Posts by J. Cook

Stock market blizzard: Snowflake set for £33bn IPO as valuation bubble keeps on expanding

... Does this mean that it's Special?? (Snowflake, special.. I'll get me coat.)

Storage consolidation: Why different flavors of database need different types of storage

Re: Sure

Or worse, having an inexperienced user take down the entire system because they asked for a report that hits *EVERY* record in an 800 GB database?

BT,DT,wore the t-shirt out.

Consolidating databases has significant storage benefits – and therefore everyone should be doing it

My arguement against...

.. is (for my employer, at least) we buy packaged software, usually with little to no customization. Hence, We do have multiple copies of, say, a list of all employees, because most of the apps don't talk to anything but their own little database. For that reason, we use shared servers to reduce licensing costs, administration headaches (fewer servers to backup and maintain), and we keep tight control over who has server admin rights.

the few apps that we do have major customization on (mainly because they are sold to us that way) are generally their own silos, so if their app decides to start eating database processor time like a fat man at a pasta bar, it doesn't bring down half the apps in the company.

Granted, odds are the database servers are living on the same storage appliance, possibly even the same volume....

Database consolidation is a server gain. Storage vendors should butt out

My spin on this...

Background: the environment we have consists of multiple database servers, most of them shared, and for the large part not using native clustering. We have a couple silo'd apps that use their own database servers because they are very transaction heavy, and the vendor's coding on the client side is... less than optimal, to put it politely*.

All of the sql servers are virtualized, using a mostly standard virtual machine, but with the data, log, and tempDB files on not only seperate 'disks' , but separate virtual SAS/SCSI controllers within the VM. (i.e., the OS sees four controllers, with one or two disks on each). We've also done some shenanigans with the cluster size on the disks as well at the OS level. These are stored on the same flash/SSD accelerated rotating storage arrays. For the large part, the apps on the shared sql servers don't notice or care. The few apps that we do see performance issues on are the LOB apps that have their own silo of SQL servers, and we spent a couple months going around with the vendor before coming to the conclusion that their queries are crap along with their database design and lack of good index placement.

Consolidation of databases onto shared servers are good, but care MUST be taken with what's put on them, and a competent DBA and system admin need to oversee and maintain them.

* This is the same vendor that I may have mentioned had a habit of going "our code is fine, your hardware SUCKS- throw more hardware at it!!!" only to find out that their databases had no indexes on the tables that were getting pounded on, and their queries were being structured as "SELECT * from *" and using WHERE clauses to filter the results for the data they wanted. They've gotten better over the last five years as we've called them out on rather a lot of their crappy practices and they've gotten competent staff in who are fixing a lot of the design problems we've pointed out to them. But I'm still going to make fun of them, because. :)

Re: Consolidation is putting all your eggs in one basket

It also means that a rogue app that manages to get SA rights on the shared database server (or a rogue vendor) can really, really ruin the admin's day/week/month/career.

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

and an altimeter that’s constantly measuring readings.

You know, for those of us that are worried that all the hot air in our heads is making us float off the ground.

I'd be happy with knowing that I can buy that little coupler dingus for the gen 1 Pencil without having to either a) grovel to Applecare, b) grovel to someone at their genius bar, or c) buy one of the 84713 knock off clones on amazon. (or, for that matter, a new cap.)

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

Re: How can we be sure

COMPUTER, END PROGRAM!

Nvidia to acquire Arm for $40bn, promises to keep its licensing business alive

Re: re BINGO

... Or Skynet.

Competitive techies almost bring distributed disaster upon themselves – and they didn't even find any aliens

Re: Other BOINC projects

... You get an upvote for that terrible pun.

The Honor MagicBook Pro looks nice, runs like a dream, and isn't too expensive either. What more could you want?

Re: Intrigued

No, that's SOP for Sony VAIOs, at least their notebooks. I had one a number of years ago that had a tendency to BSOD due to a fault in the video driver; problem is, I couldn't use the standard ATI Radeon driver kits, because Sony did something to the GPU's firmware that made the Radeon drivers refuse to install, so I was stuck with the crappy, buggy driver that Sony had for it. Shame, it was an otherwise decent laptop, too.

When classes are online, how do you get out of school? Florida teen cuffed, charged after crashing cyber-lessons

Re: Anyone else think this is odd?

You forgot the Church Police.

Re: Dismal system safeguards

.. "Well Funded" and "public school system" are two things that generally don't go together.

And even if they are, the school administration generally runs away with the lion's share of the money.

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

Re: Stop pressing enter!

Exchange (in a DAG) is also like this, along with other things, like restoring mailboxes, exporting mailboxes, etc. In my documentation for testing a DAG failover with Exchange, there's several places where it notes that a healthy dose of patience is needed. One step literally says "Go get a cup of coffee/water/tea/soda/etc."

Re: Perhaps

The boss I call 'turkey' was like that- everything was a 'drop whatever you are doing and fix this RIGHT F'IN NOW GO GO GO GO GO GO !!!!!!!1111oneoneoneone' priority, even if it wasn't.

Like performing remediation on the production vmware servers of real or imagined 'defects' (like disabling copy/paste from the console on an esx5 host, which has that function turned OFF by default to the point that the flag isn't in the vmx file.)

ON CHRISTMAS DAY. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON.

[RedactedCo] is a 24/7/365 shop, so we are open for business every day; the nature of the business means that holidays are generally amongst the busiest times on the production floor.

Since I was doing remote work at the time to care for a family member that had major surgery, I replied back to him via email, with his boss (the CIO, and a sensible person) simply that no, that's not going to happen, but if he's insistent on it, to put it in writing, and I would start with the VMs that are running the production floor, and that each one has to be powered off first in order for me to add the toggle to the vmx file, which is about a 10-15 minute downtime for each server.

I then disconnected from the work network, turned off the laptop, and spent the rest of the day unmolested apart from the CIO going "you were joking, right? I'll deal with him" via text message.

I think. I have holes in my memory from that boss, he was extremely toxic.

Re: Perhaps

Teams is the current iteration of Skype for Business, which was Lync Communicator, which was Office comunicator. The only thing shared between Teams/SfB and Skype is the name.

You're stuck inside, gaming's getting you through, and you've $1,500 to burn. Check out Nvidia's latest GPUs

I'd also like to see the power draw on these; while the 3090 says it requires a 750 watt supply, I'd like to know just how many amps it's pulling through the two pci-e power connectors...

Microsoft reprieves SHA-1 deprecation in Edge 85 security baseline

They are absolutely screwing themselves over if they are insisting on using a deprecated certificate authority. Unless they've done something completely outside best practices (like making the CA root have an expiration date of 100 years or something equally stupid), they should be using something at least supported, especially if they are paying MS for support on it. And TBH, it's not too difficult to stand up a new CA next to an old one, which is useful if the CA's name needs to be changed or some such. (That's the route [RedactedCo] took moving away from a SHA-1 signed certificate with a tiny key length- We decided to stand up a new CA that exceeded best practices in terms of algorithm and key length, and just let the old one expire out. (We did have to remove it later on from the environment which was a little shaky, but our AD has a decent amount of cruft in it already from nearly 20 years of existence and a number of admins and people who thought they were admins messing around in it.)

Sounds like the black helicopters have come for us. Oh, just another swarm of FAA-approved Amazon delivery drones

Re: Great

Could also be a school that trains pilots, and has it's own airport so they can better control the airspace they are using for training.

Space station update: Mystery tiny but growing air leak sparks search for hole

Re: Redefine it

That sounds like an expensive plumber's bill, although I had to have the entire drain line from the kitchen sink to the main drain line in the front yard re-done after ~30-40 years of hot water, grease, and bog only knows what else finally ate through the cast iron part of the line. Had to have the front yard trenched, and part of the front porch saw cut. that was about 3-4 thousand US pesos. I at least got a main line cleanout plug installed in the yard for my money, so there was that.

(The previous owners were cheapsakes and did half-assed fixes whenever possible instead of paying the appropriate money and doing it right the first time. Had I known that, I would have passed on this house.)

You there. Person, corp, state. Doesn't matter. You better not shoot down or hack a drone. That's our job – US govt

Re: This is solvable

wow, what a crappy idea. :)

Notepad++ website sent to China's naughty step after 'Stand with Hong Kong' software update

Re: Column editing

Gods yes. I use the crap out of this feature (and other features) when I'm having to mangle text blocks from raw dumps into something useful, like a CSV format for either mucking about with in a spreadsheet, or feeding it into a powershell script.

Re: Not Just A Developers Tool

Notepad ++ is part of our standard server build; our system admins love it. (this infrastructure admin does as well; I need to see if we can arrange a corporate donation or something...)

Former HP CEO and Republican Meg Whitman – who split HP with mixed success – says Donald Trump can't run a business

Re: the Democrats should have won easily

I think part of it is that they are acting like they have higher morals. In addition, there was enough in-fighting within the DNC during the last election which pretty much prevented a unified front, which is what they absolutely must do this year.

Personally, I don't like either candidate, but I'd rather take an unknown with morals than the lying, narcissistic, sociopathic impeached crook we currently have.

Please stop hard-wiring AWS credentials in your code. Looking at you, uni COVID-19 track-and-test app makers

Re: Phone is not person

kinky!

SAP blogger reveals top tips for keeping clients happy: Don’t swear, remember to write a pithy subject line, and TURN OFF CAPS LOCK

Re: Just to clear one point

Hell, Common sense is so uncommon it's practically a super-power.

Sun welcomes vampire dating website company: Arrgh! No! It burns! It buuurrrrnsss!

Re: Dress Code

My 'interview' outfit has been my suit jacket, white long-sleeved button down shirt, a neutral tie, my nicest pair of black trousers ('docker' style pants for the USAians) and dress shoes. Seems to work well enough.

Oddly enough, that's the same outfit I use for funerals and formal weddings.

I had to do a call out one night in the middle of a party I was hosting; I was wearing flip-flop shoes, shorts, and a T-shirt into the datacenter. I also had a friend'consultant' with who wanted to see the place. he was dressed the same.

Re: Inappropriate garb? Me? Probably daily ...

I'd do it under the provisio that I get a clothing stipend as that will destroy the nice clothes rather quickly.

My current employer has a 'no jeans' rule as well, but it's at management's discretion, and several of our departments and teams are exempt (like the telecomms team). Fortunately, it's business casual, so we can largely get away with docker style pants, which are more rugged (and cheaper) than suit pants. (although things like cargo pants don't fly for some stupid reason...)

Re: Inappropriate garb? Me? Probably daily ...

Oh my!

Appeals judges toss out FTC win: What Qualcomm did to its rivals was 'hypercompetitive, not anticompetitive'

Re: Standardization

A really good example is the v.90 standard for 56K modems back in the mid 90's. There were essentially two companies out there that had a viable process: 3Com/US Robotic's X2 and Rockwell/Lucent/Motorola's 56Kflex. v.90 (and later, v.92) took bits from both (to hear USR's response, v.90 was mostly X2 but with some 56Kflex sauce stirred in; I imagine the same was said on the other side as well), and was incompatible with both.

I know that Cisco is one of the 40 tonne kaiju in the internet standards realm, which is certainly a pain at times, because they have their own special way of doing things.... (Microsoft was also one in the past, and probably still are.)

We have bad news for non-US Microsoft fans: The incoming Surface Duo is underspecced, overpriced, and over there

Re: Why?

Their ergonomic keyboard was pretty legendary, too, IIRC.

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

Re: Woz not Jobs

Yep; that's why the drives had that infamous knock during post. also explains why a good number of them went out of alignment, too.

Citrix warns of patch-ASAP-grade bugs in its working-from-home products, just as we're all working from home

Re: Customers are committed for the long-haul

Very much this. replacing a VDI solution also often requires a (literal) forklift upgrade/replacement of hardware as well as software. Even if the thin clients support all three of the big players (Citrix, Horizon, RemoteApp (aka RDP), it's generally a pain in the gluteus maximus to implement and migrate from one to the other. And none of the three I mentioned are 'simple, easy' solutions- lots of moving parts and a complex configuration, even for something simple and straightforward, like providing vendors with access for remote support.

Search for 'things of value' in a bank: Iowa cops allege this bloke broke into one and decided on ... hand sanitiser

Re: Keep in mind

... and Nebraska is America's cornhole.

(with apologies to the few people in that state that aren't meth-heads, have a bicep size larger than their IQ, etc.)

Re: Nature is a double-edged sword ....... sometimes !!!

You are not supposed to drink bleach either, yet our illustrious leader had mentioned that in a tweet some months previous. *eyeroll*

How did you spend your time at university? Pizza, booze, sleeping? This Oxford student is snooping on satellites

Re: Which internet router encrypts traffic?

Operators that do value their traffic - i.e. TV broadcaster - do encrypt it.

Yep. There was a decent trade for a while with some of the people I used to work with many years ago pirating DirecTV signals; apparently, the decryption scheme they were using had some flaws in it or some such. I was never really interested at the time, so I didn't bother finding out more.

What happens when holes perfect for spyware are found in the engine room of millions of Qualcomm-based phones? Let's find out

Re: Why do us customers bother?

And Agent Kay's comment in Men in Black:

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

You had one job... Just two lines of code, and now the customer's Inventory Master File has bitten the biscuit

Re: @werdsmith

And also in this day and age of virtual machines, taking a snapshot of the VM has also done the same thing. (just the app server, not the database server, which, if it's a shared database server, would cause far more problems...)

Re: @werdsmith

Backing up the database before upgrades or major updates is also a good technique/habit as well. It's saved our bacon a couple times at [RedactedCo] when the vendor ran an update to their software which included a database update, and then found that our specific instance of their software install broke their update, which required a rollback.

Re: Adding a comment sometimes caused compile failure

Maturity- I've heard of it.

"Growing old is mandatory; Growing up is optional."

Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5" floppy disks

Re: Cloud

I'm pretty sure you meant the Federal Aviation Administration, not the Food and Drug Administration.

Cheers!

Toshiba formally and finally exits laptop business

Re: Great.

Yes, Panasonic still makes toughbooks. There's a company called Getac that also makes rugged laptops, and charges about the same as Panasonic.

Ever wonder how a pentest turns into felony charges? Coalfire duo explain Iowa courthouse arrest debacle

Re: Firewalls needed

Nope, not at all- This is a text book example of some county level staff being irritated that they were either not informed of, or given the chance to have any say in, how the state decided to conduct their testing.

This investor blew nearly $300,000 on Intel shares the day before 7nm disaster reveal. Yup, she's suing

Re: I'm shocked

Kinky!

Burn baby burn, plastic inferno! Infosec researchers turn 3D printers into self-immolating suicide machines

Re: old story is new again

Pretty much any modern laser printer that uses toner also has a fuser to melt the toner into the paper. Now, normally the hot roller in the fuser assembly is coated with something like teflon to keep the paper and toner from sticking to it, but paper's really freaking abrasive over time, and the teflon wears out. (which is why you'll get repeat defects of a certain size when the fuser's old and needs replacement.)

One thing that I had to do a number of years ago was to crack open a brand new color laser printer, because some chucklehead ran a sheet of printable iron-on transfer paper through the printer, thinking it was for an inkjet.

Narrator voice: It wasn't.

The iron on transfer melted to itself and wrapped around the fuser. I was able to fix it, but still....

Also, laser printer do have a thermal cutout (or should!) for the fuser, although I've never seen one trip.

Getting back on topic: I have a couple 3d printers; both are powered off until I'm ready to use them, and I also don't leave the house while they are running, because fire hazard. (also, cats.)

'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad

Re: Every time

been there, done that, I think I'm up to four people that I've provided evidence to HR for being naughty, and they got fired for violating company policies. (there were probably other factors, but that's far above my pay grade...)

We've had a few of the more brazen types trying to look at pron on the 'shared' machines we have in the employee canteen, obstinately for the purposes of being able to look up their benefits or use company related web sites while on their lunch break. Our security group has full visibility to the screens, and gee, the idiots got caught.

Re: Lost count

See, that's a training issue, and the person handing over the laptop and dock should have taken a couple minutes to explain how to dock and undock the kit.

Unless the line manager was one of those "I work in the technology, and therefore I understand how all this works, despite the fact that this is brand new kit that I've never seen before" people who shoved the tech out the door 500 msecs after getting everything plugged in and powered up....

One hopes it was taken out of his check, or his department's budget.

Re: Which is why I always turn off email sigs...

... with fishnet stockings and go-go boots?

*heads for the door*

If you own one of these 45 Netgear devices, replace it: Kit maker won't patch vulnerable gear despite live proof-of-concept code

Re: Thank you Netgear

Yep. They cranked out a model of their Nighthawk X6S for one of the warehouse club chains, the model R7960P. Apparently, a large number of these have a problem where they don't actually save their configuration properly, so when the power is removed from the device, it resets back to factory. Netgear's official response was "pay us XX for a support ticket, and we'll RMA it with another unit that may or may not have the same exact problem". And while I could take it back to the warehouse club to RMA it there, (this particular chain has a fairly generous returns policy!), it was easier for me to just buy something else that was DD-WRT compatible (a TP-Link AC1750, which has a 'beta' firmware on DDWRT that seems to work just fine.)

Linksys was crap since cisco bought them, although I will state that I have a stack of D-WRT'd WRT-54G/GL routers that work rather well, despite being very obsolete. (which was the primary driving force behind getting something that supported both 2.4 and 5Ghz radios and was a little more modern.)

With the US election coming up, when better to petition regulators for a controversial way to chill online speech?

Re: Trump'S Getting Worse

There's been a rumor flying around that he had a minor stroke a few months back during that 'unexpected health checkup' that occurred.

Personally, I had the Orange One's personalty pegged years ago- he's a narcissistic, sociopathic con-artist who does'nt give a load of dingo's kidneys what happens to anyone else but him, as long as he's made out to look good. (which means that 'world leader' is absolutely the worst job to have.)