THUS Plc has power cut at datacenter warrington

So, getting ready to go home.. when 2 of our sites says their network connection is down.

We use THUS Plc for our MPLS network. We worked out that their Warrington center is down.

We tried 10 times to ring their support number and was getting messages saying their to busy to pick up and call back. We got into their support que and waiting 50mins for some one to tell me, that they would fix the problem in 4 hours and they had a powercut.

How can you have a powercut at a teleco DATA CENTER ? Anybody body out their that has MPLS network in the UK with out any problems?

Support Issue 73 | Coldfusion On Google

I think ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) should be the next supported
language on Google App Engine.

Take Your Vote to http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=73

See the full list of issues at http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list

behind the scenes, Love it

Nice public presentation for a techie and always love to see how the behind the scenes stuff.

$120,000 of Cisco switching, but cant deal with iSCSI and numbers dont add up

A few years back we order two Cisco 4510 to replace our two Cisco 4006. At the time I am thinking about moving to iSCSI away from Fiber Channel.

So you can select diffrent Engines with this product and when I have this types of options I buy the BIGGEST. and I was thinking I was getting the best (Its Cisco its the best, its cost $120,000).

So I had my self Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Supervisor Engine V-10GE with 8 x 48 Port 1000mbits PoE line cards.

2/3 years later I find out..

a) the line cards have 48 x 1000mbits dont support Jumbo Frames (up to 9216 bytes) when I was thinking that Jumbo Frames was a Engine feature.

b) Per slot switching capacity is only 6 Gbps when the total for switch 136 Gbps. I have 10 slots... so why dont I have a min of 13.6 Gbps per slot? If I have a 48 Port line card I should be able to pump thu 48 Gbps.

c) Every 6 ports on 48 Port line card shares 1 Gbps. So I can only get 8 Gbps, but does not matter as the slot only supports 6 Gbps.

So I got 24u (1/2 a rack) of tin.. which cost $120,000.. and does nothing for iSCSI. I really think I have to review my want to buy Cisco. I think Cisco is amazing company but I really hoping for a lot more.

Plus this not the only product. If you played with Cisco Router 3640 it can support up to 8 E1 interfaces, but it can deal with more then 2 1/2 with H.323.

CBUS Network Install

Here is where all the CBUS Relays (2 x 12 channels and 1 x 4 Chaneels) & CBUS Dimmers come to.

All my lighting, heated floors, central heating and blinds come back into this boxs.

I have 28 Relay channels, 20 Dimmer channels and 80 control actions via the "light switch" (not really a light switch, just an addressable control). Thats 128 address, would been cool if they where IP Address.



On this light switch you can see that I can put text or my own drawings. The top one is used to let the house know I am staying home. If this is switched on then the house will funcation diffrent to when I set the home to being away i.e. heated floors in the bathroom would start up at 6am.

Home Automation with Windows Vista Media Center ( with CBUS and Domia Harmony )

So I finaly getting around to setting up my (very very slowly) home integration / automation with Windows Vista Media Center. I have set up a CBUS network with a PC interface. On the PC I am running Domia Harmony .

I am now able to access my lighting, headed floor, central heating, blinds, sound system via HTTP/Web/API's, Wall Switchs and Windows Vista Media Center.

A day doing nothing

SO had one them days when been trying to fix somthing and not knowing where the error is.

Was dealing with two Windows Mobile Data Synchronisation Problems

1 ) Error

“Initializing SQL Server Reconciler has failed”

Our Fix

Don’t use fully qualified DNS names e.g. sqlserver.mydomain.com\sqlname, should be sqlserver\ sqlname in your .net CF code
repl.Publisher = "DAVINCI-SQL\\SQL2005INSTANCE";
Only found this problem due to SQL DB and IIS Replication Server being in different domains
To find the correct name to use “ EXEC sp_helpdistpublisher 'DAVINCI-SQL\SQL2005INSTANCE “
Microsoft use this error way to many place and the internet is full of reasons for it.

2) Error

“The specified validation type is not supported by the Subscriber. The supported validation type is 'Rowcount only (No Checksum)'

Our Fix

Our development system did not have this problem and did not need it to be changed.. But to fix it on our live system we did the following.
On the Distributor Server > Replication > Distributor Properties > Agent Profiles – Profile Default > Merge Agent > Select rowcount validation profile

Dell in 2nd and last Place :) Is that what happens when you OEM?

As you know we know got Dell EqualLogic PS boxs, but back in 2004 we ordered Dell CX700 to run microsoft dynamics ax 3.0 (Axapta 3.0). We are still running them today and moving to Dell EqualLogic PS with Dell R900.

I found this review "Diogenes Labs Storage Magazine Quality Survey" and it shows the following...

1. Compellent Storage Center
2. EqualLogic PS Series
3. Hitachi Data Systems Thunder 9500 V Series or AMS Series
4. Network Appliance FAS200/FAS900/FAS2000
5. Hp StorageWorks EVA
6. Sun StorageTek 6000
7. IBM FAStT and DS4000/DS6000
8. EMC Clariion CX
9. Dell CX Series

its funny how a company can have a 2nd place product and 9th place OEM product when the real version is 8th place.

I feel we have made the correct choice after reading this, I might have gone for Compellent but.. I dont know if the company will be around for next 5 years. One thing is for sure (well maybe) Dell should be around for the next 5 years.

Best In Class says Cisco Systems

Just like to thank everybody on my team that helped us get this Cisco award.

Best In Class EFT Site Cisco Unified Communications System Release 6.0

Dell EqualLogic faster then Dell MD3000i

We got told that take 3 to 4 weeks for EqualLogic boxs to come, but only 1 and 1/ weeks... :) it made it the same day as our Dell R900 server, but where is the MD3000i?

So while we wait for MD3000i.. trying to pick Xen or VMWare.

The problem I have with VMware right now is that with out getting VMware Control Center all the cool stuff like creating a system in under 10mins gets way to complex and not easy for my dev guys.

So right now my system team checking out Xen (Microsoft was selling Xen hard at a windows 2008 session). Also Microsoft supports their software running on a Xen, but not on VMWare.

Once we made a choice with VMWare v Xen then get back to building our new cluster.