iSCSI is fast (update: actually, it's not)

[update: iSCSI isn't so fast -- my benchmarks below are "buffer cache is fast". I went back to virtualbox disks instead, which are now even faster.]

After I built a ZFS server that uses 79W, I started looking around at other places I was using a bunch of power. And my Linux server (a few years old, P4) was using 150W+. What if I could turn it off and virtualize it?

I moved the whole thing to VirtualBox 3.0 with OpenSolaris as the host. This has worked reasonably well, aside from some odd hangs and a bunch of tuning you do to make the guest not eat all the host's CPU. (Hint: pass "divider=10" to your kernel. You don't need a new kernel.)

The glitches there are annoying enough that I recommend you mostly don't go the guest/host route. If you want to consolidate a bunch of servers, maybe you should try Xen or VMWare ESXi (which is sort of free now) instead.

And VirtualBox's performance overall is quite good (CPU, network).

The only problem is I put /home on NFS, and Solaris has all these rules, and they don't let you do async writes as much (like normal Linux NFS servers have let you do for years), and so compiling is very, very slow.

A small project of mine was taking about 2 minutes to compile over NFS. Same thing took 25 seconds on "local" Virtualbox make-believe disk. And yes I did "async" and "noatime" and all those things, and it didn't make a big difference.

So instead of adding another disk to Virtualbox, I decided to try out the iSCSI support in OpenSolaris. Would still get snapshots, would be exportable to a real physical box, and it's just cool to try.

After some help setting up the server (ahem, the "Target"), and setting up the client (the "Initiator"), things mostly worked, and I formatted with ext3.

23 seconds to do the compile.

Cool. I'm done with that stinky NFS volume.

When "search with Bing..." isn't

I was visiting MSDN today and saw "Search with Bing..." at the top. Like, maybe, they've fixed the terribly slow search on MSDN. Wouldn't that be nice?

I searched, and it was slow as usual. So I measured it.

MSDN search for "GetWindowThreadProcessId": 1126ms

Bing search for "GetWindowThreadProcessId site:msdn.microsoft.com": 234ms

Google search for "GetWindowThreadProcessId site:msdn.microsoft.com": 125ms

With Google, I can make a bookmarklet for "I'm feeling lucky" and get the first MSDN result in about 1/10 the time of MSDN's search.

Message to Microsoft Marketing: Search and Replace is not such a good re-branding strategy. Why rebrand something that's awful if you're trying to compete with something that's good? You are making an effort to tell people that your search is 10 times slower than your competition.

MSDN, if you need help, Google has a site search product that might be useful. Isn't any slower than "real" Google!

The Default Way

My uncle is a fine artist. He's almost 65, and has never really learned how to use a computer. He asked what computer to get, and I recommended a Mac. My dad asked me, why not a PC? My dad has two PCs, and everyone else in the family mostly uses PCs.

I even write a lot of software for the PC, and while I use both platforms (PC a bit more), somehow this one was pretty easy.

I told him, "The Mac has one way to do most things."

If he gets a Vista machine, and he asks someone who uses XP, "How do I connect to a wireless network?" He'll get the wrong answer. Because the answer to that question isn't the same, not even similar, on two versions of Windows.

For somebody who's never used email much, having an email program and a web browser that are quite good, that's a good enough answer. Photos, good enough answer.

My friend dropped off a midiman keyboard because he knew I broke my foot, to keep me entertained. Plugged it into the Mac, and Garageband just kinda worked. Plugged it into the PC and I don't know what to do next. I guess I could buy something, but what? Too many options. No default way.

Of course, the thing that cinched it with my uncle is Apple's "One to One" program, which provides a year of training for $99. They're going to lose a ton of money on my uncle, because he's dutifully going once a week, and doing the whole curriculum. But they'll have a Mac user for life.

Microsoft's ripping out their "Live" apps in the next OS, and I think this is a very bad move. Because it means that there's not a default way to do things. Yes there are good free apps that get included on new PCs (maybe Picasa is one of them) but they are rare. More often, their goal is to get you to upgrade or spy on you, not to make a good experience.


Photo from my doctor's office: 4 offers to upgrade trial software.

When you don't have a default way to do things, that means there are multiple ways to do things. You "go online" and try a bunch of them, and you get spyware with half of the free apps. You spend a bunch of money to get a "premium" tool, but nobody else you ask actually knows how to use it.

Apple's OS isn't more secure by design, but the funny thing is that it's more secure because you don't have to download tons of stuff to get it to work.

A default way, a usable way, a way that's not buggy and doesn't make you download stuff you don't understand.

Now when I talk to him on the phone, we talk about art and design, instead of which software to use to get something done.