the free world more qualified to do so.

He also got the publisher to license it under a CC-BY-SA-NC license
which means we all have access to his work for free!

It is available for online perusal at
<http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596805357>, or see below for a
PDF link.

If you prefer a text copy, O'Reilly of course sells them for about $40.

I've include a couple of local LUG lists on this announcement, as
well, as I know the book is not intended to be Ubuntu-specific, or
even Ubuntu-centric. It's not even meant to be about computer, or
technical communities. It's about communities in general; from LoCos
to knitting circles.

I hope this finds you all having a wonderful day!

Simón

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jono Bacon <jono@ubuntu.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:05 PM
Subject: Re: *Free Art of Community Book For LoCo Team*
To: Simón Ruiz <simon.a.ruiz@gmail.com>

Thanks for your request for a copy of The Art of Community. You can
download the full book at:

   http://www.artofcommunityonline.org/downloads/jonobacon-theartofcommunity-1ed.pdf

Feel free to share this with other people: it is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike Non-Commercial license. You
can read more about what you can do with this license at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

I really hope the book helps to advise and provide ideas and
inspiration to make your LoCo team even more awesome! It is teams like
yours that inspire and motivate the global Ubuntu community and I am
passionate to help you make the most of your group. Keep up the great
work!

I would ask one final favour: could you please find a few moments to
go to Amazon and the O'Reily website
(http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596156718/) and review the book. Feel
free to leave the same review on both Amazon and the O'Reilly page.
Positive reviews really help spread the word about the book and
encourage people to read it. If there is no Amazon for your country,
please just leave the review on
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596156718/ - Thanks!

   Jono

--
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org
www.identi.ca/jonobacon www.twitter.com/jonobacon

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