VMware renovations

A few months ago I purchased an HP ProLiant ML110G4 (QuickSpecs) server to use as an VMware ESX 3 server. Adding 4GB RAM, a Lights-Out 100c remote management card, an E200 SCSI controller, an SFF-8484 to SATA fan-out cable and four 500GB SATA2 HDDs completed my spending spree.

When I came to assemble everything, I realised I'd purchased only one fan-out cable (whoops!) and that the drive cage in the case would only hold four HDDs anyway. Accordingly I was only able to use four HDDs in total. I had intended to use the standard 160GB HDD for the ESX system disk and to have the four 500GB HDDs providing ~1.5TB of RAID5 protected VMFS storage. The decision was made to stick with the latter and to install ESX on there too. Not ideal but at the time I needed ESX running in a hurry.

As this year had an extra day (today) I thought I would finish the job properly. In preparation I'd purchased another SFF8484 cable and two low-profile 160GB SATA2 disks (for a bargain £24 each) to configure as a RAID1+0 system disk. Making use of my new workshop and a tiny bit of my son's Mecano stock, I used a 5¼" to 3½" HDD bracket to mount both drives in the spare 5¼" tray. Having these two disks mounted ¼" apart should keep them cooler and as quiet as possible.

I installed the bits and added a new RAID1+0 volume (#2 on the controller) as the system booted to a 3.0.2 update 1 build 61618 CD. I installed ESX from scratch to the cciss/c0d1 volume, leaving the original volume alone. Of course, on a reboot to the HDDs the original cciss/c0d0 install started up. As the RAID5 volume had been created first, adding the RAID1+0 volume was useless - the system will boot from the first volume.

So, how to reorder the logical volumes? In the past this was always a huge drama but I felt sure a quick Google would reveal how such things get fixed over time. I was disappointed. Oh well, I would just have to imagine the controller had died and I was replacing it with a new one.

Call me chicken but before I started I had copied everything to other storage so I knew I wasn't going to lose anything. To switch the logical drive numbers I...

• Switched off
• Disconnected all the disks
• Powered on, the E200 found nothing and did not offer to run the BIOS configuration
• Started again :-(
  
• Connected only the two new RAID1+0 disks (less valuable in terms of data)
  
• Powered on and saw a warning for two logical drives, one missing, hit F1 to continue
  
• Quickly hit F8 to get to E200 BIOS configuration
  
• Deleted the absent RAID5 volume - "You will lose all your data!" it said
  
• RAID1+0 volume was now listed (significantly) as volume #1
• Plugged the RAID5 disks in, waited for them to show up
• Added a RAID5 volume, significantly now #2, with exactly the same config as before
  
• Saved config and rebooted

Sure enough, everything booted and the new ESX install automagically added the VMFS storage from the original RAID5 set with all data intact. Great news!

After a bit of zip-TARring and data movement I cleared the RAID5 set of anything I wanted to keep and repartitioned it to one big VMFS storage volume. Job done.

Factory opening drawing near

Things are starting to come together in my new workshop. After a couple of trips to the rather la-di-da Household Waste Recycling Centre, negotiating my way around the slowest old people in the World who seem to maximise delays by attending in carefully orchestrated shifts (grrr!), I've managed to clear an area of garage floor and much of one wall.

A trip to Wickes, courtesy of Stew, resulted in the acquisition of a bargain solid wood workbench, suitable for the bench drill amongst other things. And a relatively cheap rack of metal shelves from B&Q means I now have just about enough storage to keep things tidy. I say cheap, not quite so when you factor in all the plasters you need to stop your hands bleeding.

For the worriers amongst you, don't fret; I had the bench braced to the wall with "L" brackets before the shake of Tuesday morning so nothing fell over.

Light and power will be rearranged shortly. Ignoring the absence of adequate pressure testing facility ("safety-shmasty" as a wiseman once said, before being horribly scarred by steam and burning hot shards of metal), I think I'm good-to-go with the build of my first engine.

Quake!

Wow! That was a quake, a big one, and in Yorkshire of all places! I've never felt one at home before. 00:57 according to my Skype chat log. Dog went barmy and the banging of the doors and wardrobes woke my wife.

That was as much of a shake as I felt during all my time in Japan. Sadly we don't have the same reporting as our far-eastern friends.

[Update 01:35] Sky News (panicking as ever) are reporting the epicentre was apparently 15 miles north-east of Lincoln and the shake measured 4.7 on the Richter scale.

[Update 01:47] The US Geological Survey have this. Unfortunately the UK GS website seems to have crumbled. The timing was recorded at 00:56:46 so I wasn't too far out with my estimation.

[Update 09:00] The British Geological Society agree with the location but claim a 5.3 on the Ricther scale. Certainly felt like at least an intensity IV here. The children waiting to go into school were funny, with their experience of the quake being coloured by the Chicken Little nursery rhyme. I'd guess about only half of them were actually woken up. :-)

[Update 09:15] We found this last night as we Googled for news. This guy managed to put a little red circle around Lincolnshire(ish) a few days before the quake struck. Conspiracy theory anyone???

The latest family addition

Isn't she beautiful?!?

Earlier this morning a rather disgruntled delivery driver struggled to the front door with 40kg of Sealey magic. Despite the assembly instructions (damn those missing illustrations!) I managed to assemble the bits of my new GDM92B bench drill.

This is just one more step on my journey to building a cheap version of a Mamod stationary steam engine. I've bought all the (unmachined) constituent parts for around £15. Unfortunately my workshop wasn't quite tooled up to be able to do all the required fabrication.

Apart from this bench drill, I need a bench(!), a couple of metal working vices, a tap and die set, a hand riveter and a pressure vessel capable of testing boilers to 4 bar under water. A heater in the garage might be nice too.

To be fair, it would clearly be much cheaper, and perhaps safer, to spend the money on a pre-built model but where's the fun in that? My current estimates suggest I should break into profit after making only my twelfth example.

Riming [sic] in the bushes!

After yet another overnight hard frost, this morning we saw something that we've not seen too many times before. Many of the hedges were covered in fairly spectacular and very icy spiders' webs. (Whilst I've always known that spiders like hedges, I never realised there were quite so many of them.) And on the news there were pictures of cars covered in what looked like an inch of snow.

The weather lady on at lunchtime was at pains to point out that she hadn't got the forecast wrong and that the white, frozen deposits were not snow at all but rather were something called "rime". Apparently "riming" doesn't often happen in the UK. Even more bizarrely, rime is also known as "hoar frost" - I'm not making this up!

All this cold weather - it's not even got up to 1°C today - has meant I've managed to enjoy some very pretty scenery while I've been out on my bike. It's a good motivator as if we stop for too long we begin to suffer hypothermia (on top of the cramp and exhaustion).

I'm beginning to get the hang of rapid puncture repairs, a very necessary skill as hands only remain useable for a few minutes out of their gloves. Anyone who's watched Ice Road Truckers will know what I mean. Perhaps I'll have to investigate some run-flats for the winter excursions. :-)