Maintenance work

Tonight, I will mostly be doing a first SAN attach to a new SAN.
It's very exciting.
However, the 'schedule' as released to our customer reps looks like this:

17:00 Ensure Server connectivity to NEW SAN
17:00 Shutdown server
18:00 Connect server and configure to new SAN
18:00 Test copy data to new SAN.
18:30 Check Data and verify
19:00 Start Data Copy
20:00 Check Copy data and estimate Timings
22:00 Check copy data activity
00:00 Check Copy Data activity
05:00 Check and re-etimate timings
07:00 Check and re-estimate timings, check cluster-partner availability
07:00 Decision to carry on or revert to original system.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, if it takes more than 7 hours to transfer 600Gb SAN->SAN then something's buggered anyway, and we'll be aborting, thankyouverymuch. We have 2 HBAs (host-bus adaptor) in this server. One will be connected to the 'old' SAN transferring data at 1Gb/s (thats giga-bit, not gigabyte). The other will be connecting to the 'new' SAN and transferring at 2Gb/s. Now in an ideal case that means a read rate of 100Mb per second. You never get that, but if it's below 30% (30Mb/sec = 100Gb/hr) then I'll be taking that to mean something's shafted.

Even so, I find it ominous to see any 'plan' than involves activity (by me) at 2 hour intervals, up to midnight, and at 5am.

ID Cards

So. ID cards then.

As you may be aware, the ID card bill is due for a vote in the House of Commons today.
Where do you stand?

Personally, I think ID cards are one of the worst ideas ever. They're similar to letting someone point a gun at your head, because they assure you that they'll never pull the trigger.

Their benefits? Well, proving your identity easily, and making it harder to clone, would make some forms of fraud harder. But in all honesty, the _only_ way that's going to work is if they become compulsory, and issued at birth. And mandatory to carry at all times.

Otherwise, well, the fraudsters'll just not have one, or not have it on them. Let's not be forgetting how you go about _getting_ one in the first place. Fake up a birth certificate, and a couple of other supporting bits of paper, and you too could be Tony Blair. And they'll trust that, because your biometric ID says so too.

It'll make proving your ID easier. This means that going and opening a bank account will be a more straightforward process, where you walk in, wave your card, get approved, and walk out.

But make no mistake, it'll have no impact on people seriously involved in terrorism or organised crime. I mean seriously, you're not going to have too much difficulty fobbing off a police officer asking for your ID card whilst you go plant your bomb.

Look at it this way. You hand over a level of information about you, that's your whole life. This is in the hands of some faceless organisation, which will be set up by the government. People with a 'need to know' will be able to find out everything there is to know about you. A need to know, which might change in scope, or might be released to credit reference agencies, or to corporations, or just corrupt individuals who are looking to exploit you.

Once you've given up this right to privacy, there's no way to take it back again. You're owned. You've got your identity license, and government suits will be able to easily and trivially control your life. And you'll still suffer from terrorism, organised crime and fraud.

That is, of course, leaving aside the cost of ID cards. Around £100-300 per person. Ok, so it might not be up front, but it will, sooner or later, have to be paid for.

These ID cards will cost and control the lawful citizen. Which by definition is hardly a problem area anyway.

Do you really see a need to trust the government with everything you've ever done or owned?

Data movement

Well, as a side show to this 'ere maint work, we have sheet lightning. I do mean that we have a storm of impressiveness overhead, and making many flashes.

Nice big forked jobbies, and loud claps of thunder. Lovely.

Have lost power here once, but that just meant a reboot and reconnect to the server (the computer room is on a flywheel+generator UPS, but the office isn't).

Unfortunately, it's looking like our data transfer isn't going so well. About 20Gb/hour. (which'd put it clear of 20 hours to complete)
I've had better than that off a flippin' tape, so I'm not impressed.

Minor disasters so far, include discovering that our entire batch of fiber cables are crossovers. (You virtually never do this, as ... well you have a transmit and a receive fiber. You don't usually want to transmit down the same fiber as the other machine is transmitting down.

Finding that our brocade switches only have half the ports active due to licenses. (Plugged into a working port, because CBA to go license key hunting tonight)

Found out that the multipathing software that we use, isn't compatible with the latest emulex HBA driver. (oops crashy crashy).

And then found some monkey has stolen one of my switch IP addresses, so rather than talking to a brocade, and failing to log in, I was in fact talking to a cisco network switch.

Grr.

However, since this is looking like being a 20+ hour job, it's very very likely that it'll be this weekend instead.
Which is nice.

(not)