對收藏的執着﹕跑車控 (轉文)

By admin, July 30, 2011 10:26 am

這個瘋狂的事我也做過﹐3年前為了台AA的Aston Martin V8黑色的問題糾結過﹐然後把它砸個粉碎﹐直接扔掉。當然我沒那位XD這麼執著﹐也沒買台新的﹐總結是應該剛進坑﹐大家都有着某種追求完美的態度吧。

時間久了﹐現在對那些瑕僻已經一笑置之﹐要知道有時候不完美才是生活的全部﹐不完美才令我們的人生完整﹐不要因為某些芝麻小事而影響了我們收藏車模的快樂。

超過110輛跑車模型全都靜靜地躺在盒子里,沒有任何展示的机會。即使是要拿出來看,劉芮也會認真地帶上白手套,生怕一不小心,哪塊皮膚触碰到車模表面,落下指紋和汗跡,更不允許自己的車模長期暴露在空气中被氧化。

被采訪者:劉芮 CMC中國模友會成員 90后跑車模型迷

一間15平米的屋子,牆上貼著各式汽車海報,一邊堆滿了汽車模型,另一邊齊腰落著各种汽車雜志,看得出主人對于汽車的熱愛。

這間房子的主人叫劉芮,給人的第一印象是精瘦、俊朗。1990年出生的他有些不善言談,談話間還會有點儿害羞,但是只要提起他熱愛的汽車,便一下打開了話匣子,信心十足地從跑車講到卡丁車,從車模講到真車,總之一切跟車有關的話題,都能和他產生共鳴,就像他自己說的,“這輩子离不開車”。

從小,劉芮的玩具就是汽車,從遙控玩具車到汽車模型,汽車就是他的玩伴,也是唯一能讓他靜下心來的東西。2005年,剛上初三的劉芮在商場看到了一輛1:18的汽車模型,綠色的車漆和流線型的外觀讓他邁不開腳步,一看价格700元,雖然對他來說不小數目,但劉芮還是傾其所有買了這輛“霹靂馬”概念車模型,也就從此打開了收集車模的口子。

從第一輛“霹靂馬”開始,劉芮只要出門就會找賣車模的店。一家在和平里的小店成為他經常光顧的地方,在這家店淘了20多台車模,平均一台600元。其中有一台2000元的恩佐法拉利足足讓他等了個月,“通知我去拿車時候,心情就跟提真車一樣,別提多興奮了”。

后來,劉芮認識了更多收藏車模的朋友,這才知道賣車模也有經銷商,也有一級、二級之分。之前光顧的几家小店,已經是轉了几道的零售商,价格自然高了不少。此時,回過頭看當年花700元買的第一輛車模“霹靂馬”,不僅車型不夠經典,經銷商那里也只賣180元。

從一開始收集車模,劉芮就給自己定下了明确的方向——跑車。“我本身喜歡跑車,而且跑車的优勢就是外觀和性能,所以跑車車模的外觀肯定都錯不了。”現在,他的110輛車模中,除了有一輛奔馳S63AMG和一輛邁巴赫,其余全是運動型跑車。

劉芮的車模不像很多人那樣擺出來展示,除非要拿出來看,其它時間全都靜靜地躺在盒子里,沒有任何展示的机會。即使是要拿出來看,劉芮也會認真地帶上白手套,生怕一不小心,哪塊皮膚触碰到車模表面,落下指紋和汗跡。他對車模的要求是近乎苛刻的完美,絕不允許自己的車模長期暴露在空气中被氧化。

曾經,一輛价值15 0 0元的法拉利F40車模剛剛到手,后引擎里有個橫拉杆了,劉芮本想用502把它沾好,可手指上膠水不小心沾到了車漆上。這讓劉芮無接受,一气之下把整個車模狠狠地摔在上,頓時粉身碎骨。緊接著又花了1500元,買了一模一樣的法拉利F40。

在劉芮收藏車模的過程中,只要是遇自己喜歡的車型,就會把所有顏色收齊,如日產GTR和斯巴魯STI,同樣的車型,只是不同顏色,都已經有了七八輛。這种對事物的苛刻讓外人難以理解,其實,交往中能感覺出他追求極致的性格,曾每天連續開經卡丁車、一門心思的去鑽研汽車、收集跑車車模,就連一摞雜志中多出來的一個邊角,他也會用手捋齊,不允許出現直線、直角以外的造型。

對于他自己的汽車,他更是追求極致,一輛嶄新的三菱EVO還沒上牌照。与其說是交通工具,不如說它是一件收藏品。“听說這款車要停產,我就赶緊買了一輛,牌子上不上無所謂,也不開。”

劉芮很早就喜歡上了三菱EVO,從玩游戲、看動畫片、看電影中,他感覺到其它跑車像“將軍”,可EVO是“武士”,瀟洒、另類、低調,別看五六十万元的車沒有倒車雷達、座椅還是手動的,但這款車的性能讓劉芮絲毫不介意這些細節。

從夢想擁有EVO車模,到現在終于有了真車,劉芮完成了一次欲望的旅程。但對于汽車的執迷,他絲毫沒有停下來的意思。他也的确离不開汽車了,汽車制造專業出身的他現在在一家汽車厂工作,如愿地過上了不可一日無車的日子。

真正的車痴﹕4000台車模、300萬的投資 (轉文)

By admin, July 30, 2011 1:19 am

今天在MC看到此文﹐我極度震驚了(用現代話說是我給雷到了)﹐世上原來真有車模痴﹐比我還要如痴如醉上幾十倍﹗

4000多個車模足足花掉了侯曉明近300多万元,不僅是金錢,侯曉明也把大部分精力都用在了汽車和模型上,除了吃飯、居住和汽車沒什么關系,就連工作掙錢也為了買車模。

被采訪者:侯曉明 CMC中國模友會成員 骨灰級模型藏家

1“門口停著輛阿爾法羅密歐,那就是我家了。”順著指引,記者很快就在南城的這個小區里找到了那輛阿爾法羅密歐,只是并非一輛,而是三輛,主人就是四十歲出頭的侯曉明。

侯的家在一棟樓的一層,除了路邊停著的紅色阿爾法羅密歐,100平米的花園儼然成了他的停車場,另外兩輛阿爾法羅密歐緊貼著停在一起。另一側是齊肩的磚房,不知道的人會以為這是自家蓋的蔬菜大棚。

跟著侯曉明,記者從一個小門進入“蔬菜大棚”里面,下了五六個台階之后,終于看清了“蔬菜大棚”的真面目——4000多個車模整齊地排列在兩側的玻璃柜里,透過玻璃房頂,自然光柔和地打在每一台車模上,儼然是一個小型的汽車模型博物館。

侯曉明是汽車模型發燒友,而且燒得不輕。不管是車模還是真車,只要有軱轆的,他都喜歡。就在這間半地下的“博物館”里,還停放著兩輛法拉利自行車、一輛摩托車。早年侯還干過二手車買賣,只是別人賣二手車會挑市場好、利潤高的收,他倒好,專挑那些自己看著新鮮、沒開過的車。錢沒掙到,反而賠了不少。曾經花17万元收了輛福特KA,自己看著喜歡不舍得賣,七八年后,5万元賣出去了。

在2000年的北京國際車展上,侯曉明無意中看到了一個汽車模型展台,雖然以前玩過拼裝和遙控,但眼前的模型和以前看到的都不一樣,真材實料,該用金屬的地方用金屬,該用真皮的地方用真皮。“我足足看了半天,想買,可人家說是展品,不賣。”對這几款車模念念不忘的侯曉明赶在最后一天撤展時又來到展台,從中午就開始給人家幫忙。快結束的時候,跟參展商的一位領導說:“車模再拿回去多沉啊,賣我几個吧?”對方看侯曉明如此執著,又幫著干了不少活,不好拒絕,這才答應讓他挑四款。“當時四款車花了2000多塊錢,不算便宜了,其中有一輛就是奔馳的黑王子”。從此,侯曉明就開始收藏車模,一發不可收拾,而且無藥可救。

侯曉明收藏車模沒走什么彎路,讓他的藏品成几何倍數增加的是几次集中收購。2002年,有位廣東的藏家因為搬家,需要一筆錢還貸款、裝修,准備把收藏的車模變現3 0万元。侯听說之后,當即把新買的寶馬318賣了30万元現金,換回來700多個汽車模型。這樣的整體收購,還有七八次。

現在,4000多個車模對于侯曉明來說,就像4000多個孩子一樣,沒有哪一個是他不喜歡的,每個車模都有每個車模的故事、意義,很難分出孰輕孰重。從1886年的第一輛奔馳車、淘金車、福特型車,再到貓王的摩托車、舒馬赫的F1賽車,侯曉明的藏品可謂應有盡有,甚至很多早已銷聲匿跡的車,他都有模型。比如,用郁金香木頭打造的喜事伯蘇珊。

盡管如此,他還是建議中國的收藏者都應該擁有紅旗車模,“畢竟是中國人自己的汽車,外國的車再好,中國的模型愛好者肯定要有紅旗車”。他擁有的几款紅旗車模中,其中一輛“東方金龍”的車標是用999純金打造的,還有紅旗設計者賈延良的親筆簽名。

不少收藏老爺車的人,但凡遇到不認識的車型就會找到侯曉明,從他的車模里找到相似的車型。侯也會告訴他們這款車的歷史、生產厂家、特點等等。4000多個車模,侯曉明清楚地知道每一款車模的名字、年份、歷史淵源,這也是車模讓他著迷的地方。“每一款車都會讓我產生疑問,通過查資料慢慢了解這些車模,這就是我的樂趣。”

侯曉明不像其它藏家那樣,不敢用手去触碰,他覺得車模必須在手里把玩、觀賞才有意思。至于戴手套,他也覺得沒什么必要,“戴手套會減小摩擦力,車模容易掉地上,也容易刮掉模型上的小零件”。

有些坏了的車模,侯曉明會自己動手修好。有時候還會騰出時間打掃車模,“先用刷子掃灰,然后用綢子布沾水擦,最后再上蜡,一天最多弄十輛”。不過即使是一天打掃十輛,如果想把所有車模都清理一遍,也要將近兩年時間。

到目前為止,4000多個車模已經花掉了侯曉明近300多万元,并且還在繼續“燒錢”,只要是生產模型的知名厂家出了新品,他都會毫無猶豫地收歸囊中。不僅是金錢,侯曉明也把大部分精力都用在了汽車和模型上。“除了吃飯、居住和汽車沒什么關系,就連工作掙錢也為了買車模,滿足自己的精神世界。”

剛看完了一個關於候爺的視頻,候爺肯定不是什麼車模土豪,看得出他很愛車,也喜歡每台車背後的歷史故事和文化。

永恆的美麗﹕Ferrari Dino 246 GT

By admin, July 29, 2011 10:33 pm

小時候曾經有段時間不停地搜索所有關於法拉利跑車的型號﹐記得那時好像還沒有Internet﹐唯一的途徑就是跑到書店看那些免費的外國汽車書籍和雜誌。我清楚記得當時看到了那個難以令人忘懷的流線型身影﹕Ferrari Dino 246 GT﹐那一刻我真的震撼了﹐那誘人的側面設計實在美的不可言喻﹐震撼度僅次于經典的Testarossa﹗

ferrari-dino-246-gt[1]

就是這個Pininfarina的偉大設計迷倒了一代又一代的法拉利車迷。

Dino 246 GT是法拉利的第一款中置引擎﹐又是法拉利系列裡唯一採用V6引擎的跑車。而Dino這個名字則是Enzo Ferrari老先生為了紀念其24歲英年早逝愛子而採用的。246

246的後繼車款也就是那大名鼎鼎的308﹐作為標準法拉利迷的你如果有細心觀察的話﹐其實不難發現後繼者如308﹑348﹑ 355﹑ 288 GTO﹑ F40甚至ENZO等線條其實都是由此基礎變化出來的﹐正所謂天下武功出少林也就是這個道理了。另外246的命名其實就是2.4升V6汽缸﹐288則是是2.8升V8汽缸﹑而328則是是3.2升V8汽缸﹐如此類推。

Ferrari Dino 246 GT可以說是我最喜愛的70年代法拉利﹐在收藏初期﹐ Dino 246只有Anson生產過﹐但無奈質量實在太差沒收。到後來才輾轉收入了紅黃兩色的Hotwheels Elite Dino 246 GT街車版本﹐沒過多久後Super Elite就推出了﹐但那高昂的價格完全令人卻步。

最近幸運之神又再次降臨了﹐上一手車主原來也是在去年12月中的那次本地車模店聖誕節大特價時買的﹐那次我買了台半價的410 Superamerica﹐但對于這台半價的Super Elite Dino 246 GT還是忍住了瘋狂的購買慾。這次能夠以上一手半價再1/3的“奇跡經歷”搜得﹐簡直自己都不太相信。回來後用了1個小時幫車清潔和打蠟後﹐Dino 246 GT紅得就跟新的一樣﹐實在是漂亮﹐全車用了極多的蝕刻片﹐而且價錢竟然比我之前收的普通Elite版還要便宜得許多﹐這次可真樂死我了﹗

 

1/18 Hotwheels Super Elite Ferrari Dino 246 GT

IMG_4758

Dell’s Customized ESXi ISO

By admin, July 28, 2011 5:38 pm

Recently, I involved in a project to deploy latest ESXi 4.1 at client site and all of their ESX hosts are Dell Poweredge based.

We know there are two variation of ESXi images, one is the VMware version you normally download from VMware’s web site, the other is the one customized by server vendor such as IBM, HP and Dell. The main difference is those customized ones are modified with vendor specific IPMI/Hardware monitoring stuff, for Dell, they have added some drivers in order for OpenManage SNMP agent to recognize and use. So it’s common sense to use vendor specific ISO if you happen to use their servers.

However, I looked into Dell’s FTP, there are two Completely Different versions founds:

VMware-RecoveryCD-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized.iso
VMware-RecoveryCD-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A01.iso
VMware-RecoveryCD-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A02.iso
VMware-RecoveryCD-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A03.iso
VMware-RecoveryCD-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A04.iso

VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized.iso
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A01.iso
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A02.iso
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A03.iso
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A04.iso

And the answer is VMware-VMvisor-Installer is to be installed on local storage (like harddisk or SAN) and VMware-RecoveryCD is for internal embedded devices like SD Card of USB.

In additional, Dell has created more confusion as there are even different versions within each distribute, like for VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized, there is A01, A02, A03 and A04 version.

Lucikly, by carefully reviewing the content of each download, you will soon discover the short cut that is always use the latest number, like A04 in this case because it contains all the previous fixes in A03, A02 and A01.

Hope this helps those who had scratched their hair recently.

人的出生不是平等的,人的死亡是平等的 (轉文)

By admin, July 26, 2011 2:20 pm

突發奇想﹐大家都說的“上帝面前﹐人人平等”﹐想深一層﹐那不還是說人死後。這跟李怡所講的“人的出生不是平等的,人的死亡是平等的”有著同曲異工之妙。

因為出版了兩本人生話題書,有人問我對人生能不能提出最基本的概括觀念。

人生的課題,不外是生與死,以及從生到死這中間的過程。人的出生不是平等的,有人含着金鑰匙出生,有人出生在窮困或破碎家庭,有人生而健康,有人生來有殘障。但在上帝面前是人人平等的。生而幸運的,要知道感恩。股神巴菲特說,他的富有,是因為他中了「卵巢獎券」,這獎券就是他出生在美國,又是男性和白人,這使他有較好的發展機會。他知道感恩。生而不幸的,不要抱怨。台灣一位生來患有嚴重腦麻痺症的女士黃美廉,她不能講話,做一些簡單動作都很困難,但她說父母愛她,上帝愛她,她會畫畫,寫文章,她只看自己所有的,不看自己所沒有的。她沒有抱怨。知道感恩和沒有抱怨的人,就有充實人生。

人的死亡是平等的。最有錢和最窮困的人,都要面對死亡。生前所有的一切,財富,權勢,爭鬥,愛恨情仇,當死亡到來都會成為過去。清楚認識人人會死,就不會把人生的成敗得失看得那麼重;看重的應是忠於自己,不要扭曲自己,是首要執着於是非對錯,而不是成敗得失。人生是一個過程,讓這過程有意義,享受這過程,比達到什麼目的和結果更重要。因為所有的目的和結果都會在人死時成為過去。故懂得提起,更要懂得放下。

即使了解以上的基本概念,也絕不能回應我們幾乎每天遇到的人生困惑。人生是一本一輩子讀不完的大書,有時一下就翻過了一頁,錯過一些重要細節,而往往魔鬼在細節中,天使在細節中,智慧也在細節中,儘管是小小的人生智慧。

(李怡)

Ancient Aliens & Life Did Not Evolve First on Earth

By admin, July 24, 2011 10:55 am

I watached an interesting series of Ancient Aliens by Discovery Channel.

One of the episode I watched (forgot the link) is about Nazi and its advanced weapon, most of those top German scientist were captured after WWII and sent to America, the German guy who invented V-Rocket/Missile said their technology was actually from them (them being refer to aliens).

The more I knew, the more I tend to believe many religion gods or upper rulers in the past may be aliens. 

The universe is is TOOO huge, combines billions of stars in our Galaxy and there are billions of Galaxies out there!

So it would be crazy to say there is no other life being in the universe besides us.

“I’ll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space. Right?” from the Movie Contact.

One particular thing is Sir Frances Crick discovered the DNA in the 1960s and won the Nobel Prize.

http://exopermaculture.com/2011/04/14/francis-crick-on-dna-intelligent-design/

Sir Francis Crick has the following theory:

“Life did not evolve first on Earth; a highly advanced civilization became threatened so they devised a way to pass on their existence. They genetically-modified their DNA and sent it out from their planet on bacteria or meteorites with the hope that it would collide with another planet. It did, and that’s why we’re here. The DNA molecule is the most efficient information storage system in the entire universe. The immensity of complex, coded and precisely sequenced information is absolutely staggering. The DNA evidence speaks of intelligent, information-bearing design.

Complex DNA coding would have been necessary for even the hypothetical first so-called’ simple cell(s). Our DNA was encoded with messages from that other civilization. They programmed the molecules so that when we reached a certain level of intelligence, we would be able to access their information, and they could therefore ­ teach” us about ourselves, and how to progress. For life to form by chance is mathematically virtually impossible.”

Tiered Enterprise Storage with SSD

By admin, July 20, 2011 4:26 pm

I found an excellent article on ITHome (Taiwan) regarding the latest trend in Tiered Enterprise Storage with SSD, but it’s in Chinese, you may need Google Translate to read it.

68700_4_3_l[1]

Update:

Aug-17-2011

There is new topic about Distributed SSD Cache in Enterprise SAN and Server, new SSD caching products are coming from EMC, NetApps, but where is Equallogic in this area?

Also Dell just released its SSD solution (CacheCade) for H700 H800 raid card with 1GB NVRam, but the cost is quite expensive, not worth the money really. (as one 149GB Solid State Drive SAS 3Gbps 2.5in HotPlug Hard Drive,3.5in HYB CARR [US$4,599.00])

CacheCade is used to improve random read performance of the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) based Virtual Disks. A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. SSDs significantly increase the I/O performance (IOPS) and/or write speed in Mbps from a storage device. With Dell Storage Controllers, you can create a CacheCade using SSDs. The CacheCade is then used for better performance of the storage I/O operations. Use either Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) SSDs to create a CacheCade.

Create a CacheCade with SSDs in the following scenarios:

Maximum application performance—Create a CacheCade using SSDs to achieve higher performance without wasted capacity.

Maximum application performance and higher capacity—Create a CacheCade using SSDs to balance the capacity of the CacheCade with high performance SSDs.

Higher capacity—If you do not have empty slots for additional HDDs, use SSDs and create a CacheCade. This reduces the number of HDDs required and increases application performance.

The CacheCade feature has the following restrictions:

Only SSDs with the proper Dell identifiers can be used to create a CacheCade.

If you create a CacheCade using SSDs, the SSD properties are still retained. At a later point of time, you can use the SSD to create virtual disks.

A CacheCade can contain either SAS drives or SATA drives but not both.

Each SSD in the CacheCade does not have to be of the same size. The CacheCade size is automatically calculated as follows:
CacheCade size =capacity of the smallest SSD * the number of SSDs

The unused portion of SSD is wasted and can not be used as an additional CacheCade or an SSD-based virtual disk.

The total amount of cache pool with a CacheCade is 512 GB. If you create a CacheCade which is larger than 512 GB, the storage controller still uses only 512 GB.

The CacheCade is supported only on Dell PERC H700 and H800 controllers with 1 GB NVRAM and firmware version 7.2 or later.

In a storage enclosure, the total number of logical devices including virtual disks and CacheCade(s) cannot exceed 64.

NOTE: The CacheCade feature is available from first half of calendar year 2011.
NOTE: In order to use CacheCade for the virtual disk, the Write and Read policy of the HDD based virtual disk must be set to Write Back or Force Write Back and read policy must be set to Read Ahead or Adaptive Read Ahead.

  

Aug-24-2011

I’ve found out only H700 H800 raid card with 1GB NVRam supports FastPath and CacheCade, unlike the LSI product which requires a hardware or software key, Dell’s LSI OEM H700/H800 provides those free of charge!!!

msm

In additional, if you tired of using OpenManage to manage your storage, you can try LSI’s Magaraid Storage Manager (aka MSM) which is a client based GUI tool like the previous Array Manager.

However, this still leave with one big questions even you have a H800 w. 1GB NVCache as it only supports SAS interface on Powervault MD1200/MD1220. Where can we find a cheap compatible  SAS SSD for alternative? (OCZ still costs a lot), if you know, please let me know.

For those of you who are interested in enabling H700 with cheap SATA SSD for CacheCade and FastPath, here is the How To Link, but it’s in Chinese.

 

Aug-27-2011

CacheCade software enables SSDs to be configured as a secondary tier of cache to maximize transactional I/O performance. Adding one SSD to substantially improve IOPs performance as opposed to adding more hard drives to an array.

By utilizing SSDs in front of hard disk drives (HDDs) to create a high-performance controller cache of up to 512GB, CacheCade allows for very large data sets to be present in cache and deliver up to a 50X performance improvement in read-intensive applications, such as file, Web, OLTP and database server.

The solution is designed to accelerate the I/O performance of HDD-based arrays while minimizing investments in SSD technology.


CacheCade Characteristics
The following list contains various characteristics of CacheCade technology:

 

- A CacheCade virtual disk cannot be created on a controller where the CacheCade feature is disabled. Only controllers with a 1GB NVDIMM will have the CacheCade feature enabled.

- Only SSDs that are non-foreign and in Unconfigured Good state can be used to create a CacheCade virtual disk.

- Rotational drives cannot be used to create a CacheCade virtual disk.

- Multiple CacheCade virtual disks can be created on a controller. Although there is no benefit in creating multiple CacheCade virtual disks.

- The total size of all the CacheCade virtual disks will be combined to form a single secondary cache pool. However the maximum size of the pool will be limited to 512GB.

- Virtual disks containing secured Self-Encrypting Disks (SEDs) or SSDs will not be cached by CacheCade virtual disks.

- CacheCade is a read cache only. Write operations will not be cached by CacheCade.

- IOs equal to or larger than 64KB are not cached by CacheCade virtual disks.

- A foreign import of a CacheCade virtual disk on a controller with the CacheCade feature disabled will fail.

- A successfully imported CacheCade VD will immediately start caching.

- CacheCade VDs are based on R0. As such the size of the VD will be the number of contributing drives x the size of the smallest contributing drive.

- In order to use CacheCade for the virtual disk, the Write and Read policy of the HDD based virtual disk must be set to Write Back or Force Write Back and read policy must be set to Read Ahead orAdaptive Read Ahead.

- CacheCade has NO interaction with the battery learn cycle or any battery processes. The battery learn behavior operates completely independent of CacheCade. However, during the battery learn cycle, when the controller switches to Write-Through mode due to low battery power, CacheCade will be disable.
NOTE:

Any processes that may force the controller into Write-Through mode (such as RAID Level Migration and Online Capacity Expansion) will disable CacheCade
 

Reconfiguration of CacheCade Virtual Disks

A CacheCade virtual disk that is made up of more than one SSD will automatically be reconfigured upon a removal or failure of a member SSD.

The virtual disk will retain an Optimal state and will adjust its size to reflect the remaining number of member disks.

If auto-rebuild is enabled on the controller, when a previously removed SSD is inserted back into the system or replaced with a new compatible SSD, the CacheCade will once again be automatically reconfigured and will adjust its size to reflect the addition of the member SSD.

 

Sep-4-2011

LSI Corp. today updated its MegaRAID CacheCade software to support write and read solid state drive (SSD) caching via a controller, providing faster access to more frequently used data. 

LSI MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 speeds application I/O performance on hard drives by using SSDs to cache frequently accessed data. The software is designed for high-I/O, transaction-based applications such as Web 2.0, email messaging, high-performance computing and financials. The caching software works on LSI MegaRAID 9260, 9261 and 9280 series of 6 GB SATA and SAS controller cards.

LSI delivered the first version of CacheCade software about a year ago with read-only SSD caching. MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 is priced at $270 and is available to distributors, system integrators and value added resellers. LSI’s CacheCade partners include Dell, which in May began selling the software with Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) H700 and H800 cards.

“What we want to do is close the gap between powerful host processors and relatively slow hard disk drives,” said Scott Cleland, LSI’s product marketing manager for the channel. “Hosts can take I/O really fast, but the problem is traditional hard disk drives can’t keep up.”

LSI claims the software is the industry’s first SSD technology to offer both read and write caching on SSDs via a controller.

LSI lets users upgrade a server or array by plugging in a controller card with CacheCade. Cleland said users can place hot-swappable SSDs into server drive slots and use LSI’s MegaRAID Storage Manager to create CacheCade pools. The software will automatically place more frequently accessed data to cache pools.

“In traditional SSD cache and HDD [hard disk drive] configurations, the HDDs and SSDs are exposed to the host,” Cleland said. “You have to have knowledge of the operating system, file system and application. With CacheCade, the SSDs are not exposed to the host. The controller is doing the caching on the SSDs. All the I/O traffic is going to the controller.”

SSD analyst Jim Handy of Objective Analysis said it took time for LSI to build in the write caching capability because “write cache is phenomenally complicated.”

With read-only cache, data changes are copied in the cache and updated on the hard drive at the same time. “If the processor wants to update the copy, then the copy in cache is invalid. It needs to get the updated version from the hard disk drive,” Handy said of read-only cache.

For write cache, the data is updated later on the hard drive to make sure the original is still updated when the copy is deleted from cache.

LSI also has a MirrorCache feature, which prevents the loss of data if it is copied in cache and not yet updated on the hard drive.

Handy said read and write caching is faster than read-only caching.

“Some applications won’t benefit from [read and write caching],” Handy said. “They won’t notice it so much because they do way more reads than writes. For instance, software downloads are exclusively reads. Other applications, like OLTP [online transition processing], use a 50-50 balance of read-writes. In these applications, read-write is really important. ”

 

Sep-5-2011

The SSD Review did an excellent research in their latest release “LSI MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 Review – Total Storage Acceleration Realized

vSphere Storage Appliance 1.0, Is It Really Necessary After All?

By admin, July 19, 2011 2:08 pm

A week ago, one of the latest derived products from vSphere 5 catches my attention, the vSphere Storage Appliance v1.0. Basically, it’s a software SAN solution for ESX Shared Storage requirement. VMware vSphere Storage Appliance provides virtual shared storage volumes without the hardware.

VSA enables Different Key Features according to different vSphere Editions:

Essentials Plus, Standard
•High Availability
•vMotion

Enterprise
•Fault Tolerance
•Distributed Resource Scheduler

Enterprise Plus
•Storage vMotion

And it offers Storage Protection
RAID 1 (mirroring) protection across nodes
RAID 10 protection within each node

Licensing
vSphere Storage Appliance is licensed on a per-instance basis (like vCenter Server)

Each VSA instance supports up to 3 nodes. (ie, maximum expandability is 3 ESX Hosts)
At least two nodes needs to be part of a VSA deployment

Pros: There is only ONE, it doesn’t require you to purchase an expensive SAN in order to use vMotion/DRS.

Cons: Too Many!!! Read on…

1. The license fee is USD5,995 per-instance but 40% off if with vSphere Essentials Plus, again VMware wants all of you to purchase E+, a $$$ driven price structure thing created by its fleet of “genius” MBAs. If your company have the money to purchase VSA, then I am pretty sure a proper SAN won’t cost you an arm.

2. “Run vCenter Separate from VSA Cluster for best protection” Why’s that?  These days the ultimate goal is to virtualized everything even for vCenter, it’s against the most fundamental rule of virtualization just like vRam asking you to purchase more servers with less ram installed on each host!

3. Have additional disk-space to enable RAID protection: VSA protects your data by mirroring data in multiple locations – this means your business data will require additional raw disk capacity. Good rule of thumb is to get 4x the server internal disk space you expect to use (You kidding me! RAID10, then split the rest for other node’s mirror, left you ONLY 1/4 of the original storage, this is again not enviornmental friendly); in VSA 1.0, disk capacity and nodes cannot be changed setup – feature is planned for future release.

3. Two VSA Hosts can support up to 25 VMs, Three VSA Hosts can support up to 35 VMs: This particularly renders VSA to Not Worth Spending the $$$, 3 nodes can only support 35 VMs max sounds unjustified for ROI.

4. Since it’s NFS based, you can’t use RDM or VAAI, this is bad news for those who run Exchange/SQL and looking for performance, but again, if you are after IOPS, then you got the $$$. Not to mention NFS is well known for its low performance over IP network comparing to block based such as FC or iSCSI and placing the same shared storage or SAN on ESX host will inevitably reduce the overall performance.

It seemed to me an immature rush to release product, use 400% more space is not a solution for Enterprise, it’s a big waste and a 2nd point against virtualization. It reminds me the software feature from NetApp’s Network Raid, it will use 2/3 of your storage for N+1 raid feature, well it worked, but it just doesn’t justify the cost after all.

Virtualization should save cost by fully utilizing Cpu/Ram/Space, but with the release of vSphere 5, it seemed to me the VMware is trying its best to discourage everyone by using vRam model as well as this VSA product. There is a hot debate on this topic on VMTN, 99.9% is against this “vmw screwed us“ new license change, and vmw’s official is hiding in the dark and afraid to response with a valid point.

No body want to purchase more servers with less ram on each host these days, these will use more power and absolutely non environmental friendly, now, we see VMware is becoming an anti-environmental friendly corporation.

Finally, VSA will use host CPU and local storage IOPS, and it’s not a model for future aggregate IOPS growth comparing to a real SAN, but after all, it’s just a temporary product for SMB, but why does VMware charge so much for it? In my own opinion, vSphere Storage Appliance 1.0 can be made obsolete and it’s uncessary as there are already Free Products from Microsoft iSCSI Target, Starwind and many similar products from Linux world for the purpose of Shared Storage for ESX.

PS. Just found out the free vSphere 5.0 ESXi version has the pathetic 8GB limit, now I finally understand why Monopoly is a bad thing, I shall start to look into Xen and Hyper-V seriously for my clients.

Concept from Movie Inception became true with ESX, How Many More Layers Can You Create?

By admin, July 19, 2011 1:50 pm

Last time I tried a Nested iSCSI VM thing, EQL>MS iSCSI Target>Starwind but today I found something even more crazy!

This is probably one of the best and most people responded blog page regarding Nested ESX and it’s unlimited possibilities.

The author even went so far by migrate a running VM with VMotion from the physical ESX host to the virtual ESX host, as well as running Hyper-V within ESX.

Wow, why don’t you install an additional ESX within that Hyper-V again to see what will happen when migrate a running VM back to the original mother ESX, that’s 2 layer’s back.  :)

從一場精彩的乒乓球女子雙打比賽得到的啟發

By admin, July 17, 2011 6:05 pm

南韓選手打的是削球,球拍向乒乓球的中下部削推,過來的球下旋,對手回球一定要根據下旋的程度來上提或平推,提得不夠球會下網,提得太多球會出台。下旋球的轉軸可以是平的,也可以是斜的, 給對手造成很大的困難。中國選手打的是上旋進攻球,擊球中上部,產生上旋球,除了來球快,球到對方台面會急遽前衝,對手要有快速反應的能力才行。

我做這解說,希望大家了解雙方攻防的難處,從而欣賞這場球賽。

希望大家已經領悟到了如何應付善于用下旋和側旋打法的球員。

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