Black Friday

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During previous Black Fridays I have bought a few stuff including notebooks, Chromebook, RAM, micro sd cards and VPSs… This year tried to order the Eco series dedicated server on OVH https://www.ovhcloud.com/. In the end got a KS-LE-2:

No luck in getting a free upgrade as per the OVH lottery just others get. Although IPMI is included in the server, setting up an environment to run a Java applet has proven to be quite challenging. Oracle has changed its licensing, making Oracle Java unavailable for free in commercial environments, while OpenJDK does not support applets. Additionally, I have found that the applet always crashes when attempting to mount an ISO, which forces me to install the server using the templates provided by OVH.

The installation process was almost seamless, requiring just a few clicks. However, my first attempt hung midway, prompting a technician to intervene and update the BIOS settings. For my second attempt, I tried installing Hyper-V Server 2019, which went smoothly, but I faced issues managing it via Hyper-V Manager over the Internet. Additionally, I encountered dynamic disk limitations, restricting to only two disks for mirroring the system volume. As a result, I decided to reinstall the server using the Proxmox Virtual Environment 8 template:

I must admit that Proxmox has a pretty neat GUI and creating VM is just easy using the wizard! Here is the YABS result:

# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2024-06-09                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Mon Dec  2 09:00:52 HKT 2024

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Uptime     : 5 days, 17 hours, 48 minutes
Processor  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1231 v3 @ 3.40GHz
CPU cores  : 8 @ 3425.075 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 31.1 GiB
Swap       : 4.0 GiB
Disk       :
Distro     : Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Kernel     : 6.8.12-4-pve
VM Type    : NONE
IPv4/IPv6  : ✔ Online / ✔ Online

IPv6 Network Information:
---------------------------------
ISP        : OVH SAS
ASN        : AS16276 OVH SAS
Host       : OVH Hosting, Inc
Location   : Beauharnois, Quebec (QC)
Country    : Canada

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50) (Partition data/zd2):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 36.91 MB/s    (9.2k) | 431.89 MB/s   (6.7k)
Write      | 37.01 MB/s    (9.2k) | 434.16 MB/s   (6.7k)
Total      | 73.92 MB/s   (18.4k) | 866.05 MB/s  (13.5k)
           |                      |
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 1.06 GB/s     (2.0k) | 1.25 GB/s     (1.2k)
Write      | 1.11 GB/s     (2.1k) | 1.33 GB/s     (1.3k)
Total      | 2.17 GB/s     (4.2k) | 2.59 GB/s     (2.5k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed      | Ping
-----           | -----                     | ----            | ----            | ----
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 377 Mbits/sec   | 862 Mbits/sec   | 76.9 ms
Eranium         | Amsterdam, NL (100G)      | 884 Mbits/sec   | 847 Mbits/sec   | 91.1 ms
Uztelecom       | Tashkent, UZ (10G)        | 823 Mbits/sec   | 481 Mbits/sec   | 183 ms
Leaseweb        | Singapore, SG (10G)       | 590 Mbits/sec   | 508 Mbits/sec   | 243 ms
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 891 Mbits/sec   | 547 Mbits/sec   | 68.1 ms
Leaseweb        | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | busy            | busy            | 12.1 ms
Edgoo           | Sao Paulo, BR (1G)        | 846 Mbits/sec   | 713 Mbits/sec   | 119 ms

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed      | Ping
-----           | -----                     | ----            | ----            | ----
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 872 Mbits/sec   | 739 Mbits/sec   | 75.1 ms
Eranium         | Amsterdam, NL (100G)      | 873 Mbits/sec   | 852 Mbits/sec   | 91.1 ms
Uztelecom       | Tashkent, UZ (10G)        | 778 Mbits/sec   | 464 Mbits/sec   | 183 ms
Leaseweb        | Singapore, SG (10G)       | 562 Mbits/sec   | 603 Mbits/sec   | 243 ms
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 880 Mbits/sec   | 872 Mbits/sec   | 68.2 ms
Leaseweb        | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 924 Mbits/sec   | 925 Mbits/sec   | 12.2 ms
Edgoo           | Sao Paulo, BR (1G)        | 833 Mbits/sec   | 606 Mbits/sec   | 119 ms

Geekbench 6 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test            | Value
                |
Single Core     | 1257
Multi Core      | 4178
Full Test       | https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/9191014

YABS completed in 14 min 1 sec

A small model

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Recenty bought a small nanoblock clone robot that looks like Gundam RX78-2 from Taobao for just HKD 4.12:

The package was a bit squashed as expected:

Here are the materials inside:

Assembling took around 30 minutes with a final product:

Sudden change to VPS

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The low end VPS powering this blog got a sudden migration to then trendy Ryzen platform…. The VPS was pretty unstable and slow during the past few days, perhaps due to some kinds of noisy neighbors? Anyway it seems to be back to normal now….

# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2021-12-28                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Fri Jul 22 08:56:20 HKT 2022

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 1 @ 3800.000 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 357.2 MiB
Swap       : 525.0 MiB
Disk       : 14.2 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 130.44 MB/s  (32.6k) | 250.52 MB/s   (3.9k)
Write      | 130.78 MB/s  (32.6k) | 251.84 MB/s   (3.9k)
Total      | 261.22 MB/s  (65.3k) | 502.37 MB/s   (7.8k)
           |                      |
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 480.11 MB/s    (937) | 747.53 MB/s    (730)
Write      | 505.62 MB/s    (987) | 797.32 MB/s    (778)
Total      | 985.73 MB/s   (1.9k) | 1.54 GB/s     (1.5k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed
                |                           |                 |
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 591 Mbits/sec   | 79.2 Mbits/sec
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 752 Mbits/sec   | 221 Mbits/sec
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 717 Mbits/sec   | 189 Mbits/sec
WebHorizon      | Singapore (400M)          | 663 Mbits/sec   | 375 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 860 Mbits/sec   | 203 Mbits/sec
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | busy            | busy
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 889 Mbits/sec   | 715 Mbits/sec
Iveloz Telecom  | Sao Paulo, BR (2G)        | busy            | busy

A new case for the pi

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The pi was an amazing little device. However the original plastic case is rather limited in air ventilation, viewing a HD video on Netflix could easily makes it overheated to have the CPU throttled! Having no choices but putting the pi into a new case for daily desktop use…

There were so many cases on TaoBao and here is a cheap one I bought for just around HKD 33.

The package contaiing the metal case, fan and head sinks.
The pi inside the case with a fan installed, connected to +5v and GND.
The completed case with the fan.

The whole assembly process took around 10 minutes and I got the pi running with the fan in the new case. However the fan was really noisy and I suspect the vibration of the case made it even louder! So anohter few minutes in removing the fan in favour for a quiet fanless pi!

The fan was found to be really noisy! Removed it at the end.

A tiny device for WFH use

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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH (Worf From Home) becomes a new trend over the globe. The desktop I had been using was in fact an aging HTPC, the onboard sound was already broken and it would not superise me if it would fail any time soon….

As a cheap desktop replacement, I decided to try to recently Rapsberry Pi 4. It just got 2 days to have the package deliveried to me from a local reseller.

The box delivered by a local courier.

The package contains a 8GB Pi 4, case, heat sinks, PSU, 128G micro sd, card reader and a micro HDMI cable. Pretty neat as a tiny computer.

The items included in the package: pi 4B, case, heat sinks, PSU, micro sd, card reader and a micro HDMI to HDMI cable.

Assembled the unit took only a few minutes, that is a piece of cake.

The pi with heat sinks installed inside the plastic case.

Finally the finished unit in operation.

A new start

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A fresh start

This is the first entry of the blog, also marked a start of the year 2021. I created this blog as a documentary of what I would like to build at my spare time…

This first item built is this blog deployed on a low end VPS:


# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
#              Yet-Another-Bench-Script              #
#                     v2020-12-07                    #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #

Fri Jan  1 07:39:48 HKT 2021

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 v2 @ 2.50GHz
CPU cores  : 1 @ 2499.998 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled
RAM        : 357.4 MiB
Swap       : 525.0 MiB
Disk       : 14.2 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 36.07 MB/s    (9.0k) | 544.98 MB/s   (8.5k)
Write      | 36.18 MB/s    (9.0k) | 547.85 MB/s   (8.5k)
Total      | 72.25 MB/s   (18.0k) | 1.09 GB/s    (17.0k)
           |                      |
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 860.16 MB/s   (1.6k) | 713.63 MB/s    (696)
Write      | 905.86 MB/s   (1.7k) | 761.15 MB/s    (743)
Total      | 1.76 GB/s     (3.4k) | 1.47 GB/s     (1.4k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed
                |                           |                 |
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 607 Mbits/sec   | 528 Mbits/sec
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 694 Mbits/sec   | 449 Mbits/sec
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 740 Mbits/sec   | 481 Mbits/sec
Biznet          | Jakarta, Indonesia (1G)   | 546 Mbits/sec   | 30.3 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 1.34 Gbits/sec  | 922 Mbits/sec
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 1.50 Gbits/sec  | 1.00 Gbits/sec
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 3.34 Gbits/sec  | 2.21 Gbits/sec
Iveloz Telecom  | Sao Paulo, BR (2G)        | 145 Mbits/sec   | 157 Mbits/sec