Anybody heard of the FODMAP diet? GF is starting that this week. She has read the books and has to go FODMAP free for two months before introducing certain foods, problem is... they don't say how to go entirely FODMAP free! Any ideas?

Hi folks,

I've got a new leased line 1000/1000Mbps. What are some good methods to test the line speed?

Initially, I ran a quick speed test on speedtest.net, which selected a 'server based on ping', and for 750 Mbps DL, and 790 Mbps UL, which is significantly lower that 1000Mbps - but I expect that speedtest.net is not really an accurate test.

How should I test this?

Best,
Jim

@scottalanmiller said in What Is RAID 0? SAMIT Video:

@jimmy9008 said in What Is RAID 0? SAMIT Video:

I like the video; I'm not sure how helpful it is though.

Well, if you already know RAID 0. But lots of people don't, and I want to be complete.

Yes, it's good to be complete. If anybody asked me, I'd just pointing them here - probably.

I have a Motorola Moto GP, I think. It does the job, and when I kill it it's cheap to replace.

I like the video; I'm not sure how helpful it is though.

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

@dashrender All I can say at this point is "you have no idea what I'm dealing with at this company in terms of management perspective and expectation". I could spend another several paragraphs trying to defend myself and justify all the stuff I'm dealing with here, but I'm quite certain that none of you guys care to waste your time reading it, and it would actually just create more fuel for the fire that's already burning.

Cue the mangolassi elitist guillotine that lobs off Shuey's head

Wasn't being disrespectful... was just highlighting that deliberation costs money.

@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

I have an update on this thread, and more questions, lol. First of all, I got a new quote from xByte:

• Dell PowerEdge R730 Server 3.5" chassis with up to 8 drive bays (1)
• Intel E5-2620v3 2.4GHz/15M/1866MHz 6-Core 85W (1)
• Dell PE R730 Heat Sink (1)
• Dell 8GB DDR4 (2)
• PERC H730 Mini Mono Controller 1GB NV Cache (RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60) (1)
• 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
• Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card (1)
• 4 PCIe Slots, 3 x8 and 1 x16 (1)
• iDRAC8 Enterprise (1)
• Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails (1)
• Dell 750W Power Supply (2)
• Windows Server 2016 Standard 2-Core OLP (8)
• 5 Year Dell NBD Onsite Warranty (1)

Total with tax and shipping: $6360

My boss had me ask the xByte rep about the hard drive brand/model, and this is what the rep said:

"We have several to choose from, but the one we have most of are cobranded Dell/Toshiba hard drives. The Toshiba model # is MG04SCA60EE."

My boss then had me contact CDW to ask for a quote from them. Here's what I told the CDW rep:

"We're looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server to act as a storage server. We were initially thinking of an R730, but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:

• A 8-12 bay (3.5") chassis
• A single Xeon 6-core CPU with heatsink
• 12GB or 16GB of RAM
• One PERC H710P RAID controller with 1GB NV Cache (or equivalent)
• At least eight 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS drives
• One Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb NIC (or equivalent)
• iDRAC7 Enterprise
• Dell "sliding ready rails"
• 2x 750W PSUs
• Windows Server 2016
• 3-5 Year Warranty

Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"

Here's what he replied back with:

"I have the pricing back and am over 10K with this config. I know you said the budget was 6k.
Where can we cut back? The 8 6tb drives are almost 6k alone."

I told him we got a quote from another vendor and said that the CDW quote was considerably higher.

The CDW rep said:

"Is it apple to apples or did xbyte use third party memory and drives? We are dell's largest partner so it should not be a large difference if truly apples to apples."

I'm not sure what to think of all this right now.... :-/

How much time have you put in to this now, including your higher ups time? At some point, you have to just move on and buy the thing...

@scottalanmiller

Very interesting video. I see such corruption all over the place too. Not just non-profit, but charities too... it is such a shame.

I know one charity where a member on the board of directors for the charity also owns an MSP. That board use his MSP as the 'IT Company' for the charity. The board will never change that, and yes, his MSP charges far more for work at the charity than to normal business. As he is 'in power', it wont change - and the work they do is usually below standard.

@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:

Now that you are in the UK, that's huge and that's why xByte doesn't make sense. They have to ship there. In the US, the price difference is huge and we get so much more from xByte.

We need a flag on ML saying country of origin...

Well, US or UK, these are probably coming from China or something anyway. So, both have shipping costs.

Would be great to see a third quote for somebody US based for that exact same xByte quote above... Just to see how much extra we are being charge over here compared to you...

Still, over here that 30k or so adds up, so when I say it can make sense to go to Dell at certain times of the year, it's based on my knowledge of the UK market. Most of the year, that Dell quite would be much higher and xByte probably makes sense. But their end of quarters, for us at least, can be 30k less than xByte.

A month before that Dell quite, their price was around double. It's because it was close to their end of year and their sales want to nail targets.

I haven't looked at this for a while, but, how much is the cost to just purchase the domain name, and point that to an instance in AWS, or Azure, or VLTR etc? May cost more, but i'd look in to it...

Just manage the instance yourself...