My Weblog - Pat Ramadass - emediaIT

Western Digital Velociraptors SATA HDDs vs Corsair Force 3 Series SSDs in RAID 0

I have been putting off the move to SSDs for ages now, mainly due to cost, but the disk I/O on my machine was becoming an increasing bottleneck from what I could tell and there is more multi-tasking and juggling of responsibilities at work. I have been running 2x Western Digital Velociraptors in RAID 0 for the last few months and apart from one drive failure I was really pleased with the performance, especially coming from a RAID 0 7200 RPM laptop hard drive configuration on my soon to be retired Dell XPS M1730 (Almost 4 awesome years of service and still under full warranty from Dell!).

I decided to take the plunge into the SSD world yesterday (Early Christmas present to myself and well timed as I will be working through the holidays) and with it being a choice between the Intel 510s and the Corsair Force 3 Series (OCZ Vertex 3 is not that easily available around here), I opted for the latter due to comparable performance in most areas and much smaller cost. Installation into my Thermaltake Level 10 GT chassis was simple enough once I ditched the 3.5" brackets the SSDs came with and just used the GTs own removable brackets which have support for 2.5" drives. I also decided to stick with RAID 0 despite there not being TRIM support on the SSDs in RAID currently, but this is seemingly going to be there in a future Intel RST Driver release from what I have seen online and there are conflicting opinions on how much of an issue it actually is if a machine is left to idle/garbage collect etc. Below are the benchmarks in ATTO and also the WEI results (Ignore the CPU and Memory, it's a result of different overclocking settings on the i7 2600k) used.

Drives used…

2x Western Digital Velociraptor 450GB 10k RPM SATA HDDs - WD4500HLHX
2x Corsair Force 3 Series MLC 120GB 2.5" - F120GB3-BK

…with the SSDs obviously being far smaller (Which is not an issue as I will keep the Velociraptors in a RAID 1 config for important data/archiving etc) but both have full SATA III 6Gb/s support.

Velociraptors:

Force 3 Series:

So from a straight benchmark point of view, the SSDs obviously run away with it by some way, but it will be interesting to see what a difference it will be for real world/general productivity when it comes to day to day activities including general applications, Visual Studio etc.

Quick Office Braai

 

Unified Communications - Increase Productivity - Presentation

emediaIT - Unified Communications - 2011.09.01

View more presentations from Venketash (Pat) Ramadass.

Building "Windows 8" - Video #1

emediaIT is Hiring! - Advanced Systems Engineers

We are looking for an Advanced Systems Engineer to join our fast-moving team. They will work alongside our sales team, technical team, partners, suppliers and will be involved in pre-sales, support (client facing), internal systems and research & development including project management. They will be able to work in a team or alone and have the drive for continuous improvement and on-going skills development including certifications (Microsoft, Cisco etc) in key areas.

We need someone who is intelligent, hardworking, highly presentable, well-spoken, hugely ambitious, committed and looking for a career rather than a step along the way. Our company is fast paced, leading edge and we only want the best. We reward performance and results.

The candidate will need to be flexible, have the ability to learn quickly and adapt to different environments and services, products and technologies. We need someone who is as passionate about our services and products as we are.

It is expected that within the first 3 months of the candidate being employed they will:

• Complete handover from person they will be replacing (Initial Month)
• Familiarise themselves with processes and products/services
• Take full ownership of specific responsibilities assigned to them
• Advise on areas where they feel there can be improvement
• Completed initial assessments and exams required by the company (Microsoft based)

Understanding of IT Products and Services. Familiarity/Experience (Minimum 2-3 years) with most/all of the following:

•  Software Development

• Networking
  • IP addressing, routers, ADSL, firewalls, DNS, DHCP, Dynamic DNS, port forwarding, shared/networked printers, drive mapping, VPNs, wireless
• Hosting
  • Web
  • Email
• Connectivity
  • ADSL
  • VPN
• Unified Communications
  • Asterisk
  • Microsoft OCS/Lync
• Hardware
  • Servers/Workstations
  • Dell preferably
• Microsoft Server Products
  • Windows Server 2003/2008
  • SQL Server 2005/2008
  • Exchange Server 2007/2010
  • etc
• Microsoft SharePoint 2007/2010
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0/2011
• Virtualisation (Hyper-V etc)
• Active Directory
• Certificates
• Cabling

Related and up to date Microsoft certifications will be a big advantage. Click here for more information.

Mobility Solutions - Work Anywhere, Anytime - Photos

Below are photos taken at our recent Mobility Solutions event held with Microsoft and K2.

       

Mobility Solutions - Work Anywhere, Anytime - Presentation

emediaIT - Mobility Solutions - 2011.03.01

View more presentations from Venketash (Pat) Ramadass

Walskipper, Jeffrey's Bay

Heatherbank, Port Elizabeth

Sent from my Windows Phone

emediaIT wins Corporate 20 Overs Cricket League!

emediaIT played in the final of our Corporate 20 Overs Cricket league on Saturday 22nd January 2011 against ADR Distributors. It was the 4th time we had entered the league and had only managed as far as the Semi Finals in previous appearances.

With this curse lifted, we were all very excited at the prospect of finally getting a shot at the trophy. Unfortunately the weather had other plans and the game had a delayed start of 14:30 as opposed to the originally scheduled 09:00. We won the toss and chose to bowl first given the overcast conditions and rather grassy wicket. A few early chances presented themselves in the field, but we did not take these and ADR made a solid start of 53/1 after their first 10 overs. Run rate wise this was fine for us, but the next 10 overs went for over 100 runs despite an amazing 19th over during which we took 4 wickets, setting us 145 for victory.

Our chase started with us losing early wickets in both the 1st and 3rd overs, but we then stabilised to 64/2 after 10, slightly ahead of where the opposition were at the same point in their innings. Good running and some great hitting from the middle order allowed us to cruise through to a 7 wicket victory with 1.5 overs to spare.

Thanks to the entire squad who helped take us all the way as well as all of our supporters, friends and family who made it a great season all round. The next corporate and indoor seasons will be starting soon and emediaIT will there once again!