zabbo

I’ve long been a fan of of the discontinued APC AP9211 distribution unit. To wit:

1. It’s an efficient 1U, taking up just enough space for the 8 outlets.
2. It is gloriously devoid of any moving parts, including noisy fans.
3. powerman comes with scripts to manage its outlets from the command line over ethernet. Once you get used to the convenience of “powerman -c $host” you never go back.
4. It’s common enough to easily be found on ebay.

That last point brings us to this post. Mark got a pair for his machines after I showed him the light. He got them from an auction that has 3 days left and, at the time of this writing, 19 units left. Each has a pretty reasonable price for immediate purchase with shipping.

APC MasterSwitch AP9211 w/ AP9606 Control Module — ebay auction 230196539398

It’s a chance for poor kernel developers out there to stop being frustrated by having to lose time rebooting boxes in person.

I’m very excited. In a small number of hours someone from the PostgreSQL project will be coming by to take away my old fiibre channel storage setup. I had used it for OCFS2 development, mostly, but haven’t touched it in ages. I do hope it works out well for them. It consists of the following:

1. 8 incredibly long copper cables
2. about a million (ok, 11) copper GBICs
3. 8 qla2100 PCI cards (these are not excellent)
4. A tray of 10k rpm Cheetahs, complete with funky NetApp firmware, which could kill a man who attempted to lift them unaided
5. a fibre channel switch whose fans could then wake said dead man

Did I mention the excitement? This crap — er, fantastic storage infrastructure — will no longer take up space in the basement.

These days I do my storage work on an HP DS2405 which is directly connected to an Emulex LPe11002, both donated by said companies. The old setup could hit 100MB/s on a good day. The current kit hits 450MB/s without trying very hard. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.