Category: General

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Dell 6850 power requirements

We recently updated some lagging DB servers to new hardware. We installed some new Dell 6850 quad processor machines with 8GB ram, internal Perc raid mirror and external PowerVault 2200s storage. The hardware provisioning went fine with the exception of one odd matter, Dell PowerEdge 6850’s only run on 220volt AC!

All our existing PDU’s were 20 amp 110v and running at 70% utilization so even if the the servers worked on 110 they would put us over capacity. I just thought it was odd that the servers only ran on 220 when their non-rackmount counterparts, the 6800’s run on either 110 or 220. Dell says it’s due to space constraints on the new 6850’s, they don’t have the room to have a larger power supply.

Anyway, if you’re ordering 6850’s make sure you get dell to include a 16 amp 220v PDU and the proper power cables. Thanks to the quick response time of the guys at Savvis we had our power divation installed in 3 days, which made my life a lot easier.

As a side note, if you’re building a DB server that needs to really haul you should spend some serious time evaluating the fastest possible I/O configuration for your budget. Moving from raid5 to raid 1+0 and separating innodb storage from binlogs and temp tables has made our MySQL server at least 2-3 X faster.

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Quicktime 7 without iTunes

I tried to download quicktime 7 today from apple.com and noticed that the quicktime page only offers you the option of downloading the latest quicktime bundled with itunes. iTunes takes over file associations and media setting without asking which drives me crazy.

I’ve located a link to the quicktime standalone player:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html

I think that intentionally making it hard to download the standalone player for quicktime is a slimy thing to do, reminds me of the RealOne player a few years ago.

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Rogers Wireless in PEI Sucks

Four years ago when I moved home from Montreal the only way I could use my Rogers cell phone in PEI was to drive to the other side of town on a hill so I could get 1 bar of analog signal, just enough to check my voicemail. Sadly in 2005, not much has changed.

Sure I can get a digital GSM signal now, heck I can even get 1 bar of signal in my house (Of course my aliant phone gets 5 bars) but the coverage still sucks and is far behind the coverage my aliant phone gets. It doesn’t even work in my office. I would guess that at least 50% of the island isn’t covered at all which is pretty pathetic given the geographic size of the island.

How can you expect to charge similar rates to your competition when you don’t even provide 50% of the service area that they do. I guess the thing that REALLY ticks me off is that the sales guy said that coverage on the island was complete from tip to tip. I guess it’s my fault for trusting a slimy sales guy. Good thing I followed my instinct and didn’t opt for a contract. Anyway, off to cancel my service and burn my SIM card. I wonder if they would be happy with 50% of the total bill?

UPDATE April 2010: This post is now 5 years old and I no longer live in PEI. I would suggest that anyone thinking about purchasing Rogers Wireless cellular service in PEI should talk to a current Rogers Wireless customer in the area you plan to be most of the time. A lot can change in a wireless network in 5 years and the last time I was in PEI with my company phone (Rogers Blackberry Perl) I had coverage everywhere we went in PEI. I can’t speak to the customer service aspect as I don’t deal with them but in general I find all telephone companies have horrible customer service so I would assume that is still the standard.