Moving Server From Physical Server to Virtual Machine

Posted on 08/11/2011 | 1 comment

My physical server was hosted in a private data-center at Baulkham Hill, Sydney. It was connected with 3 different ISPs and using BGP to peer with those 3 ISPs for failover. My Server was there since 2008 and throughout the last 3 years there was only 2 downtimes. One was caused by fire in the car park and the other one was caused by an extended powre outage by Energy Australia.

With a physical server, I have built some services on this server and try to generate income to cover the colocation costs. Unfortunately, I have never reached the amount to cover the cost of hosting a physical server. As a result, I am pulling off my physical server off the data center and to move all my web site to a virtual server.

I signed up Crazydomains VPS last months and have everything moved to that VPS including my blogs and other web sites. Unfortunately, ever since I moved to their VPS, I have been continously receiving complaint about slow speed and slow respond from the server. One of the online shopping cart took nearly 5 minutes to load a full page. One of my clients used to upload images all the time, and he claimed that it took 10 times more! It used to be a 10 minuts job with the VPS in Crazydomains, it took him 1.5 hours to upload the images.

As a result, I have to look for another VPS provider. Two days ago, I signed up a VPS with iiNet. iiNet is a well known ISP and I believe they can provide something better. I will see if there is any complaint. I hope this move will be final and all the clients using my server will be happy with this VPS from iiNet.

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Posted in Network Engineering

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iPhone4s (should it be called iPhone For Steve?)

Posted on 14/10/2011 | Leave a comment

Today iPhone4S released in Australia. I have already reserved one for myself yesterday. I am currently using an iPhone 4 32GB and I still have 22GB left in the Phone. So this time, I am not going to go for 32GB or 64GB. I have ordered myself a 16GB iPhone4S. I believe one of the reasons the I ordered the iPhone4S is because of the Siri function. After reading some reviews and the online instructions from Apple web site, sound like this Siri really can make my life easier!!

I drive a lot – spending at least 2 hours on the road everyday a voice command support on the phone will really helps. I have used the Google Nexus one and I did use the voice dictation for sms input. I think Apple has taken this a step futher, because looking at the demo, it understands your word not only dictation what you say but also action on what you said.

i.e. “remind me to call mum tomorrow”, it will set a remind in your phone.

I really want to test it once I have got my new iPhone 4 S, it will be interesting to test out my Chinese-Accent English.

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Posted in Mac Stuff

No Update……

Posted on 02/10/2011 | 1 comment

I haven’t been updating my blog for over a months now. I am too busy with personal stuff and a lot of planning and training. There is no time for me to do anything. I haven’t been taking photos for over a month now.

For my Mac Book Pro, ever since I have updated to 10.7.1 I have never done any other update or fix to it. I am quit happy with the previous posted method to get more battery out of it. Now waiting for the new iPhone to come out.

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Mac Lion 10.7.1 Released, but…..

Posted on 23/08/2011 | Leave a comment

I have updated to 10.7.1 few days ago. Test it and I didn’t notice any different to 10.7.0. May be after I have done the SMC and the maunal graphic card switching which have already resolved my short battery life issue. I did a search on google about what is updated in 10.7.1 and I found that the problem it listed I didn’t notice any of them while I am using that on my MBP.

The main concerns for other people still the battery issues on OS x Lion. However, there is no word about battery life improvement on the 10.7.1 and some people have also confirmed that 10.7.1 make no changes to battery life.

Look like only a few people are lucky enough like myself who can fix their battery life issue with SMC reset and the maunal graphic card switch trick.

Come on Apple, can you confirm your OS works properly before releasing them?

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Network Planning and Documentation is important!

Posted on 18/08/2011 | Leave a comment

I have worked in private company and I have also worked in public company. I found that documentation is important for all networks. Without a detailed network diagram, it is so hard for trouble-shooting. Not to mention to maintain it, just to make myself to understand the networks may take up a whole week (depends on the network size). One thing I have learnt from different jobs, the more documentation about the network, the easier and quicker for me to get my job done.

Not only a detailed network diagram is needed, a rack layout diagram should be part of the documentation. I have been in a satuation openning a rack with full of equipment on a 42RU rack. I have to go through the label on each device one by one to find out the right equipment for me to work on.  If there is a nice rack layout diagram, I can have a good picture of how the rack look like and save a lot time of finding the right device.

I think being a great engineer, not only good technical knowledge is needed but also a excellent documentation skill to provide good information for other engineer to work on your work.

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Posted in Network Engineering

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A bad comment received about some of the photos I posted

Posted on 05/08/2011 | 3 comments

Photography is my hobby. I recently received a comment on my blog saying that my photos are bad and pretent to be a professional photographer. I can tell you I am not a professional. Taking photo is just my hobby. There are people think my photos are good and of course there are people think my photos are bad. Photography is like art, different people holds different views. If you don’t like my photos, you can close the page or skip this page. No need to make a comment “Asians that have a professional camera thinks they are professional, and they don’t even hold the camera right”. Nowadays, technology makes life easier. Even a 3 years old kid can press a button to take a photo. He may take a very good photo by just one click without knowing what photographic is.

Some The One Magazine Photos

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Thanks to Dilin who found a real fix to Lion Battery Problem

Posted on 05/08/2011 | Leave a comment

Dilin has made a comment on the post about the battery problem with Lion. He found a real fix to have the battery life back to where it was in SL. I am going to follow his intruction and test it. For now, I am going to advertise the fix here. (I think my blog somehow always in the first page in google search……..

The link is here

http://www.shaasthra.com/2011/08/revealed-mac-os-x-lion-battery-drain.html

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More Problem caused by Lion

Posted on 03/08/2011 | Leave a comment

I realised one more problem caused by Lion – My little snitch firewall is not working any more after upgraded from Lion.

I noticed this because I haven’t recieve the warning message from that for a long time and when I went into the configuration, it said the file is corrupted and I need to reinstall it.

I have read someone saying that the Lion upgrade also create troubles for other software on the forum. I think Lion is really giving people a lot of headache.

Sotfware crash, battery, preformance downgrade,…… I am sure this list is growthing is Apple is not going to release a “fix” for all the that…..

I used to love my MBP, but I started to feel sick of it now…..

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A Fix for MAC OS X Lion reduces Battery Life

Posted on 26/07/2011 | 20 comments

I tried to find out if there is a fix to the shorten battery life after the Max OS X Lion upgrade. Finally,  I found a fix. At this stage I am not sure if this is a real fix because I haven’t waited long enough to see how long my Mac Book Pro can last after a full charged. I can confirm that this is a real fix after I tested it for a few hours without the power supply connected to my mac book pro. I could get 6 -7 hours under normal use (before apply the fix, I could only get 3 hours use). If you are having a shorten battery life issue after you upgraded your MBP to Lion. I highly recommend you try the follow step. According to the Apple Support forum, these keys are to reset the power management module in the MBP.

The method was posted on Apple Support Forum as follow:

**** Thanks Justin’s comment below, please ensure you have the power supply connected when you do this****
1. Turn off the computer.
2. Hold down Ctrl+Option+shift
3. While holding down these button, press and hold the power button as well.
4. Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds.
5. power back on the computer.

After I have done this, at 98% battery level the battery life timing was showing 9:15. It seems longer than beforer I upgrade. Anyways, this reading at least make me feel more comfortable. I will let it run and see how the battery consumption is like after applying this “fix”.

*****Update : Please follow Dilin’s blog for a better fix. http://www.shaasthra.com/2011/08/revealed-mac-os-x-lion-battery-drain.html

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Mac OS X Lion SHORTEN the battery life on my Mac Book Pro

Posted on 25/07/2011 | 12 comments

I have a Mac Book Pro early 2011 version running on a 2.2 quad core i7, before I upgraded to Lion, when I fully charged the battery indicator always display 5+ hours of battery life. However, as soon as I have upgraded to Lion, even I have fully charged my Mac Book Pro, the battery life indicator has never display anything over 4 hours.

I then go to change some energy saving setting, adjust the brightness, etc and finally can squeeze the battery timer up to 4:30. However, I still can see a significant shorten life of the battery.

In summary, in my personal experience of this Lion upgrade (+ some other articles online), I am quite certain that the current Mac OS X Lion (10.7) is using a lot more power than it previous OS (10.6.8). Now I am hoping Apple will release a 10.7.1 to get this power consumption issue fixed.

After my extensive testing on my Mac Book Pro, the battery life is shorten around 1 – 2 hours in normal use.

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