Day: 3 November 2005

Poker Loss

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Yesterday at Brian’s request I got a last minute game of hold-um setup. We did it at my place. We had a good turn out. I think 8 showed by the time we were done. I lost $40. I have never lost when we don’t play tourniment. I broke even, or won but never flat out lost all my money I played with. It felt weird. it was also weird not being able to leave in shame since it was my apartment. It wasn’t that bad actually, but I would have liked to play a bit more.

We all want to get together more regularly, but who knows who will take it upon themselves to schedule it. Even with the loss I had a good time.

Best Way To Send A Large File?

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Do you know the best way to send a large file? Lets say a gig or bigger for argument sake? The answer may surprise you. Someone once told me they heard a CEO of a big bandwidth company ask that question. The answer wasn’t some whizzing technology. It was sneakernet. Don’t get the reference? Take the file and walk it wherever you need it to go. Part of our operations tasks is couriering around drives with updated data between offices. It is cheaper to do that then send over the internet a 100 gigs of data. I sometimes find it funny we do it, but it makes sense. With many servers of the same hardware configuration we can also build servers and send the drives to their intended location and plug them into a different shell. Old idea, but it never ceases to amaze me how simple and effective it can be.

Crazy the things you think about when your mind isn’t preoccupied with something!

ESX Server?

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I have praised VMWare’s products for some time on this blog. As things look now, I will continue to do so. I have used their workstation product for almost 2 years. I have used GSX server for about a year. Now comes ESX server. It looks awesome. I have a project that requires allot of new hardware to be built. ESX server looks like an good alternative to server sprawl. Instead of building dozens of servers, the same solution done virtually can be done with a few (not many) ESX servers. The cost benefit is real. I ran some figures over the weekend and it can save us a nice amount of money by going virtual. Then there are the saving space, and energy issues. And the flexibility we get by having a virtual setup. I am really excited about what we can do.

I have been trying out ESX on a test box we setup (reminds me I have a VM building right now that probably needs some click next help). The install was quick. I now have to read the dozen or so white papers spread across my desk (my computer desktop and physical desk). This software solves problems I didn’t even think about until I got to reading about the solutions. Multi vlan support is nice, as well as NIC teaming. I have allot of reading and testing to do in the short amount of time I have until we have to deploy the solution. I don’t think have been this excited about a technology since Call Manager. More info as I play (i mean test).

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