WhiteBox - 2

A few days ago I’ve hooked-up my newly bought Intel SSD drive to one of my ESX server but didn’t realize it was the one with an ICH9 SATA controller. After some first tests I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, only 150 MB/Sec. After exchanging some email with Simon Seagrave over at techhead.co.uk who also has bought an SSD drive, I realized I was using the wrong ESX server. The SSD drive is now hooked-up to a server with an ICH10 SATA controller. I quickly fired-up the servers to see how fast the SSD drive is running now and it really matters. The difference is significant.

Next week my new Cisco Catalyst 2960G-8TC-L switch will arrive so I went to the store to buy some additional Intel PRO/1000 adapters to get fully prepped. While I was waiting in queue at Informatique an article written by Chad Sakac popped into my mind, in his article he predicted that 2010 will be the year of Solid State Storage. I noticed a real nice offer from Intel; the X25-M Postville SSD 80GB for only 200€ and tough what te heck, let’s buy one.

Model Name Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive
Capacity 80GB
NAND Flash Components Intel® Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory
Bandwidth  Up to 250MB/s Read Speeds - Up to 70MB/s Write Speeds
Read Latency 85 microseconds
Interface SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s

All the NICS and the SSD drive are build into my two white boxes so I fired up HD Tune Pro in a virtual machine with a 8 GB test disk hosted on the newly created SSD-VMFS. The HD Tune Pro has a real nice feature which enables you to export screenshots of the measurements.

So, here is a quick benchmark comparison between SATA (10 GB) and SSD (8 GB) storage.

The past few days the experts from inPeople and inVirtualize have been working on their Nehalem Whitebox. This great setup with an Intel Core i7 975 Extreme 1366 processor has the pleasure to ultra-fast take use of the enclosed 16Gbyte of memory. Of course they've added some other speedy goodies like Solid State Disk and some extra NIC ports. Here are the specs for those who want to start playing as well.

Shuttle SX58H7

• Processor Intel® Core i7 975 Extreme 1366
• Memory DDR3 1333MHz 4x4GB
• Storage 2x Transcend 32GB TS32GSSD25S-M SATA
• SSD Bracket Scythe Twin Mounter (2x 2,5" in one 3,5")
• Network Intel® PRO/1000 PT Quad Port Server
• Graphic Point VGA 8400GS 512MB PCIe
• External DVD ;-)

They will start adding some shared storage (QNAPs with a lot more SSD) to build several solutions on top of it. More details will follow...

When teaching classes I always show my students how to build up their own vSphere home lab just to run through the labs again or because it’s so cool to do a VMotion at home. One of my students has sent me an email with a link to a really nice device that can save you lots of money on your energy bill. Jean-Marc Zohlandt has bought the IP Boot Manager 9280 and is powering on his machines from a remote location only when they need to be powered on.

IP Boot Manager acts as a manager for your PC & Server . It handles all the ESX servers and storage with just one Internet Browser Screen and a simple connection to Internet. You can remote control & access the power + Reset and schedule daily server actions.

It saves manpower and time during unmanned periods. No more driving to the server room for a reset. IP Boot Manager 9280 is a unique device designed to help you manage up to 8 separate servers with one IP address. With this device you can control Power (On/Off), Reset, Schedule daily server actions and Auto ping (Watch Dog) your ESX servers.

Introducing the StorCenter ix2-200 Network Storage device, offering content sharing with advanced media features and data protection in an easy-to-use product ideal for small/remote offices, workgroups and power home users.

- Built-in EMC world-class storage and security technologies for enhanced data protection
- Easy 4-click setup
- Remote access to your network storage device from anywhere in the world
- Built-in torrent support for peer-to-peer file sharing
- User replaceable drives
- Iomega QuikTransfer moves data from a USB drive or replicates your data without the need of a PC
- Advanced features such as security camera capabilities, user/group setups, and Bluetooth upload
- Device-to-Device Replication using rsync-powered copy jobs.
- VMware certified for NFS and iSCSI
- Three year product warranty (with registration)
- 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities available