Benjamin Bryan

One reason I don’t see addressed very often is your drive is too full… Hard drives have a head that is like a needle for records, or a laser for CDs.  It has to position itself on a track then wait for the sector with the data you’re after to spin into position.  The nature … Read more

Here’s a simple query that reports SQL Server locks along with the program name, host, sql process id, and the user that went off to lunch in the middle of their transaction…  select * from sys.dm_tran_locks l join sys.dm_exec_sessions s on l.request_session_id = s.session_id join sys.sysobjects o on l.resource_associated_entity_id = o.id

I’ve noticed that Crashplan isn’t saturating my 400kbps uplink (Northland Cable… just barely faster than satellite) even though I’ve given it no upload restrictions… I think the problem is with Crashplan’s De-duplication running too intense of an algorithm for my mere AMD Phenom II black quad core processor to handle efficiently. Setting data de-duplication to minimal allowed … Read more

NexentaStor 3.1 uses OpenSolaris kernel with Debian userland so neither the Solaris or Linux version of Crashplan works out of the box.  But Chris Moates wrote an excellent post (removed link since it’s dead) on getting Crashplan on Nexenta  by combining files from the Linux and Solaris version of Crashplan.  This works except Crashplan can’t … Read more

Purpose: Determine fastest small NAS/SAN OS/Appliance software solution for home running under ESXi.Constraints: Candidates must support ZFS, be relatively stable (I narrowed down my candidate list by only choosing solutions that other people have used successfully), and be able to run CrashPlan for data protection. If you’re not familair with ZFS (Zettabyte File System), read ZFS … Read more

Finally finished my 189.7GB backup to Crashplan’s servers.  Started uploading on July 25th and completed on December 17th.  Didn’t notice too much of an internet slowdown thanks to Tomato’s QoS routing to prioritize traffic during the process. Outbound QoS rules  

This is a great example of someone recognizing something we all hate and making it better.  We all despise our thermostats.  And for good reason.  A simple task like changing the temperature shouldn’t be very confusing, but the thermostat designers have made it complicated. My first apartment had this Energy Star programmable thermostat.  I think … Read more

Since moving to North Idaho our internet is slow, we’re regularly saturating our 1/2 Mbps upload doing cloud backups and uploading pictures and videos which can make gaming or web browsing painfully slow and unreliable.  I tried to get QoS (Quality of Service) working on DD-WRT but it can only have QoS rules based on … Read more