IT Administration

The case against RAID 5, why use RAID 6 instead

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For many years RAID 5 used to be best practices and golden standard for any organization, who cares about smoothness of their operations, especially when downtime means losing money. RAID 5 is cheap and when the hard drive in your array fails, you can replace it without data loss. You just swap the drive manually or you can have installed spare drive already in your storage device exactly for this situation. Users often won’t even notice something is wrong. RAID 6, on the other hand, is still seen as overkill with bigger overhead and with worse performance.

Disk cost

RAID 5 needs one more drive, which you cannot use for storing data. If any of the drivers fails, you can rebuild it without data loss.

RAID 6 needs two more drivers, bud you can lose 2 drives at once and you will still be able to rebuild the array successfully.

Speeds

The reading performance of RAID 5 and RAID 6 is basically the same.

The writing performance is a little bit more complicated, RAID 6 can be more power hungry (33 % more CPU power) and also little slower in some scenarios. But the difference can be eliminated using cache in your storage device.

So what’s the problem?

It’s the security. You are using RAID, so you obviously want no downtime –  restoring from backups takes precious time and you have to bring your information systems offline in most cases.

Many people think the chance of 2 disks failing at once is slim. It happens all the time, believe me. The drives have much bigger capacity today so the rebuild often takes days. When another drive fails in this period and you are using RAID 5, your data are gone.  Also, the rebuilding process is pretty disk-intensive and it can cause another failure. You have probably bought the disks at once, they can come from the same manufacturing batch and have the same defects. Hell, you probably installed them and started to use them on the same day!

There is another big problem, which wasn’t such a big deal years before. Storage is cheaper nowadays. With vast arrays of many terabytes, rebuilding times are not only much longer, but there is a higher chance to encounter URE (Unrecoverable Read Error) and again, lose your data.

One recommendation holds well against the time. RAID doesn’t replace backups. Have good backups, folks.

What do you think?

IT Administration

Those hellish Sharepoint 2013 backups

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I spent a lot of time today on this one.

I tried to backup my Sharepoint 2013 farm, full backup, via Management Shell:

Backup-SPFarm -Directory \\SERVERXXX\farm_backup\ -BackupMethod full

It did save data but always ended with an error. At the end of the log file was this gem:

FatalError: Backup failed for Object Crawl-0 (E: on SERVERXXX) failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the spbackup.log or sprestore.log file located in the backup directory.

It was a god-damned permission problem. If you are getting this error, check your database users – open up Sql Server 2014 Configuration Manager (or the version you have) and check those:

sql-server-config-manager-users

See? Those are default:

  • NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService
  • NT Service\MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS

Grant them NTFS permission to the backup location and to the share (full access). Run the backup to see if the problem persists. This did it for me.

Nezařazené

System requirements for Vampyr

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The new game from authors of Life is Strange, where you play as Dr. Jonathan Reid, who is newly-turned Vampyr, is finally here. If you want to enjoy this beautiful game fully, you will need some serious performance.

Here is what you should have straight from NVIDIA:

Minimum System Requirements

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Legacy GPU: GeForce GTX 660)
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-2130 (3.4 GHz)/AMD FX-4100 (3.6 GHz)
  • RAM: 8GB
  • Hard Disk Space: 20GB
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bits)

Recommended System Requirements For 1920×1080, 60 FPS, High Preset Gameplay

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 / GeForce GTX 970
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K (3.2 GHz)/AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (3.2 GHz)
  • RAM: 16GB
  • Hard Disk Space: 20GB
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bits)

Recommended System Requirements For 2560×1440, 60 FPS, High Preset Gameplay

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K (3.2 GHz)/AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (3.2 GHz)
  • RAM: 16GB
  • Hard Disk Space: 20GB
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bits)

Recommended System Requirements For 4K, 60 FPS, High Preset Gameplay

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K (3.2 GHz)/AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (3.2 GHz)
  • RAM: 16GB
  • Hard Disk Space: 20GB
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 bits)

 

Now you get the idea. You can also tweak the game even higher, all the way to the Ultra-detail modes.

Wordpress

Whats the point of Wordpress Desktop App?

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I have noticed WordPress.com offers to download their app to manage your site, so I decided to give it a try. And I don’t like what I see.

The app is basically browser wrapper. Disconnect your computer from the network and you cant do anything. No functions to do (or at least prepare) stuff for your website while you are offline. Were my expectations too high? Whats the point of the app then? I can do the same (and more) directly in the browser while I get the support of my favorite plugins (like Grammarly). Also, the preview feature didn’t work for me. You cant open WP admin from the left panel inside the app, it opens your browser anyway. You need to update the app regularly.

I can imagine only one use for the desktop app … managing your distractions, you don’t have all the functions, you cant open facebook in it, you may focus better on your writing. Maybe.

The authors also tell us there is a speed difference because the app uses a local copy of your site assets. I didn’t notice any difference myself, but I will take their word for it.

Have you tried the app? What do you think?

IT Administration

Default passwords for printers

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First thing you should do when you connect new printer to your network is to set a password or change the default one. This article will help you with the later if you don’t know what the default password is.

HP

Most HP printers default passwords would be blank or admin for both username and password.

HP LaserJet 2250dn

  • User: admin
  • Password: *leave empty*

HP LaserJet Professional P1606

  • User: Admin
  • Password: Admin

OKI

OKI B731

  • User: admin
  • Password: aaaaaa

OKI C332, C532, C542, C612, C712, C823, C833, C843, MC363,MC573, MC853, MC873

  • Default admin password: 999999

Brother

Brother HL-2130 to HL-2270DW

  • User: admin
  • Password: access

Works for these models: HL-2130, HL-2132, HL-2135W, HL-2220, HL-2230, HL-2240, HL-2240D, HL-2242D, HL-2250DN, HL-2250DW

Canon

Most models use:

  • User: ADMIN
  • Password: canon

If this doesn’t work, the password may be the serial number of the printer. You will find it on the white sticker. The serial number is 9 characters long (5 letters and 4 numbers).

Kyocera

Most models use:

  • User: Admin
  • Password: Admin

OR:

  • Password: admin00

Konica Minolta

Bizhub C258, 558e and many more

  • Administrator’s password: 1234567812345678

Lexmark

Lexmark 4600 MFP

  • Password: password
Games

Cheats for Skyrim

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Many of those also work in Oblivion or Fallout 3. You have to write them in the console, which you will activate with “`” key (under ESC). After entering the cheat press “Enter”.

  • tgm – god-mode, you cant die and you can carry infinte weight
  • tcl – flying and goint through the walls
  • coc place – teleports you to place of your chosing, for room with all items use QASmoke
  • psb – all spells
  • player.advlevel – increases level, but wont add perk
  • caqs – finishes all parts of the quest
  • tfc – free cam (perfect for screenshots)
  • saq – starts all the quests (be careful with this)
  • qqq – close the game
  • coc qasmoke – as I mentioned earlier, this is a testing room, careful with enchanted things, game could crash
  • tai – turns AI on and off, basically freezes enemies
  • tcai – same as above but in combat
  • tg – turn the grass on and off
  • tm – toggle menu/HUD
  • tfow – changes FOW
  • kill – kills the thing you are aiming at
  • resurrect – revive thing you are aiming at
  • unlock – unlock the container
  • lock X – lock the container or door, X is strength 1-100
  • killall – kills all enemies nearby
  • removeallitems – removes all items of the NPC you are aiming at
  • movetoqt – teleports you to the quest location
  • tdetect – toggles AI, you can use this to steal undisturbed
  • setownership – sets ownership of the item
  • duplicateallitems – self-explanatory
  • fov XXX –  change your field of view
  • advancepclevel – increase level
  • advancepcskill (skillname) X – increase skill
  • advskill [skill] XXX – increase skill
  • player.modav Dragonsouls X – adds dragonsouls
  • player.setav speedmult X – sets your speed
  • player.setav Stamina X – sets the stamine
  • player.setav Health X – sets your health
  • player.setcrimegold X – sets bounty on your head, you can use 0
  • player.setav Magicka X – sets your mana
  • player.setlevel X – sets your level
  • player.placeatme X – spawns NPC
  • player.IncPCS [Skill Name] – increase skill by 1
  • showracemenu – shows race and appearance menu (WARNING – this resets your level and skills)
  • player.additem 0000000f „999“ – adds 999 gold
  • player.additem 0000000a „100“ – adds 100 lockpicks
  • help – shows you console commands
  • help keyword X – search help by keyword and ode
Games

Far Cry 5 has secret ending

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The tradition of secret endings in Far Cry games continues. The main antagonist in FC4 doesn’t have to be the main antagonist at all, just wait few minutes as you are told. No, you had to start killing everyone, you psycho. The developers are mocking us in similar way in a new installment of this popular sandbox game.

Your mission is to arrest Joseph Seed. You are in the church full of armed cult followers. The situation is extreme. Mr. Seed asks you to try to take him.  If you don’t put cuffs on him and hesitate few minutes, the sheriff decides to leave so nobody gets hurt. And he has point, doesn’t he?