|
|
While trying to set up a bare-metal hypervisor, before settling on XCP, for the new server, I tried a number of configurations.
VMWare ESXi, which I believe I would still recommend as a first try, has problems with unbalanced memory, so if you aren’t willing to put out the money to properly balance your nodes skip it.
Oracle VM seems like a really great package but there are a couple things to watch out for. The base system is unable to work with NFS loopbacks, that is an NFS share hosted and mounted on the same machine. If you were thinking of doing this, don’t. Use iSCSI instead.
Also, you need to install Oracle VM Manager on some computer. You can run it in a VM but you need an external VM to set this up in the first place and it takes some resources. Alternatively, you can install it on the Oracle VM Server base system. There are some guides for doing this. I found this one to be especially good: http://www.pythian.com/news/30197/installing-oracle-vm-manager-3-0-3-under-dom0-host-or-how-to-save-resources-on-your-sandbox/ But, ultimately I was unable to get the system to work, it frequently crashed often resulting in database corruption (it might be that I was using Oracle XE instead of SE or EE).
My recommendation is to stay away from Oracle VM.
So far XCP has been a great system, albeit not very well documented (XenServer has good documentation that is mostly applicable, but there are a few differences). I will be adding some guides on working with XCP on this site soon.
Update: For ultimate control and easy installability in complicated disk setups, it seems that deploying Xen on Debian is the way to go.
In light of Shiden being down, I decided it would be a good time to move the site over to a new server.
Tyan Thunder K8S S2880
2 AMD Opteron™ 248 Processors
4GB PC3200 ECC Registered DDR RAM
3GB PC2700 ECC Registered DDR RAM
160GB IDE Hard Drive
Corsair CX430 V2
The host OS, Debian 6.0.4 “squeeze”, is running Xen 4.0
The guest OS is what I like to call a PoSNMar stack.
PHP 5.3 through php-fpm with APC 3.1
openSUSE 12.2
Nginx 1.2
MariaDB 5.5
So far the server seems very fast, but the php-fpm tends to overuse memory. I’m still trying to track down the memory leak, most likely just need to set a lower max requests.
Shiden has been having some problems the last couple months.
So far I have replaced the CPU and graphics card, but the problem always seems to come back.
Finally, I have decided to RMA the mother board.
It is at ASUS right now being repaired and hopefully when it gets back everything will work fine.
I do a lot of media sharing from Shiden, my desktop/server, to my XBOX360 and Shoki, my laptop. Both computers run Windows 7 Enterprise which makes things somewhat simple. Never-the-less, there are a few essential tools and tips which make nearly flawless media sharing a possibility.
The core of sharing is creating a VPN to which all sharing computers must be part of (note this is not possible for the XBOX360, so it must be on the same network as one of the computers). There are many ways to do this, but I find LogMeIn Hamachi to be the easiest and it does an excellent job.
Once all the computers are on the same network/VPN, a variety of options open up. Windows Media Player can share its libraries which allows sharing of music, videos, and pictures. But I find it doesn’t do such a great job of videos.
For videos and recorded TV Windows Media Center is a must. Sharing to the XBOX360 is as simple as setting it up as a media extender. However, other computers cannot be set up as media extenders. But we can get around this using file sharing and register tricks. You can find a great guide here.
Now, this works great for a lot of things, but it may be inconvenient or impossible to set this if you just want to show a mate a quick video. For this TVersity is a lifesaver. It doesn’t work for recorded TV (wtv format) but it has a really nice interface that can be accessed from anywhere with a web browser.
So a while ago I dyed my hair purple. I finally got around to taking proper pictures so here goes.
The first time I did it I used Clairol Basic White Normal Strength bleach, and Clairol Pure White 10 volume developer. My hair came out this crazy red auburn color. Apparently my hair is actually really dark red!
When I dyed it purple it came out really bad, no one could tell it was purple. So I asked Eryka how long I would have to wait again and she said I could do it right away and gave me some tips (she’s a pro).
So a few days later I bleached again with Clairol Basic White Normal Strength bleach, and Clairol Pure White 30 volume developer. It took about an hour and twenty minutes to get it to the right color.
Then I dyed it with N’Rage demi-permanent Plum Purple. About a month later it looks like this.
I’ve gotten tons of comments about it, including a couple that came up to me after class that “just had to tell [me] that I know how to dye [my] hair properly.”
On the recommendation of Chris from MOAP I have switched registrars to omnis.com. They give me near full control over DNS records so that I can have unlimited subdomains. Unfortunately, in the move I’ve lost my mail servers. So Shiden is now running one. However, because of downtime Shiden has, I have decided to minimize the use of the domain mail servers.
So I was avoiding the cold, while waiting for the mall shuttle to come, in the Coop, chilling in the manga aisle of course, when I picked up this cute little title called Absolute Boyfriend. I read like two chapters and was totally hooked. Everyone should read this manga!
I ended up reading scanlations cause of the hours I was reading it, but the translation wasn’t very good so I recommend you go to your favorite manga store and buy it (or read it there). Here is a sneak peak (my favorite moment).
So, Bapa from moap, who doesn’t shut up about catgirls, was being annoying when I was trying to get him to read Absolute Boyfriend, which you all should read, and going on and on about Touhou fanart.
Naturally, I wanted to see the actual manga, because, while artbooks are nice, we all know it’s about the story. But what’s this? Touhou isn’t a manga, it is a series of games. Well we will just have to check these out (all ~16 of them). Hmm bullet hell, bullet hell, bullet hell, best fighting game in the world, bullet he… wait what was that? Best fighting game in the world? Yes that’s right. Touhou 10.5 (and expansion 12.3) are the best fighting games in the world (they are even Peace approved). You should check them out here.
I bought a 25″ TV today for 20USD and it caused me to make my audio video setup even crazier than it was. Here is a diagram just to show you the insanity.
|
|
