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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for January 5th, 2022

Google calendar: add a yearly repeating event on the last/#th/first weekday of a month

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/05

TL;DR: recurrence in Google Calendar can be tough.

Adding a yearly repeating event on a last weekday (where weekday is any day of the week: sunday, monday, etc) of a month in Google Calendar was a lot less obvious than I hoped for.

The easiest path “Custom Event” by default does not show last/#th/first, only a fixed date when selecting yearly or monthly repeating events, which is contrary to the suggested answer at [Wayback/Archive.is] Google calendar question: How to set an event to repeat on the first Monday of a specific Month : google:

Create an event on September 3rd. Choose custom recurrence. Repeat every 12 months monthly on the first Monday. I just tested that out on the browser version of Google calendar

The trick is to first select a normally repeating monthly event on the last#th/first weekday day of a month.

Note that for the 5th week, you cannot do this in the Google Calendar UI as per [Wayback] google calendar – Schedule an event for last Sunday (or another day of week) of each month – Web Applications Stack Exchange:

If you actually want a day on the 5th week of every month (versus the last week), the Google Calendar UI does not support this, but you can do it by importing an .ics file

Below is an example while writing this: adding a yearly recurring event on the last Sunday of May (which in 2021 was Sunday the 30th of May).

These are the steps:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google, GoogleCalendar, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

“Solution” on ESXi 6.7 `smartinfo` throwing `error Cannot open device`

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/05

After writing Some notes on ESXi smartinfo throwing error Cannot open device, I bit the bullet and experimented with disabling the vmw_ahci driver (shown as ahci in the storage adapters view), which forces the sata_ahci driver to be used (shown as ahci in the storage adapters view).

Poof! All problems were gone.

All? Not all: on the console and terminal, there seems to be some throttling going on, as I observed the read or write speed limit to be capped somewhere close to 60 MB/s. More on that in a future post.

Basically, the smartinfo trouble tripped me into thinking the device was bad, where I should have understood that the latency warnings in the vmkernel.log file indicated the vmw_ahci driver was the culprit. Oh well: never too old to learn.

References

I’m not alone on this; these posts also discuss latency issued:

This is different from the transfer speed issues that were part of ESXi 4, though I have a gut feeling there is some correlation:

On AHCI: Advanced Host Controller Interface – Wikipedia

On native drivers versus legacy drivers:

  • [Wayback] Troubleshooting native drivers in ESXi 5.5 or later

    A new native driver model feature is introduced in VMware ESXi 5.5 that replaces an older model that employs a Linux compatibility layer.

    In this article:

    • Drivers using the new model are referred to as native drivers
    • Drivers using the old model are referred to as legacy VMKLinux drivers

    This article provides troubleshooting information for the native driver model.

    The following inbox Native Drivers are included in default installation of ESXi 5.5: – See more at: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/11/esxi-55-introduces-new-native-device.html
  • [Wayback] ESXi 5.5 introduces a new Native Device Driver Architecture Part 2

    A new concept of driver priority loading is introduced with the Native Device Driver model and the diagram below provides the current ordering of how device drivers are loaded.

    As you can see OEM drivers will have the highest priority and by default Native Drivers will be loaded before “legacy” vmklinux drivers. On a clean installation of ESXi 5.5 you should see at least two of these directories: /etc/vmware/default.map.d/ and /etc/vmware/driver.map.d/ which contains driver map files pertaining to Native Device and “legacy” vmklinux drivers.

Steps

This is how you disable the native vmware_ahci driver:

  1. Suspend all virtual machines
  2. Bring the ESXi box into maintenance mode, for instance by running esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
  3. On the console or terminal, run this:
    # esxcli system module set --enabled=false --module=vmw_ahci
    # reboot
  4. After booting, get the ESXi box out of maintenance mode, for instance by running esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false
  5. Power on all suspended virtual machines

To re-enable the native vmware_ahci driver (in case not all your SATA devices are recognised):

  1. Suspend all virtual machines
  2. Bring the ESXi box into maintenance mode, for instance by running esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
  3. On the console or terminal, run this:
    # esxcli system module set --enabled=true --module=vmw_ahci
    # reboot
  4. After booting, get the ESXi box out of maintenance mode, for instance by running esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false
  5. Power on all suspended virtual machines

Suspending and unsuspending all virtual machines can be done on the console/terminal, see Source: VMware ESXi console: viewing all VMs, suspending and waking them up: part 5 how.

Results: storage adapters

With native vmware_ahci, the storage adapters are these:

Storage adapters with vmw_ahci enabled

Storage adapters with vmw_ahci enabled

With legacy ahci, the storage adapters are these:

Storage adapters with vmw_ahci disabled

Storage adapters with vmw_ahci disabled

What you see is that the Patsburg 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller has been split from a single vmw_ahci adapter in six separate ahci adapters.

Results: read/write speeds and latency when suspending/unsuspending all virtual machines

With vmware_ahci, the storage adapters are these:

Latency issues after resume/suspend cycle of all virtual machines: the latency stays up in the 15 millisecond region

Latency issues after resume/suspend cycle of all virtual machines: the latency stays up in the 15 millisecond region

With ahci, the storage adapters are these:

Latency after resume/suspend cycle of all virtual machines: the latency goes down to the 2 millisecond region

Latency after resume/suspend cycle of all virtual machines: the latency goes down to the 2 millisecond region

For both cases, the read and write rates are roughly the same (and OK for an EVO 860 SATA device). The latency drops a lot (and with prolonged vmw_ahci use goes up to like 15+ seconds, that is 15000+ milliseconds):

[Wayback] SSD 860 EVO 2.5″ SATA III 500GB Memory & Storage – MZ-76E500B/AM | Samsung US

Speeds are consistent, even under heavy workloads and multi-tasking allowing for faster file transfer. The 860 EVO performs at sequential read speeds up to 550 MB/s* with Intelligent TurboWrite technology, and sequential write speeds up to 520 MB/s. The TurboWrite buffer size* is upgraded from 12 GB to 78 GB.

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Work Chronicles | Comics about Work on Twitter: “Fast-paced Environment… “

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/05

Even when young, this transcript should raise all the red flags:

  1. Recruiter: At this job, you will get to work at a fast paced environment.
  2. Recruiter: You will get to thrive under pressure.
  3. Recruiter: And you will be part of a dynamic team.
  4. Applicant: Great, new that you’ve outlined the cons, what are the pros?

[Archive.is] Work Chronicles | Comics about Work on Twitter: “Fast-paced Environment… “ and [Wayback] Fast-paced Environment | Work Chronicles:

–jeroen

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Posted in About, Development, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »