Hey folks,

I'm donating a few older servers to charity and want to wipe the arrays. I usually go to DBAN for this (as the drives are donated too), but it is failing to run on all these servers - so gave up and using Ubuntu boot disk instead which is running perfectly...

So, one of the servers has 6TB of 7.2k SAS drives. I'd usually run this where I cant get DBAN to work:

sudo shred -n 1 -v -z /dev/sda

That will fill the whole drive with random data fully, (one pass), and then fill with zeros (second pass). I think that's correct anyway.

The data its self isn't really that important or a worry to the company if found. But we should make a decent attempt in wiping it. So I just want to do a reasonable wipe to make a 'quick effort' rather than 'best effort'... and we don't want to wait days and days for the process to finish. Being a 6TB array (in raid 0), it would take a long time... So, how secure is running this instead?

sudo shred -n 0 -v -z /dev/sda

That would do no first random pass, and will just fill the drive with zeros right?
Is that pretty much cleaned? Or would getting the data bac be trivial?

I imagine zeros, rather than random and then zeros, would be much faster - and still pretty secure wipe - but want to check as no experience on the recovery side of what is possible...

So, use -n 1, or -n 0 would be fine?

Best,
Jim

@tim_g said in HyperV Partitioning:

@tim_g said in HyperV Partitioning:

@jimmy9008 said in HyperV Partitioning:

@dustinb3403 said in HyperV Partitioning:

@joel said in HyperV Partitioning:

This is how their tech team have requested it be configured.

Their tech team doesn't understand the benefits of OBR10 then and why splitting arrays like this was never a good thing.

As for the partitioning, this is something you'd have to do at the raid controller, assuming it support this.

2x1 in R1 = 1TB usable
4x2 in R10 = 4TB usable
Total = 5TB usable.

OBR10, all disks would drop to the smallest size available, so those 2TB can only be 1TB, right?
So in OBR10, that's now really only 6 x 1 TB, which is 3 TB usable.

Perhaps they understand OBR10, but can only use their disks they have, and need more than 3TB.

Splitting is not a good thing, but if that's all they have, well... its all they have.

You would instead never have purchased the 1TB drive, and had gotten two more 2TB drives to make a 6-drive RAID10 for a total of 6TB usable. 2TB spinning rust is pretty close the same cost as 1TB.

To further expand on this, you would, when installing HyperV Server, create your partitions then. A 60GB C partition, and the D partition for the remaining space.

You missed my point.

@dustinb3403 said in HyperV Partitioning:

@joel said in HyperV Partitioning:

This is how their tech team have requested it be configured.

Their tech team doesn't understand the benefits of OBR10 then and why splitting arrays like this was never a good thing.

As for the partitioning, this is something you'd have to do at the raid controller, assuming it support this.

2x1 in R1 = 1TB usable
4x2 in R10 = 4TB usable
Total = 5TB usable.

OBR10, all disks would drop to the smallest size available, so those 2TB can only be 1TB, right?
So in OBR10, that's now really only 6 x 1 TB, which is 3 TB usable.

Perhaps they understand OBR10, but can only use their disks they have, and need more than 3TB.

Splitting is not a good thing, but if that's all they have, well... its all they have.

Anybody heard of the FODMAP diet? GF is starting that this week. She has read the books and has to go FODMAP free for two months before introducing certain foods, problem is... they don't say how to go entirely FODMAP free! Any ideas?

Hi folks,

I've got a new leased line 1000/1000Mbps. What are some good methods to test the line speed?

Initially, I ran a quick speed test on speedtest.net, which selected a 'server based on ping', and for 750 Mbps DL, and 790 Mbps UL, which is significantly lower that 1000Mbps - but I expect that speedtest.net is not really an accurate test.

How should I test this?

Best,
Jim

@scottalanmiller said in What Is RAID 0? SAMIT Video:

@jimmy9008 said in What Is RAID 0? SAMIT Video:

I like the video; I'm not sure how helpful it is though.

Well, if you already know RAID 0. But lots of people don't, and I want to be complete.

Yes, it's good to be complete. If anybody asked me, I'd just pointing them here - probably.

I have a Motorola Moto GP, I think. It does the job, and when I kill it it's cheap to replace.

I like the video; I'm not sure how helpful it is though.

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

@dashrender All I can say at this point is "you have no idea what I'm dealing with at this company in terms of management perspective and expectation". I could spend another several paragraphs trying to defend myself and justify all the stuff I'm dealing with here, but I'm quite certain that none of you guys care to waste your time reading it, and it would actually just create more fuel for the fire that's already burning.

Cue the mangolassi elitist guillotine that lobs off Shuey's head

Wasn't being disrespectful... was just highlighting that deliberation costs money.

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

I have an update on this thread, and more questions, lol. First of all, I got a new quote from xByte:

• Dell PowerEdge R730 Server 3.5" chassis with up to 8 drive bays (1)
• Intel E5-2620v3 2.4GHz/15M/1866MHz 6-Core 85W (1)
• Dell PE R730 Heat Sink (1)
• Dell 8GB DDR4 (2)
• PERC H730 Mini Mono Controller 1GB NV Cache (RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60) (1)
• 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
• Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card (1)
• 4 PCIe Slots, 3 x8 and 1 x16 (1)
• iDRAC8 Enterprise (1)
• Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails (1)
• Dell 750W Power Supply (2)
• Windows Server 2016 Standard 2-Core OLP (8)
• 5 Year Dell NBD Onsite Warranty (1)

Total with tax and shipping: $6360

My boss had me ask the xByte rep about the hard drive brand/model, and this is what the rep said:

"We have several to choose from, but the one we have most of are cobranded Dell/Toshiba hard drives. The Toshiba model # is MG04SCA60EE."

My boss then had me contact CDW to ask for a quote from them. Here's what I told the CDW rep:

"We're looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server to act as a storage server. We were initially thinking of an R730, but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:

• A 8-12 bay (3.5") chassis
• A single Xeon 6-core CPU with heatsink
• 12GB or 16GB of RAM
• One PERC H710P RAID controller with 1GB NV Cache (or equivalent)
• At least eight 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS drives
• One Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb NIC (or equivalent)
• iDRAC7 Enterprise
• Dell "sliding ready rails"
• 2x 750W PSUs
• Windows Server 2016
• 3-5 Year Warranty

Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"

Here's what he replied back with:

"I have the pricing back and am over 10K with this config. I know you said the budget was 6k.
Where can we cut back? The 8 6tb drives are almost 6k alone."

I told him we got a quote from another vendor and said that the CDW quote was considerably higher.

The CDW rep said:

"Is it apple to apples or did xbyte use third party memory and drives? We are dell's largest partner so it should not be a large difference if truly apples to apples."

I'm not sure what to think of all this right now....

How much time have you put in to this now, including your higher ups time? At some point, you have to just move on and buy the thing...

@scottalanmiller

Very interesting video. I see such corruption all over the place too. Not just non-profit, but charities too... it is such a shame.

I know one charity where a member on the board of directors for the charity also owns an MSP. That board use his MSP as the 'IT Company' for the charity. The board will never change that, and yes, his MSP charges far more for work at the charity than to normal business. As he is 'in power', it wont change - and the work they do is usually below standard.

@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

Now that you are in the UK, that's huge and that's why xByte doesn't make sense. They have to ship there. In the US, the price difference is huge and we get so much more from xByte.

We need a flag on ML saying country of origin...

Well, US or UK, these are probably coming from China or something anyway. So, both have shipping costs.

Would be great to see a third quote for somebody US based for that exact same xByte quote above... Just to see how much extra we are being charge over here compared to you...

Still, over here that 30k or so adds up, so when I say it can make sense to go to Dell at certain times of the year, it's based on my knowledge of the UK market. Most of the year, that Dell quite would be much higher and xByte probably makes sense. But their end of quarters, for us at least, can be 30k less than xByte.

A month before that Dell quite, their price was around double. It's because it was close to their end of year and their sales want to nail targets.

I haven't looked at this for a while, but, how much is the cost to just purchase the domain name, and point that to an instance in AWS, or Azure, or VLTR etc? May cost more, but i'd look in to it...

Just manage the instance yourself...

@dashrender

@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

Get the best price you can, within reasonable effort - it's a fair expectation from most companies.

Scott bills out at $250+/hr. If it takes him 2 hours to get a quote from Dell they are already $500 in the whole compared to xByte (where he can get a quote from their website in mins).

But it's really hard to believe that you could get an equal price, let alone superior price directly from Dell than you could from xByte, but in the interest of fairness, please post your quote so we can see them side by side.

I have my Dell price, but the xByte quote is gone. I don't keep 'losing' quotes. I asked xByte for a new quote earlier this week so we can compare. They couldn't match the same kit anymore, so quoted based on 'as close as they could get'. This order was a while back, so I guess they cant get the same kit anymore?

Anyway, this is based on the 'closest kit xByte could do to the T630s', which happens to be R730xd's according to them (which they said should cost less than the T630's anyway). That's based on their advice in the week. So, converted to GBP before VAT, xByte come in at £18,984.89 per box. That's £75,939.56 for the 4 servers. xByte say they cannot sell 2016 Datacenter in the UK, so this is total price excluding any OS.

Dell come in at £17,261.56 per box ex VAT, and for the order of 4 servers comes to £69,046.24. This includes Windows Server 2016 Datacentre on each server too.

So, for £6,893.32 less spend, you get the same SSDs, RAM, Networking, and Cores as xByte... but with 2016 Datacentre OS on each box too...

What would 4 x datacenter be on volume licensing? A quick search says on VL for 2016 Datacenter is £764.99 per 2 core pack ex vat [though, could be looking at the wrong part]. But... based on that 32 packs (to license to total number of cores = 64) is £24,479.68 ex VAT. That, plus the hardware cost difference is £31,373 less ex vat- If you ordered through Dell... for entirely new kit, not 'like new'.
31k is worth a few emails to 'haggle' IMO.

[Company info removed etc. The Dell order also contains a couple of switch too, so need to take that off the total etc.]

@black3dynamite said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

You can just export the firewall rules from your physical box and then import it to your virtual machine.

Using group policy also makes managing the firewall rules a lot easier too.

I'd like to see if they are different before making any changes. As I understand, disk2vhd should not have changed these... so, I should need to change the rule. They should have been as they were on the physical machine... right? So will compare them.

@dashrender said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@jimmy9008 said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@marcinozga said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@jimmy9008 said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@marcinozga said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

Reboot the server, that usually fixes network profile assignment.

That's not the issue. Like I said, the profile sees its self as domain. NOT private/public. Its domain.

I would still reboot. It's Windows after all.

I shall tonight and try. We are just running it at the moment with domain firewall off, so SSMS works for the devs. Will turn domain on, restart, and see tonight... but even so, it is domain network as identified.

Did you look at the firewall setting themselves to see if they are set as desired?

Not yet. Its not been looked at. I will turn the old physical box on to compare. (Obviously disconnected from the network entirely).

Not sure why Disk2VHD could have 'broke' the domain firewall rules.

@marcinozga said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@jimmy9008 said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@marcinozga said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

Reboot the server, that usually fixes network profile assignment.

That's not the issue. Like I said, the profile sees its self as domain. NOT private/public. Its domain.

I would still reboot. It's Windows after all.

I shall tonight and try. We are just running it at the moment with domain firewall off, so SSMS works for the devs. Will turn domain on, restart, and see tonight... but even so, it is domain network as identified.

@marcinozga said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

Reboot the server, that usually fixes network profile assignment.

That's not the issue. Like I said, the profile sees its self as domain. NOT private/public. Its domain.

@jaredbusch said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

@dashrender said in Disk2VHD/SQLServer:

It seems weird to me that the driver would have anything to do with it, but I do agree that the Network Profile is like different - i.e. The server thinks it's on a public network now instead of a domain or private network, so the firewall settings changed to match the new network profile.

Why would this be weird? Every time you change the network card you get new adapters. That is how windows has always worked.

I see, but... the new adapter (inc drivers) are still joined to the same LAN. The connection identified as domain connection. So, the firewall set of rules under 'domain' would still apply right? Regardless of what adapter is used...

The network adapter of the VM is joined to the domain network, so its not seeing its self as public/private. Its seeing its self as domain, which is it and was. Same network.

Its a rough direction though, so thanks
Edit - to add 'not'