https://portertech.ca/ Recent content on PorterTech Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us All rights reserved. Fri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2023/03/10/gpu-max-blower/ Fri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2023/03/10/gpu-max-blower/ I just want to share my new favourite systemd unit. GPU MAX BLOWER! This unit sets the nvidia GPU fan speed to 100%, which helps keep the GPU core and memory cooler under load. Most cards use a “fan curve” to help reduce fan noise while keeping temperatures within the specification. While this is acceptable (or preferred) in most cases, a GPU may be running under load for extended periods, or in a server enclosure where moving air quickly is critical. https://portertech.ca/2023/03/06/nfs-root-overlayfs/ Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2023/03/06/nfs-root-overlayfs/ Thanks to the fairly recent “crypto collapse” and ever increasing crypto network difficulty, used GPUs are back on the menu! I managed to acquire six nvidia A4000 single card slot GPUs from eBay at a bargain price. Crypto miners were dumping these sweet cards just in time for me to experiment with GPU acceleration of all-the-things. My home lab already had three identical nodes ready to house the GPUs, but they were in need of some tender loving care. https://portertech.ca/2023/03/03/undervolt/ Fri, 03 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2023/03/03/undervolt/ I recently installed a fresh OS on my personal x86 laptop, the Razer Stealth 13 (2020). One of the first things I like to do on a clean Linux laptop is “undervolt” the CPU. Under-volting an Intel mobile CPU will reduce CPU (and iGPU) temperatures while increasing battery life - great right!? Certain CPUs can be under-volted more than others, taking it too far will result in an unstable system (will crash or be sluggish). https://portertech.ca/about/ Sat, 11 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/about/ Sean Porter is the creator of Sensu, the open source monitoring tool, and the co-founder and CTO of Sensu Inc. Sean is a seasoned systems operator and software developer with over a decade of experience in automating infrastructure. As CTO of Sensu Inc, he oversees the development of Sensu, and works with users to better understand how Sensu can help them solve complex monitoring problems. Sean lives in Kamloops, a city in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. https://portertech.ca/2019/10/15/scaling-sensu-go/ Tue, 15 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2019/10/15/scaling-sensu-go/ Or, why we spent $10K on gaming hardware to improve our product This post was originally published on the Sensu Go blog. At this time last year, Sensu Go hadn’t been released in General Availability (GA) yet. Now, 10 months later, version 5.14 is in production environments, monitoring infrastructure, applications, and connected devices across public and private clouds. It’s been quite a journey to get to a product that’s both a massive improvement over the original Sensu 1. https://portertech.ca/2013/09/26/bamboo/ Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2013/09/26/bamboo/ Bamboo, pound for pound, has a greater tensile strength than steel. Its one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, growing upwards of one hundred feet tall. Bamboo is capable of withstanding tremendous weight and force, bending to accommodate it. Bamboo’s resilience is inspiring, this and its many other attributes are those I strive to instill in Sensu, the open source monitoring framework. Sensu on GitHub https://portertech.ca/2013/07/26/aws-reinvent-submission/ Fri, 26 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2013/07/26/aws-reinvent-submission/ A few weeks ago, I submitted a session for AWS re:Invent 2013, “Monitoring the ever changing”. Limited to 400 characters, I sent the following: Growing and contracting on demand, dynamic infrastructure introduces monitoring challenges. Frequent application deployment and configuration changes call for increased visibility and feedback. I will share my methodologies for monitoring these ever changing infrastructures. Instrumentation, configuration management as a source of truth, self-service tooling, service checks at scale, and more. https://portertech.ca/2012/12/10/iac-morning-market/ Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2012/12/10/iac-morning-market/ Morning market: A daily routine that involves examining rejects made the previous day before work begins so that countermeasures can be adopted as soon as possible. I recently read “Gemba Kaizen” by Masaaki Imai, a fantastic book that introduced me to the idea of the morning market. After putting down the book, I began to think of ways I could apply this idea to IT operations, and more specifically Infrastructure as Code. https://portertech.ca/2011/11/01/sensu-a-monitoring-framework/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2011/11/01/sensu-a-monitoring-framework/ At Sonian, we monitor an ever changing number of Amazon EC2 instances. As I write this post, that number is 476, expected to rise and fall before the day is done. The “elastic” nature of our infrastructure makes monitoring it a not so trivial task. We have found the standard tools from the community toolbox to be inadequate when operating in the “cloud”. Up until recently, Sonian utilized several tools in conjunction to monitor systems and collect metrics; Nagios, Collectd, Graphite, and Ganglia. https://portertech.ca/2010/07/19/phones-servers-and-user-experience/ Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://portertech.ca/2010/07/19/phones-servers-and-user-experience/ Successful mobile applications are enjoyable to use, offering a intuitive, useful, and responsive set of features. GOOD mobile developers spend a large portion of their time designing their user interface, followed by performance optimization. GREAT developers know that creating a better experience for their users is far more important than adding features. As the demand for data-rich mobile applications grows, producing a simple, easy to use interface becomes more challenging, usually accompanied by performance issues.