So have run into this intermittently while doing HP server builds over the past month, but havent really paid it the attention it deserves until today…  – utilising the HP PSP 8.7.

I have also found some other people now having this issue too – http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2011/03/hp-network-interface-does-not-start/

Unfortunately, my builds are via SCCM – and if the network dies half way through a build – the rest of the build does not complete – and its not really feasible to manually intervene for larger amounts of servers.

Since PSP 9.0 has been released, i have moved my server builds on to that – and am hoping that the issue has been resolved…. ill report back my findings tommorow.

*edit* – looks as if the PSP 9.0 has helped on the 2 builds so far…. will run more through-out the day.

On a side note, i downloaded and used the  HP SPP – as an alternative – the ILO firmware was upgraded to 2.07 and now the fans are very noisey… as per most things with HP – 2 steps forward, 2 steps back….. so noisey that it needs resolving otherwise its not an appropriate site server anymore.

Late last year, i pourchased a number of Dell servers for the Adexis environment… there were delivery hassles etc… but once everything turned up, i racked it and its been reasonably smooth sailing since then….

Couple of things i have found…

1) Dell’s server management tools suck – and suck bad.  Open Manage essentials and OSMA (on the nodes) give me a bit of info – but dont really allow me to do the stuff i want to do (such as check/set bios settings/ilo settings/RAID settings etc). Discovering machines with OME is easy enough, but actually getting them to inventory seems to be another story… ive discovered every device on the network, but none of them will inventory – and yes, the OSMA is on every server and the ports are open.

 Actually finding out which tools i needed in the first place was a hassle, then trying to get around dell’s “ciruclar reference” weblink system which they seem to employ extensively on their webpages took a while, but after you get them installed…. they’re just not very friendly to use or useful….  Hey – i might be missing a component or something that brings it all together… and i am happy to have iDRAC, which is extremely handy…. but the actual mangement tools seem to suck.

2) PERC H700, support for non-dell drives. I didnt think about this one… but after seeing some “!”‘s in the above mentioned sucky management tools, i investigated and found that using a non-dell drive in a system is apparently a warning generating event. Googling around on this finds that it is meant to be the case, intentionally… yes, really. Now there’s an interesteing market protection approach…. and a good way to piss off customers.

Anyhoo – if your reading this, and im wrong – and there is a way to manage the BIOS settings or the PERC H700 or the ILO from windows…. even on a single machine basis (although en-mass would be nice) – or im missing something when it comes to OME, pleae let me know (i tried to register on the dell community to ask these questions and kept getting errors…. but hey, just triued again then, and i can logon…. so ill post back if i find any help)

*edit* – as murphys law would have it – one of the unsupported drives just went into a cycle of “im not going to be recognised anymore…. oh, wait, here i am… now i dont exist anymore etc” which is how the PERC controller seems to handle this unsupported drive…. its awesome.

*edit 2* – Got OME working with some assistance on the dell forums… updating drivers/firmware centrally…. its handy… harder than it needs to be… – i still want to be able to manage everything via windows… i also grabbed the Dell Remote Access Configuration Tool (DRACT), (which doesnt work on x64 without a unsupported work-around – http://b.zhaospace.com/2011/11/how-to-make-dract-run-in-64-bit-system.html) – again, handy – but its not a complete solution.

To sum up – i spose i was expecting more…. more power, better interfaces and easier to use…. dont get me wrong – they definately offer some handy features…. but, like me, i suspect you will find yourself thinking “why is doing <insert task here> this hard?”

A few weeks ago, my new phone arrived – the HTC Titan.

 I had stayed away from Windows Phone 7 simply because of the lack of tethering and iphone because I don’t like products that are successful because of marketing rather than technical superiority…. But when the titan got announced – I was interested in finally upgrading my Tytn II running Win Mobile 6.1.

 That’s when I ran into my first issues – actually sourcing the phone. Three places that came up in a google search (at the time, now there about 6) – all of which got bagged for being dodgey over in the whirlpool forums (www.whirlpool.net.au)… So, eventually I opted for an overseas source instead and used http://www.handtec.co.uk/ – the phone took a week to arrive and all up, including all charges, came to a tad under $A650 – so better than any price that the dodgey places were selling it for anyway.

 I did contact my business carrier – Optus, about a date for when they would be stocking this phone, but their email reply took a week and said to call their sales department…. Otherwise known as “we don’t want your business”

 So, onto the phone itself…  keeping in mind that my primary uses for this phone are:

• Activesync for mail, calendar items and contacts
• Plays music
• Makes phone calls
• Has a useable interface
• Tethering/wireless hotspot

 

Now if you similar to me and these are your primary usages, the HTC Titan does all these tasks well:

• The wireless hotspot is really cool and works very well – but sucks the battery like all hell
• The interface, although not quite as customisable as I would like is reasonably intuitive and easy to use… and fast
• The normal phone and speaker phone work well
• Activesync is as smooth as you would expect it to be

 

A few additional things that weren’t high on my priority list but aren’t bad:

• The “locations” GPS…. Although entering your destination and getting it to route you there is just not intuitive at all
• The camera seems to be pretty good…. And I will admit, it is handy to have an ok camera with you at all times
• The flashlight is awesome – that is just incredibly handy
• The marketplace has surprisingly good apps to fill gaps left in the interface (such as a lack of a speed dial interface for the front page)

 

And the annoying:

• The wireless hotspot on/off (as it kills the battery) is hidden down the menu structure and you cannot pin it to the start screen – grrrrr
• Inability to choose the size of the icons on the home screen…. For example… if I was to have 3 icons across the screen – everything would be on one screen – just easier…
• Having to use Zune to get my media onto the phone. Zune is without doubt an absolute piece of shit software… just fucking terrible

 All in all, I’m pretty happy with it… it does all the things I require plus a bit more, its responsive and has good sound quality. Now just let me manage it without Zune – and it would be fanatastic!

I purchased a bunch of Seagate barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drives a few years back when 1.5TB drives were the largest you could get.

These drives always had issues – if you do a quick google on them, you’ll find lots of entries complainign about their reliability and firmware issues….

I’ve basically had one die, on average, every 3 months over the past few years….. initially, i had to get i think it was something like 8 out of 12 of them replaced within the first month… so yer, hasnt been a good experience.

The one i lost last night stored my media server and XP virtuals that i used for remoting in to various client sites – i deemed this not important enough to back up…. and it isnt…. but fuck its a hassle re-creating this stuff!

Having said that, i think there is only 1 left now – so the pain will soon be over…. and the plan is to move everything over onto an iSCSI NAS soon anyway….. ive heard the QNAP’s are good, so ill be looking at them…. basically anyhing but a Thecus is an option.

When it comes to corporate hardware (server and workstations) we often get asked who do we recommend.

From my point of iew, their all ok – HP/Dell/IBM/Lenovo/Acer – some people have a preference for the HP CMI tools or ILO, others dont mind DRAC and OCMI tools etc – all of them have their strong and weak points (a big one is scripting of the TPM config for bitlocker on workstations)

Anyhoo – there seems to be  massive void when it comes to small company support (such as us) – i tried a few times yesterday to ring HP – and stuck in the cycle of death.

Me: “Hi, i have a HP laptop model number x, serial number x which is out of warrnaty and i’d like to get the monitor repaired”

Them: “I’ll just ask you for all those details again, mis-understand half of them because english isnt my native language and then shunt you off to a different department”

Me: “Hi, i have a HP laptop model number x, serial number x which is out of warrnaty and i’d like to get the monitor repaired – the last department sent me here”

Them: “I’ll just ask you for all those details yet again, mis-understand half of them because english isnt my native language, tell you you have come to the wrong department and send you back to the department you just came from”

And thus begins the infinte loop of HP!

Does anyone out there have a method of getting support (in Australia) for us non-large corporates ? Is there anyone at HP support that speaks english ?

So its been a few months since i purchased and posted about the Thecus N7700 NAS box i purchased.

After much hair pulling, ive effectively found the following:

* Do not try and use AD integration on the NAS box…. while it works initially, it always stops working and completely stops all access to your shares. The time frames it dies in seem to vary from a few hours to a few days

* There is absolutely no useful logging that i could find or anyone could point me to – so trying to troubleshoot the device is difficult to impossible

* Thecus support does not answer support requests. I did get one reply to my initial email asking for my configuration files, which i sent – and have not heard anything since –  this is over 6 weeks ago. Follow up emails have not been answered

I had purchased this NAS because i wanted something simple that just worked – and if it stopped working, someone who would support it. I have found out the hard way that i paid a premium for something with neither of those qualities and i would have been far better off just creating my own NAS (which i initially looked at but decided it was too much hassle)

On the off chance that someone who reads this blog is looking at buying a thecus box – do not buy one, its a piece of shit and the company is clearly not interested in providing working products nor support.

So i just purchased myself a new hyper-V host.

Gigabyte-X58A-UD7, 24GB DDR3 RAM, 2 x SATA3.0 (6bps) 600GB WD raptors

Short story – the mavel SATA 3 controller on this motherboard is completely fucking useless.

Add the drives to a RAID-1 set, one constantly just drops out. Try to use the two drives independantly, one randomly dissappear… and the performance from the one that does work is very very average.

Swap them over to use the ICH10 (Sata2) ports…. everything just works.

Save yourself some cash and just get SATA2 drives instead…. and clearly, with SATA3 implementations like this – its not going to be used until an intel chipset comes out with SATA3 inbuilt.