Category: Technology

General articles on technology

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Mining Pool Recommendation

Not a lot of time to post at the moment due to a busy work schedule and several life changes.

I do want to take a quick moment and give a shout-out to Jason Hughes (aka wizkid057) over at Eligius. Eligius, maintained by wizkid057, is a 0% fee Bitcoin mining pool which is completely anonymous and provides solid, reliable infrastructure to support the pool user base. Wizkid057 is quick to support pool users via the BitcoinTalk forums.

If you are looking for a primary pool or a secondary pool for your mining rig/s, check out Eligius!

 

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Dell OpenManage Command Line

Dell’s OpenManage product consists of a number of network management and systems management applications which are made available via a secure, web-based dashboard. The dashboard is usually located a http://host.domain.net:1311.

A number of technical senarios such as restrictive firewall configurations or server level scripts may raise the need for Dell Open Manage (DOM) commands to be initiated from the command line. This short articles serves to outline some of the commands available and their use.

There are five main command line modules available for Dell OpenManage:

Command Used For Component Of
omreport Read hardware settings and state information OpenManage Server Administrator
omconfig Set hardware options like BIOS settings OpenManage Server Administrator
racadm Read or set configuration of the Dell Remote Access Card OpenManage Deployment Toolkit
syscfg Read or set BIOS options OpenManage Deployment Toolkit
raidcfg Read or set options for the RAID controller OpenManage Deployment Toolkit

Each of these commands can be initialized from the bash shell (Linux) or command line (Windows) in the same way any other system application can be ran.

An example is outlined below:

[root@server ~]# omreport chassis temps
Temperature Probes Information

————————————
Main System Chassis Temperatures: Ok
————————————

Index                     : 0
Status                    : Ok
Probe Name                : PROC Temp
Reading                   : 48.0 C
Minimum Warning Threshold : 10.0 C
Maximum Warning Threshold : 120.0 C
Minimum Failure Threshold : 5.0 C
Maximum Failure Threshold : 125.0 C
</snip>

Other command line examples are available at: http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/OpenManage_command_line_interface and instructions on install Dell OpenManage for Linux are available in my blog here.

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Asterisk – “I’m sorry an error has occurred”

I recently experienced an issue with Asterisk 1.8 and the voice mail module. If a voice mail is recorded and is less than 6 seconds a non-descript error message will be played:

“I’m sorry an error has occurred”

The cause is a default 5 second voice mail restriction within Asterisk. The solution is to edit: /etc/asterisk/vm_general.inc and edit the following variables:

; Asterisk post 1.6.2 options the minmessage and maxmessage are deprecated in favor of these
; which are per user settable also:
maxsecs=600                     ; max length of vm message
minsecs=1                       ; Minimum length of a voicemail message in seconds

Save the file then restart the amportal (# amportal restart)

Note that this will set the maximum length of a voice mail to 10 minutes and the minimum length to 1 second.

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Recommended Data Center Temperature & Humidity

Monitoring the environment conditions in a computer room or data center is critical to ensuring uptime and system reliability. A report from the Gartner Group in late 2003 estimated that the average hourly cost of downtime for a computer network at that time was $42,000 (1,260,000 baht). In the year 2011, it has likely gone up dramatically. At these high costs, even companies with 99.9% up-time lose hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in unplanned downtime. Maintaining recommended temperature and humidity levels in the data center can reduce unplanned downtime caused by environment conditions and save companies thousands or even millions of dollars per year.

Recommended Computer Room Temperature

Operating expensive IT computer equipment for extended periods of time at high temperatures greatly reduces reliability, longevity of components and will likely cause unplanned downtime. Maintaining an ambient temperature range of 68° to 75°F (20° to 24°C) is optimal for system reliability. This temperature range provides a safe buffer for equipment to operate in the event of air conditioning or HVAC equipment failure while making it easier to maintain a safe relative humidity level.

It is a generally agreed upon standard in the computer industry that expensive IT equipment should not be operated in a computer room or data center where the ambient room temperature has exceeded 85°F (30°C). Continue reading “Recommended Data Center Temperature & Humidity”

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Windows 7 & Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Released

Microsoft released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 to the masses yesterday, February 22nd.

Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is a set of updates and fixes for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 that addresses feedback from Microsoft customers (in addition to the improvements that are delivered to users through Windows Update). In addition to including previously released updates, SP1 focuses on specific reliability and performance issues, support for new types of hardware, and support for a few emerging technology standards. Note that although SP1 is not intended to be a vehicle for releasing new features, some existing features do gain enhanced functionality through SP1.

Notable new features include:

RemoteFX – Ever use Remote Desktop to connect to another machine virtually over a LAN? You’ve probably noticed that the experience you get across a network pales in comparison to what you get locally, with features like Windows Aero, full-motion video, and 3D graphics all off limits. RemoteFX will lift those barriers.

Dynamic Memory – According to Microsoft, dynamic memory “allows customers to achieve increased density when they’re consolidating physical servers into a virtual realm, providing them with predictable performance and linear scalability.” Translated: IT administrators can dice up the physical memory on a machine, like a server, and dole it out to many different virtual machines on the fly. Continue reading “Windows 7 & Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Released”