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P2V migration servers with “small files syndrome”

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The past weekend I was helping a customer perform several P2V of physical servers to VMware virtual machines. Those were critical applications with small downtime window.

Generally P2V are pretty straightforward and easy to do. Given enough time, any x86 physical workloads can be migrated. In the ones I just did, all I had was 4 hours each. On the surface, 4 hours for about 120GB worth of data was achievable over 1Gbps networks. For these, we needed a lot more time. We did a migration on one of the machines which had no issues with a tight window, it took 16hrs!

The cause, nearly 1 million small files!! Small files are the bane of storage, which are a pain to copy.

We had to use different techniques for the P2V. Block based copying was not an option, and so it would have to be just regular file based copying.

The solution? P2V the OS disk only, then copy the other drives using FastCopy.

FastCopy was much more efficient that standard file copying utilities. It is known to be very successful in copying small files, and it’s true! Even for copying over the network! Though it’s still far from being as fast as block copy, but it was certainly faster than leaving it to regular copy/migration means.

Update to my Manila SUN Cellular Experience

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My earlier post was basically highlighting that if you are purchasing a Sun Cellular prepaid SIM for internet usage, you’ll have to get it activated before trying to apply and SBW load. Otherwise the load will be wasted, which was what happened to me.

The follow up experience to that was that I did get my GPRS (data) access activated within the 48hrs as mentioned by the call center help agent. There was no automated notification, I just had to keep trying to send “activate” to 2300. When it works, it will reply with the activation message.

Then I applied the SBW50 load and I was immediately online. The next thing I tried was tethering with my iPhone 3GS. The tethering didn’t work. In fact, the tethering option disappeared from the iPhone menu.

So what I did for the rest of the trip was to just use my E5830 to provide Internet access to my laptop and phone over WIFI.

I noticed for the E5830, in most places, there are good 3G signal, but for some reason the device will fall back to a slower speed. So I just forced the device to only use WCDMA to keep to the constant good speed. The drawback on this is when the 3G signal quality was bad, Internet access will be miserable.

SUN Mobile Prepaid SIM Service in Manila, Philippines

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Here on a business trip, I decided to try out a local prepaid mobile service. This is from Sun, one of the 3 local mobile service providers.

The experience is pretty straightforward, and cheaper, compared to Singapore.

There are 2 types of prepaid SIM services, Sun Cellular & Sun Broadband. The former is for voice and the latter dedicated to data only. I bought both, as I was advised at the shop that Sun Cellular does not support data connection. This I have found to be not totally accurate.

For a heavy internet user like myself, opting for the time based internet access does not work for me. What works for me will be the unlimited day pass (SBW50) I can get for P50 (approx, S$1.42, US$1.14). The easiest way to activate this service is to buy a SBW50 Load card, scratch the card to get the code to activate the service. Here”s what I’ve realized, the SBW50 service CAN be applied to a Sun Cellular service.

The catch… which I was caught is you need to first activate data usage on the Sun Cellular SIM. Do this by sending a text “ACTIVATE” to 2300. It failed for me, and I called the customer service number 200, and there was some back end processing required first. Once that is done, then I can use data. I have already loaded the SIM with a SBW50, but too bad, it’s wasted.

Other than the hiccup above, I’m pretty happy with the performance I’m getting. It’s not super fast, but it works decently. I’m using the data SIM with my Huawei e5830.

Overall, I’m pleased with the solution I’ve checked out, and is saving me quite a few dollars!

IOS Devices : Automatic App Installation On All Devices You Own

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I didn’t stay up to catch the Apple WWDC, but it’s the first thing I checked out when I woke up today. One of the new features which has got all my thumbs up is the ability for your devices to automatically download purchased content. More details is in this Mac Rumors posting.

I haven’t tested this yet, but what I believe it’s suppose to do is this; Say you have an iPhone and an iPad. If you’ve purchased  content, Music/App/Book, from the Apple Stores, it will automatically make it available on both devices. That sure takes the hassle out to trying to keep both devices in sync.

Without this, I’ve been maintaining synchronization using iTunes, or just manual re-download. Now it’s all automatic! That’s cool!

The best part, you don’t need to wait for IOS5, all you need is the currently available IOS 4.3!

My Personal Favorite IDD Service in Singapore

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Looking for a smart and cheap way to make IDD calls over a phone? This is not VOIP or anything like Skype I’m talking about here. This is good old traditional land line or mobile phone.

This service that I’ve used for over 5 years now, and have been my favorite pick for IDD calling services. This is Zone1511, which has a good presence here in Asia.

The smart thing about Zone1511 is that it’s not a traditional IDD service. Think of it as an automatic aggregate of many IDD services. What you do is configure your favorite 5 service providers, and when you dial IDD via 1511, it will intelligently route through the cheapest provider at that point in time. If that provider is at capacity, it will automatically go through the next best provider.

The result, getting the best price and quality for you anytime and every time you make that international call.

Setup and registration is easy. Sign up online at their website with a credit card and you can start making calls instantly. The best part, there’s no minimal monthly fees or subscriptions. It’s purely pay as you use.

Can’t get any better than this folks, this is definitely the smartest and CHEAPEST way to make IDD calls from Singapore.

Can’t get better than this folks, sign up now!

Please use my referral link too 🙂

 

Great place for “Old Apps”

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a recent task I had to do involved getting a bunch of old versions of applications. The search for these brought me to a website www.oldapps.com. I first came across this website from watching Tekzilla. (good video podcast for tech fans, and the hosts are great!).

The website hosts a lot of popular applications, and every version of those software that have been publicly available. Most of the times, these software are no longer found on their main website, and even hard to find on the P2P network. Fret not as this site has it!

So, if there are any vintage versions of Winamp that you like, but lost due to a system rebuild. You can hop over to Old Apps and download that favorite version you like.

Going HD TV

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Over the weekend, I brought my Starhub Cable TV Set Top Box to the service centre to exchange it for a HD version. It’s a nice $2 a month upgrade which let’s me enjoy HD cable content.

Starhub has a nice free offer to bundle in some HD channels if you are already subscribed to the standard def equivalent. All very nice!! Just for $2 a month and I get to enjoy about 10+ channels in HD.

All good except that Starhub doesn’t supply a HDMI cable with the set top box rental. It does, however, come with a complete set of component and composite cables. Since I have a good stock of HDMI cables that I am selling on ebay, I gladly supplied myself one of them 🙂

To my slight disappointment, the HD content is only available up to 1080i. It’s not full HD, just one step away from full 1080p. 1080i may be more commonly known as “HD Ready”, which happens to be what my TV supports up to anyway. So even if the cable content does come in 1080p, my TV won’t support it anyway.

Overall, I’m very happy with the crisp picture quality with HD TV. And for the price of 2 canned drinks a month, I’d encourage everyone to take up HD.

Apart from better picture quality, the HD set top box also performs faster than the non-HD model.

For the HDMI cable, I’m selling them cheap on eBay. Please do not get cheated into paying for those overpriced ones at the large electronics outlet, nor fall for cheap, poor quality ones on eBay.

Search for my listings, under the seller name “jasonyzs”.

diamond water – it’s not just the product, but the after sales care as well

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My family has been using the Diamond water filtration system since Jovan was 3mths old. It’s been serving us well and definitely doing a great job in keeping our water for consumption clean.
Today, I realize that just like many other products that are important and we use a lot, maintenance is also very important. Just like our PC, cars, handphones, homes, maintenance is key to make sure it’s delivering what it’s meant to deliver. And if it’s something out of your own area of expertise, having the right person do the job is critical.
Think about it, we installed the water filtration system to improve on the quality of the already well provided utility water. No matter how clean it can get, the pipes that carry water to the house can and will age, and filth will slowly creep in. There’s chlorine in the water, which ideally should be minimized, and this system helps to get rid of the chlorine. If we don’t do a good regular maintenance on the filter, eventually the filth will build up, and slowly start to get into what we are drinking. Beyond the recommended maintenance period, we will probably be worst of drinking from the filtration system.
I’m glad to have met a good service lady from Diamond water. Naturally it’s in her own interest to help keep track of the due date for the maintenance of my filtration system. So, someone reminding me that it’s time to spend some money, but for a damn good reason that I do need to spend on, to ensure my family get the good water we want to have. Ann, is the lady who sold me the system, and also doing an excellent job in helping me maintain the system. Her knowledge of the system is top notch, and her experience in performing the maintenance is worth taking note of.
She’s a very patient lady, and very friendly. Every time she’ll spend time to do a quick refresher to my domestic helper on how to do the simple interim cleaning that we need to do. This is a tough business, if you understand the business model, she’s like many roles in one. Sales, post-sales, servicing, help desk, all rolled into one.
I’m personally delivering services all my working life, so I know what’s a good honest service when I see one. So, if you are considering installing a filtration system for your home or office, I strongly recommend going to Ann Yap, 96493662.

My family has been using the Diamond water filtration system since Jovan was 3mths old. It’s been serving us well and definitely doing a great job in keeping our water for consumption clean.
Today, I realize that just like many other products that are important and we use a lot, maintenance is also very important. Just like our PC, cars, handphones, homes, maintenance is key to make sure it’s delivering what it’s meant to deliver. And if it’s something out of your own area of expertise, having the right person do the job is critical.
Think about it, we installed the water filtration system to improve on the quality of the already well provided utility water. No matter how clean it can get, the pipes that carry water to the house can and will age, and filth will slowly creep in. There’s chlorine in the water, which ideally should be minimized, and this system helps to get rid of the chlorine. If we don’t do a good regular maintenance on the filter, eventually the filth will build up, and slowly start to get into what we are drinking. Beyond the recommended maintenance period, we will probably be worst of drinking from the filtration system.
I’m glad to have met a good service lady from Diamond water. Naturally it’s in her own interest to help keep track of the due date for the maintenance of my filtration system. So, someone reminding me that it’s time to spend some money, but for a damn good reason that I do need to spend on, to ensure my family get the good water we want to have. Ann, is the lady who sold me the system, and also doing an excellent job in helping me maintain the system. Her knowledge of the system is top notch, and her experience in performing the maintenance is worth taking note of.
She’s a very patient lady, and very friendly. Every time she’ll spend time to do a quick refresher to my domestic helper on how to do the simple interim cleaning that we need to do. This is a tough business, if you understand the business model, she’s like many roles in one. Sales, post-sales, servicing, help desk, all rolled into one.
I’m personally delivering services all my working life, so I know what’s a good honest service when I see one. So, if you are considering installing a filtration system for your home or office, I strongly recommend going to Ann Yap, 96493662.

mifi good and bad with the huawei e5830

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so, I’ve been using the E5380 for 6 weeks now. The experience has been mixed, at times, it works great and flawlessly, and at times, it’s just horrendous.

So, would this be a device the I recommend, yes definitely; but know it’s limitations. To be fair, I’m using Singtel here in Singapore, and the device Singtel sells is the e5832. I could be that the e5830 is not totally well compatible with Singtel.

Before I get all too technical here, this is what I have experienced….

The situations are 2 extremes…

  1. the device works flawlessly and delivers uninterrupted internet access
  2. the device connects to the internet, works for a few mins and then loses connection, but thinks it’s still online

So far, I don’t have a clear clue on why exactly this is happening. From my observation and numerous internet posts, plus comparing some specs, I believe there are 3 possibilities

  1. what I do notice is that connection tends to be very flaky when signal strength is weak. But if I switch the device to force it to connect only using GSM (and never 3G) it will work smoothly, just slow. So here, I question what’s wrong that is preventing the device to switch network automatically… very much like what the E220 USB dongle can do.
  2. Reading from some aussie forums, it appears that there are users with the E5830 that encountered the same symptoms as I have. ie, the device works very well and consistently in some areas, and in others, flaky. What they have observed but unable to confirm is that it could have been a carrier network issue. So for many of them, without doing anything to the devices, all of the sudden at the areas where the device worked bad, it was performing fine already. The conclusion there is that there was some operating issue with their mobile provider and it was fixed at the carrier end.
  3. Singtel does issue the E5832 with the high end post paid plans, and comparing the difference between the E5830 and E5832, is that the E5832 supports WCDMA 2100/900MHz where the E5830 only supports WCMDA 2100MHz. Could it be that to work well with the Singtel network, I need the WCDMA 900MHz also? I don’t know, so far I’m not able to find any details online about what frequencies does Singtel 3G network operate on. In addition, my friend has the exact same model as me, just that he’s using Starhub. Starhub has the E5830, and his experience has been all much better than mine. In areas where I have dodgy signals, his still works smoothly. Will need more testing to see how well it performs in areas of weak signal strength.

There are alternatives out there for 3G pocket router solutions. The Novatel MIFI is definitely discouraged from the stories I’ve heard. But now, manufacturers like Aztech and Dlink produce 3G routers which you can plug your good ol 3G USB dongles to. I’ve read that some of the newer routers are USB powered, but have yet to be able to validate that. If true, it could be a viable alternative, BUT with a heavier baggage. The E583x models are still the slimmests and most portable around.

mifi world!! pocket hotspot on the go!

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huawei i moa week ago, I picked up my newest gadget, the Huawei E5830. This is a personal wifi hotspot, something similar to the Novatel MiFi, available with Verizon (US) or M1 (Singapore).

My sister has the MiFi from M1 and she complains the same issue that many users have; the unit overheats. When it gets too hot, it just shuts down without warning! For my sister it seems to get to that point in 5mins of usage.

So, together, we picked up the Huawei E5830. In Singapore, there are 2 ways to buy that device. 1, with a contract with Singtel (one of the major telco), or 2, from 3rd party resellers.

The Singtel option is costly, and also did not apply for us as we have existing contracts for our data plan. The alternative is 3rd party resellers. Just about all of these 3rd party resellers sells the unlocked model from 3-UK. So it seems that the 3 UK could be the best provider in the world that offers the device with a nice pre-paid data plan. This makes the device available at a pretty reasonable price. In addition, some people have got their hands on the unlock code for the device and managed to unlock the devices and even change the firmware.

With the unlock and firmware upgrade, this device becomes usable with any 3G telcos in the world. It’s easy to find many people trying to sell this on eBay. For us, we found someone in Singapore who have brought in a large quantity of these devices and selling them at a slightly higher price than we can find in eBay. For the higher premium, at least we’ll get a better chance of some sort of “warranty” if we find any problems with the units.

The Huawei E5380 is slighly bigger than the first generation HSDPA USB modem. As it has a rechargeable battery inside, it weighs a little bit more, but still fairly light to carry around easily. Opening up the unit to slide in the SIM card is very similar to most mobile phones. To operate the unit, there are 3 buttons, power, wifi & 3G connect.

  • Power – toggles the unit on and off
  • wifi – toggles the wifi served on and off
  • connect – gets the unit to establish a connection to the internet

The unit is pre-configured with WPA encrypted wifi out of the box. The WPA key is on a sticker next to the SIM card slot, so make sure to take note of the key when inserting the SIM card.

Once we power up the unit, give it about 30s to 1min to boot up, and when the “W” icon lights up, the WIFI is on and you can get your notebook, iPad, etc.. to search for the signal. Follow the standard way on your device to connect to a wifi.

If your unit has the firmware that has web management capabilities, just launch your favorite browser and point it to http://192.168.1.1. Login with the default credentials and it will take you to the web administration portal. For Starhub users, there’s actually nothing much to do, the unit will just work straight away. If you are a M1 or Singtel user, you’ll need to make some changes to the APN profile. Likewise if your provider requires some unique APN setup, this will have to be done.

One nice feature is that you can configure the unit to connect to 3G manually or on demand. Manually, means you’ll either need to press the button, or get into the web portal and click the “connect” button. On demand means that the 3G will auto connect once there’s a request from a client device to access something on the internet. It can have a time out setting which will disconnect the 3G connection after some time of inactivity. This probably can extend the battery life since the unit don’t have to maintain a permanent connection. On the similar note, the wifi signal can be set to auto-off after a period of inactivity also. This further saves power, but to re-enable wifi signal, you’ll have to press the wifi button on the device.

I’ve been quite happy with the performance of the unit, by specifications it is capable up to 7.2Mbps downstream. In reality, with Singtel as my provider I have reached up to 3Mbps, which for me is very much good enough for internet access on the go.

In addition to the wifi connection it provides, you can use the unit like a USB dongle as well. It has a standard mini-USB jack, and once plugged in, you’ll get the usual virtual CD-ROM drive that contains the connection manager installer. If you’ve used 3G USB dongles before, this will be a familiar ground for you. I have read before that some units will disable 3G when the USB is plugged in. This is not the case for my unit. So, this means that if you are sharing the device with others, and the battery goes low, you can just connect the device to your notebook to charge it up.

In the overall, I’m very pleased with this little investment. It is the perfect companion for iPad users, for people who work on the go, and to share with peers.

If you’ve read about my exploration of MyWi before, I’ll rate this unit to be a much better choice for a few reaons

  1. on top of the list – this device operates in Infrastructure mode (which mywi only works in ad-hoc)
  2. the E5380 offers many more features than MyWi, which one can argue is not critical just to get some internet connection on the go
  3. Since this unit works independently, it takes away the strain from my iPhone
  4. I can easily pass the unit to my wife for her usage, which otherwise I would not be able to do so with my iPhone

True, there’s a higher cost involved compared to just buying MyWi, so, it really comes down to individual situations and preferences.