Internet Files Encyclopedia – allfile.do.am – Click

When I start a new project, I like to check performance from as many layers as possible.  This helps to verify things are working as expected and helps me to understand how the pieces fit together.  My recent work with dNFS and Oracle 11gR2, I started down the path to monitor performance and was surprised to see that things are not always as they seem.  This post will explore the various ways to monitor and verify performance when using dNFS with Oracle 11gR2 and Sun Open Storage “Fishworks“.

why is iostat lying to me?

“iostat(1M)” is one of the most common tools to monitor IO.  Normally, I can see activity on local devices as well as NFS mounts via iostat.  But, with dNFS, my device seems idle during the middle of a performance run.

bash-3.0$ iostat -xcn 5
cpu
us sy wt id
8  5  0 87
extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0    6.2    0.0   45.2  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.4   0   0 c1t0d0
0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 toromondo.west:/export/glennf
cpu
us sy wt id
7  5  0 89
extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0   57.9    0.0  435.8  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.5   0   3 c1t0d0
0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 toromondo.west:/export/glennf

From the DB server perspective, I can’t see the IO.  I wonder what the array looks like.

what does fishworks analytics have to say about IO?

The analytics package available with fishworks is the best way to verify performance with Sun Open Storage.  This package is easy to use and indeed I was quickly able to verify activity on the array.

There are 48,987 NFSv3 operations/sec and ~403MB/sec going through the nge13 interface.  So, this array is cooking pretty good.  So, let’s take a peek at the network on the DB host.

nicstat to the rescue

nicstat is wonderful tool developed by Brendan Greg at Sun to show network performance.  Nicstat really shows you the critical data for monitoring network speeds and feeds by displaying packet size, utilization, and rates of the various interfaces.

root@saemrmb9> nicstat 5
Time          Int   rKB/s   wKB/s   rPk/s   wPk/s    rAvs    wAvs %Util    Sat
15:32:11    nxge0    0.11    1.51    1.60    9.00   68.25   171.7  0.00   0.00
15:32:11    nxge1  392926 13382.1 95214.4 95161.8  4225.8   144.0  33.3   0.00

So, from the DB server point of view, we are transferring about 390MB/sec… which correlates to what we saw with the analytics from Fishworks.  Cool!

why not use DTrace?

Ok, I wouldn’t be a good Sun employee if I didn’t use DTrace once in a while.  I was curious to see the Oracle calls for dNFS so I broke out my favorite tool from the DTrace Toolkit. The “hotuser” tool shows which functions are being called the most.  For my purposes, I found an active Oracle shadow process and searched for NFS related functions.

root@saemrmb9> hotuser -p 681 |grep nfs
^C
oracle`kgnfs_getmsg                                         1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfs_complete_read                                  1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfswat                                             1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfs_getpmsg                                        1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfs_getaprocdata                                   1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfs_processmsg                                     1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfs_find_channel                                   1   0.2%
libnfsodm11.so`odm_io                                       1   0.2%
oracle`kgnfsfreemem                                         2   0.4%
oracle`kgnfs_flushmsg                                       2   0.4%
oracle`kgnfsallocmem                                        2   0.4%
oracle`skgnfs_recvmsg                                       3   0.5%
oracle`kgnfs_serializesendmsg                               3   0.5%

So, yes it seems Direct NFS is really being used by Oracle 11g.

performance geeks love V$ tables

There are a set of V$ tables that allow you to sample the performance of the performance of dNFS as seen by Oracle.  I like V$ tables because I can write SQL scripts until I run out of Mt. Dew.  The following views are available to monitor activity with dNFS.

• v$dnfs_servers: Shows a table of servers accessed using Direct NFS.
• v$dnfs_files: Shows a table of files now open with Direct NFS.
• v$dnfs_channels: Shows a table of open network paths (or channels) to servers for which Direct NFS is providing files.
• v$dnfs_stats: Shows a table of performance statistics for Direct NFS.

With some simple scripting, I was able to create a simple script to monitor the NFS IOPS by sampling the v$dnfs_stats view.  This script simply samples the nfs_read and nfs_write operations, pauses for 5 seconds, then samples again to determine the rate.

timestmp|nfsiops
15:30:31|48162
15:30:36|48752
15:30:41|48313
15:30:46|48517.4
15:30:51|48478
15:30:56|48509
15:31:01|48123
15:31:06|48118.8


Excellent!  Oracle shows 48,000 NFS IOPS which agrees with the analytics from Fishworks.

what about the AWR?

Consulting the AWR, shows “Physical reads” in agreement as well.

Load Profile              Per Second    Per Transaction   Per Exec   Per Call
~~~~~~~~~~~~         ---------------    --------------- ---------- ----------
      DB Time(s):               93.1            1,009.2       0.00       0.00
       DB CPU(s):               54.2              587.8       0.00       0.00
       Redo size:            4,340.3           47,036.8
   Logical reads:          385,809.7        4,181,152.4
   Block changes:                9.1               99.0
  Physical reads:           47,391.1          513,594.2
 Physical writes:                5.7               61.7
      User calls:           63,251.0          685,472.3
          Parses:                5.3               57.4
     Hard parses:                0.0                0.1
W/A MB processed:                0.1                1.1
          Logons:                0.1                0.7
        Executes:           45,637.8          494,593.0
       Rollbacks:                0.0                0.0
    Transactions:                0.1

so, why is iostat lying to me?

iostat(1M) monitors IO to devices and nfs mount points.  But with Oracle Direct NFS, the mount point is bypassed and each shadow process simply mounts files directly.  To monitor dNFS traffic you have to use other methods as described here.  Hopefully, this post was instructive on how to peel back the layers in-order to gain visibility into dNFS performance with Oracle and Sun Open Storage.

In order to see which NFS version your server supports, use this command:

rpcinfo -p localhost

You’ll get a tab delimited list that probably looks like this:

program vers proto port
...
100003 2 udp 2049 nfs
100003 3 udp 2049 nfs
100003 4 udp 2049 nfs
100003 2 tcp 2049 nfs
100003 3 tcp 2049 nfs
100003 4 tcp 2049 nfs
...


As you can see, this particular server supports using NFS versions 2, 3 and 4.

Servidor NFS – Network File System.

Utilizado em redes Unix para compartilhamento de arquivos e diretórios. Este importante servidor é utilzado em tarefas como implementação de Terminais Burros (Thinclients) e de Instalação de Sistemas Operacionais utilizando Boot Remoto.

Mostrarei tanto o cliente como o Servidor NFS .

1 – Utilizando um Servidor NFS

Utilizando um compartilhamento remoto:

Para usar um compartilhamento NFS, basta usar o comando mount. Porém antes de fazer, você pode utilizar o comando para exibir os compartilhamentos do servidor alvo:

Exibindo os compartilhamentos
showmount –e IP_DO_SERVIDOR
Exemplo:
# showmount –e 10.0.17.254

Exibindo os serviços de compartilhamento
# rpcinfo –p 10.0.17.254

Montando um Diretório
A sintaxe é a seguinte:
mount –t nfs IP_SERVIDOR:/diretório /local_a_ser_montado

Exemplo:
# mount –t nfs 10.0.17.254:/arquivos /media/servidor # mount –t nfs 10.0.17.254:/jogos /media/jogos-servidor

Onde /media/servidor e /media/jogos-servidor são diretórios que você terá que criar para poder montar estes compartilhamentos remotos.

2 – Configurando o Servidor NFS
NFS – Network File System
Servidor de Arquivos e compartilhamento entre máquinas Unix*.

Para instalar o servidor NFS:
# apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

Arquivo de Configuração:
/etc/exports

Daemons Responsáveis:
/etc/init.d/portmap /etc/init.d/nfs-common /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server.

Assegure de executar os seguintes comandos, antes de começar a compartilhar seus diretórios:
# /etc/init.d/portmap start # /etc/init.d/nfs-common start

Para compartilhar:
Todos os compartilhamentos devem ser declarados no arquivo /etc/exports. E deve ser escrito dessa forma:
/diretório estacao1(opcao1,opcao2) /diretório estacao1(opcao1,opcao2) estacao2(opcao1,opcao2)

Onde opção pode ser:
ro – Somente leitura
rw – Leitura e gravação
sync – Mantém a sincronia em tempo real (Síncrono)
async – Faz transferência de forma assíncrona
noaccess – compartilha arquivos, mas não subdiretórios
no_root_squash – trata o usuário root remoto como usuário root local
root_squash – evita que o root cliente tenha direito de root sobre os diretórios do servidor.
no_subtree_check – Desabilita a verificação de estados de arquivos dentro de um filesystem.
subtree_check – Habilita esta verificação.
Obs: Por questões de desempenho, deixe esta opção desabilitada, ou seja, no_subtree_check. Não esqueça de colocar sempre esta opção

Exemplos:

/arquivos 10.0.17.100(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) /arquivos 10.0.17.*(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) /arquivos *(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) /arquivos 10.0.17.100(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) 10.0.17.1(ro,no_subtree_check)

Obs: É bom lembrar que independente da opção ro ou rw, a permissão do diretório no servidor deve ou não permitir a gravação. Altere isso com o comando chmod.

Ativando os compartilhamentos:
# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart
Ou
# exportfs –r

Exibindo os compartilhamentos
showmount –e IP_DO_SERVIDOR

Exibindo os serviços de compartilhamento
# rpcinfo –p # rpcinfo –p 10.0.17.254

@ajvt

This week notices went out to the remaining stakes in the Salt Lake Temple District announcing that all members can use nFS as of 23 November.   These are the last stakes in the last temple district in Utah to be added to nFS!

 The only temple districts in the world not using nFS are the 5 Asian temples which should be added next year.

From/De: EA

Need for Speed SHIFT Revs up with All-New Team Racing Mode and Legendary Cars

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced an all-new Team Racing pack for the critically-acclaimedNeed for Speed SHIFT™. The content pack takes online racing to the next level with an action-packed new race mode and five renowned racing cars – all for free (Need for Speed SHIFT and Xbox LIVE® or PlayStation®Network account required). The Team Racing pack is the first downloadable content for Need for Speed SHIFT and will be available worldwide on December 1^st on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system. The pack will be released for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system on December 3^rd in Europe and on December 10^th in North America.

The Team Racing mode brings a fresh new challenge to SHIFT by completely redefining online racing. In this mode, two teams of up to six racers will battle against each other for online supremacy. Individual driving strategy and playing it safe won’t work as team tactics and 200 mph split-second decisions are required to push your team to the podium.

As part of the new content, players will also get access to these legendary racers:

• 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 427
• 1967 Shelby GT-500
• 1969 Dodge Charger R/T
• 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T
• 1998 Toyota Supra Mark IV

The Team Racing content pack is custom-made for Need for Speed SHIFT, a spectacular racing game originally released in September 2009. The game introduces a brutal first-person crash dynamic and a signature cockpit view that delivers a true driver’s experience. The game further personalizes the experience through the all-new driver profile — a unique persona based on the driving skill and style of each player. With a perfect ‘10’ score from GameSpy.com and G4TV.com, and 90+ scores from IGN.com, Official Xbox Magazine, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, Team Xbox.com, Game Daily.com, Gametrailers.com and more, Need for Speed SHIFT is the highest rated Need for Speed game in years.

Need for Speed SHIFT is now available on the PlayStation3, Xbox 360, PC, PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system, mobile and coming soon on the iPhone™. More information can be found at www.needforspeed.com or follow us on Twitter at NeedforSpeed.

Press can download assets at http://info.ea.com.

About Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the Company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names: EA SPORTS^TM, EA^TM, EA Mobile ^TM and POGO^TM. In fiscal 2009, EA posted GAAP net revenue of $4.2 billion and had 31 titles that sold more than one million copies. EA’s homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA’s products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

EA, EA SPORTS, EA Mobile, POGO and Need for Speed are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. The names, designs, and logos of all products are the property of their respective owners and used by permission. Microsoft, Xbox and Xbox 360 are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. “PlayStation” and “PSP” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

During the course of experimentation with 11gR2, I was given some space on a Sun Storage 7410 NAS.   In the past NAS meant using NFS with obscure mount options that seemed to vary from platform to platform.  So, at first I went scrambling for the “best practices” to use with Oracle NAS on Solaris.

There is a nice Metalink article Note:359515.1 with the latest information for all platforms.  This Metalink note does include the “tcp” option which is not necessary on Solaris.  So it boiled down to the following mount options for using Oracle data files on NAS devices with Solaris.

rw,bg,hard,nointr,rsize=32768,
wsize=32768,noac,
forcedirectio, vers=3,suid

But wait, what about the new 11g feature to use direct NFS “dNFS”?    More searching…

configuring dNFS on Solaris

This is a fairly simple process.  Although Oracle dNFS configuration is fairly well documented for Linux, I will post my interpretation and commentary to help other Solaris users that might want to configure dNFS.

First, create mount the NFS share just as you would have in the past.  Oracle still needs to see the file system from the OS point of view.  You don’t have to use the mount options as in the past, but you might want them anyway for OS tools may access the mount.  You would most likely place these options in the “/etc/vfstab” file, but I will just show the mount command.

mount -o rw,bg,hard,nointr,rsize=32768,\
wsize=32768,noac,forcedirectio,vers=3,suid \
toromondo.west:/export/glennf /ar1

Second, you have to link the direct NFS libraries in place of ODM.  This is a little clunky, but not terrible.

cd $ORACLE_HOME/lib
cp libodm11.so libodm11.so_stub
ln -s libnfsodm11.so libodm11.so

Third, create the “$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/oranfstab” file.  This file defines the various details Oracle needs to directly access the NFS share.  You can configure multiple paths, so that Oracle can multiplex access to the NFS share.  This is for redundancy and load balancing.  There is another Metalink article ID:822481.1 that details how to configure dNFS with multiple paths across the same subnet and force the OS to not route packets.  This is a great feature, which I will try once I get some more network plumbing.  For now, I just did the most simple configuration as shown below.

cat $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/oranfstab
server: toromondo.west
path: toromondo.west
export: /export/glennf mount:/ar1


Finally, you will be able to see if this takes effect by looking at the “alert.log” file.  When Oracle starts up it places debug information in the alert.log file so we can see if Oracle is using Direct NFS or not.

grep NFS alert_*.log
Oracle instance running with ODM: Oracle Direct NFS ODM Library Version 2.0
Direct NFS: attempting to mount /export/glennf on filer toromondo.west defined in oranfstab
Direct NFS: channel config is:
Direct NFS: mount complete dir /export/glennf on toromondo.west mntport 38844 nfsport 2049
Direct NFS: channel id [0] path [toromondo.west] to filer [toromondo.west] via local [] is UP
Direct NFS: channel id [1] path [toromondo.west] to filer [toromondo.west] via local [] is UP

That’s all there is to it.  Hopefully, you will find this useful.

In this podcast…

• Facebook on the PS3!
• EA Layoffs!
• NPD Sales for October

Reviews and Discussion for…

• Need for Speed: Shift!
• Borderlands!
• Dragon Age: Origins!
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2!

Here it is:

http://accordingtoyu.podbean.com/mf/web/6xncpz/AccordingtoYu3.mp3

Please feel free to leave your comments. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes

Here I will explain how to add entries to /etc/fstab for various filesystem.

Mounting the fat partition in linux

To mount the FAT partation in linux enter the following entry in /etc/fstab file

/dev/<node>      <path>     vfat    relatime,rw,exec,nodev,user,auto,uid=<username>,gid=<groupname>  0  2

example

/dev/sda6       /media/DATA     vfat    relatime,rw,exec,nodev,user,auto,uid=thalib,gid=thalib  0  2

Mounting the samba/cifs partition in linux

//<ipadres>/<share name>     /path/to/mount    cifs username=<username>,password=<password> ,rw,_netdev,uid=<userid>,gid=<groupid>      0 2

example

//172.29.38.6/thalib     /mnt/samba    cifs username=thalib,password=thalib,rw,_netdev,uid=thalib,gid=thalib      0 2

From the above :

uid and gid are the users and groups to which we want to give acces to the mounted partition.

rw = read and write permisson

auto = when you do mount -a or on the boot the parations will be mounted

The list of FamilySearch Affiliates continues to grow! On Nov 14 an application for the iphone and ipod touch was released that allows you to download your family tree and even view local ipod photos in the tree! It also allows you to search nFS if you are where there is an internet connection and see a map of events. Think of this as a nFS reader!  Cost is $4.99 and available in the itunes store. Be careful as there is another app with a similar name! Go to Mobiletree and not MobileFamilyTree – not that the latter is not a good app – it works with MacFamilyTree5!
For more information go to http://mobileme.me – isn’t that a nice url! – and I see Dick Eastman wrote about this app in his online newsletter today http://www.eogn.com.

Need for Speed ! Bir zamana damgası vurmuş, bilgisayar oyunları arasında efsaneleşmiş bir oyun serisi. Tabi ki bu serinin altın oyunu Need for Speed: Underground 2. Çoğumuz şimdi bile ne unutulmaz oyundu ama diye iç geçiriyoruz. Bu oyununun arkasından çok NFS oyunu çıkartıldı ama oyun severler için sonuç hezimetten öte gitmedi. Her yeni NFS oyunu geçmişin hatrına alındı ve her yeni oyun NFS’ye duyulan saygıyı biraz daha azalttı. EA Games de bunun farkında. Bu sebeple her yeni NFS oyununu biraz daha başarılı yapmak ve oyun severlerin eski tepkisini yeniden yakalamak amacındalar. Bu amaç doğrultusunda da çok reklamı yapılan, çok iddaalı olan Need for Speed: Shift’i piyasaya sürdüler. Şimdi bu oyuna bakalım.

Bir Kırmızı, İki Kırmızı, Üç Kırmızı, Gazlaaa
Oyuna ilk başladığımızda şunu görüyoruz. Oyun buram buram; Nascar, Grid kokuyor. O sokak yarışlarından, doğal şehir trafiğinden, her an çarpıp altımıza alabileceğimiz insanların bulunduğu ortamlardan artık tamamen vazgeçilmiş ve oyun araba yarış pistlerine yönelmiş. EA Games bu tutumuyla Need for Speed oyun serisinin imajını da tamamen değiştirmiş. Kim bilir belki bu NASCAR oyun serisinin sonlandırılmasıyla alakalıdır. NFS, NASCAR’ın bayrağını devralmış olabilir. Yada EA Games bu yarış türünün daha popüler olacağını düşünmüş olacak ki bu şekilde bir dönüş gerçekleşti. Need for Speed: Shift oyunu tüm bu olumlu ve olumsuz eleştiriler arasında piyasaya sürüldü.
Yarış Keyfi İçin…
Oyunun popülerliğinin günden güne düştüğünü ve EA’in bunu engellemek için oyunu yenilikler kattığını söylemiştik. İşte bu yeniliklerden ilki ve belkide en güzeli “kokpit sürüş modu”. Bu mod daha önceden de bir çok oyun ve seride denenmişti ama belirtmeliyim ki ilk defa bu kadar iyi olanına şahit oldum. Bir kere direksiyon havada kendiliğinden ahenkle dans etmiyor. O direksiyonu tutmuş ve komutlarımızla birebir orantılı olarak direksiyona yön veren elleri görebiliyoruz. Bunun yanında kendimizi gerçek bir araba yarışında gibi hissetmemizi sağlayan dikiz aynası ve sol ayna da mevcut. Sağ aynanın olmaması da son derece mantıklı ve kabul edilebilir bir şey. Gerçekten bu aynalar oyun içerisinde çok işimize yarıyor ve oyuna heyecan ve adrenalin katıyor.

Virajlara Dikkat
Kokpit Modunu gerçekçi kılan başka bir özellik ise virajlarda ve kasislerde araç sallandıkça kokpitin içininde sallanması. Tüm göstergeler ve direksiyon her kasis ve virajda sallanarak gerçeklik hissiyatını arttırmış. Bunun yanında oyuna getirilen bir başka yenilik ise araç hasar durumu. Oyun severlerin şiddetle istediği ve eksikliği durumunda çok tepki gösterdikleri araç hasar özelliği Need For Speed Shift oyununa mükemmel olmasada güzel sayılabilecek bir şekilde aktarılmış. Artık virajları alamayıp bariyerlere çarpınca öle yola tıngır mıngır devam etmek yok. Aracınız gerçekten büyük hasarlar alıyor. Mesela kaput yamuluyor, çarpmalar devam ederse ön kaputun uçtuğunu görebiliyoruz. Bunun yanında çamurluklar yamuluyor, kapılar göçüyor daha da güzeli camlarımız çatlayabiliyor. Tüm bu hasarlar yarış sonunda aracınıza verdiğiniz özeni gözler önüne seriyor.

Funciona, é claro. Eu mesmo, jogando Need For Speed Undercover tive mais certeza ainda que nasci para ter um Mustang.

Daniel Pinheiro

————————————–

É bem mais que diversão

Cada vez mais empresas investem nos jogos online para se aproximar de seus consumidores — e, com isso, fortalecer a própria marca

Por Lucas Amorim | 12.11.2009 | 00h01

Fonte: EXAME

No dia 23 de agosto, no exato momento em que a seleção brasileira feminina de vôlei conquistava, no Japão, seu décimo título mundial no tradicional torneio Grand Prix, as jogadoras do time eram transformadas em personagens de jogo de videogame. Na sede da Olympikus, localizada na cidade gaúcha de Parobé, as atletas habitualmente simpáticas e bem-humoradas, ganharam traços rústicos e cara de poucos amigos. Batizado de Super Vôlei Brasil, o jogo está desde então disponível de graça na internet — e já atraiu mais de 2 milhões de visitantes. Cada partida, que pode reunir até 12 jogadores ao mesmo tempo, dura em média 20 minutos — ou 40 vezes o tempo de um comercial na TV. “Os jogos são mais do que simples diversão. Eles proporcionam uma exposição muito maior da marca aos amantes do esporte”, diz Marcio Callage, gerente de marketing da Olympikus, fabricante de artigos esportivos do grupo Azaleia e principal patrocinadora da seleção brasileira de voleibol feminino. “Já estamos trabalhando numa nova versão para o ano que vem.”

Assim como a Olympikus, empresas como Unilever, Grendene e Procter& Gamble têm trabalhado no desenvolvimento de jogos online para reforçar o apelo de suas marcas junto aos consumidores. A estratégia pode ser explicada pela necessidade de ganhar relevância entre um público jovem, cada vez menos exposto à mídia de massa. Nesse sentido, os games despontam como uma oportunidade nova — e lúdica — de contar histórias, apresentar produtos e forjar um relacionamento único entre as empresas e seus consumidores. Recentemente, a fabricante gaúcha de calçados infantis Bibi adotou os jogos como forma de comunicação. Em outubro, relançou o “skatenis”, tênis com rodinhas no solado que havia feito um enorme sucesso entre a garotada em 2006. Para utilizá-lo, é necessário que as crianças vistam equipamentos de segurança e evitem descer ladeiras ou escadas. O problema é que explicar tudo isso no curto intervalo de um comercial de TV é quase impraticável. Em outubro, os executivos da Bibi lançaram um jogo com o produto no site YouTube. Pelo plano original, o joguinho deveria aumentar as vendas de Natal, mas o retorno veio antes. “Vendemos 30 000 pares em um mês, sem nenhum outro tipo de publicidade”, diz Camila Kohlrausch, diretora de marketing.

Uma das pioneiras no uso de games foi a Burger King. Em 2006, a rede de lanchonetes lançou nos Estados Unidos três joguinhos para o videogame Xbox, vendidos a 3,99 dólares cada um numa promoção com os sanduíches. Em apenas três meses o Burger King vendeu 3,5 milhões de lanches e seu faturamento aumentou 41%. Desde então, outras companhias em todo o mundo vêm usando estratégias semelhantes — ainda que com resultados menos expressivos. A fabricante de energéticos austríaca Red Bull, por exemplo, lançou em agosto um jogo de motocross para o iPhone. O aplicativo já foi baixado 630 000 vezes, o que o torna um dos games mais populares entre os usuários do celular. Em sua incursão mais recente pelo mundo virtual, a Red Bull trouxe para o computador competições como corridas de avião, patinação no gelo e campeonatos de carros fabricados no fundo do quintal. “A Red Bull quer que sua marca seja referência em esportes radicais, mesmo que o internauta nem precise sair de casa para perceber isso”, diz Israel Mendes, diretor de criação da Aquiris, uma das maiores empresas de games do Brasil.

Embora pareça relativamente simples (o número de empresas especializadas nesse tipo de programa cresce a cada dia), desenvolver um jogo que transmita alguns dos principais atributos de uma marca exige um cuidado quase obsessivo com os detalhes. Entender o público-alvo é crucial. “Não pega bem, por exemplo, desenvolver um jogo da memória para um grupo de executivos de alto nível”, diz Tiago Ritter, sócio da W3Hauss, empresa por trás do projeto da Bibi. Além disso, é preciso encontrar o ponto de equilíbrio entre a qualidade do jogo e a apresentação da marca. Não adianta criar um game simplesmente divertido se ele não contribuir para melhorar a imagem da empresa. “A brincadeira tem de ser envolvente, mas deve ter conexão com o negócio. Do contrário, as chances de sucesso serão mínimas”, diz Fernanda Jesus, sócia da Gringo, uma das pioneiras no desenvolvimento desses jogos no Brasil. Os responsáveis pela marca de desodorantes Axe, da Unilever, entenderam como poucos esse raciocínio. De 2008 para cá, criaram três jogos. O mais recente, batizado de Get Them Back (“Tragam-nas de volta”, em português), foi lançado em setembro. O objetivo lúdico do jogo é recuperar mulheres supostamente perdidas para um astro da música. O objetivo comercial é fazer parte de uma campanha publicitária que inclui anúncios de TV. Para tornar a história mais verídica, o vilão ganhou um perfil no site de relacionamento MySpace. “Em dois meses, o jogo deve atrair 250 000 pessoas”, diz Guilherme Mortensen, gerente da marca Axe.

Apesar de todo o frenesi criado em torno dos joguinhos, ainda é muito difícil — para não dizer impossível — medir o retorno que eles trazem para a empresa, tanto em termos financeiros quanto em benefício para a marca. Embora o custo de desenvolvimento desses games seja relativamente baixo — cerca de 600 000 reais — , esses aplicativos normalmente servem de apoio a uma campanha mais ampla, ancorada em veículos tradicionais. “Não dá para desvincular as duas coisas”, diz o americano TJ Keitt, analista da consultoria Forrester Research, especializada em internet. “Como se trata de algo muito novo, os efeitos só vão aparecer no longo prazo.” Se medir o sucesso de uma iniciativa dessas é algo complicado, o fracasso, por sua vez, costuma ser cristalino — e imediato. Em outubro de 2007, a Toyota lançou um jogo de corrida para o Xbox 360 para promover seu novo carro, o Yaris. A recepção em blogs e outras comunidades virtuais foi tão ruim (os usuários reclamavam que os comandos não funcionavam direito) que a montadora retirou o jogo do mercado apenas um ano mais tarde — o carro, por outro lado, foi sucesso de vendas. Para especialistas, apesar dos riscos, o potencial de crescimento dos games é enorme. Segundo a consultoria americana NDP, 11% das grandes companhias já incluem esse tipo de passatempo na estratégia de marketing — ávidas por conquistar os 72% de consumidores que costumam brincar com jogos online. A fase da brincadeira, definitivamente, ficou para trás.

My background is Fibre Channel and beginning 2009 I implemented a large iSCSI environment. The “other” storage protocol supported by VMware, NFS, is rather unknown to me. And to be honest I really tried to keep away from it as much as possible, thinking it was not a proper enterprise worthy solution. That changed this month as I was asked to perform a design review of an environment which relies completely of NFS storage. This customer decided to use IP-Hash as load-balancing policy for their NFS vSwitch, but what Impact does this have on the NFS environment?

First of all, unlike the the default Port-based load balancing policy, IP-Hash has got some technical requirements.

The physical switch must be configured with STATIC LACP (a.k.a. etherchannel, for Cisco switches) Dynamic LACP is not supported by VMware.  KB article 1004048 focuses on the configuration of LACP between the ESX server and physical switches.

Another technical requirement is that all uplinks in the vSwitch need to be active as the physicall switch is not aware of certain status of the uplink inside the vSwitch. David Marotta (VMware) explained the theory in such a way, I cannot forget this setting after hearing the story.

Because the pSwitch thinks it can send traffic to a particular VM down any of the pNICs. So all pNICs should be Active. Otherwise traffic to VM-A could be sent by the pSwitch to pNIC-2, and if the vSwitch thinks pNIC-2 is not Active for the port group used by VM-A, the vSwitch will drop it. Then VM-A will never get the packet. And it will sit in a corner, lonely and depressed, wondering why nobody calls it anymore.

Etherchannels and standby uplinks can introduce “Macflaps”, Duncan Epping (@DuncanYB) has written an excellent article on this as well Active / Standby etherchannels?

Besides the technical requirements of IP-hash, It will not do perfect load-balancing out of the box. Remembering Ken Cline’s (@clinek) the great vSwitch debate series about vSwitches I knew you must dive in to the algorithm used by IP-Hash load balancing and pick specific IP-addresses to make IP-hash load-balancing work.

But how does this IP-Hash algorithm work? As Ken cline so eloquently stated;

Take an exclusive OR of the Least Significant Byte (LSB) of the source and destination IP addresses and then compute the modulo over the number of pNICs.

OK, right! So how can we calculate it so we know if if the environment is balanced? Instead of the following the algorithm stated by Ken, I’ve used the method described in KB article 1007371

Waiver
The ip-addresses which are used in this example are ficticious, the ip-addresses are not based on real-life addresses, if those are in use by some company, it’s purely coincidental.

Step 1: Convert IP address to a HEX value
Use a IP Hex Converter tool to convert the IP addresses to Hex. An online Hex converter tool can be found at http://www.kloth.net/services/iplocate.php

In this example I use a vswitch with 2 uplinks. When using IP-hash, the first uplink has a IP binary representation of 0, the second uplink has a IP binary representation of 1.

The IP-Hash is calculated on source IP address, the VMkernel NFS IP address and the destination address, the NFS array IP address.

The VMknic has in this example the ip address of 145.10.44.10,
The first IP address of the NAS is 145.10.44.80 and the second address is 145.10.44.90

HEX: ESX VMkernel:   145.10.44.10 = 910A2C0A
HEX: NFS address 1:  145.10.44.80 = 910A2C50
HEX: NFS address 2:  145.10.44.90 = 910A2C5A

Step 2 Calculate the binary representation of the HASH
Now lets calculate the binary representation of the uplink’s IP address. I use windows for my desktop, so I use calc.exe for this example.

Open calc.exe and select Programmer, select the option HEX and Qword and paste the HEX value of the VMkernel NIC

Now press Xor , enter the (first) NFS IP address in HEX format (910A2C50) and click on the = button. The result is 5a, press the option Mod (modulo) and use the number of uplinks as value (2). Click on the = button to calculate the modulo.

The result of this calculation is the number 0 (zero). This means that IP-hash chooses the first uplink because the hash and the uplink both have an binary representation of 0.
Now lets calculate the second hash. In short;
HEX value “VMkernel NIC” Xor HEX value “NFS address 2”:
910A2C0A Xor 910A2C5A = 50    MOD 2 =           0

The result of this calculation is also 0 (zero), this means that the VMkernel does not balance traffic and will send traffic to across one uplink.

One ip-address of the NFS array needs to be changed to ensure that the VMkernel wil balance outbound traffic. For this example, IP-address 2: 145.10.44.90 is changed to 145.10.44.81, the HEX value of this address is 910A2C51.

Now lets calculate the binary representation.
910A2C0A Xor 910A2C51 = 5B    MOD 2 =           1.

The result of this calculation is 1 (one) The VMkernel chooses the second uplink because it has the same binary representation of the Hash. Hereby balancing outbound NFS traffic across the two uplinks.

Using IP-Hash to load-balance is a excellent choice, but you do need to fulfill certain technical requirements to get it supported by VMware and plan your IP-address scheme accordingly to get the most out of this load-balancing Policy.

One last thing, because I knew little about NFS, I turned to my primary source of storage related VMware articles Chad Sakac (@sakacc) and he written an excellent article about the use of NFS and VMware together with Vaughn Stewart (@vstewed)  of NetApp. Please read it if you haven’t already.  A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual NFS customers using VMware. Again it’s truely excellent!

I guess it depends on how you count!  I usually count combining duplicate spouses and duplicate children as one step when I guess you could count it as 2!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get everyone to combine thoroughly and carefully before looking at submitting a name to the temple!

I notice there is an updated knowledge document in the Help Center on Combining.  KD 100986 ( you can search in the Help Centre just by putting in the document number if you have a list of favourites or by entering key words – in this case “combine four ways”).  You can print knowledge documents (To print this document, place your mouse pointer here, right-click, and choose Print Target) or copy and paste the content.

This looks like a thorough document.  Hope it is helpful.

(Sung to the tune of “The Handcart Song”)

When New FamilySearch moved to the west,
With courage strong, we met the test,
And learned the program all day long,
And as we learned, we sang this song:

You must combine or uncombine,
Those duplicates, you need to find.
Before you click the temple sign,
Or you’ll be wasting precious time!

Some folks are done, and some are not,
It’s up to you to sort the lot.
Oh, don’t do grandpa’s work again!
He’s te-ach-ing your waiting kin.

Posted on a missionary chat 11 Nov 09 – missionary said he heard it being sung while he was on a shift at his FHC – would like to give full credit to the creator – does anyone know who wrote this hit song?

Need for Speed Shift (NFS: Shift) este urmatorul titlu din seria NFS, acesta urmand sa fie lansat de Electronic Arts in toamna anului 2009. Shift este dezvoltat de Slightly Mad Studios, cunoscuti pentru GT Legends si GTR 2, impreuna cu Michael Mann de la EA Black Box si Patrick Soderlund de la DiCE.

Jocul va fi mai degraba un racing simulator, accentul fiind pus pe abilitatile jucatorilor de a lua parte la cursele auto si pe experienta din spatele volanului. Jucatorii vor fi pusi in cockpit-ul bolizilor de curse, participand la joc din modul first-person view.

Electronic Arts a decis sa lanseze trei titluri Need for Speed in viitorul apropiat, NFS: Shift urmand a fi disponibil doar pentru PC, PS3, Xbox 360 si PSP. Varianta pentru platformele Nintendo va purta numele de Nitro (working title), fiind anuntat si un NFS play 4 free, denumit Need for Speed World Online.

Windows XP (Service Pack 3) / Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) / Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz or faster
RAM: 1 GB for XP, 1.5 GB for Vista/Windows 7
HDD: 6 GB
DVD Drive: 8x
Video: 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0*
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
DirectX 9.0c compatible
Internet Connection Required
Online Multiplayer – 512 Kbps or faster
Optional – USB Steering Wheel / Dual Analogue Gamepad

Video Cards: ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB or greater; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.

Hi There!! i have found a new trainer 4 the game “NFS SHIFT”.

if you want to download it just click here

Say Thanks to Razor 1911 and games.softpedia.com