Ever wonder if that laser printer nearby is poisoning you?

I came across this report recently and found it interesting since I use many of these products.  The International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, Queensland University of Technology did a study to determine how much particle emission and other matter is emited by laser printers.  Most printers did well, but some printers commonly used in business environments could be making you sick.  Click here to get the article and study.

“Summary of Results for Printer Emission Investigations, Based on the Ratio of Submicrometer Particle Number Concentration Peak Value Emitted by the Printer to the Background Value (measured by P-Trak)”

non-emitter (ratio 1)	low level emitter (ratio < 1.1-5)	middle level emitter (ratio < 5.1-10)	high level emitter (ratio > 10)
HP Color LaserJet 4550DN (1)	Canon IRC6800 (1)	HP LaserJet 1020 (1)	HP Color LaserJet 4650dn (1)
HP Color LaserJet 8500DN (1)	HP LaserJet 5M (3)	HP LaserJet 4200dtn (1)	HP Color LaserJet 5550dtn (1)
HP LaserJet 2200DN (1)	HP LaserJet		HP Color LaserJet 8550N
HP LaserJet 2300dtn (1)	9000dn (1)		(1)
HP LaserJet 4 plus (1)	RICOH		HP LaserJet 1320N (1)
HP LaserJet 4000N (1)	CL3000DN (1)		HP LaserJet 1320n (1)
HP LaserJet 4000TN (1)			HP LaserJet 2420dn (1)
HP LaserJet 4050N (2)			HP LaserJet 4200dtna (1)
HP LaserJet 4050TN (6)			HP LaserJet 4250n (old)
HP LaserJet 4si (1)			(1)
HP LaserJet 5(b) (1)			HP LaserJet 4250n (new)
HP LaserJet 5000n (1)			(1)
HP LaserJet 5100tn (2)			HP LaserJet 5(a) (1)
HP LaserJet 5N (2)			HP LaserJet 8000DNa (1)
HP LaserJet 5si (1)			HP LaserJet 8150N (1)
HP LaserJet 5si/NX (1)			TOSHIBA Studio 450 (1)
HP LaserJet 8000DN (2)
HP LaserJet 8150DN (3)
Mita DC 4060 (photo copy) (1)
RICOH Aficio 2022 (1)
RICOH Aficio 3045 (1)
RICOH Aficio 3245C (3)
RICOH Aficio CC3000DN (1)
TOSHIBA Studio 350 (1)

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Our backup admin quit

Our backup administrator has left the company.  I never realized how mismanaged the backup system was until he left.  He was keeping the system barely above water with many failed jobs.  We have since gotten a temporary backup admin who is making it all look easy.  Jobs are completing.  The system isn’t running out of tapes.  The consultant is making it work and that’s encouraging.  BTW, we are using Backup Exec 11d with a Quantum m2500 robotic tape library.

Lots of stuff to talk about…

I apologize that I haven’t posted anything in a while.  I got married on June 30th and I disconnected from as much as possible for most of June.  There’s a lot going on in my world.  I have been promoted at work, while we are moving to a new location, and several ongoing projects are … ongoing.  Oh, and someone quit.  On the tech front, there’s lots of interesting little news stories out there.  Keep an eye out for all the techno babble to come.  🙂

Ever feel like you had ghosts in the computer room?

This guy did: http://weblog.infoworld.com/offtherecord/archives/2007/05/ghost_of_the_ma.html

I completed our VMware ESX 3 upgrade this past weekend.

 I have been planning my company’s ESX upgrade for a while.  After many delays and other conflicts, I was able to schedule it for this past weekend.  I want to braindump everything I learned if possible. It’s a bit of a mish-mosh, but so is my brain.

• Plan, Document, Plan, and Document: There are so many moving parts that you’re going to want to document EVERYTHING.  The upgrade is not difficult, but it is tricky.
• Be prepared for your Virtual Center upgrade to go bad.  This is the only in place upgrade that you cannot avoid and it’s the least reliable.  Have a backup plan whether it’s restoring the database or wiping it and starting clean.  Make a decision in advance.
• If you lose VC you lose stats, permissions, VM groups, and a few other things.  Document all of VC at minimum (if possible).
• VMware says you need 1200 MB of free disk space on your LUN’s.  This is not enough.  I had at least 2 gigs and still ran into problems.
• The VM Hardware upgrade moves VM configuration files from the ESX server to the SAN.  One of these files is the VM swap file.  The swap file is twice the size of the VM’s memory.  Reducing the assigned memory increases free space on the LUN.  This helps with insufficient disk errors at boot up.
• You can’t suspend a VM if you don’t have enough disk space.
• Rebooting the ESX servers seems to clear up “Object” errors.
• VMotion: You have to license it, set up the virtual switch as vmkernel, AND enable VMotion on the port.
• WinSCP is a great program.
• You MUST upgrade Hardware on all VM’s before putting them in a cluster.  This makes sense, but isn’t obvious.
• Test as much of your upgrade as possible in advance.  This helped me tremendously.
• Make sure that your VMFS2 LUN’s are formatted at 8MB block size or less.  ESX cannot upgrade LUN’s that are formatted with anything larger than 8MB block size.  The two LUN’s I used as backup were both formatted with 16 MB block sizes.  I knew the limitation, but I didn’t think it affected me because I always used the default block size.  The only thing that’s strange about them is that they are both 1.7TB.
• “unable to upgrade filesystem” + “function not implemented” errors come from the wrong block size on the VMFS2 partition.
• Renaming datastores is not destructive in ESX 3, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this until all VM’s are functional.
• The upgrade is a good chance to upgrade server firmware.
• Make sure all VMDK files are connected before upgrading Virtual Hardware.  Otherwise you will get errors about disk version mismatches.  I used the recommended resolution.  I’m not confident that I did the right thing.
• Invalid affinity entry errors will happen if you assign a processor or memory affinity to a server and then move it to a server that cannot fulfill the entry.  This could happen if you move a VM from a quad proc. server to a dual and set processor 4 as the affinity.  Best way to fix this is remove the affinity.  Second best way is to recreate the VM using the same disk files. (Remove from inventory, recreate.)
• Network Copy Failed for File. [] /root/vmware/<servername>/nvram error is most likely a DNS problem.  Make sure to register all possible DNS names in the hosts file of each server involved.  In my case, the registered name and FQDN was different.  More info can be found here.
• If there are yellow or red alarms on most VM’s after Virtual Center 2 upgrade:  The upgrade sometimes truncates records including the alarm thresholds.  It will truncate 70% and 90% to 7% and 9%.  VC looks like a Christmas tree the first time you log in.  Your options are bad and worse in this case.  I chose to wipe the old DB and create a new one.  The stats were not critical to us.  Doing this also affects rights, groups, and other things.
• “The virtual machine is not supported on the target datastore.”  Rebooting solves lots of problems during the install.  Especially this one.
• VMware Tools for Netware.  I need to address this in a seperate post, but the answer is that the only instructions for this are old GSX 3.2 instructions.  They work.

Sorry about the disorganized info, but this is just a braindump.  Please let me know if you have any questions and I will get you more detailed info.

This week ought to be fun

Well, not really. We are short 2 people this week. One quit a couple weeks ago and the other is on vacation. This means that I’ll be extremely busy. I also have a VMware upgrade scheduled for next weekend. Is sleep really that important?

We had a boneheaded mini-disaster last week.

Last week we installed a new SAN and 3 new servers to run some new application. One of our guys was responsible for power. He decided to pull some plug because he thought everything was redundant anyway. BIG MISTAKE. This guy pulled the plug on something that was supporting a second power strip. Our primary ESX server and a database server shutdown. Phones went off the hook as expected. The ESX server came up OK, but the database server had issues. Some file locked up and the database wouldn’t start. This is another in a series of boneheaded manmade screw-ups.

I posted that I was insterested in a book called Visual Ops a couple months ago. I am interested in this book because I feel it is a practical guide for changing my department. I offered the book to my boss and he’s not interested. I’m probably going to offer it to another of my bosses. I hope I have more success with him. If not, I will have to lead by example. The only downside is I won’t have a mandate at first. So be it. Right now we are too lax about controls and change management. We constantly repeat dumb mistakes and there isn’t enough accountability for risk taking.

BTW, READ THS BOOK if you are in IT.

Note: I know the power situation is bad if we are using power strips. We are replacing all the racks and UPS within 5 months.

Nomadishere: 8 Things Intelligent People, Geeks and Nerds Need To Work Happily

I really enjoyed this article.  Probably because I agree with the 8 things.

http://nomadishere.com/2007/03/12/a-note-to-employers-8-things-intelligent-people-geeks-and-nerds-need-to-work-happy/