jake's blog

This may very well be the best new feature of Outlook 2013 - it should hopefully prevent people from forgetting to attach attachments to emails. Here's how it works - you can try it for yourself! Type up an email and include the words "have attached a file" or something similar and don't actually attach anything. Then click send - and you get a nice reminder stating that you may have forgotten to attach a file.

Brilliant!

Recently, I logged in to my LogMeIn account to provide some "remote support" to my parents when I noticed a nice error message stating that You will soon have to pay for more than 10 computers - the free version will be limited to 10 computers only.

I was able to remove a few computers that had either been replaced or that I was no longer actively managing...but I know of several companies that use the "Free" version to provide remote support - this will probably not go over too well with them.

FreeNAS Build: Part 1 - Turn on a Power Supply without a Motherboard

After doing much research, I've decided to move forward with my FreeNAS build for my home lab\storage. I will be storing VMware datastores via NFS and tons of files via CIFS. The system will be configured (for now) as follows:

• HP DL360G5
• 2x Dual-Core Xeon 3.0GHz
• 32GB RAM
• 4 1Gb NICs
• IBM ServeRAID M1015 flashed to an LSI-92118i
• HP SAS Expander
• Habey ESC-2122C for 12 additional 3.5" drives

The 12 bay 'storage shelf' has already been arrived and reviewed here.

This configuration will put the SAS expander in the storage shelf - so the next question: how to power it?

The HP SAS card only gets power from the PCI-e interface; there is no data connection. So all I need is a powered PCI-e x8 slot - one option is to use a cheap motherboard to power a slot, but never boot into an OS. Another option is having the SAS expander in the actual PC - in my case the DL360...this will not work since I am out of slots (used by the 2nd NIC and LSI SAS card). So with this build, I'll be using a 2 slot, 1U backplane (PE-2SD1-R10) available here from OrbitMicro.

The only problem with these backplanes is that they do not have a direct means of turning on the power supply - and keeping it on. There are again, a few options - the most common is to jumper the ground and power-on pins - it should be noted that the power button and reset button pins don't do anything (that I can tell). By jumpering the power-on pin to ground, the power supply is permanently powered on - thus making the external hard switch on the PSU the power on switch. I didn't like this idea - so I built a circuit based on a 2 coil latching relay to allow the front power button to control the power supply. 

Using the 5 volt standby to actuate the 2 coils in the relay - the 2 pin lead is for the built in power button on the chassis and the 3 pin lead connects the ground, +5VSB, and power-on from the backplane.

Comcast has been touting a new "feature" to try to keep up with Verizon FiOS - it is all over radio ads and TV commercials...they have 'The fastest In-Home WiFi'! Way to go, Comcast - let's make a bogus claim, not back it up and confuse customers while you're at it! First let's compare the most common Internet speeds from both providers:

• Comcast: 50Mbps down, 10Mbps up - $75 per month
• FiOS: 50Mbps down, 20Mbps up - $75 per month; includes digital voice phone service

So Comcast falls behind there. Next lets address the WiFi claim as noted here: http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/nations-fastest-internet-provider-now-provides-fastest-in-home_wifi

Clearly, the Comcast gear has a maximum data rate around 150Mbps, while the Verizon data rate maxes out around 85Mbps. So for the 50Mbps down that most Comcast customers are using, the 'Fastest in-home WiFi' is getting you.....absolutely nothing. Well - you can move files between computers on your network faster on Comcast...but if you're doing that, you probably know enough to use your own wireless access point

It also doesn't help that the fastest speed tier from Comcast (~300Mbps) is not available in all areas. And if you have that, none of the above wireless gateways will do you any good.

It should also be noted that any 10/100 adapters will limit that 300Mbps speed - so my point: If you are going to buy (need) a speed tier that exceeds 100Mbps, you're likely smart enough to use your own gear.

Thanks, but no thanks, Comcast. I'll stick with my FiOS fiber-to-the-house connection.

I've been testing FreeNAS lately - connecting ESX hosts via NFS for virtual machine storage. Being POSIX compliant, ZFS must abide by any calls made with the o_sync flag set meaning essentially that all disk activity must be written to stable storage before success is returned. This includes most commonly databases, file server operations and most importantly NFS. This means that the ZIL (ZFS intent log) will be used as a special place on disk in the pool to temporarily write data to from RAM - in its default configuration the ZIL is comprised of blocks from your zpool.

There are 2 ways to improve performance for NFS workloads - especially intensive ones such as VMware:

1. Use an SSD (or mirrored pair of SSDs - especially if you're not at ZFS v28) as a dedicated log device
2. Disable the ZIL *Not recommended - can cause data corruption

To prove that the ZIL is being used excessively, you can temporarily disable it to see if performance improves. See the screenshot below from the VCenter console - datastore write latency for my VMs was averaging 9-11ms which is not great. The arrow indicates the point at which the ZIL was disabled:

While it is not a good idea to disable the ZIL, it clearly shows that it is being strained. Once disabled, the new average latency was 0-1ms and the systems were much more responsive.

The command to disable the ZIL is:

zfs set sync=disabled tank/dataset

This was done for testing\demonstration only. To re-enable the ZIL back to its default configuration run this command:

zfs set sync=standard tank/dataset

For the final FreeNAS, a pair of SSDs will be used for the ZIL.

I have been testing lots of storage software lately - since a NetApp Filer is overkill for a home lab environment, I'm sticking with other software based storage. The goal has always been to serve storage for two things - Fast storage for an ESX cluster and lots of storage to share over the network with CIFS.

The first iteration was a DL380G5 with a p800 card connected via external SAS to an MSA50. The biggest problem with this setup was simply that the MSA50 was WAY TOO LOUD for a home environment, and there is no real way to quiet it down. The next problem is also that the DL380G5 is also somewhat loud, and it only has 8 SFF bays. Long story short, I decided to build a white box disk shelf - and that's where the Habey ESC-2122C Chassis comes in.

The item can be found here at Newegg. It is a 2U chassis with 12 hot-swap SAS\SATA LFF slots, 4 80mm fans, and the backplane is connected with 3 SFF-8087 ports (not 2 like Habey and Newegg report). The plan is to use an HP SAS Expander in the chassis to provide SAS connectivity to the controller server. Here's an overview:

What you see is what you get - a bag of screws...and that is all. Looks like rails are available (here's one that I found) though I'm not sure if I'll use them or not as it will be sitting on top in the rack...we'll see. Here's the backplane and fan connector board:

Here's the 3 (not two) SAS backplane connections and 4-pin molex connectors for HDD power. Please note that there are SIX (6) power connectors on the backplane, plus ONE (1) for the fans for a total of (7) - needless to say I will be repurposing some SATA power for this.

Update: Note that each pair of molex power adapters is for redundant power supplies - so for a single PSU, only one of each pair will be needed to power each row of four (4) drives.

There are 2 places on either end of the fan-cutout plate for cables to pass to the front of the chassis - it is going to be difficult to get all the cables up front because the space is fairly small. Also the back of the SAS backplane connectors are fairly close to the fan cages and the bottom one is fairly difficult to get to without taking the fan out.

A little blurry but here's the front of the unit:

And one of the HDD trays:

Also note: the trays are compatible with 2.5" drives - note the 4 screw holes in the tray.

The fans are meant to be "hot-swap" as well, but being that the only thing generating much heat is the SAS Expander, air flow is not a high priority here. That said, I am removing the stock fans and replacing them with much quieter units.

Here's the fan out of the slot - there are two options if you want to replace the fans:

1. Use the existing 3-pin fan headers on the control board directly to new fans - this bypasses the 4-pin 'hot plug' connector on the fan cage.
2. Re-pin the 'hot plug' connector and keep the existing cable connections to the control board.

I opted for option 1 - the pins from the new fans did not fit into the 4-pin connector on the fan cage - also note that only 3 of the 4 pins are used. Here's a close up of the fan cage:

There's a small blue clip that holds the white connector in place - it snaps off. The 4 fan screws also have small spacers between the fan and the cage.

All in all it seems to be a decent chassis for the money. More details once I start building the controller and get the expander mounted.

I have long been interested in getting into Home Automation ever since X10 came out many moons ago. Having watched, researched, and debated several of the major HA vendors and products, I finally decided to take the plunge. The choice was not easy - products based on UPB or Z-Wave seemed to provide a higher reliability than others...but they also came with a higher price tag. X10 essentially died off...Insteon has a great range of products, and is looking to move everything to Dual-Band - or sending signals both wirelessly and over power line. I was concerned about the reliability of the protocol as well as the failure rate of the products...but both seem to have improved over time (according to other reviews and forums).

So the first small purchase was a Dual-Band OutletLinc Dimmer and an 8-scene RemoteLinc 2. This would provide some insight into the functionality of the dimmers available as well as the range and functionality of a controller...and being that I've been replacing all of the contractor-grade standard outlets with Decora TR outlets, it was an easy choice.

Note that the top row of letters is already rubbed off...not too big of a deal. Also, DON'T throw away the outlet key for the controlled outlet - I had read some people did this then complained about the product...it is clearly marked and its purpose makes sense. Besides - how often do you unplug\plug in a lamp, anyway?

RemoteLinc 2:

Pros:

• Small, hand-held
• Charges with micro-USB cable (same as our cellular phones, tablet, other common devices...charger NOT included)
• Single charge has lasted 1 month +
• Operates the OutletLinc as a standard switch or a dimmer

Cons:

• Range is fair...granted for the size of the device, it sort of makes sense. Plus the fact that there is only ONE device on the Insteon network - and there's a big dresser between where the remote usually is and the OutletLinc...
• Initial programming was a bit tricky. Again, this is my first Insteon device, so this is to be expected. I should have put it in 4-scene mode to begin with.

Dual-Band OutletLinc Dimmer

Pros:

• Looks like a normal outlet, Decora style, TR...
• LED indicates status can be turned off
• Button on front operates switched outlet
• Fit into electrical box with no issue

Cons:

• Only one outlet is controlled

Conclusion:

Overall we're pretty satisfied - the dimming is VERY smooth. The initial programming would have been much easier if I had put the RemoteLinc into 4-Scene mode to begin with - this essentially turns each row into an on and off button instead of trying to toggle on a single button...I'm not really 100% sure I understand the standard 8-Scene mode - nor do I think it really makes sense with just 1 controlled device.

I think the range issue will be resolved if there were one more Dual-Band device in the room - which is the plan.

I recently storage-VMotion'd all of the lab home lab VMs over to FreeNAS based storage. It is an NFS share based on 4 10K 146G spindles configured for RAIDZ - deduplication is turned off, instead opting for lzjb compression. The physical specs of the FreeNAS host are the same as in this post.

Keep in mind that there are several other VMs banging away at these 4 disks. That said, 75% write\25% read (75% random) is considerably lower for this configuration. Again - this is not the final configuration - no SSDs for ZIL, RAIDZ (RAID5) instead of a mirror (RAID1), and more RAM.

200 IOPS isn't terrible, but it's not great. It's plenty for my home lab (for now).

Just to compare and show that the L1ARC (RAM) cache is doing its job, I configured a 100% read specification (75% random).

2355 read IOPS is pretty good for these disks - but you can clearly see that it is pretty much all coming out of the RAM cache:

[root@filer] /usr/local/www/freenasUI/tools# ./arcstat.py -f read,hits,miss,hit%,arcsz 1

More testing to continue...

New from Insteon - Micro Modules! At just under 2" x 2" x .7" - they will pretty much fit anywhere!

These could very easily fit behind any switch in a box, or pretty much anywhere.

Last line is the best part: Every Micro Module is Dual-Band! This is game changing! Plus the sense wires for existing switches...can't wait to get a hold of a few of these.

More info is available HERE at SmartHome

I should probably call this one "FreeNAS Performance: The REAL Test"...my previous performance tests were completely unfair to FreeNAS and I'd like to show what it can really do. So - what was wrong with the first tests?

• FreeNAS needs RAM for ZFS to do what it does best
• A single spindle just isn't a good test for ZFS
• Didn't do my homework on FreeNAS or ZFS
• FreeNAS needs RAM - more than 3GB
• ...

So here's the new test setup - granted this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, I feel it's enough to show that FreeNAS can and will perform.

The VMware environment is running on HP DL360G5s, as is the FreeNAS appliance. While the VMware box in this test is more beefy than the previous tests, keep in mind that it is also loaded with several other running VMs during the tests. FreeNAS Specs:

• Dual Intel Xeon 5160
• 16GB RAM
• 3x 10K SAS Raid0 (stripe)
• P400 with 256MB BBWC

I did a single Windows 7 VM install in 7-8 minutes. Boot\reboot times are excellent - sub 20 seconds...overall, performance of the VM feels great. IOMeter shows it:

This is not the same ~50 IOPS from the previous test...this is 30 times the IOPS! This is the same IOMeter test setup as before, and it is pulling 1500+ IOPS from the FreeNAS NFS datastore. The FreeNAS appliance has allocated ~3-5.5GB once this VM was up and running and during the test...clearly 3GB in the previous test was not nearly enough. Further, I do not have deduplication turned on - instead I am using compression on the ZFS Dataset. In Windows, I am showing 8.6GB space used and only using 4.2GB on the NFS share:

Additionally, I was able to copy a file to a CIFS share (all over a 1Gb network) and saw 110-130MBps.

The testing continues in Part 3!