In this post, we’re going to demonstrate why aligning your disk partitions can be a good idea. For starters, we’re going to go with the default alignment, do a test, then align, and redo the test. But first, in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, this randomly discovered post may be a useful primer. Create the scheme on the disk This command creates a GPT scheme on the drive. Create […]
Aligned versus not aligned Read More »
During a recent install of FreeBSD 9.1 onto a gmirror, it was pointed out that my disk partitions were not aligned. Today, I’ll look at how that affects performance, both before and after alignment. Last night, I installed FreeBSD 9.1 onto a separate HDD, which I’ll use as a floater. I can attach this HDD to any system I need to work on without booting from the main HDD. In attached this HDD
Aligning disk partitions for better throughput Read More »
Late last week I installed FreeBSD 9.1 onto a gmirror, which I created during the install process. I documented it via photographs and comments. Hopefully, the next time I do this, it will be useful to refer to this resource. NOTE that when I did this, the partitions were not aligned properly. See the comments in the above URL for details. I will be covering this in a future post.
Installing FreeBSD 9.1 into a gmirror Read More »
I wrote this some time ago, but never published it. Here we go… Bacula is a fantastic backup solution. It’s open source. It uses a database to keep track of backups. I’ve been writing recently about using ssl-admin as a certificate authority tool. Today, I started using ssl-admin for generating certificates for my backup clients. In this post, I’m using Bacula 5.2.12 and using this reference page as a guide. I started playing
Bacula: TLS Allowed CN Read More »
I’ve realized that I’m going to need some cables inside this box. 4x SATA Power Splitter Adapter Cable – perhaps 2 x $12 each 3ware CBL-SFF8087OCF-10M 1 Unit of 1M Multi-lane Internal (SFF-8087) Serial ATA Breakout Cable – 2 x $20 each
Miscellaneous cables for the server Read More »
After posting the original plan, I’ve made a few changes, highlighted below in bold Here is what I’m thinking of getting: SUPERMICRO MBD-H8SGL-O ATX Server Motherboard : $224.99 AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz 8 x 512KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server : $259.99 Kingston 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1600 Server Memory : 4 x $59.99 = $239.96 PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK III 600W
Designing a new server, part II Read More »
I think I may have to put together a new server. For home use. Here is what I’m thinking of getting: SUPERMICRO MBD-H8SGL-O ATX Server Motherboard : $224.99 AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz 8 x 512KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server : $259.99 Kingston 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1600 Server Memory : 4 x $59.99 = $239.96 PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK III 600W
Designing a new server Read More »
I’m sitting in the The Warden – FreeBSD and Linux Jail Management talk at EuroBSDCon 2012. He has mentioned two things, so far, that give me ideas. Evil ideas. Put each jail in a different ZFS data set – this may be useful for my jails running Bacula regression testing Schedule cron jobs to do snapshots on a regular basis – useful for snapshots, which I’m not really using at all And he’s
Idea from Kris Moore – PC-BSD Read More »
Last night, I found that I had a number of unused ZFS snapshots. I decided to destroy some of them. The first destroy locked up the system. Nagios reported everything was dead. I remotely power cycled the system. After it came back, I noticed that a scrub was in progress. This had not been initiated because of the power cycle. The scrub was a weekly automatic operation which started some hours before my
Destroying some unneeded ZFS snapshots Read More »