Cygon’s Blog

Guess I’ll have to ease my frustration by letting out another rant about Windows Server 2008.

Don’t use this to guide your decision for or against Windows Server 2008. As I said in my previous post, resourcefully titled “Windows Server 2008“, I’m still running Beta 3, so things might have changed in the RTM build. I won’t know, however, because I don’t have the money to buy it, well, unless I can score a lucky hit on ebay

My home server is running a (soft)RAID-5 with 4 drives. The drives are configured so they get turned off after 60 minutes of inactivity. This is a pretty simple scheme since when I’m at my PC, I usually access them all the time (streaming music, movies recorded by my Siemens Gigaset M 750 S, which also isn’t without its problems) and when I’m not at home, the drives can go to sleep for 20+ hours straight.

So the rule should be simple: Drives used -> turn them on for 60 minutes.

Unfortunately, Windows Server 2008 appears to have its own, unique, understanding of this rule.

If I just browse my server’s file shares, the drives spin up, the directory is read, then the drives spin down again. Well, sometimes they spin down while I’m still browsing, causing my Vista PC’s explorer windows to hang - dear Vista team, I can almost feel the quality code that is in Explorer.exe :o)

Sometimes they will also spin up for no apparent reason. Maybe the Windows File Indexing service decided to go on patrol, but who knows.

At other times, I want mount an .iso image from a file share in Daemon Tools. By browsing for the .iso image, I cause the hard drives to spin up. But when I then don’t access the virtual drive within seconds, the drives spin down again. Unlike explorer.exe, which shits itself, Daemon Tools unmounts the .iso again when it cannot be accessed anymore. So, from the user point-of-view, you mount an .iso, attempt to open the virtual drive and discover the .iso is not mounted anymore.

When I’m just pressing play in my WinAmp and the drives aren’t spinning yet, there’s another funny thing to observe. First, WinAmp freezes until the first drive has spun up. Then you get to listen to some seconds of music and WinAmp freezes again. Now the next drive spins up. Then another few seconds of music and WinAmp freezes yet again. When finally all drives are running, you are about half a minute into the song.

Maybe this last thing was done to not push the PSU by spinning up all drives at the same time. Who knows. But what’s so hard about my rule?

When the drive is accessed, spin it up for 60 minutes.

Is that asking too much?

I’ve always been rather neutral about the whole Windows versus Linux thing. For me, Windows was easier to manage, had better development tools, my games ran on it and I didn’t have to put up with all the half-baked solutions following a thousand different ideologies on how a program should interact with the user.

However, there’s one thing that makes me seriously think about switching my home server, currently running Windows Server 2008 (Beta3), to Linux. You can observe it on any LAN and, if you’re running a home server, you’ve most likely run into this issue more than once, too:

As soon as someone in the LAN downloads a big file from your windows machine, let’s say an .avi of a recorded TV show, your system is dead. Just opening the task manager to look what’s wrong takes literally minutes. Heck, it already takes that long to get the context menu to appear. The system becomes an upload slave and cannot be used anymore until you friend has finished his download… and by that time, the only sane thing to do is to reboot — if you have the patience to wait for the start menu to open.

This has hit Windows XP, it has hit Windows Server 2003 and it is hitting Windows Server 2008 right now as I’m writing this.

What can be observed in the task manager is that windows uses all available memory and then some for its disk cache. There is no sane limit on RAM, there is no stopping, windows will page out all running applications, the desktop, explorer, the start menu, your calculator, your clock, absolutely everything so it can fill the entire RAM with the never-again used contents of the file your friend is downloading.

This is hitting Microsoft’s server OS just as good as its workstation and home Windows packages. The holy file cache is allowed to use every bit of RAM in your system, all else becomes secondary to that. Sharing a large file is basically a way of asking for your system to be taken down, or more specifically, to take down itself.

For me that means: (File Server) == !(Microsoft OS), or in words, if you want a file server, you cannot use a Microsoft OS.

I wonder if there is a way to limit windows’ cache, or to disable caching of files on a specific partition or something else that prevents Windows from dying when it serves a file. Anything.

…or is Microsoft’s latest and greatest Server OS really such a miserable joke?

This is one of my favorite CDs of all time. Even though only an EP, “No Way Back” features two very, very intense tracks: “No Way Back” and “Close Your Eyes”.

While there is no doubt that this is a genuine Death Metal, “No Way Back” starts with a deeply touching and sad opening that slowly transforms into pure desperation. The song is driven by the unyielding pressure that is typical for Norther. Truly a masterpiece that tells a story with a lot of emotion.

“Close Your Eyes” carries the expression of frustration and disappointment while at same time, the lyrics express red-hot rage and anger. I guess Norther are just too good at this kind of stuff, because it holds you captive and doesn’t let you go until the story of this track is told.

I already loved “Norther” during the time of their first album “Dreams of Endless War”, when everyone was blaming them of ripping off “Children of Bodom” while I truly couldn’t see the slightest resemblance between their styles. After “Death Unlimited”, they headed off in a direction I initially couldn’t relate to, but their latest release is exactly what I’m longing for!

My personal list of must-hear tracks for Norther would be: Dreams of Endless War - Released, Dreams of Endless War - Nothing Left, Mirror of Madness - Betrayed, Mirror of Madness - Everything is an End, Death Unlimited - Deep Inside, Death Unlimited - A Fallen Star, Death Unlimited - Nothing, Solution 7 - YDKS (You Don’t Know Shit), Till Death Us Unites - Drowning, Till Death Us Unites - Everything, No Way Back - No Way Back, No Way Back - Close Your Eyes, N - We Rock

My personal rating for “No Way Back” is a definitive 10 out of 10.

Had the chance to listen to “Devian” today, a new death metal group with vocals by “Legion” (the voice we all know / knew “Marduk” by).

By their descriptions on Last.fm “…taking focus off the blastbeating using a wider palette of sounds from slow grinding gloom to exploding primal fury raising the standard of their body of work in a sharply tuned firewind or strong brutal songs…” and themselves “…DEVIAN decided to go for a more dynamic old school vibe, which is built upon a very catchy combination of melody and aggression.”

The opener “Serenade for the Fallen” was very atmospheric and touching, so I was expecting something great to come my way. But the remainder of the disc doesn’t have any dramaturgy whatsoever. Everything sounds like monotonous thrashing at pretty much the same intensity throughout the whole tracklist.

It’s analogous to someone shouting, all the time at the same pitch and volume, “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” - you don’t sense much emotion and after a few seconds it already feels weak, uninteresting and you’re wishing there was some buildup in tension or a melancholic part that explodes into hate allowing you to pick up the emotion. It would feel just that much more intense with some variance or melodic parts.

My personal rating for “Ninewinged Serpent” is maybe 2 out of 10. Without the great atmospheric opener, that would become a 1 out of 10.