7/30/2014
7/14/2014
Minimizing last gen Dell server power consumption
I got my hands on a used Dell cloud chassis with 4x nodes with 2xQC Intel Xeon CPUs each and 24G ram on each, for total of 96G.
Initially, when first time booting up it consumed 1050-1200W out of the wall. That's insane!
Fans were screaming like hurricane etc.
After a little bit of fiddling, slotting the nodes out and back in again, it stabilized to 690W under 100% CPU load finally. This is still way too much.
No power saving setting in BIOS seemed to help at all. Linux speedstepping was a bit erratic as well.
Took out the 2nd cpu was in my use those are not needed and slotted out half of the ram as well which was dedicated to the 2nd cpu and finally down to 320W under load, measured from the wall!
Now that is sweet: 320W for 4xXeon servers with 12G ECC Ram on each :)
Initially, when first time booting up it consumed 1050-1200W out of the wall. That's insane!
Fans were screaming like hurricane etc.
After a little bit of fiddling, slotting the nodes out and back in again, it stabilized to 690W under 100% CPU load finally. This is still way too much.
No power saving setting in BIOS seemed to help at all. Linux speedstepping was a bit erratic as well.
Took out the 2nd cpu was in my use those are not needed and slotted out half of the ram as well which was dedicated to the 2nd cpu and finally down to 320W under load, measured from the wall!
Now that is sweet: 320W for 4xXeon servers with 12G ECC Ram on each :)
7/10/2014
making network cables
Got some gear in and needed custom length network cables, since i hadnt made any cables for over a decade i had to get new reel, plugs, pliers etc.
On to making cables, i recalled it being super simple, but somehow after hours i had 0 working cables - WTF?! always some issues.
I recall it being so easy that i made my first cables even without checking up how to make them, and on first attempt for a long run. Wierd, when did it become this hard?
For a while, i used way too long cables, but then i checked out youtube that i better make good cables and stumbled upon this funny tek syndicate tutorial video:
On to making cables, i recalled it being super simple, but somehow after hours i had 0 working cables - WTF?! always some issues.
I recall it being so easy that i made my first cables even without checking up how to make them, and on first attempt for a long run. Wierd, when did it become this hard?
For a while, i used way too long cables, but then i checked out youtube that i better make good cables and stumbled upon this funny tek syndicate tutorial video:
7/03/2014
Cogent, Verizon, Comcast. Get your act together - NOW!
Cogent, Verizon and Comcast - Get your damn act together now for the sake of users!
Cogent is a brilliant disruptive force in the networking industry - they aim to have the best pricing around, and aim constantly to make better offers for their customers, hence their network has grown really fast.
Verizon and Comcast are the big bad telcos in the states who want to control everything. They all have a peering agreement between each other.
Thing is, Cogent has a lot of customers who use tons of bandwidth as their Mbps rates are generally the lowest. In today's market as low as around 0,45€/Mbps! (4500€ for 10Gig link)
Hence, Cogent is the choice for parties who move a lot of data, such as Netflix.
Verizon and Comcast are telcos, they have their network extending for the last mile and they too have vast backbone networks to connect all the metropolitan areas together, all the counties and states.
Cogent doesn't offer connections to the end user, they focus on datacenters, backbone networking, connecting different datacenters, networks and telcos together.
For more than a year Verizon and Comcast has been refusing to upgrade the peering with Cogent because they are such a disruptive force and moves so much traffic, Cogent gets the big data customers which Verizon and Comcast are unable to reach.
Verizon and Comcast have the eyeballs, Cogent have the providers, until lately Cogent has been starting to get the eyeballs as well from other countries smaller telcos getting their transit agreement.
We cannot know what precisely is going behind the curtains, but my bet is that Verizon and Comcast would like to charge Cogent for access to their eyeballs, and hence refusing to upgrade the peering.
On grassroots levels it's also been suspected that Verizon and Comcast throttle traffic from various Cogent sources, and some of it has been on the news, comcast refusing to upgrade to fix congestion to force netflix into interconnection deal.
At the end of the day, it's all users who need traffic between verizon and cogent, or comcast and cogent who suffers. My guess is that the traffic is mostly one sided, most traffic flows from cogent network to verizon and comcast, since that is the nature.
Cogent has a vastly "upstream" biased network, while Comcast and Verizon offering the last mile has vastly "downstream" biased network - or so i would assume.
However, Cogent is scoring more and more local ISPs in other countries than the states - so we might see that change eventually.
Cogent is a brilliant disruptive force in the networking industry - they aim to have the best pricing around, and aim constantly to make better offers for their customers, hence their network has grown really fast.
Verizon and Comcast are the big bad telcos in the states who want to control everything. They all have a peering agreement between each other.
Thing is, Cogent has a lot of customers who use tons of bandwidth as their Mbps rates are generally the lowest. In today's market as low as around 0,45€/Mbps! (4500€ for 10Gig link)
Hence, Cogent is the choice for parties who move a lot of data, such as Netflix.
Verizon and Comcast are telcos, they have their network extending for the last mile and they too have vast backbone networks to connect all the metropolitan areas together, all the counties and states.
Cogent doesn't offer connections to the end user, they focus on datacenters, backbone networking, connecting different datacenters, networks and telcos together.
For more than a year Verizon and Comcast has been refusing to upgrade the peering with Cogent because they are such a disruptive force and moves so much traffic, Cogent gets the big data customers which Verizon and Comcast are unable to reach.
Verizon and Comcast have the eyeballs, Cogent have the providers, until lately Cogent has been starting to get the eyeballs as well from other countries smaller telcos getting their transit agreement.
We cannot know what precisely is going behind the curtains, but my bet is that Verizon and Comcast would like to charge Cogent for access to their eyeballs, and hence refusing to upgrade the peering.
On grassroots levels it's also been suspected that Verizon and Comcast throttle traffic from various Cogent sources, and some of it has been on the news, comcast refusing to upgrade to fix congestion to force netflix into interconnection deal.
At the end of the day, it's all users who need traffic between verizon and cogent, or comcast and cogent who suffers. My guess is that the traffic is mostly one sided, most traffic flows from cogent network to verizon and comcast, since that is the nature.
Cogent has a vastly "upstream" biased network, while Comcast and Verizon offering the last mile has vastly "downstream" biased network - or so i would assume.
However, Cogent is scoring more and more local ISPs in other countries than the states - so we might see that change eventually.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)