Stanly Jan-Mar

kly630

There were 5 pods earlier last week before the second email came out about how we should wait to schedule labs. I actually logged into the lab the first day and could've sworn there were 10+ pods, so I think they're being taken off the site when they're not working.

hiddenknight821

Thanks for the heads up, bermovick.

Okay. It just got really bad. I got kicked out of the first lab this morning. I thought I accidentally close down the session window, but that wasn't the case when I tried to start my second lab I reserved an hour later. I couldn't get in the second one, and got an error message telling me an admin's working on it. I guess we get what we paid for. I ought to try completing several modules and get ahead of class once the pods are back online to avoid this mishap.

Question: Are we suppose to answer the questions in the lab worksheet or just do the labs and inform the instructor that we did the lab by submitting the date of the lab?

alexfamous

bermovick wrote: »

Lab 2 takes at least 1.5 hours. I was unable to complete it the first time and had to schedule it again. I've found if you complete a lab early you can free up any remaining reservation time, so I've been reserving a 4-hour block, then free-ing and re-reserving for each lab.

So its beneficial to reserve the whole 4 hours on all labs?

bermovick

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Question: Are we suppose to answer the questions in the lab worksheet or just do the labs and inform the instructor that we did the lab by submitting the date of the lab?

I was wondering that too, but you CAN'T fill in the pdf (it doesn't have whatever allows you to input data into a pdf), and when I checked around, it looks like you just complete the lab in the main class page and input the date that you completed it.

alexfamous wrote: »

So its beneficial to reserve the whole 4 hours on all labs?

Yeah, I'm doing it whenever I can. If I finish early I try to re-reserve any remaining time. I managed to sneak in a 30-minute reservation for lab 7 last night and completed it with 0 minutes to spare.

So far only lab 2 has been a beast. All the other ones are easily done in an hour (lab 3 might be pushing that though)

alexfamous

bermovick wrote: »

Yeah, I'm doing it whenever I can. If I finish early I try to re-reserve any remaining time. I managed to sneak in a 30-minute reservation for lab 7 last night and completed it with 0 minutes to spare.

So far only lab 2 has been a beast. All the other ones are easily done in an hour (lab 3 might be pushing that though)

Thanks for the feedback. So, would it be safe to say if I reserve 2 to 3 hours for each lab per 4 hr block, and then if i finish early i can reserve the rest for another lab. Per example, hypothetically i can reserve lab 1 from 12pm - 3pm within the 12pm - 4pm time block. I finish the lab by 2pm and then reserve lab 2 from 2pm - 4pm.

GAB1900

We were told not to use/reserve any labs until they notify us. Please stay clear until they get it fixed. We all want to complete our work but we need to let them do theirs first.

bermovick

alexfamous wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. So, would it be safe to say if I reserve 2 to 3 hours for each lab per 4 hr block, and then if i finish early i can reserve the rest for another lab. Per example, hypothetically i can reserve lab 1 from 12pm - 3pm within the 12pm - 4pm time block. I finish the lab by 2pm and then reserve lab 2 from 2pm - 4pm.

You risk someone coming in and scheduling 3pm-? after you though. By grabbing a full 4 hour block, unless someone cuts in during the short time between free-ing up the remainder after completing a lab and re-claiming the time by registering another, you get it all.

This wouldn't be an issue if they had more pods available, but right now there's only 1, for 53 people. If there were 5 like kyl said they saw then I probably wouldn't care as much, but 3 fills up and 1 is even worse.

alexfamous

bermovick wrote: »

You risk someone coming in and scheduling 3pm-? after you though. By grabbing a full 4 hour block, unless someone cuts in during the short time between free-ing up the remainder after completing a lab and re-claiming the time by registering another, you get it all.

This wouldn't be an issue if they had more pods available, but right now there's only 1, for 53 people. If there were 5 like kyl said they saw then I probably wouldn't care as much, but 3 fills up and 1 is even worse.

I agree, with the current lab resource situation in flux, I understand what you are saying.

hiddenknight821

GAB1900 wrote: »

We were told not to use/reserve any labs until they notify us. Please stay clear until they get it fixed. We all want to complete our work but we need to let them do theirs first.

Yes, but the thing is they told us not to reserve over the weekend. I thought by today it's suppose to be back online. Beside, the instructor didn't even bother telling us exactly which assignment due dates are postponed, so they had us stressing over it instead. It would be nice if they told us that the assignments are not due until a week after the pods are back online. That's the kind of assurance we'd like to have.

GAB1900

Do not worry. Everything got delayed at least one week, and he will not punish you for not doing the labs when they are down. We should be getting an email soon.

xocity

The Lab Requests have been a little crazy. Havnt had a windows of time to work with. Hopefully after everything gets fixed, it wont be get crazy with reservations

kly630

Yep, there were definitely 5 when I logged in last week around Thursday night or so to do lab 1, and I really think there were around 14 when I logged into the lab on the fist day.

Since they sent that email out about not reserving anything, I figured I'd wait until they sent an email things were back up before even trying lab 2 or lab 3. If I receive any grief from anyone about it, I'd pretty much forward the email we all got to the instructor of my section, but I just don't think it'll be an issue to wait this week.

zcarenow

You're suppose to wait till the instructor sends you an email that it is ok. otherwise, by reserving now, you might make the whole reservation process inconsistent for the entire course. in other words, you might have times where it is available and convenient and other times u might not be able to get anything. just let them finish fixing it, so that it will be a process where you will always have it available at all hours. At least that is what i was told yesterday.

GAB1900

zcarenow wrote: »

You're suppose to wait till the instructor sends you an email that it is ok. otherwise, by reserving now, you might make the whole reservation process inconsistent for the entire course. in other words, you might have times where it is available and convenient and other times u might not be able to get anything. just let them finish fixing it, so that it will be a process where you will always have it available at all hours. At least that is what i was told yesterday.

That's why I asked earlier to please stay out until they fix it. We all want to login and do our labs, but not following their advice to stay out we might delay it even longer.

xocity

I still see people making reservations, its annoying. I wonder how long this will take, im biting my nails waiting to have at it on the lab lol.

hiddenknight821

I understand it's frustrating to see people making reservations, but I don't blame them since they weren't explicitly told not to make the reservation. They were merely recommended not to make reservations over the weekend. This statement doesn't deter people enough from doing so. Granted, I'm one of them too as I made mine yesterday morning, but I got kicked out of the pods. I didn't bother attempting again since then as I'm now waiting for further updates. It'd be nice to have the instructor to communicate with us more explicitly if the reservations are causing more problems/delay than anticipated.

xocity

Just got an email. Im reserving like a mad man. sorry guys


"
Hello All:
Please see the email below from our NetLabs Administrator. It is important that you read through all of the email before moving forward. If you have any questions, please contact your instructor.

Regards,

Sylvia Lewis
Business, Career, & Technology Director
Networking Instructor
Stanly Community College
slewis8950@stanly.edu
[URL="tel:704-991-0287"]704-991-0287[/URL]



From: Kelly Caudle
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2015 10:05 AM
To: Sylvia Lewis
Subject: Message



I want to start this message off with an apology. As both an instructor in the VCP classes and one of the primary Netlabs administrators, I am very sorry for the issues we have had at the beginning of these classes. SCC makes every effort to have our labs up and running when classes start. We tested the system with a simulated load and felt it would perform. Unfortunately, it did not.

We have made a change to the system that appears to have fixed the issue. I’m going to give a brief overview of the issue as it pertains to your ICM course. Our system consists of a Dell VRTX chassis populated with four Dell 620 servers with dual 8 core Xeon processors. Each server has 256 GB of RAM. Our Vcenter appliance has 8 CPU cores and 48GB of memory dedicated to it. With this system, we have enough resources for the pods in these classes. Unfortunately, due to the design of the ICM 5.5 pods and the use of snapshots, we found out that our system was being disk constrained.

On the Dell VRTX chassis, the integrated storage enclosure on our system has dual redundant PERC8 controllers. In the original design, the storage system in this redundant configuration was set to Write Thru on the disk, thereby ignoring the 1 GB of cache on the controllers. This caused the storage subsystem to be overwhelmed when more than 8 pods were booted simultaneously. After researching with both NDG (the developers of Netlabs) and Dell we found out an update was available to the storage system that allowed Write Back to be configured as the Write Policy for the Virtual Disks. We can now boot 10 pods simultaneously in about 8 minutes!! The moral of the story is pay attention to the disk performance counters in Vcenter. They can lead you to the problems you are experiencing and an eventual fix.

I am going to open up 3 pods per class to start today with more coming online during the rest of the week. Please still allow 10 minutes at the beginning of your reservation for the entire pod to boot. I also suggest at least reserving two hours for your reservations. This gives you time to complete tasks inside the labs.

I hope you enjoy using our online virtual systems and again apologize in the delay in getting it up and running fully.
Sincerely,

Kelly Caudle
Program Head, Information Systems Security
Academy Support Center, Lead Contact
Cisco Networking Academy Instructor Trainer
Stanly Community College
141 College Drive
Albemarle, NC 28001
[URL="tel:%28704%29%20991-0346"](704) 991-0346[/URL]
kcaudle5282@stanly.edu
"

hiddenknight821

Speaking of the devil, just got the email. The pods are back on but not all of them are back online yet. Just 3 for now at this writing.
UPDATE: xocity beat me to it.

xocity

=D lol haha

hiddenknight821

Not to sound nosy, but I looked up the name. Turned out the person who sent out the email, co-authored the book, CCNA Guide to Cisco Networking Fundamentals, 4th Edition. When I saw the cover, I immediately recognized it, because we actually used her book in my Cisco class back in '09. What a small world!

xocity

Nice Find. Yea small world.

xocity

Ok so im going through the labs. Seems pretty straight forward. It says we dont have to submit anything or do anything really since everything is being logged as it gets done. Is that correct or is there something i'm missing?

zcarenow

xocity wrote: »

Ok so im going through the labs. Seems pretty straight forward. It says we dont have to submit anything or do anything really since everything is being logged as it gets done. Is that correct or is there something i'm missing?

what labs are you talking about? which particular ones?

bermovick

As far as I've seen, once you finish the lab, go back to the moodle site and submit that lab. Enter the date in the comments(?) field, and you're done.

I'm really HOPING that's correct... none of mine have been graded yet and I'd hate to get a 0 because something else was supposed to have been done.

From the FAQ though:
Is lab progress tracked?
Yes. We can see what you do in the labs, no need to send an email or anything, the instructor knows.

bermovick

zcarenow wrote: »

what labs are you talking about? which particular ones?

Several of the labs ask you to answer a question like "how much ram is the VM using" and "what screen do you see when you click this". But there's no way to actually 'answer'

xocity

any of them really. Im on lab 2 but for lab one it says to record what you see or whatever, but not sure where it wants me to do this or if its really needed. According the the FAQs, it states the following;
"
Is lab progress tracked?
Yes. We can see what you do in the labs, no need to send an email or anything, the instructor knows.
"

So im going through the labs and just doing what it asks.

xocity

bermovick wrote: »

Several of the labs ask you to answer a question like "how much ram is the VM using" and "what screen do you see when you click this". But there's no way to actually 'answer'

What he said @zcarenow

hiddenknight821

I did some digging around, and I looked into the previous class thread. Turned out we're really progress-tracked.

GAB1900

Darn!... Lab 2 takes a really long time. I had about 4 minutes left when it timed out on me.

bermovick

I ran out of time the first time. Ticked me off that I wasted all that time and had to sit through the installs again.

Up past lab 10, and except for 2 (and 3 to a lesser extent), they've all been pretty short.