In Xsan, the PIO HiPriWr shows you how latent the connection to your LUNs is. If the connection to any of your LUNs is too high then it can cause instability and worse, potential volume integrity issues. If you run into issues with this kind of latency then you should fix it. But if you can’t, then you can deal with it programatically using the Buffer Cache Size. Increasing the buffer will allow for more caching, which will in turn allow for more latent LUNs to have less effect on the overall performance, health and viability of the SAN. Additionally, the iNode Cache should be increased for the same purpose…
-
-
Xsan: Small Files & AFP
Xsan can be used as the back end storage to provide front end network file share services for a Mac OS X environment. This isn’t to say that it will work like a charm without some fine tuning though. One of the most important tools you have in performance tuning any Xsan volume is the block size. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the stripe breadth multiplied by the block size should total out to about 1MB total. The stripe breadth on the storage pools is therefore going to need to be customized any time you change the block sizes for the volume. If you are using Xsan as a…
-
iDisk + Word
I have been a .Mac/MobileMe subscriber for a long time. But until recently I had never bothered to use any of the services other than mail. Then I started to use my iDisk. Today, I had written a couple of pages of my upcoming book since my last full save and then viola – Word crashed. I’m not used to Word crashing often, but I have Word set to autosave every 5 minutes, so when it does crash I’m not all that overly concerned as the damage is minimized. However, Word was unable to find the Auto-recover location and so was not actually autosaving, nor telling me it wasn’t. So…
-
Controlling iTunes
Sizzling Keys is a free application for Mac OS X that allows you to assign hot keys for use with iTunes. But you can already do that, right? Well, if you switch out of iTunes then the hot keys don’t work. But with Sizzling you can have keystrokes that work to control the basic features of iTunes no matter what application you are in. I have not found an exact equivalent for Windows, although if you click on the Advanced tab of the iTunes preferences for Windows you’ll see the Show iTunes icon in System Tray, which will place it down in the lower right hand corner of your screen.…
-
Editing EFI
There are a number of tasks that a little EFI trickery might require. If you need to edit EFI, check out rEFIt on SourceForge. rEFIt will allow you to edit your boot environment to show a selection menu for operating systems and provide custom icons for loading operating systems. If you just need to select operating systems, BootPicker will be a more easily support tool now that Apple has taken over the project. OK, so this one is short – but what do you expect, it’s a holiday weekend…
-
Disable and Remove .DS_Store Files
In a number of environments, where SMB, AFP and other file sharing protocols are used with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux clients, there are a number of hidden files that Mac OS X leaves behind. For anyone who has managed an environment like this you’re likely to notice the .DS_Store files and potentially even have tried taking measures to get rid of them. However, try as you might they’re likely to have come back repeatedly. But you don’t have to live with them. You can tell your Windows clients not to show hidden files. From Windows XP, open an explorer.exe window (Windows Explorer, also accessible by browsing any folder…
-
Uninstalling and Reinstalling Xsan
There are a number of Xsan troubleshooting scenarios that seem to call for uninstalling and reinstalling the Xsan software to resolve client configuration issues. If you are looking at a configuration issue, such as a single client not mounting a volume then you don’t actually have to uninstall the software, reinstall the software, run Software Update and then reboot and attempt to readd the client to Xsan Admin on the MDC and then attempt to mount. That’s a lot of crap when one step will reset a client back to how it was before it ever joined its first Xsan. Just delete the contents of the /Library/Filesystems/Xsan/config folder (but not…
-
Google Outage
When a large company loses email and other services the help desk is abuzz with calls. But who do you call when an outsourced vendor goes down? I’ve read a number of reports about the Google outage from a few days ago. Having millions of users without service, or with deprecated service, is a lot of potential calls. Just like tens of thousands in an enterprise is lot when those users cannot access email. In the reports I’ve read people were taking a very strong stance on the outage, not necessarily with Google directly, but identifying cloud support options across the board as having “no one to call.” Really? There’s…
-
Managing iTunes en Masse
iTunes is cool. But there are some features that many organizations want to limit as when they are used by a large number of people they can become problematic. Apple allows you to manage iTunes for Windows and Mac OS X clients. For Windows, there are a number of registry keys that can be used and for Mac OS X there is the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist file, or more importantly the ability to Add the aforementioned file into the Workgroup Manager Managed Preferences. Once added you will be able to set a number of options to manage, including the following (which are self explanatory for the most part): allowiTunesUAccess disableAppleTV disableAutomaticDeviceSync disableCheckForUpdates…
-
QuickLook
If you click on a file, folder or image in Mac OS X and then press the space bar to see a QuickLook screen. Here, you can click on the diagonal arrows pointing outwards to move into full screen – great for showing documents or images during presentations. While in full screen mode, click on the diagonal arrows again to go back to a windowed appearance. If it is an image then you can will also have an icon to save the image into iPhoto and can option-click on the image to zoom in.