[JOB] Senior Sysadmin Position, DIAS

[Dmitri Grigoriev]

Hi to All,

If you/somebody else are interested:

https://www.dias.ie/2020/11/23/senior-it-administrator/

Deadline 11th of December. Please redistribute.

       D.G.

[Dmitri Grigoriev]

Hi to All,

The deadline has been extended until this Friday 8/01.

Happy 2021!

     D.G.

[Kevin Lyda]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 8:20 PM Dmitri Grigoriev
<dmitri.g...@dias.ie> wrote:
> The deadline has been extended until this Friday 8/01.

Best of luck but that pay scale for a senior person with those skills
for a non-permanent job in Dublin is, charitably, archaic.

That was true before the pandemic and now, at a time when more jobs
are allowing remote work, it's even more so. A good candidate could
get double that for a non-permanent contract job for some company in
Germany, the Netherlands or the US (to name some places in my
recruitment spam folder). If you really want to hire someone, either
up the salary or offer full-time jobs with health insurance.

Kevin

[Dmitri Grigoriev]

    Hi Kevin,

    Good to see there still are live people on the list!

On 05/01/2021 8:50 p.m., Kevin Lyda wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 8:20 PM Dmitri Grigoriev
> <dmitri.g...@dias.ie> wrote:
>> The deadline has been extended until this Friday 8/01.
> Best of luck but that pay scale for a senior person with those skills
> for a non-permanent job in Dublin is, charitably, archaic.

Well, this is not a company job, which could be good or bad, but why do
you say non-permanent?

>
> That was true before the pandemic and now, at a time when more jobs
> are allowing remote work, it's even more so. A good candidate could
> get double that for a non-permanent contract job for some company in
> Germany, the Netherlands or the US (to name some places in my
> recruitment spam folder). If you really want to hire someone, either
> up the salary or offer full-time jobs with health insurance.

Full-time -- yes, permanent -- possible, health insurance -- sorry, no
(a VHI group scheme, to be precise). D.G.
>
> Kevin

[Pól Ua Laoínecháin]

Message from another live person! :-)

> Good to see there still are live people on the list!

What's the skinny on NVMe drives - are they all they're cracked up to
be or are there pitfalls for the unwary?

Any input appreciated!


Pól... (just checked pulse - still working!)

[Pól Ua Laoínecháin]

Apologies all - forgot to change subject!

> What's the skinny on NVMe drives - are they all they're cracked up to
> be or are there pitfalls for the unwary?

Pól...

[Darragh Bailey]

Hi,

On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 at 21:14, Dmitri Grigoriev <dmitri.g...@dias.ie> wrote:

     Hi Kevin,

     Good to see there still are live people on the list!

On 05/01/2021 8:50 p.m., Kevin Lyda wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 8:20 PM Dmitri Grigoriev
> <dmitri.g...@dias.ie> wrote:
>> The deadline has been extended until this Friday 8/01.
> Best of luck but that pay scale for a senior person with those skills
> for a non-permanent job in Dublin is, charitably, archaic.
Well, this is not a company job, which could be good or bad, but why do
you say non-permanent?

Because the job description describes it as a 5 year contract with the possibility of being permanent, which I would assume most would infer means it can be cancelled at relatively short notice.

--

Darragh Bailey

[Pól Ua Laoínecháin]

On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 at 20:51, Kevin Lyda <ke...@lyda.ie> wrote:

> That was true before the pandemic and now, at a time when more jobs
> are allowing remote work, it's even more so. A good candidate could
> get double that for a non-permanent contract job for some company in
> Germany, the Netherlands or the US (to name some places in my
> recruitment spam folder). If you really want to hire someone, either
> up the salary or offer full-time jobs with health insurance.

I second that - they're looking for someone with ~ 7 years experience
in a relatively senior networking (Linux and Windows) role and they're
offering a 3-4 years experience salary - the only thing they don't ask
for is a College degree. And a 5 year trial period is a bit OTT...

The role is still open - hardly a surprise...

Pól...

> Kevin

[Pól Ua Laoínecháin]

Hvala moj prijatelj i kako si?

(wrote that from memory - just had to check the spelling of "prijatelj")

> I got a relatively-cheap PCI NVMe with M2 interface, plus an adapter
> from M2 to PCI, and the games are loading very, very quickly. Looks
> like the CPU is now my bottleneck for games.

What's the difference between PCIe, M2 and NVMe with an M2 interface?

AIUI, you can have M2 SATA and M2 PCIe?

What then is "normal" PCIe?

I see various things offered on Amazon

(going to get a friend who lives in the gigantic lunatic asylum known
as the USA to buy a machine for me - when he ever comes back - his
mother is in a home and he won't be able to visit even if he does come
now...)

and I'd like to know what I'm getting...


> If you suspect disk access is your bottleneck,

I'm a database nerd, so faster disk access is the holy grail...
graphics and CPU... meh...

Some of the machines have a SATA 2.5' drive bay and an M2 slot - I got
one of these (spinning rust HDD and empty M2 - put an SSD in 2.5' bay
and an M2 SATA drive (no point in getting PCIe for a SATA compatible
slot) and it hums - but I'd like to try the "fully monty" of "pure"
PCIe NVMe...


Videmo se,


Pól...

[Ivan Vučica]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 9:28 PM Pól Ua Laoínecháin <line...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>
> Hvala moj prijatelj i kako si?
>
> (wrote that from memory - just had to check the spelling of "prijatelj")

\o/ Go raibh maith agat! Tá mé go maith.

[I had to use Translate for this, even 7yr later. Maybe I should
double down on Duolingo lessons...]

> > I got a relatively-cheap PCI NVMe with M2 interface, plus an adapter
> > from M2 to PCI, and the games are loading very, very quickly. Looks
> > like the CPU is now my bottleneck for games.
>
> What's the difference between PCIe, M2 and NVMe with an M2 interface?
>
> AIUI, you can have M2 SATA and M2 PCIe?

What I'll say might be silly, as it comes solely out of what I
received in my order and a bit of talking with friends before my
purchase -- someone please correct me.

1) PCI Express is the "(usually) big slot" on your motherboard. Think
"this is where the wifi card goes" or "this is where the GPU goes".
2) M2 interface is really, really tiny. Think "when I open a laptop,
there's some space to plug something in".
3) Even if it has the M2 interface, the drive can still talk only
SATA. The adapter from M2 slot to the "big" PCI Express slot which I
bought explicitly said that the drive must *not* be SATA-only -- that
it only adapts M2 interface drives which talk PCI Express 3.0.

I am not fully sure what M2 exactly is -- I simply never looked up in
sufficient detail. Similarly, I don't know exactly in what physical
sizes PCI Express slots can come in.

> What then is "normal" PCIe?

I assume there are storage devices which can be plugged directly into
the big PCI Express interface, sized for desktop network cards, GPUs
etc?

> I see various things offered on Amazon
>
> (going to get a friend who lives in the gigantic lunatic asylum known
> as the USA to buy a machine for me - when he ever comes back - his
> mother is in a home and he won't be able to visit even if he does come
> now...)
>
> and I'd like to know what I'm getting...

I bought this 1TB drive:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B087QRVVVH

When everything arrived, I was really happy that I bought this adapter
at the same time:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B075TF6HFM

I was really happy given that this is when I realized how tiny M2
interface really is. You see the big PCI Express interface that you
get to plug into your motherboard? Compare it to the tiny slot that
the arrow points to.

>
>
> > If you suspect disk access is your bottleneck,
>
> I'm a database nerd, so faster disk access is the holy grail...
> graphics and CPU... meh...
>
> Some of the machines have a SATA 2.5' drive bay and an M2 slot - I got
> one of these (spinning rust HDD and empty M2 - put an SSD in 2.5' bay
> and an M2 SATA drive (no point in getting PCIe for a SATA compatible
> slot) and it hums - but I'd like to try the "fully monty" of "pure"
> PCIe NVMe...

Given how cheapo the adapter is, and given that it works fine on
Windows for me, I'd go for it.

I can't remember if I tried to make it work on my Debian installation.
I certainly left some unallocated space for a partition, but I'd need
to reboot to see if the device is properly recognized. I *think* the
UEFI sees it, but I'm not 100% sure about that either.

(It's not my boot drive at this time.)

>
>
> Videmo se,
>
>
> Pól...

o/

[Paul Kelly]

On 12/01/2021 21:27, Pól Ua Laoínecháin wrote:

>> I got a relatively-cheap PCI NVMe with M2 interface, plus an adapter
>> from M2 to PCI, and the games are loading very, very quickly. Looks
>> like the CPU is now my bottleneck for games.
> What's the difference between PCIe, M2 and NVMe with an M2 interface?
>
> AIUI, you can have M2 SATA and M2 PCIe?

M.2 defines a connector, its pinout, and physical card sizes. There are
several different personalities M.2 can have, with keying of the slot
used to prevent incompatible cards from being inserted. "B" key slots
are typically used for SATA but can also offer x2 PCIe and USB
connectivity. M.2 WiFi cards (usually "E" or "A" keyed) use the PCIe
lanes for network but also use the USB support to connect Bluetooth. "M"
key slots can offer x4 PCIe and SATA. A card will be notched to fit one
or more keys. M.2 SATA cards usually fit both B- and M-keyed slots but
all the fancy new NVMe cards demand an M-keyed slot.

The PCIe lanes of an M.2 slot are no different in capability &
performance to what you find in a traditional PCIe slot, and you can
acquire widgets in the darker corners of the internet that will turn an
M.2 slot into a PCIe slot. PCIe adapter cards also exist with M.2 slots
for SSDs, but be aware that many of the cards offering multiple M.2
slots only support NVMe in one slot and SATA in the other(s). Sharing a
PCIe lane (with a PCIe switch) or splitting lanes out ("bifurcation")
from an x16 slot into several x4 connectors are both hard to do, so
adapter cards that support multiple NVMe-capable M.2 slots tend to
either be very expensive or only work in specific slots of specific
motherboards.

On the other hand NVMe is more of a protocol and interface
specification, like AHCI is for SATA or UHCI for USB, intended to sit
directly on a PCIe bus. It's designed from the ground up for modern
SSDs. Optimized for minimum latency, a large number of concurrent
requests, and support for multi-core processors. It's not tied to the
M.2 form factor. It can also be a traditional PCIe card, or U.2 format -
which looks for all the world like a 2.5" drive with a SATA connector
(actually "SATA Express"). PCIe slot NVMe cards are uncommon these days
but U.2 is a thing in the server world, where hot-swap and ease of
replacement is a useful feature.

NVMe is usually implemented directly in the controller of the SSD. In an
ideal configuration your M.2 socket will be wired through the CPU socket
straight to the CPU's own PCIe lanes. In that case there's nothing
between the CPU and the SSD controller, and system memory just the far
side of that CPU. Storage never had it so good.

--

Paul.