Apple’s AirPort Extreme: A Presonal Review

Recently I was asked to setup an Apple AirPort Extreme for a friend. So I was luck enough to spend a couple days with it before I installed it. This blog post is just a few thoughts I had about the AirPort Extreme and couple issues that I found with the unit.

Don’t get me wrong the Air Port Extreme is beautiful to look at. I assume that Apples design process for their engineers is “We need you to fit all those electronics into this package.” This goes for all their products which are all equally aesthetically pleasing.

The Good:

• 3 GigE Switch ports. Very handy if you are setting up a home network and require a GigE for streaming audio and video.
• A USB port that can share out printers or USB storages devices via afp or smb. Multiple devices can be connected shared from it via a USB hub.
• Setup is a breeze with the Apple AirPort Utility, but the AirPort Utility is also a con.

The Bad:

• Price: AirPort Extreme runs roughly $180. Ouch!
• The top of the unit gets REALLY warm.
• Since the AirPort Utility is required for the setup and changes of the device you have to have the utility installed on either a Mac or a Windows based PC. A web interface would have been much better.
• No DynDNS or any other Dynamic DNS options. This is really handy if you are connecting back into your home via the internet. That is if your provider does not use static IPs with your cable or dsl modem.

How to Restore a Virtual Machine from a Netapp Snapshot

Step 1. SSH into the Netapp Filer to which contains the virtual machine that you wish to restore.

Step 2. Once SSH into the Filer check to see what snapshots are available. Run a…

df -h

..to display all the volumes, which should display something like.

/vol/vmware0/ 200GB 143GB 56GB 72% /vol/vmware0/
/vol/vmware0/.snapshot 50GB 975MB 49GB 2% /vol/vmware0/.snapshot
/vol/vmware1/ 200GB 143GB 56GB 72% /vol/vmware1/
/vol/vmware1/.snapshot 50GB 975MB 49GB 2% /vol/vmware1/.snapshot
/vol/vmware2/ 640GB 253GB 386GB 40% /vol/vmware2/
/vol/vmware2/.snapshot 0GB 17GB 0GB —% /vol/vmware2/.snapshot
/vol/vmware3/ 640GB 187GB 452GB 29% /vol/vmware3/
/vol/vmware3/.snapshot 0MB 11MB 0MB —% /vol/vmware3/.snapshot

Step 3. Now run snap list plus the volume name to display the snapshot of that volume.

snap list vmware3

Output should like something like.

Volume vmware3
working…
%/used %/total date name
———- ———- ———— ——–
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 12:00 hourly.0
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 11:00 hourly.1
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 10:00 hourly.2
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 09:00 hourly.3
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 08:00 hourly.4
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 07:00 hourly.5
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 13 00:00 nightly.0
0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 12 00:00 nightly.1

Pick a snapshot that you believe was the last known good data.

* Note: your volume name may differ.

Step 4. Now list the current luns and the their path.

lun show all

This should display something like the following.

/vol/vmware0/vmware0/vmware0.lun 200g (214748364800) (r/w, online, mapped)
/vol/vmware1/vmware1/vmware1.lun 200g (214748364800) (r/w, online, mapped)
/vol/vmware2/vmware2/vmware2.lun 320.0g (343645618176) (r/w, online, mapped)
/vol/vmware3/vmware3/vmware3.lun 320.0g (343645618176) (r/w, online, mapped)

Step 5. With the source LUN path we’ll now let create a cloned lun of the vmware volume from the snapshot. Since this is a cloned volume it will consume no space as it uses the block pointers from the snapshot from the base lun. The command to create the lun clone is…

lun clone create [-o noreserve] -b

Example:

lun clone create /vol/vmware3/restore.lun -o noreserve -b /vol/vmware3/vmware3/vmware3.lun nightly.1

* Note: be sure to use the “-o noreserve” otherwise this may cause issues with space.

Step 6. To make the cloned lun viewable by the VMware vCenter interface it needs to be added to an igroup viewable to the ESX host servers/clusters. Now it is possible to create a new igroup and add the new storage and ESX hosts to it but it is much easier to just use the one currently in use. To view the igroups on a Filer the command is…

igroup show

…this should display something like:

vmware (iSCSI) (ostype: vmware):
iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:elm-30c07ddd (logged in on: prod1, iscsi1)
iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:teak-5f0894ae (logged in on: prod1, iscsi1)
iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:bamboo-7434706b (logged in on: prod1, iscsi1)

Step 7. So from the above there is a “vmware” igroup that several ESX hosts are attaching to. So to map the cloned lun to the “vmware” igroup the command is as follows:

lun map /vol/vmware3/restore.lun vmware

Step 8. Now from the VMware vCenter select a ESX host server.

Step 9. Click on the “Configuration” Tab.

Step 10. Select “Storage Adapters.”

Step 11. Click “Rescan.”

Step 12. Now click “Storage” and the cloned lun should be listed.

Step 13. Right click on the new cloned datastore it should start with “snapXXXXXXXXX” and select open.

Step 14. At this point the all the virtual machines that are in the clone should be listed in the new window. In the window’s right pane you should be able to right click on the directory containing the VM(s) that you want to restore and copy them.

Step 15. Now go back to the vCenter interface and Right click on the datastore that you want to copy the restored VM to and select open.

Step 16. In the new window right pane select paste. This should copy the VM from the cloned lun to the production lun storage.

Things that Apple Needs to Improve

For the record I’m primarily a Linux user I run linux on my work laptop, home workstation and server. I’ve always admired Mac’s from a far and secretly wanted one, though I never confessed this to my fellow linux friends. About a week ago I purchased my first Mac a shinny new MacBook and so far I’ve enjoyed getting familiar with it – but… Along the way I’ve found a few things that I think that Apple needs to improve on. They are as follows.

• Network Share Mapping/Mounting – This really needs to improve. I mean SMB/CIFS shares have been around for what 15+ years and “Go -> Connect to Server” is the best that Apple can muster!?! Even linux does a better job.

• Make and Sell Real docking stations (revolutionary in design) – The Bookendz docks for MacBooks and Macbook Pro’s are fugly and from an aesthetic perspective do not go with the beauty that Mac’s are. Apple should really look at developing something that uses magnetic induction charging and wirelessly interfaces with the dock that USB/Firewire devices and Speakers are connected to. No one wants to fuss with the cable mess that Macbooks offer when going between home and work.

• Develop an email client that interfaces with Exchange. Sorry Apple but Microsoft has won in the corporate environment with Exchange. This was grasped when developing the iPhone but lost with OS X. Asking customers to pay another $100 to buy Microsoft office to get Entourage on top of their already expensive apple computer is a bitter pill.

Just food for though from a new Mac user.

NM Ubuntu LoCo and Our EPC Project gets mentioned by Ubuntu Podcast

How very cool!  Our local Ubuntu user group the Ubuntu NM LoCo gets mentioned during the Ubuntu Podcast for our EPC project.  Please check it out.

http://ubuntupodcast.net/

Music Collection as a Service?

I’m a huge music fan.  My music tastes range from Antonio Vivaldi to Slayer and anything in between.  As a music fan I have a large collection of digital music that I’ve collected over the years,  I created my first mp3 in 1992, that I maintain some 300+gb.  To maintain the collection I have to buy not one but two drives, one for the main collection and one for backup copies, each time my collection grows beyond it’s current storage.  This is getting pricey and to be honest kind of a pain to run a weekly backup for the collection and store one drive off site in the event something happens to my home (i.e. fire, flood, whatever).

We all know that there’s been a constant battle between those who would like to have their music in a digital format that they can use anywhere any time and the RIAA whom wants to control, to their fault, the format and how we use music. I suggest a compromise.  I as a consumer do not want the hassle of maintaining a digital music collection but I want my music in a digital form that can be used anywhere anytime. So why not offer a service that instead of downloading music can browsed through any or all music ever and stream any genre, artist, albums. singles, playlist that I like to any device.  I would gladly pay for such a service.  It’s a win/win for both the consumer and the RIAA.

One way of doing this is to open Apple’s iTunes store for streaming.  Apple already has agreements with the various music companies and the RIAA,  it has a huge collection already online, and an interface that is user friendly.

Just an idea.

Is Comcast trying to stifle Online Streaming?

We all know that Comcast and other highspeed Internet providers are placing bandwidth caps on their subscribers.  Most are stating that these caps are to curtail misuse of their Internet services by piraters, p2p users, etc..  If this is their sole interest is to prevent said misuse then I have a test for them.  Why do they count services like Hulu, Itunes, NetFlix streaming, YouTube, etc against their subscribers bandwidth caps?  These services are legitimate and so why are are they counted against the bandwidth caps?  I propose to you that these caps have another function.   Let’s be honest cable companies bread and butter is their TV services.  Now are are seeing a ever growing trend that users are migrating to on-line always on-demand and accessible anywhere services, like Hulu, NetFlix, etc.  All of which are a threat to cable providers base TV services.  What better way to stifle such behavior then to cap a user base at a set bandwidth?

So I have a challenge for cable companies like Comcast who are placing bandwidth caps.  If you truly are not trying to stifle your Internet subscribers from using on-line video and music content feeds then white-list  the legitimate services/providers and do not have these service count against subscribers bandwidth usage.

Planning Ubuntu Based Fanless Media Front End box.

For the longest time I’ve wanted a fanless front end box that I could access my media collections that I have on my Ubuntu NAS server. Sure there are media players out there like the Neuros OSD or Link. But each that I’ve looked at has been missing a feature or two that I would’ve liked or that would’ve made the player totally awesome.

As an example the Neuros devices.

- The Neuros OSD – missing a CD/DVD rom, no S/PDIF out, no HDMI, no support for theora video, lastly interface is slow.

- The Neuros Link – not fan less and the case is ugly, support for codecs requires manual hacking, remote storage requires hacking to mount NFS or CIFS shares. Though I do like the fact that it is Ubuntu based. =)

So since I can’t buy the Ultimate media player or PC I’ve decided that I better build one myself.

Features Key to my project:

Hardware:

- Needs to be fanless and quite.

- Needs to look good and blend with my other stereo equipment.

- Needs to be powerful enough to play all manor of media from mp3/ogg to HD video.

- Needs HDMI and SPDIF out.

- Needs to be relativity cheap to build but good quality.

- All hardware should be supported by Ubuntu Linux.

Software:

- OS needs to be based on Ubuntu Linux.

- Easy to maintain and backup.

Interface:

- Needs to be clean

- Needs to be functional

- Needs to be easy to navigate for all users.

- Needs to be eye candy.

Now time to start looking. =)

Ubuntu Certified Professional Training Courses

Canonical Ltd Partners with LynuxTraining Sàrl to Develop Ubuntu Certified Professional Training Courses.

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VMware over NFS

Found a great blog entry from an Engineer at NetApp that discusses advantages of using NFS in a VMWare environment.

VMWare over NFS

Quote: “People may find this hard to believe, but the performance over NFS is actually better than FC or iSCSI not only in terms of throughtput but also in terms of latency. How can this be people ask?”

OpenSource VMWare ESX?

I’ve been thinking about trying to recreate an ESX like environment with the freeware version of VMWare server and Ubuntu. In theory if you…

1 – Install Ubuntu Server on a backend server that has a ton of storage which will be the “shared” storage server.

2 – Use NFS to share out big chunks of storage from the backend server.

3 – Install Ubuntu Server and VMWAre on the “frontend” servers (2 or More).

4 – Mount the shared NFS storage shares on all frontend servers

5 – When creating VM’s create them on the NFS shares.

6 – Power up a VM on a single frontend server but point all the frontend VM servers at all VM’s. This way if a frontend server dies you can recover to one of the other frontend servers.

It should work. Mind you having GigE network is sort of a must. Even better Dual NIC’s in the servers with separate GigE Switches or VLANs (one for storage the other for data).