#arpnetworks 2015-04-11,Sat

I do a clone every day, and when I'm home, I clone that clone to a drobo
I also use backblaze, which in theory shoves everything of interest into the cloud.

[09:28]

BryceBot

TO THE CLOUD!!!

[09:28]

RandalSchwartz

that's what she said!

[09:28]

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if I have the arp VPN, do I still need to use ssh to tunnel vnc?

[11:39]

apparently yes still
And ugh! the FreeBSD DVDs arp provides don't have a fixit shell!
they're "disc1".
I'll have to figure out what should be mounted instead.

[11:53]

got it. need the dvd1 release, not the disc1 release. :(
support@ request made.
hopefully filled soon because otherwise all our machines are at risk if they ever fail to boot.

[12:07]

brycec

phlux: I use duplicity for my backups :)

[12:18]

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mike-burns

Tarsnap for data, git (and the rcm suite of programs) for dotfiles. But then my git repos are backed up with tarsnap.

[12:50]

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plett

Most of the stuff I want to keep backups of in git and i push to a remote repo when i make changes, but I also use duplicity for backing up home dirs
I don't do whole machine backups any more. I can re-build a machine from an OS installation and either ansible or puppet

[13:10]

brycec

Yeah, it's pretty pointless to backup /bin, /usr, etc. Just a waste of space.

[13:14]

mnathani_

can a raspberry pi be used to control the power (on/off) of a power bar
Ideally, I would like to connect to the pi over network and toggle the switch

[13:23]

brycec

In short, yes.
On its own, no.
But can you toggle an opto-relay from a GPIO? Of course. It's widely documented.

[13:31]

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[13:38]

m0unds

i use crashplan to backup desktop & notebook computers to my nas and to teh klaud. i rsync data from my remote servers to my nas, which also gets backed up to teh klaud
i have some old stuff that i need to keep encrypted and stored in glacier, and some critical stuff encrypted and stored on s3 as well. photos get backed up to the nas -> crashplan and also to smugmug

[13:38]

mnathani_

would you recommend another solution for IP based power toggle?

[13:42]

m0unds

tripplite makes some decent managed power stuff
their isobar surge protection stuff is really good and less expensive than some alternatives
triggering a relay via gpio on an rpi sounds like a fun project (i've done similar to control a fermenter)

[13:43]

brycec

mnathani_: There are probably cheaper ready-made stuff. Eg. Belkin's line of WeMo stuff.

[13:45]

m0unds

yeah, mfi by ubiquiti has some power products too, iirc

[13:45]

brycec

(depending on how "professional" you're looking)

[13:45]

m0unds

https://www.ubnt.com/products/#all/controlautomation
my buddy used mfi stuff and a home built fan box to control the aerator on his septic tank

[13:46]

mnathani_

brycec: nothing too fancy, just needs to have IP connectivity
or an app I guess

[13:47]

brycec

http://www.amazon.com/WeMo-Electronics-Anywhere-Automation-Smartphones/dp/B00BB2MMNE/ $43 USD for what it's worth, wifi, app, ifttt.com integration, etc.

[13:52]

BryceBot

Amazon: "Belkin WeMo Switch, Control Your Electronics From Anywhere with the Home Automation App for Smartphones and Tablets, Wi-Fi Enabled"

[13:52]

brycec

May or may not be the fanciest one or cheapest, but it is aimed to be easy and the like.
(I have 0 experience with any consumer remote power switch, for the record)
Apparently http://www.amazon.com/WeMo-Electronics-Anywhere-Automation-Smartphones/dp/B00EOEDJ9W/ $53USD can also monitor usage

[13:52]

BryceBot

Amazon: "Belkin WeMo Insight Switch, Control Your Electronics and Monitor Energy Usage From Anywhere with the Home Automation App for Smartphones and Tablets, Wi-Fi Enabled"

[13:53]

mnathani_

great
ordered from Amazon

[13:54]

brycec

Cool, good luck :)

[13:55]

mnathani_

brycec: Thanks

[13:55]

brycec

mnathani_: Out of curiosity, what are you controlling?
In my life, I've never seen a need for a remotely controlled power outlet
So I'm curious what need you found.

[13:55]

mnathani_

I have some cisco equipment in my room, hooked up to a single power bar
its for my home lab
I can access it remotely once its on
but it needs to be manually powered on at this point

[13:57]

brycec

And you need to remotely power-toggle it?

[13:57]

mnathani_

yes, since it will be accessed remotely
that or, get someone at home to switch it on

[13:57]

brycec

Ah. You said "home" and I sorta assumed that meant you would be at home with it :p
And leaving it on all the time would obviously be wasteful.

[13:58]

mnathani_

loud more than anything else

[14:00]

brycec

If you're not home to hear it...

[14:01]

mnathani_

being considerate to other residents of the household, I guess :-)

[14:02]

mercutio

i can understand not wanting to have that kind of stuff on at home
while you're home.
what i don't understand is why "server" gear automatically seems to mean not having fan speed adjustment etc in some gear
1u servers are always going to be a little hard to have quiet

[14:07]

brycec

"server" usually means assuming that noise/volume is not an issue. Then you realize you can remove a component that may potentially fail, a fan controller or speed logic, and just let the fan run at full speed.
At least, that was our logic when I worked for a company that built servers. Except the motherboard still had a fan controller anyways and we used that

[14:10]

m0unds

PWM controller or whatever?

[14:12]

mercutio

when i was looking at infiniband switches you can get them "kind of cheap" but "EXTREMELEY NOISY"
and someone said about doing replacements with noctura making a huge difference

[14:12]

brycec

m0unds: yeah the onboard 3- and 4-pin headers :p

[14:12]

mercutio

brycec: i have to use ear plugs in "server rooms"

[14:13]

m0unds

i had a headset i would wear if i had to work in the server room for more than a minute or so

[14:13]

brycec

^ OSHA guidelines dictate the same for any non-brief time spent.

[14:13]

mercutio

if people cared a little more about noise maybe that woldn't be the case

[14:13]

m0unds

shooting muffs, kept them in my bag because my employer refused to furnish them

[14:13]

mercutio

heh

[14:13]

m0unds

now they're in my truck in case i forget to throw my nicer ones in my bag when i go shooting, haha

[14:14]

brycec

We definitely didn't really care about noise complaints. The fact that people would buy them and put them under the receptionist's desk was on them. They bought a "server" and should treat it as such, dammit.

[14:14]

mercutio

brycec: yeh different people have different ideas about servers
and switches
switches can be noisier than servers

[14:14]

m0unds

i think people unfamiliar with that stuff just assume it's like desktop computers on wire racks in a room somewhere

[14:15]

mercutio

buut it's because they do 6000+ rpm on the fans contsntaly often :/

[14:15]

brycec

m0unds: And some are :p (eg MacMiniColo.net)

[14:15]

m0unds

and don't realize how unholy loud it can be w/switchgear, servers, etc all running in a confined space w/air handlers and other shit running

[14:15]

mercutio

well there's extra power use from higher fan speeds too

[14:15]

m0unds

right
frontrangehosting up in denver did it too
and there's some other colo company that does it

[14:15]

brycec

Extraordinarily minimal difference in power usage on those small fans.

[14:16]

mercutio

i think doubule temperature control would be cool
like "internal" temperature control and "external tempeature control
but extenral being fed from IP oir such

[14:16]

brycec

^ Many motherboards can sense inlet and outlet temperature

[14:16]

mercutio

because if you're running at 60c
but the room temp is 40c
running higher fan speeds probably won't even make much diff
brycec: yeah but it may be too "close"

[14:16]

m0unds

ehh, it was alright on microATX formfactor stuff w/ivy bridge intel cpus on it - you tell the BIOS how you have the fans set up and it bases fan speed on that
did a reasonable job w/those boards (intel boards, 3700 cpus)
despite them being tiny and the enclosures being tiny
supplement it w/some sane minimum fan speeds if it's not doing what you want and it works out reasonably well

[14:17]

mercutio

at 40c the cooling in the server room has probably failed, everything tries to save itself :)
which will increase power draw.

[14:21]

m0unds

power draw isn't a big concern if cooling failed, getting cooling working again is, haha

[14:22]

mercutio

yeh it is
but failuure time can be pretty short...
power draw increases heat.
even if servers are idle

[14:22]

m0unds

sure

[14:23]

mercutio

but even buying a few minutes would be a good thing

[14:24]

m0unds

that's why backup cooling exists
i'd rather not grenade hardware for no reason

[14:24]

mercutio

m0unds: yeh sometimes backup can fail at the same time

[14:24]

m0unds

deal with that if it's the case

[14:24]

mercutio

i don't know how common it is, i was reading about failures when i was reading about server room temperatures.
you should deal with that, but if you get 45 minutes instead of 40 minutes
it makes it easier to deal with that.
i think the usual "solution" is to turn off some people
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/01/06/heatwave-cooling-failure-bring-iinet-data-center-down-in-perth/
like that's one example
from what i understand that article minimises the failures that users experienced, and lots of users couldn't authenticate etc.

[14:25]

m0unds

well, that sounds like multiple primary cooling failures

[14:28]

mercutio

yeh

[14:28]

m0unds

if they added "backup cooling" as a future solution

[14:28]

mercutio

but collobrative cooling would improve things a little.

[14:28]

m0unds

i saw iinet and thought of infinity internet up in portland (now easystreet)
had a couple friends who worked there

[14:29]

mercutio

iinet is a huge provider in australia i think
it'd probably be like verizon or somethign in the US

[14:29]

m0unds

yea, different company. just saw the name in the url and thought of infinity

[14:29]

mercutio

i'm curious what'll happen with electronics power draw decreasing.
here adsl/vdsl cabinets all have cooling.
i don't know how redundant they are, but that kind of area may be a better place to start.

[14:31]

m0unds

same here, also catv equipment cabinets

[14:32]

mercutio

as you can hear the cabinets :/

[14:32]

m0unds

pretty loud too

[14:32]

mercutio

they always get grafitti on them.
so there was some initiative to put artwork on them.

[14:32]

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[18:21]

m0unds

i was applying some seed to my lawn and it comes mixed with this fertilizer and bright green shredded fiber stuff to help it to stay put. i found a very unhappy, very green spider in it.
i think she climbed in the bag and couldn't get out

[18:31]

mercutio

haha

[18:32]

bloody hell
so motherboard doesn't like new cpus :/
have to put old cpu in to do bios update
the only "new" cpu i have is in my server
err new old
it's haswell vs haswell refresh

[18:40]

m0unds

bummer

[18:49]

mercutio

i may have to update bios on my server too
i do dhcp bios updates normally, but dhcp is on the server

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[19:32]

brycec

Could be worse... you could have bought a new motherboard and cpu and not have an old cpu to swap in for the bios update :p

[19:33]

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[19:34]

brycec

(Our motherboard supplier silently started shipping boards with an old BIOS, only we didn't know it was an old BIOS or that anything had changed so we thought we had a giant batch of bad boards. Ugh.)

[19:35]

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[19:44]

m0unds

ugh, that's annoying

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mercutio

brycec: so much screwing around
now i found out motherboard has mini displayport instead of displayport
brycec: did they just not post?
i suppose you couldn't tell
i managed to boot the board with old cpu and upgrade bios
now i have to figure out how to boot uefi shell again
(it was easy on the other monitor, this one shows nothing for ages)
and asus are ick
i'm still trying to figure out how to display secure boot

[21:14]

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acf__

"A failed software update caused the heat to rise rapidly in one part of a Microsoft data center, causing an outage of up to 16 hours for Outlook.com, Hotmail, and the Skydrive storage service."

[21:57]

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mercutio

yeah kind of scary

[22:17]

mnathani_

acf__ :do you have a link for that story?

[22:19]

mercutio

i seem to be stuck with samba doing twice as fast write speeds as reads :(
the other way around would be nicer.

[22:22]

brycec

Correct, no post/no boot. We couldn't tell anything. Wasn't until some back and forth with the vendor ("we're using this CPU" "be sure you're using bios version >X" "Of course we are, that's the version you're supposed to be flashing before shipping these" etc)

[22:23]

mercutio

did it have the bios version written on the motherboard?
i thought asus were meant to have nice bios's. it's worse than asrock :(
even asrock z77 is better than the asus z87

[22:24]

brycec

mercutio: As it happens it does have a sticker on the BIOS ROM, but it was coded (eg didn't simply read "V. 1.01")
Eventually we did notice the difference in stickers and it all made sense
And all boiled down to them failing to include the BIOS they were supposed to
(among other slight failures) And a great lesson was learned :p

[22:25]

mercutio

ahh
i had a motherboard rom failure
and i had to get a new rom, and i noticed that my one mentioned the bios version fine.
its' not acutally that hard to change the rom chip
and they sent me a replacement rom
they seem to socket them

[22:27]

brycec

Not many vendors seem to socket them these days
My desktop ASUS boards don't, my Intel boards don't...

[22:28]

mercutio

lots of them do dual bios
oh?
well this was asrock
it seems it may have been intel me getting corrupt

[22:28]

brycec

heh

[22:29]

mercutio

i wonder if asus do dual bios

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acf__

mnathani_: it's from the one mercutio linked earlier

[23:41]

mercutio

the iinet one

[23:42]

acf__

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/01/06/heatwave-cooling-failure-bring-iinet-data-center-down-in-perth/