blog.masker.net

Kids at Frankenmuth Fire Muster Today

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:40:34 -0400

Kids at Frankenmuth Fire Muster Today

Kids at the Frankenmuth Fire Muster Today

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:12:00 -0400

Kids at the Frankenmuth Fire Muster Today

Anyone else see something seriously wrong with this?

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:29:08 -0400

Anyone else see something seriously wrong with this?

Chickens playing Hollywood Squares

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:38:02 -0400

Chickens playing Hollywood Squares

Today was so hot we let the ducklings have their first swim.

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:16:51 -0400

Today was so hot we let the ducklings have their first swim.

Bay City Fireworks tonight

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 01:23:34 -0400

Bay City Fireworks tonight

A voicemail from Samuel.

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:03:02 -0400

A voicemail from Samuel.

Bye Bye NIC Teaming

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:31:00 -0400

One of the coolest and, in my opinion, most undersold features of Cisco UCS is the ability to enable fabric failover for a vNIC.

In UCS, vNICs are virtual interfaces that are created and presented to a blade. The host will see these virtual interfaces instead of the underlying hardware itself. When you create a vNIC, you choose to create it on either fabric A or B and there is an option to enable failover.

The most significant problem I have experienced in the past with redundant servers is with NIC teaming. The norm for this is to run an Intel or Broadcom driver to configure two interfaces as either active/active or active/passive and trust the driver in the operating system to detect a failure and begin transmitting on the redundant NIC. This is great in concept, but in practice is not so simple. The NIC vendors cannot assume much about the upstream network gear and usually need to handle failover in a way that keeps the switching infrastructure in the dark. Their methods to detect and signal failover are often proprietary and, in my experience, buggy. It is not uncommon for us to take down a network component that should be redundant for maintenance only to see a few servers drop off the network because their teaming drivers failed to work properly.

With fabric failover the operating system sees one NIC, a scenario that operating systems and drivers have been able to successfully handle for years. When a failure occurs it is handled the opposite of NIC teaming, the NIC hardware and switching infrastructure handle the failover and the operating system is kept in the dark. It is very fast. In our tests with UCS in end-host mode it was about the order of magnitude of VMotion with only a single missed ping. When the failure is resolved the vNIC moves back to its primary fabric and is often undetected in a ping test. Very cool!

From what I understand the fabric failover functionality is available in all initial NIC options for UCS but only on Cisco Palo adapters in the second generations with other vendors planning to add the functionality back in later releases. For now Cisco Palo seems the most flexible option because you get fabric failover as well as the ability to create as many vNICs as you’re likely to require.

Bye bye NIC teaming..

Icky pond leeches

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:44:51 -0400

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Icky pond leeches

Two kids & a sterile yuppie Toyota?! They can’t...

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:59:15 -0400

Two kids & a sterile yuppie Toyota?! They can’t approach my swagger..

Me: Where did you learn to tie your shoes?

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:02:39 -0400

Me: Where did you learn to tie your shoes?

Bethany: Liberty

Me: She taught you that?

Bethany: I just watched her tied her shoes and then I saw what she did and then I knowed it.

Having one of those days…

Mon, 17 May 2010 16:22:24 -0400

Having one of those days…

This probably deserves a Pulitzer. The original caption: Liam...

Tue, 11 May 2010 09:51:00 -0400

This probably deserves a Pulitzer. The original caption:

Liam E. McGee, Chairman, President and CEO of The Hartford Financial Services Group applauds during the opening bell ceremonies at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

The caption tastefully omits the obvious which is that the guy looks like he has red horns growing out of his head. Closer observation reveals the horns actually belong to a mural on the wall behind him.

Source: [http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/Photos-of-the-Day/2010/Photos-of-the-Day-05-10/(photo)/2]

Received notice today that one of my banks (the “Failed Institution”) was closed and...

Mon, 10 May 2010 20:31:25 -0400

Received notice today that one of my banks (the “Failed Institution”) was closed and that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the “FDIC”) was named as Receiver (the “Receiver”) [sic - I’m not kidding.. they seriously shortened ‘Receiver’ to ‘Receiver’ for the rest of the document] and has arranged for the transfer of my insured deposit(s) (“deposits”) at the Failed Institution to another insured depository institution (“the New Institution”). The letter continued, “This arrangement should minimize any inconvenience the closing of the Failed Institution may cause you.”

Well, that is nice. After all why should the failure of my bank inconvenience me?

if you drive a car I’ll tax the street;if you try to sit...

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:30:22 -0400

if you drive a car I’ll tax the street;if you try to sit I’ll tax your seat;if you get cold I’ll tax the heat

I must learn to fiddle..

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:55:16 -0400

I must learn to fiddle..

Evidence of iChat in iPhone 4.0: This is a screenshot of the...

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:09:30 -0400

Evidence of iChat in iPhone 4.0: This is a screenshot of the iStat app running on my iPhone. Process id 74 was not in version 3.1.3 and not discussed in Apple’s dog & pony…

iPhone 4.0 w00t!

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:03:37 -0400

iPhone 4.0 w00t!

Autumn brought home some company. :-)

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 01:40:57 -0400

Autumn brought home some company. :-)

"Openness is really a survivor technique. It’s being open to the idea that you are wrong, and..."

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:43:01 -0400

“Openness is really a survivor technique. It’s being open to the idea that you are wrong, and that other people probably have some good ideas.”

- Evan Williams