Study Notes

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We have already deployed several virtual machines on 226, and now I want to migrate this virtual servers to new ESX system. After reading some hints found in Internet, mount the Windows(226) share to ESX mount point and then import the files. The first three times I failed to mount the samba share because there is firewall existing on ESX system. When turn off firewall, the mount operation would be succeed.

I have to provide some user-end documents about NAS component, which is considered annoy job. Is that my duty? I don’t think so, I am a developing engineer, not a pure assistant, even who has a good hearing title: Department Interface. When I review the past years, I did not improve myself greatly either in technology or general communication. Even feel very tired sometimes. Pang Rangsheng said my face looked badly at this night. I am worry about my health. I must take good care of my mother, and I can not repeat my father’s way.

To make up for lack of natural talent by hard work.

This afternoon, Gavin told me something about integrating poweron’s software, which is called “pvg” and developed on Fedora5/6. It is used for video monitoring. Shan Xiaoyu and Xi Zhaoxu visited poweron, and later poweron agreed to give their program(binary format) to us for testing. We only need to run the script in the exacted directory. Zhufeng had installed it successfully on CentOS4.4. While in current BX1200 environment, it said that the glib version is too slow to run the program. We fixed this issue by upgrating the kernel from 2.6.21-7 to 2.6.22.15(stable), however, we do not estimated the effection to other components of BX1200, for example, Samba and NFS. The first successful running would create a license key that need to be re-certificated by poweron. Huang Pengcheng sent the first key file to poweron and later got the new key file, while in today testing, it seemed the received file can not be used. I have collectted all relevant information and send feedback to PowerOn.

PowerOn is still worry about how to update their video programs if integrate in our close BX1200. Gavin said we can provide a general interface for uploading as upgrate files in BX1200(Web/http upload).

Till the end of January, I will focus on this testing. The goal we want to reach is estimating whether integrate pvg or not. If integrate it, we also need to estimate the working load.

I borrow a book about documents management from the library, because I think it has became more and more importance during the online system development, the documents are considered to be control point, or middle stones. More attentions would be paid on this subject. I can also use those formats and forms listed in the book.

Collect all hardware information about RD2 department and submit the form to Jack Wang, who is the new storehouse manager. The following days I will study VMware Enterprise Server and try to deploy it to apply in our general working.

Today is the final day of 2007. In the past 2007, I took RHCE exam in January, later resigned from Plasmon and returned to Shenzhen in April. I was married in December 25th. The main work in 2007 is, researching NFSv4 in Plasmon, CentOS4.5/BA880 study, and focusing on ONStor Bobcat 2280 between September and October. In the following days, act as interface of R&D department, who is response of communication with other departments and Inventec guys.

In the coming 2008, I plan to improve my oral English and listening ability in the first three months, and CCNA is also included in my study schedule.

Happy new year, and wish my family well, wish all my friends well.

I’m going to marry Yang Juan in December 25th. This is the most important thing in my 2007. Marriage means many things, grow up and fright as a real man, and have to thing about more deeply. Or I need to change some ways or methods for general communicate, not make others felt be enforced and pressed. Try to speak slowly and become more kindly. Read more book about Chinese culture. Insist on doing hearing exercise everyday. Be a man, protect my home, and all my love.

In the morning, I had a meeting with Shan Xiaoyu(new comer in product department) and a testing engineer, Hou Xianghua. First off, I reviewed the BX1200 development process and pointed out something should be carefully concerted about. UIT OS installed in BX1200 is 2.6 kernel while the third party video-monitor software is implemented in 2.4 kernel before(RHEL 3.0 and Red Hat 9.0), so it seems to have to re-compile the codes in our 2.6 kernel to ensure it can run smoothly based on BX1200. Gavin told me, he wants the BX1200 becomes a general platform, either of end users or the software company who will integrate their monitor program and get benefit by reselling BX1200. UIT OS has not X-Windows, so it is not possible to view graphics in BX1200 console. The last point we must confirm is the Web management port. The current Web port(NAS/iSCSI) is 80, which should not be duplicated with Video-Monitoring programs.

SS2280 always annoys me. I found the platforms shipped in November 8th, have not riser card in the chassis. However, in the earlier box we got in October, it is implemented with two riser cards(full-length and half-length). As the result, we can not insert Intel 1000Mb Ethernet card in SS2280. I’ve reported this situation to Tobey Chan, QE from Inventec.

Tan yinhong said during his performance testing on BX1200, one network ports can get the best performance nearly about 1Gbps, while two ports still retain the same level. Obviously the result is not reasonable. The latest news I got from him, maybe it is caused by the re-direct codes. I call Inventec technical engineer, York Chen. The kindly man told me the two ports in SS2280 both have dedicated bus connected with ESB2 south bridge. Hmm, It sounds I have to validate the actual network bandwidth in tomorrow.

In order to resolve UT issue, mounting big volumes is very slowly and the customer set the maximum time no more than 3 seconds. In fact, we find that every mount version on 2.6 kernel will mount the volumes very quickly. However, if the kernel is 2.4, it is expected to have pain. We do not want to modify our code in kernel level, so that have to test the whole system performance when nfsd is running, though usually 4-8 nfsd threads are default. The only reason is single nfsd thread could not cause “dlm_sendd” eat all the CPU resources.

Five servers which implemented with Gigabyte network device, and all the cables are connected to a dedicated Cisco switch in order to avoid network traffic. Every server held 10-12 iozone threads to write data across two NAS 880 nodes. The performance is quite good,single node “bo” is around 25MBps, and during the 3 hours continuous iozone pressure testing the node CPUs usually have high free idles.

It seems the single nfsd would resolve the UT issue now. However, I need confirmation and agreement from Gavin Huang. Thanks Lin Peng and Zhu Feng, you have done great job all these days.

Inventec issue: Their engineers will arrive Shenzhen tomorrow morning to fix SS2280 platforms.

OEM: Original Equipment Manufactor
FRU: Field Replacable Unit
BMC: Baseboard Management Controller
EEPROM: Electronically Erasable Programable Read Only Memory
NMI: Non Maskable Interrupt