Well, I’ll be participating in Dump GoDaddy Day (December 29, 2011). I will be moving my domains to another registrar and my hosting to another server. It’s ridiculous how they support SOPA. Many will also be dumping Godaddy. So for the next few days I will be moving my domains and hosting. It is possible that there will be down time. Sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t like supporting companies that support things I don’t agree with.
I’ve been getting more curious about MongoDB. The problem is I’ve been struggling trying to create a development environment. I’ve tried OSX, Ubuntu, and Windows. I always get stuck at a step. I think I found the right recipe.
First, I’m running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit virtually. You don’t have to run Windows virtuall. I’m mostly on my Mac and I prefer to use virtual environments for development so it’s okay if I screw around with things. Then I installed Wamp. The key here is to use the 32bit version of Wamp. I’ve tried the 64bit version of Wamp and could not get it to work. Then, you need to download the latest driver from the MongoDB website. You will get a NTS (non-thread safe) and TS (thread safe) driver. The folders are labeled as follows “mongo-[version]-php5.3vc9” and “mongo-[version]-php5.3vc9ts. Remember “ts” = “thread safe”. I used the non-thread safe DLL file. Take that DLL file and copy and paste it in the “ext” folder within the PHP installation directory of Wamp. If you installed using default settings it should be “c:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.x\ext”. Open the php.ini file and add the php_mongo.dll extension. Restart Apache and it should show up in your phpinfo() page.
I will be using MongoHQ to try things out. I’m not sure why I couldn’t get it to work in a 64bit web server environment. Mongo looks very cool and if it can help me decrease development time, I’m going to build future web apps with it.
Two weeks after I installed my Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD in a RAID0, I’m still getting great performance. I have now used up half of my drive space.
My write speeds still look weird between what ATTO and Crystal Disk are reporting. I’m not really good with these benchmark softwares. I just use the default settings. If anyone can tell me how I can tweek or adjust the configurations of the benchmarks to give me a more accurate result, please let me know. Also, I haven’t updated the firmware. It is still 320ABFF0.
The time has finally come to replace my new/old Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3 motherboard. I knew the time would come even when I bought it. It was one of the first Z68 motherboards in the market. It’s a micro ATX form factor so expandability is limited. It served me well and exceeded expectations. Alas, I have outgrown it. Say hello to my new ASUS P8Z68-V Pro motherboard.
This board is impressive. It has PCI-E slots (x1 – x16). It has a total of 8 SATA ports (4x SATA2 and 2x SATA3 – Intel and 2x SATA3 Marvell). I’m able to use 2x SSD RAID0 for my OS drive and 4x Seagate 500GB RAID5 for my data drive. I still have room for a WD 1TB Caviar Black and an LG bluray burner. There are plenty of fan plugs and I really like the TPU switch that easily overclocks my Intel i7 2600K to 4.4GHz and remains stable. My only headache is that I can’t use the Marvell raid controller for a RAID0 to install the OS on. Other than that, it’s a great board at an affordable price.
I think I have found the perfect SSD drive. I have tried several, most I kept and some I returned. The ones I kept so far are 2 Kingston V+100 96GB. Both are running in a Macbook Pro 13” (Core2Duo) and another in a Macbook Pro 15” (i7 2011 model). Another is the OCZ Vertex Plus 60GB. The first one seemed to work well so I bought another and made a RAID0. Even after the firmware update (v3.50) my OS kept freezing so I returned it.
Since I’ve had such a good experience with Kingston, I decided to check out what they have using the SATA3 connection. Kingston has the HyperX SSD which comes in 2 sizes, 120GB and 240GB. They also come in 2 different packages, with or without the kit. According to Kingston, it can read up to 525MB/s and write up to 480MB/s. The numbers are impressive on 1 drive but on a RAID0, it would even be better.
I ended up getting the package with the kit. The kit includes a screwdriver, a USB enclosure, USB 2.0 cables, a 2.5” to 3.5” bay adaptor, and Acronis software to clone your old hard drive onto the new. The packaging is nice, silver and blue theme. The screwdriver is handy. It comes with 3 different bits and it’s magnetic. It’s shaped like a pen and has a clip so you can clip it on your clothes, bag, etc. The enclosure is well designed and easy to open and close. Other things I notices are the 3 year warranty and the 24/7 tech support. I will be calling them this weekend and testing that out 
.
Installation is very easy especially with the iStarUSA BPU-124V2-SS cage. After installing Windows and updating it here are the benchmark numbers from different softwares.
My WEI score also went up to 7.9. My CPU (Intel i7 2600K) is at stock speed gets a 7.6 but after overclocking it using ASUS’s TPU (4.4GHz) that score went up to 7.8.
So after a day, the drives have been stable. No freezing or signs of being unstable. Let’s see if this continues the next few days/weeks. I hope it does, since I’m really liking the performance. Here is my hardware break down if you’re curious.
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V Pro
Ram: G.Skills Ripjaws DDR3 1600 16GB 2x (2x4GB)
OS Drive: Kingston HyperX 120GB SH100S3B SSD in a RAID0 (SATAIII port using Intel controller)
Data Drive: Seagate 7200RPM 16MB cache 4x 500GB in a RAID5 (SATAII port)
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64bit SP1