Saturday - all done

content/blog/wk6day6.md

@@ -1,7 +1,117 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 6, Saturday:"
+title: "Week 6, Saturday: DDLN and sflow"
 date: 2024-09-07T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/todo.png" alt="Credit: " >}}
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/kushsessions-02.png" alt="Credit: KushSessions, YouTube" >}}
+
+(reversed chronology alert). It is Sunday September 8th, 01:26am as I begin to write this story
+about what is essentially yesterday, Saturday September 7th. I am currently listening to [[Kush
+Sessions #242](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8FIUbepBzM)] as I write this. It's not the first
+time! If you look at the video I recorded to announce my Sabbatical, which went to
+[[Twitter](https://x.com/IPngNetworks/status/1821681368989839773)], and
+[[Mastodon](https://ublog.tech/@IPngNetworks/112928849045729490)] (where I post a whole lot more
+than Twitter, just-so-you-know!), and
+[[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7227455516086571008/)], where I got
+a lot of support from friends and colleauges. I really, really like this particular Kush Sessions,
+so thank you to [[Rossum and Crissy](https://www.di.fm/shows/kushsessions)] for being such excellent
+DJs. Kittycat for the win!
+
+At 13:30, I have an appointment with my buddy Antonis, who is traveling to San Francisco on Monday
+and wants to do some pre-emptive maintenance on his machine at IPng's small colocation facility in
+Zurich. He made the same 'mistake' as I did, and fell for the Samsung QVO for his hypervisor, and
+after about a year and a half is seeing only 20-30MB/s write rates on an otherwise healthy, albeit
+slow, disk pool. I had the exact same problem, with the exact same drives, on four of IPng's
+hypervisors. I refurbished all of them with SAS-12 enterprise SSDs from NetApp and HPE and literally
+never looked back (write rate of 700MB/s per disk and 1.5GB/s on ZFS RAIDz1, hell yeah!). Recently,
+I ordered 12 more of these 3.84TB SAS12 drives, so I'll accompany Antonis and plug in a few more
+disks on my own hypervisor that runs [[video.ipng.ch](https://video.ipng.ch/)],
+[[ublog.tech](https://ublog.tech)], and [[pix.ublog.tech](https://pix.ublog.tech/)].  By the way, if
+you'd like an account on the PeerTube, Mastodon, or Pixelfed instance, just let me know! I'd be
+happy to have you, if you're reading this journal :)
+
+The colocation is a pretty cool story. My buddy Luuk, who owns a company that develops an autonomous
+mono/dual-occular slam based automatic pilot system for life sized rotary and fixed wing aircraft
+systems -- wait what? OK: Luuk and his team decided that they could probably fly an Airbus A320 or
+Robinson R44 (helicopter) better than humans could, given a good sensory and visual input and
+sufficient automated, dare I say _artificial intelligence_ systems. Daedalean creates
+safety-critical AI systems for situational awareness and flight control, with the eventual goal of
+developing certified autonomy in the air. If you're in Zurich, and this type of tech and
+startup-getitdone-company is your jam, and you'd like an intro, just come see me and I'll open a
+door for you.
+
+I have been following this great company since they started - and at some point, Luuk and I were
+wandering in the insides of this office building in Zurich Albisrieden, and I said: "Wouldn't it be
+cool if we built a colo in this otherwise unusable room?" and Luuk said: "Knock yourself out." and
+thus came into existence: [[IPng's
+Colocation](https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2022/02/24/ipng-networks-colocation/)]. The colocation that I
+built, together with Daedalean, is very special. It’s not carrier grade, it doesn’t have a
+building/room wide UPS or diesel generators, but it does have competent power, cooling, physical and
+logical deployment. But most of all: it redundantly connects to AS8298 and offers full N+1
+redundancy on the logical level.
+
+OK, where was I - Antonis added 4pcs of Samsung EVO to replace his shitty QVOs, and I added 3pcs of
+SAS12 Netapp SSD, to cycle my prime realestate services if need be. We are both In and Out like the
+Burger, 15 minutes later, disks were added, storage pools were built, and we chatted a little bit
+about mutual projects, notably [[Free IX](https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/04/27/freeix-remote/)]
+which now has a presense in Amsterdam, Zurich, Milan and Thessaloniki. The next step is to
+interconnect them all, and things are cooking in that department.
+
+I bike home at 15:00 or so and all of the sudden it hits me: I have this loaner bike until today
+16:00 and I haven't heard back from Stromvelo! I check my mail and lo-and-behold: an e-mail that
+they are servicing my _bolide_ now. I'm in Albisrieden and the path from DDLN to my house almost
+crosses Stromvelo, so I decide to bee-line it to the shop. I got there, and the guy was finishing up
+a sales convo with a prospect customer (and I think he nailed it!), after which we talk briefly
+about my bike. It turns out, the _replacement_ sensor was faulty, and he replaced it with yet
+another one, which tested fine and the bike is delivered to me without extra costs. I'm over the
+moon that I have my little Stromerli back. I bike home as-if on clouds, it's _that_ smooth.
+
+Coming home, what's a guy to do? Some loadtests of course! I leverage my side-quests form yesterday,
+boot up the hypervisors, and get cracking to a functional- and loadtest of the `sflow` plugin that
+Neil McKee from Inmon wrote a while ago. I take note, ask myself questions, and end up in an
+animated conversation with Neil. We agree that a higher bandwidth convo is justified, and schedule
+some time on Monday at 9am pacific, 18:00 my time. It'll be fun!
+
+The loadtests are running, and I am also reminded that yesterday we did not finish that _Maison
+Gillard_ wine from Wallis. It does not take long to lure Marina to the garden - and she gushes all
+over this wine. You know what? I'll bike to Coop! The last time we tried this (with the faceted
+ros&eacute;) it was sold out. Maybe this time I get lucky? Hell yeah I do! There's still maybe
+twenty bottles or so, all at fifty-billion-percent off. I have my backpack and it snugly fits
+precisely eight bottles and one 200 gram packet of smoked salmon. Mission accomplished, and as I
+roll back in, Liv and Quinn just arrive, and we offer them this newly found discounted but totally
+fabulous white. As we go outside and sit, I start a Spotify Jam, which Liv quickly joins, and she
+adds some tasty music (some great, some awful), but overal: engagement++ and I enjoy vibrantly
+discussing the music with the kids.
+
+I make dinner: home made _fladenbrot_ (English: flatbread) with planted gyros. I really, really like
+this stuff. With some homemade garlic sauce, some heatonist hot sauce, and plenty of water, the meal
+is a continuation of the vibe outside. It was dope! After dinner, we all wash up, do the dishes and
+clean the table, after which Liv takes off to catch the bus. Bye, Liv! You're an OK human :)
+
+We have three more episodes of _V Wars_ to watch. Honesty? I think I missed most of it, because I
+was pushing my face into my laptop to continue and complete the fist set of loadtests of the `sflow`
+plugin in VPP. We finish S01E10 though, and the season (and series) is completed. All three of us
+agree: OK, but not stellar - would not watch again.
+
+After this, I go downstairs and write my journal entry, starting with the (reversed chronology
+alert) and ending up here, at 02:13. It's time for me to sleep - I have promised Quinn and Marina a
+Mimosa brunch (hence: the smoked salmon -- see? it all makes sense). Today's story took me 47
+minutes to write. Time well spent? You tell me!
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1136.JPG" caption="DDLN: One of IPng's racks at this beautiful office building with good power, great connectivity, and a raised floor." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1137.JPG" caption="DDLN: A rack full of diskfuls - I have this very machine (st0.*.ipng.ch) but these are not mine." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1139.JPG" caption="DDLN: IPng @ DDLN, the sticker on the side of my two racks at this place. If you want to host a private server in Switzerland, ping me!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1144.JPG" caption="Two dual-100G network cards, normally in IPng's hypervisors, currently swapped out for 8x10G instead." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1146.JPG" caption="The Dell R730s in the IPng laboratory have vinyl badges - I didn't buy that Cameo v5 for nothing!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/loadtest.png" caption="Loadtests are fun! This is a screenshot of a losttest with and without sflow sampling enabled in its prototype from Neil McKee from Inmon.  There's work to to, but so far: functionally complete!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1147.JPG" caption="Outside, we finish that beautiful white wine from yesterday." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1148.JPG" caption="A weird stink-bug with white legs shows up on my chair. He is a cutie!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1150.JPG" caption="Marina wants moar: I bike over to Coop on my own (!) Stromer and get eight more bottles. 50% off! Yaay!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-07/IMG_1151.JPG" caption="Our salami-and-gurkin, and cheese-and-onion. So Dutch!" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}