Tag: Speed

What does Storage have to do with Virtual Machines and why?

Paul

"A Thought Experiment" by Manupriyam Dubey, University of Lausanne
A thought Experiment

“As an administrator, you are given a single host server configured with four six-core processors, 256 GB of memory, and 1 TB of storage to deploy a number of virtual web servers. You have been told that each virtual machine will require 8 GB of memory, one processor, and 100 GB of disk storage. How many virtual machines will you able to deploy? What is the limiting factor?” Portnoy, Matthew. Virtualization Essentials

This is a good little question in a text book.  I thought it would be good to at least talk about this and hear what people have to say about this.   Each person is different and will have different answers but I will at least talk about this and the best practices for virtualization and hopefully we will come to the same reason.    If anything it will teach me and maybe even you the right answer and it will allow us to learn even more about virtualization.

Best Practices

The best practices for virtual machines depends on a lot of math and understanding of what will the virtual machine be used for.  We’ll come to that in a little bit.   The question right now is how many can you deploy on a single server.   On any given server the best practice is to do a 1:1 with cores.  So in this thought experiment, there are 24 cores, so we should be able to do 24 VM at the minimum.  According to Nakivo.com here’s the Virtual Machines cores and best practices:

  • 1:1 (optimal)
  • 2.1 (Normal)
  • 3:1 (Not optimal)
  • 4:1 (Maybe)
  • 5:1 (Problematic)
  • 6:1 (Probably not going to work)

I Found an excellent article about this and thought we should at least talk about some of these facts.   I agree with what they said.  The more VM’s you add to a core will make it more unstable and that isn’t even the main thing we need to consider.

Hardware

The Next thing we need to consider is the hardware.   We should always plan around capacity, growth, and business alignment.  When I say this I am talk about the size of memory and the total amount of disk space we will have per VM.  We can easily deploy up to 10 VM if they use 100 GB of space maybe it would be more like 9.   Since we only have 1 TB drive that would limit us to how many VM we could deploy at this time.    We need to consider that if we actually use the 100 GB right now the Virtual Machines we could deploy only 9 VM’s but if we dropped the requirement of 100 GB and made it expandable when it is needed than we could probably get away with the 24 virtual machines.  We could without a doubt do 24 VM comfortably with the amount of ram we had available.  It would leave use with enough overhead for more VM’s later on if we need to.  We could easily go up to 30 VM if we had to but I wouldn’t push it past that limit unless we install more memory down the road.  You will always need to determine your workload when it comes to how many VM’s you can install at one time on a server.

Type of Virtual Machines

Depending on what you intend to use this for such as databases or even web servers.  You will need to consider just how much of an impact the VM will have on other VM on the same system.  The utilization of the speed of the server will always be an indication of to much or not enough.  We will also have to consider the implications of ballooning or the impact of spikes in the server on a day to day routine.

These are just a few thoughts on this question.   I thought I would share with you what I have learned and maybe learn even more from my users.

Finally, the virtual machine is a powerful tool the enterprise and also small business in hand.  We can see that it can be used in many different ways and create even more uses

Why I uninstalled Microsoft Windows 11 Preview build?

Paul
Windows 11 — Isn’t the great!

I reinstalled Windows 10 and Deleted Windows 11!

I don’t know about everyone else but after my week long expedition into Windows 11, I just couldn’t handle the speed issues of the Windows 11 and the encryption.   I know it isn’t worth my time after all that to down grade to Windows 10 but I I felt it wasn’t going to get any smoother than that.  I also would of had to have deleted the partition anyways since it was locked to secure boot and UEFI.  I really didn’t want to try to convert it back to MBR.   I got my trust Windows 10 DVD and started it up and found the partitions I wanted to delete and then I reinstall Windows 10.   I will say that after wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Windows 10, and turning off all the Encryption crap and just booting into Windows has seen my load times go back to normal.

Windows 11 Problems

First off the main problem I had with Windows was the need to encrypt the Hard drive and I was using a NVME which should of been way faster than a standard SSD or Hard drive to boot up.   That wasn’t the case, I’d see the swirling load screen on my system for several seconds and then it would finally boot.  Due to the encryption that Microsoft says is required to run Windows 11, it just doesn’t cut it for me.   Even playing games like Minecraft was screwy and that isn’t even taking up that much memory at the most 2 GB or if you know how to do it 4 GB.   I’d play with Minecraft and the system would take forever to load up the next part of the map or even play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and It wouldn’t be sluggish there also.

The Start Menu

This was something that was just annoying, I think Microsoft wanted to look like an Apple device and bring the apple guys over because of the look.  I can’t understand why you would prevent people from reverting back to the old Windows 10 setup.  I can only wonder what people will do to find out what they are running and if it will actually be a good idea to keep the start menu in the middle of the screen.  Some people have these really long screens and it might help them.  I personally would like to move the taskbar anywhere on the outside of the screen, top or maybe right or left of the screen.  You wouldn’t be able to do that either.   Which will make people really mad.

I can’t see this being all about security

It just can’t be about viruses and malware or even the recent months of ransomware attacks that have been happening in the past year, due to the Covid19 situation around the world.  I have talked about how Windows will ultimately fail and we will see virus writers come up with some good viruses and malwares to compromise the Secure boot and even the TPM that is trying to be forced to be used by Windows.   I am sure it isn’t over, and if Microsoft isn’t going to change, we’ll see people leaving left and right to go to operating system that are much less restrictive and more open such as Linux.  In the end, I went back to Windows 10 because of the speed and performance, and I am not even thinking about Windows 11 until I find out what they will require when the system is finally released.   This will be a big deal to some but me, I am not interested in the so called security features of Windows 11.

 

How Cloud Services Changes Our Lives?

Paul

Picture By Gerd Altmann

Cloud Services

When I say cloud services, what comes to your mind?  Probably like most you think computers in the sky maybe even a satellite in beaming down radio waves to your room.   I can be difficult to imagine just how much our lives have changed due to this little old technology that we all have used in one way or another.   You might not know it but your using it now.  This post is using a cloud service that allows everyone to see this post.   I will say I am using cloudflares service myself which allows me to cache the content of my webpages.   It allows me to speedly show you what ever you might be searching for.

What it is?

Well Cloudflare is a service that allows companies with high pageviews and or page request to readily show people the content they are looking for or allow the end user to do something that might otherwise be slowed down by others due to the server not having enough bandwidth to be able to send the requested information to the user.   It would definitely make customers go somewhere else if they had to wait for the the page to load or to pay a bill.  Cloudflare is a CDN, a content delivery network, and can be used in many different applications in the world.

Customer Satisfaction

What does that mean for you?   It is simply the best way to deliver the content you are looking for and to allow you to browse the web faster and quicker than before.   If we didn’t have cloudflare CDN, I’d wager most business wouldn’t be able to stay online or have the capacity to deal with customers as they do today.   Each time a customer gets frustrated with a site or service, they are more likely to leave and not come back.  It’s a basic idea that we should make it  as quick as possible to keep the customer happy.

Recommendation

In the end, if you’re running a website on the web.   You’ll going to need a service like Cloudflare to keep the customers happy.   I’m going to say without a doubt to get Cloudflare or someone like cloudflare when you finally do have a website.   If not, you could be losing potential customers or clients.