Redmine w/OS X OpenLDAP, Parallels Server and JumpBox
OpenRain used a slew of crappy Trac sites for issue tracking until we switched to Redmine several days ago. The decision came because..
- Redmine can authenticate off LDAP with trivial configuration.
- Redmine has multi-project support out-of-the-box.
- Redmine has some nifty Gantt chart and calendaring schwag and is generally better.
- Parallels Server (for OS X) is finally available.
- JumpBox has a beta Redmine VM image available.
If you’ve got an existing LDAP infrastructure, the whole shebang shouldn’t take more than an hour or two to set up.
- Install Parallels Server on your OS X Leopard server.
- Download the Redmine JumpBox. Generate a new MAC address and boot it. Do the one-page configuration thingy in your browser.
- Log into Redmine and create a new “Authentication Mode” set to LDAP. If you’re using the default OpenLDAP schema that ships with Leopard server, enter the attributes like so..
- All your users should now be able to log into your Redmine JumpBox using their LDAP credentials! You’ll have to set up your projects, ACLs etc. within Redmine, but that’s some pretty hot shizzle to get running in such a small timeframe.
Mad props to Redmine, Parallels, JumpBox and Apple for further simplifying my business.
Tags: apple, jumpbox, leopard, linux, openldap, osx, parallels, redmine, virtualization
. 11 Mar 08 | Computer | Comment (1)
Sun Introduces Non-Native (Linux) Zone Support
The “What’s New” document for Solaris 10 8/07 states the update “..includes the tools necessary to install a CentOS 3.5 to 3.8 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.5 to 3.8 inside a non-global zone. Machines running the Solaris OS in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode can execute 32-bit Linux applications.” Additionally, “DTrace can now be used in a non-global zone..” and ZFS gets even cooler. w00t.
Tags: linux, news, solaris, zones
. 31 Aug 07 | Computer | Comments (0)
OpenSolaris ZFS vs. Linux ext3 RAID5
Preston Says: I asked Dan McClary for a big favor recently: use his general UNIX knowledge and graduate-level statistics voodoo to produce a report highlighting performance characteristic differencess between OpenSolaris ZFS and Linux RAID5 on a common, COTS hardware platform. The following analysis is his work, reformatted to fit your screen. You may download the PDF, HTML, graphs and original TeX source here.
A Brief Comparison of I/O Performance for RAIDZ1 and RAID-5 Filesystems
Dan McClary
June 28, 2007
Introduction
The following is a description of results obtained benchmarking I/O performance for two OS/filesystem combinations running identical hardware. The hardware used in the tests is as follows:
- Motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM.
- CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual Core Processor. 2.5GHz, 2?512KB, 1GHz Bus
- Memory: 4 x 1GB via OCZ OCZ2G8002GK DDR2-800 PC2-6400
- Drives: 4 x 500GB Western Digital Caviar SE 16 WD5000AAKS 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
The Linux/RAID-5 combination uses a stock Ubuntu Server Edition installation, running kernel 2.6.19-generic, with RAID-5 configured via mdadm and formatted ext3. The Solaris/RAID-Z1 configuration is a stock installation of Solaris Developer Express Edition with zpool managing the zfs-formatted RAID-Z1 drives. Block size for all relevant tests is 4096 bytes.
Basic I/O testing is conducted using bonnie++ (version 1.03a), tiobench (version 0.3.3-5), and a series of BASH-scripted operations. Tests focus on I/O throughput and CPU usage for operations either much larger than available memory, and very large numbers of operations on small files. All figures, unless otherwise noted, chart mean performance with 2% deviation for large-file operations and 5% for small-file operations. These bounds well-exceed the 95% confidence interval, implying a range of high significance.
Large-File Operations
In dealing sequential reads and writes, particularly of large files, the Solaris/RAID-Z1 configuration displays much higher throughput than the Ubuntu/RAID-5 combination. Latency and CPU usage, however, appear to be higher than in the Ubuntu configuration. The reasons for these disparities are not determinable from the tests concluded, though one might venture that the management algorithm used by ZFS and each systems caching policies may play a part.
Figures 1, 2, and 3 summarize large-file writing performance in the bonnie++ suite. In large writes, Solaris-ZFS displays marginally higher throughput and occasionally lower CPU usage. However, the disparities are not great enough to make a strict recommendation based solely on large-file writing performance.
Figures 4 and 5 illustrate throughput and CPU usage while reading large files in the bonnie++ suite. Generally, results are consistent between platforms, with the Ubuntu configuration showing a slight edge when reading 15,680MB files (though with an associated drop in CPU efficiency).
tiobench results for random reads and writes given in Tables 3 and 4 show the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration displaying both higher throughput and greater CPU efficiency. However, these results seem somewhat questionable given the results in section §3.
Small-File Operations
In examining the performance of both configurations on small files, both in the bonnie++ suite and from shell-executed commands, the most obvious statement that can be made is that the Solaris configuration displays greater CPU usage. This, though, may not be indicative of poor performance. Instead, it may be the result of an aggressive caching or other kernel-level policies. A more detailed study would be required to determine both the causes and effects of this result. In each test, 102,400 files of either 8 or 4KB were created.
Figures 6(a)-6(c) and 7(a)-7(c) illustrate bonnie++ performance for both configurations. In contrast to the tiobench results, the Solaris configuration generally displays slightly higher throughput (on the order of 1-2MB/s) than its counterpart. However, as previously noted, CPU usage is much higher.
Finally, Tables 5-6 lists measured times as given by the standard Unix command time when measuring command execution. In these results, there are some surprises. The Ubuntu configuration performs somewhat faster when executing a large write (using the command dd). However, the Solaris configuration is much faster when dealing with 100,000 sequential 8KB files. For reference, all file creation is done via dd, copying by cp and deletion by rm.
Conclusions
Few overarching conclusions can be drawn from the limited results of this study. Certainly, there are situations in which the Solaris/RAID-Z1 configuration appears to outperform the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration. Many questions remain regarding the large discrepancy in CPU usage for small-file operations. Likewise, the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration appears to perform slightly better in certain situations, though not overwhelmingly so. At best, under these default configurations, one can say that overall the Solaris configuration performs no worse, and indicates that it might perform better under live operating conditions. The latter, though, is largely speculation.
Indeed, from the analyst’s point of view, both configurations show reasonable performance. The desire to deploy either configuration in an enterprise setting suggests that significant-factor studies and robust parameter designs be conducted on, if not both candidates, whichever is most likely to be deployed. These studies would provide insight into why the discrepancies in current study exist, and more importantly, achieve optimized performance in the presences of significant uncontrollable factors (e.g. variable request-load).
Preston Says: Thanks for the outstanding work, Dan!
Tags: comparison, linux, opinion, raid, review, solaris, zfs
. 17 Jul 07 | Computer | Comments (5)
20 Steps To Xen: A Quick Xen Tutorial For Ubuntu 7.04 x64 Server
This is an abbreviated and simplified version of a more official document. Run these either as root or with the “sudo” command..
- apt-get install ubuntu-xen-desktop-amd64 to install a new Xen kernel and various other tools. Apparently we’re supposed to use the “server” version instead, but it didn’t show up in the repository. Oh well.
- apt-get install debootstrap to install the “debootstrap” system bootstraping tool for you.
- reboot into the new kernel.
- xm list to make sure Domain-0 shows up. Domain-0 represents the host system.
- Edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and uncomment “(network-script network-bridge)”. Also comment out “(network-script network-dummy)”.
- xend restart to restart the xen daemon.
- mkdir -p /xen/slave1 to create a mountpoint for the slave system disk.
- dd if=/dev/zero of=/xen/slave1.ext3 bs=1M count=512 to create a 512MB “disk” as a normal file.
- mkfs.ext3 /xen/slave1.ext3 to create a file system in said empty file.
- mount -o loop -t ext3 /xen/slave1.ext3 /xen/slave1 to manually mount the new filesystem to its mount point.
- debootstrap –arch amd64 edgy /xen/slave1 to install a bare bones edgy system onto the new file system.
- cp -a /lib/modules/2.6.19-4-generic-amd64/ /xen/slave1/lib/modules/ to install the hosts kernel modules into the new system.
- Edit /xen/slave1/etc/network/interfaces. It should look similar to..auto lo
iface lo inet loopbackauto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
gateway 192.168.1.110
address 192.168.1.111
netmask 255.255.255.0..where “gateway” is the host machines IP address, and “address” is a unique IP address for the slave machine.
- Update /xen/slave1/etc/hostname with whatever you want its host name to be.
- Update /xen/slave1/etc/hosts with all your IP addresses.
- Update /xen/slave1/etc/fstab to mount stuff on boot, like so..proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 - umount /xen/slave1 to unmount the file system.
- Create /etc/xen/edgy-guest.cfg to configure the host to start the guest, like so..
kernel = “/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.19-4-generic-amd64″
ramdisk = “/boot/initrd.img-2.6.19-4-generic-amd64″
builder=’linux’
memory = 512
name = “edgy-slave1″
vcpus = 1
vif = [ 'bridge=xenbr0' ]
disk = [ 'file:/xen/slave1.ext3,ioemu:hda1,w' ]
root = “/dev/hda1 ro” - xm create slave1-edgy.cfg to create and start the new domain.
- xm console slave1-edgy to establish a console to the new domain. (Hit CTRL+] to exit.)
You should now be able to log in via the xm console as root, and ping the guest on 192.168.1.111 (or whatever its IP address is). w00t!
Tags: howto, linux, ubuntu, virtualization, xen
. 03 Jun 07 | Computer | Comments (2)