March 27, 2021
by dhoytt
Comments Off on The Correct Heat Sink for Bl460c Gen8 Blade Server Finally

The Correct Heat Sink for Bl460c Gen8 Blade Server Finally

I have had this ongoing saga of not being able to find the correct heat sink for CPU#2 for my BL460c gen 8 blade server for a while. The original reseller used an integrator that came in at a lower price than I could build it myself for so I let them build it. I immediately had to make corrections to for NIC’s and memory. There was also some negotiation between the reseller and integrator who tried to up the price though the specs I provided them were clear and I was sticking to that price or would build it myself. We tried several heatsinks and none of them fit except the last they sent but it fit with the heat sink fins sideways which blocked the air flow but let the heat sink actually contact the CPU due to the t-shaped design of the bottom of the heat sink.

I’m usually pretty good a retrofitting and redesign but the little changes I did to make things fit didn’t work as well as I hoped and every time I upped the load on a VM that sat on the BL460c the whole chassis would rev up like jet engines taking off until I reduced the CPU load or moved the VM that had continually high CPU resource usage to my backup Dell r710 servers which didn’t have the same issues. I finally looked at a different set of part numbers for this heat sink and found it was for the Gen9 servers!

I tried a few resellers on Ebay and though they said their heatsinks were for CPU2 on the bl460c gen 8 blade servers they ended up being for the heat sink for the second CPU on a rack mount HPE gen8 which are physically too large by about1/8th an inch one each side. Now I recall the integrator passing a message that they would need to depopulate memory for the second heat sink. Turns out they were having the same issues I had locating the proper heat sink part numbers and didn’t realize their error.

Quickspecs manuals for the BL460c gen 8 blade server wasn’t as much help as normal for this part number as the heat sinks were not listed. Finally I went to Amazon found a vendor with the proper part number and description sent for it and it took forever to get here but it worked! I ordered another heat sink for my other bl460c gen8 blade server and it came within 2 days this time which happened to be today so I installed it around 150 minutes ago, then I started putting a load which would increase CPU resource usage that normally would have the entire chassis screaming at such a high decibel level of a jet plane and the chassis is not screaming for mercy with all of the fans on high! What a relief.

The time to go through the parts system they have for these systems if not listed in the systems Quicspecs which are definitive part manuals made this a nightmare for everyone as there are 4 or five part numbers that seem like they are correct, then with slow shipping with Covid-19 to get the parts and returning them it was a time wasting draining process. The correct part number ended up being 670032-001. The correct description was important too, I had this combination of correct part number and description with another vendor and still got the wrong part. Very important to get this right so the heat sink fins are oriented for proper air flow in this tight enclosure, the heat sink is properly connected and transferring heat for dissipation to the heat sink and height is correct as there is a small controller board that fits over the top of this heat sink in position number 2.

Every piece of hardware, firmware, application and OS usage matters in these tightly integrated systems and you have to keep searching grinding and matching to get a cohesive and redundant properly working solution.

Below are some earlier pictures that illustrate how the heat sinks air flow should go and the bottom picture shows the t-shaped bottom of the heat sink. Note these are also the wrong heat sinks. I was too excited to get this in to take pictures of the correct heat sinks being put in place.

March 25, 2021
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Scroll Through Multi-Genre and Era Song Drop In Workout Mix

Scroll Through Multi-Genre and Era Song Drop In Workout Mix

That’s right I did a quick scroll down through my songs that are not separated via era or genre dropped in some titles I would like to hear and threw them into my workout mix and I’m sharing with you as always!

I went with some medium to up tempo songs with various beats and of course multiple genres then went to more chilled to some slow jams.

I went far back like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, The Supremes, KC and the Sunshine Band, to current like Ariana Grande, Doja Cat, Roddy Ricch sneak in some Ini Kamoze, Culcha Candela, Bootsy, Lana Del Rey and its a true mix Snakice House of Beats Style.

March 21, 2021
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Boat Cleaned Going to New Home

Boat Cleaned Going to New Home

Reinell Blue Water 2004 and 1998 4×4 Dodge Ram 8 cylinder.

Got email notice my boat indoor storage place was closing in 30 days mid-afternoon yesterday , right before getting into some projects around the house so I went and found a new place for the boat within the next couple of hours. There’s a few boat places within a nice small radius from the house but also very close to where the American and Sacramento rivers come together at Discovery Park.

Since it has been a very long time since taking my boat out it was caked with dust and the tires of the boat trailer were low. I needed to clean the boat up and put air in the tires. The guys at the place I was leaving helped me fill the tires of my trailer using their air compressor plus used the hose to wash and rinse the boat down, I then used my bucket and some rags plus cleaner and portable vacuum to clean my boat out. Also check out my cool 1998 Dodge Ram I have had for 23 years and its still going strong!

This really made me realize how much I miss and want to be out on the water fishing.

March 14, 2021
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Big Cable Management Start

Big Cable Management Start

Did a major start on getting some cable management done in the home computer room. I have been wanting to start some cable management in the computer room for a very long time but wanted to get the hardware situation handled first.
Now that the C7000 blade chassis is pretty much set with my Virtual Connect networks to external LAN switches it was a good time to start the cable management process. There’s still much to do but I wanted to make sure I had a workable foundation.

I gathered some cable panduit and old speaker\cable mounts I have literally been packing around for almost 20 years. The speaker\cable mounts are in original boxes from a pallet I bought at an auction long ago. I am so glad didn’t sell all of them now!

I moved cables on one network then moved to the next network starting with my busiest network. I monitored and checked connectivity after each cable movement noting which systems would be affected each time before moving the cable, minimizing troubleshooting later.

I migrated my VM’s to my main servers on the bl460c Gen8 blades moved the cables connected to my backup hypervisors and then migrated the VM’s to my backup systems once I started moving the 10gbe fiber cables.
I moved the rj45 gigabit connections first and then my 10gbe connections. The gigabit connections are mainly my IPMI connections on my FreeNAS storage and backup XCP-NG hypervisors.

This was like an all day untangling fishing line type of deal that needed to be done. Not the fun part of computers but it will make tracing cables for troubleshooting, moving equipment around faster and easier. Cleaning up the back helps keep cables out of the way in case I need to replace modules in the HPE C7000 blade chassis.

I did a final inspection of my networking logging into the Virtual Connect, my managed switches and made sure I could access my applications like websites, music streaming site, virtual systems, CCTV, Plex media servers, XCP-NG systems, FreeNAS etc..

Here’s a before and after in the front. Still not pretty but much easier to manage. I also have a bit of multimedia cables in the mix.

The bottom of the rack is the HPE C7000, then Liebert UPS’, then my 2 FreeNAS storage servers using Supermicro 2u storage chassis’s, then backup Dell XCP-NG hypervisors, then Trendnet 16 port KVM, then my 3 Mikrotik switches, then Linksys and Netgear gigabit switches, finally the cable panduits and cable mounts.

March 3, 2021
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Getting Home Gym Together Again

Getting Home Gym Together Again

Getting my home gym back together once again in a different format than before. Before I moved to where I am today I had a full gym with pro leg press and curl plus 800 lbs of weights with multiple curl bars, straight bars, pull down, chin up bar graduated bench press/squat rack and an elliptical machine for cardio when I decided not to run one of my street courses or it was late at night. 15 plus years after moving where I am currently I have more square footage but it wasn’t configured for use of that equipment. I ended up selling most of that and donated the leg machines to my old high school. I then started going to the local gym.

The only thing I saved from that time was a Roman chair I use for abs and back. What I have now is replaced the weights with PowerBlock adjustable dumbbells 💪 picked up a treadmill to use with my Roman chair.

I went treadmill because I wanted to emulate my running during these Covid-19 days and beyond even when schedule doesn’t allow me to get in an outside run 🏃‍♂️. The adjustable dumbbells will not take up much room.

After much research and shopping around I went with the Sole F85 treadmill with a 4.0 motor that will handle current weight future pace and growth since I intend to get in shape for not just finishing 5k and 10k runs but being competitive again in the front pack again with my new running style.

Taking it slow but pushing on the treadmill on pace as much as possible as necessary. The treadmill also saves me from myself. I tend to get really pumped running when I start feeling improvement and on road courses or tracks I have done too much too early and injured myself in the past.

The weights with high reps will add to my flexibility of my joints and muscles and give overall core strength and stamina.

I have had the Sole F85 treadmill for a few weeks and just got the Powerblock dumbbells today. I will get the bench tomorrow then look for other accessories like chin up bar and some leg accessories though I think I can get creative with the dumbbells for legs.

Right now everything is in the den but will get rid of things and move stuff around and try to use one of my rooms. With all the stuff I have it’s a daunting task to make room but it will get done!

February 28, 2021
by dhoytt
Comments Off on Chili on Traeger with Chuck Roast

Chili on Traeger with Chuck Roast

I was looking for a different way to use a well marbled chuck roast I picked up from Costco and decided to slow smoke it and use it in chili 🌶. A slow smoked chuck roast is almost like brisket but takes less time to cook as fibers aren’t as tightly packed.

Instead of cooking the chuck roast separate from the beans and other ingredients I placed the beans, peppers 🌶 and onions 🧅 and sauce in a dutch oven below the rack the chuck roast was smoking on so the wonderful drippings from the chuck roast would go into the chili.

This worked well except I discovered my Traeger Silverton 810 wasn’t keeping accurate cabin temperature. I already knew the temperature probe wasn’t working accurately as I had Traeger support send a replacement and was using my replacement thermometer. Then when the chuck roast stalled too long I placed another thermometer not in the meat but on the grills inner cabin and it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit less than indicated. Even raising the temperature the internal temperature didn’t rise much. At this point the chuck roast was about 165 and it was getting so late I had to cook a steak for dinner with some frozen vegetables then took the chuck roast and dutch oven ingredients off the grill.

Taking the chuck roast and the other ingredients in the dutch oven off the grill I put the dutch oven on the stove in the house and cut the roast. The chuck roast was still unbelievably tender and juicy. I placed the chunks into the dutch oven continued cooking. I wanted to go to bed but more cooking time was needed since the beans still weren’t tender enough and chili hadn’t reduced down and was watery. I thought about finishing the cook in a crock pot but didn’t want to dig that out and dirty more dishes. I decided to place the cast iron dutch oven into my oven in my kitchen at about 110 degrees then set the timer for 5 hours. This way the food could continue to cook super slow in that cast iron then the oven would turn off and the pot would slowly cool and be ready to put in the fridge not long after I wake up eat and get my storage containers ready.

The plan worked nicely I got up very late as I went to bed about 3 am combining that with going to bed about 4 am Friday without ample rest Saturday I needed to sleep in and the chili was ready. I made myself a brunch of potatoes breakfast style covered with chili I microwaved a minute just to get it piping hot with a couple of eggs 🥚 on top with toast. The brunch was some great comfort food to start a late relaxing Sunday.

Here’s some pictures of the process.