Today I finished an article on my experience with Parallels (4.0) vs VMware Fusion (2.0.1) using my day to day applications + Outlook 2007.
You can find this article on my Geek and I blog.
I haven’t posted recently as I have been busy with other things.
So far, I have migrated 14 physical servers onto the new platform and have images started (and some ready) for migration of another 6 servers in the next 4 days.
Initial savings realized so far is approximately 12A of 110V power. I will post more when I get a few more things done.
On a different tangent, I am working on VMware certification, starting with the VSP (VMware Sales Professional - required) and then onto VCP (VMware Certified Professional).
Why? This will allow ipHouse to sell VPS based services for customers, allow us to sell VMware products to customers directly, and officially support and consult on VMware products and services. Ooh, exciting isn’t it?
Codeweavers is giving away their software for one day, you can read about their press release yourself.
Why am I mentioning it here?
I commend Mr. White and his company for making a challenge then following through on the promise of free software to all americans (and those on visas) if any of the goals were met.
My hat is off to you! I hope tomorrow gives you back everything you are giving your users.
The fun is getting going - ordered up the 8 servers as listed in the configuration in my blog post from October 4th, 2008 on October 14th, 2008.
This will give me 8 host systems and one spare on the shelf (I’ll be using it for test deployments and such as well).
Ship date: October 16th, 2008.
Weight: 862lb
Due date: Today! October 20th, 2008. (Dell tracking said Friday the 17th, but obviously that wasn’t correct, but was in Minneapolis at 8:49am and out for delivery)
I have moved one production system over already (one of the POP/IMAP servers) and performance has been excellent. Over the next few days I’ll get 3 more of the host systems online and migrate the other POP/IMAP physical servers over, then tear down the old systems and remove them from the rack(s).
There is one snag holding us back for the web server side of things - a PDF library that was used by our in-house web guy for automatic formating of PDF documents. We’ll get this worked out soon and start that migration as well.
Once I get these initial 10 systems retired and out of the racks, we’ll rack up the other 4 host systems and prep them for the eventual task of migration of our caching and authoritative name servers (4), our SMTP servers (8), and measure again how things are going (performance, power, etc).
Part 4.1 coming soon, with pictures if I remember a camera…
Yah, I am a Comcast Internet subscriber. No I do not love it, nor do I hate it.
Personal Opinion: I don’t mind a 250GB cap - I can live with that…I hope.
Subjective Opinion: But some of their numbers do not make any sense to me.
If you view their FAQ on the bandwidth capping, they may not have investigated what their users might use the Internet for or their data is based on the Internet of 2001.
- Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
- Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
- Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
- Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo
Okay, so you look at the numbers - and wonder…
Email of .05KB is… 1024 * .05 == 51 bytes. Who sends a 51 byte message? The headers alone are larger than 51 bytes. Is my math broken? My email address with my name included is 36 bytes alone.
BOGGLE
4MB song? At what bitrate? Checking my iTunes library the majority of items I have ripped from my CD collection is closer to 6MB per song using AAC and variable bitrate encoding. Looking at Moby’s Play album (owned and ripped), the songs range in size from 2.1MB (Guitar Flute & String) to 6.7MB (The Sky is Broken). Who listens to 128Kbps MP3s anymore? Eeek!
Movies? Oh my, you may want to continue reading where I give my (obviously) subjective views on this topic.
And photos at 10MB per photo. Wow. My Canon EOS-20D (8MP) is 7MB each. My buddies 5D (12MP) is 11MB each. My wife’s new Canon SD770IS (10MP) is 4.2-5.3MB each. Most people I know don’t have photos of this size (in MB, not resolution). Their math works, but only on the broken assumption that the photos really are 10MB in size. This is the area where they actually overestimated in my opinion.
Complaint and possible solution to negative commentary: How about Comcast implements this new cap, and fixes their network so I no longer have to deal with subpar performance at any time of the day. I regularly get approximately 4-4.5Mbps while I pay for 8Mbps. Ignore that PowerBoost Technology, that’s just junk. Sure, I have downloaded at the full bandwidth I have purchased, and downloaded for a long time at that sustained rate. But I don’t normally get said speeds, and time of day doesn’t matter. This has been tested via my firewall (Fortigate 60) and direct connecting of my laptop (a Mac Book Pro) and my workstation (Mac Pro). Can be frustrating sometimes, but then it is time to just walk away and go check out the big blue room - scary stuff if you ask me.
Continue reading to see more of my (possibly broken) math dealing with television and movies and why the cap could hurt real people.
