Blog – Steve Scargall

How To Install and Boot VMWare VSphere/ESXi from Persistent Memory (or not)

In a previous post I described how to install and boot Linux using only Persistent Memory, no SSDs are required. For this follow on post, I attempted to install VMWare VSphere/ESXi v7.0u2 onto the persistent memory. TL;DR – It doesn’t...

June 7, 2021

How to Boot Linux from Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory

How To Linux

How to Boot Linux from Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory

Introduction In this article, I will demonstrate how to configure a system with Intel Optane Persistent Memory (PMem) and use part of the PMem as a boot device. This little known feature can reduce boot times for those that need...

June 7, 2021

How to build an upstream Fedora Kernel from source

How To Linux

How to build an upstream Fedora Kernel from source

I typically keep my Fedora system current, updating it once every week or two. More recently, I wanted to test the Idle Page Tracking feature, but this wasn’t enabled in the default kernel provided by Fedora. To enable the feature,...

September 14, 2020

Linux Device Mapper WriteCache (dm-writecache) performance improvements in Linux Kernel 5.8

How To Linux

Linux Device Mapper WriteCache (dm-writecache) performance improvements in Linux Kernel 5.8

The Linux ‘dm-writecache’ target allows for writeback caching of newly written data to an SSD or NVMe using persistent memory will achieve much better performance in Linux Kernel 5.8. Red Hat developer Mikulas Patocka has been working to enhance the...

May 30, 2020

How To Troubleshooting

How To Enable Debug Logging in ipmctl

The ipmctl utility is used for configuring and managing Intel Optane Persistent Memory modules (DCPMM/PMem). It supports the functionality to: Discover Persistent Memory on the serverProvision the persistent memory configurationView and update the firmware on the persistent memory modulesConfigure data-at-rest...

May 29, 2020

Troubleshooting

Intel Optane Persistent Memory Modules report “Non-functional” state in ipmctl

Issue Executing ipmctl show-dimm to get device information shows the persistent memory modules in a ‘Non-functional’ health state, eg: Other ipmctl commands may fail and return “No functional DIMMs in the system.”, eg: Applies To This issue applies to systems...

May 29, 2020

“ipmctl show -memoryresources” returns “Error: GetMemoryResourcesInfo Failed”

Troubleshooting

“ipmctl show -memoryresources” returns “Error: GetMemoryResourcesInfo Failed”

Issue: Running ipmctl show -memoryresources returns an error similar to the following: Applies To: Linux & Microsoft WindowsIntel Optane Persistent Memoryipmctl utility Cause: The Platform Configuration Data (PCD) is invalid or has been erased using a previously executed ipmctl delete...

May 29, 2020

How To

How To Install Prometheus and Grafana on Fedora Server

[Updated] This article was updated on 03/13/2021 using Fedora Server 33, Prometheus v2.25.0, Grafana v7.4.3, and Node Exporter v1.1.2. In this article, we will show how to install Prometheus and Grafana to collect and display system performance metrics. Prometheus is...

May 13, 2020

How To

How To Set Linux CPU Scaling Governor to Max Performance

The majority of modern processors are capable of operating in a number of different clock frequency and voltage configurations, often referred to as Operating Performance Points or P-states (in ACPI terminology). As a rule, the higher the clock frequency and...

February 12, 2020

How To Verify Linux Kernel Support for Persistent Memory

How To Linux

How To Verify Linux Kernel Support for Persistent Memory

Linux Kernel support for persistent memory was first delivered in version 4.0 of the mainline kernel, however, it was not enabled by default until version 4.2. If you use a Linux distribution that uses kernel 4.2 or later, or the...

February 11, 2020

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