14 May, 2008
Solid State Hard drives have poor random write performance
Posted by bhavin.t | (1) Comments
I just learned the hard way as to how *poor* the *poor random write performance* of Solid State Drives actually means. I recently bought a new Dell Latitude D430 and the laptop keeps freezing every now and then for a few seconds. It is fairly irritating and a quick look at my performance monitor shows ample available RAM and the CPU utilization is next to nothing. I figured the only possibility was some sort of I/O blocking.
Having spent a considerable amount of time on building large scale storage infrastructure, I am well aware of the limitations of solid state hard drives when it comes to random writes in large files. However I am facing a first-hand experience of actually witnessing the poor performance.
A quick google serach revealed that I am not the only one facing this issue -
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000927.html
Excerpt: I recently bought a dell d430 with an SSD and it was useless, reason: Poor random write performance. The user in question had a multi-GB outlook mailbox and the machine would constantly freeze for 5-50 seconds while the HD was doing IO blocking as it shifted blocks around. Had to replace with a standard technology 1.8″ drive now all is well. $500 out the window.
Other Links:
http://www.destinationip.com/index.php/C6/
http://office-outlook.com/outlook-forum/index.php?t=msg&th=75897/
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12 May, 2008
Things I wish AIR and WPF had
Posted by bhavin.t | (1) Comments
This makes a great follow-up to my last post on the Paradox of Choice. Life would be simpler with a single platform :). Before I start a flame war on that subject let me quickly turn your attention to the real topic of this post. I have been grappling with deciding between AIR and WPF for internal application development and in all honesty, I’d like to have them both. Here are my short list of gripes (or on a more positive note, my wishlist for AIR and WPF)
Missing in AIR
- Advanced socket manipulation functionality (ability to create UDP sockets, NIO etc)
- Talk to any RDBMS
- Multi-threading
- Decent server socket libraries for building server applications (yes I know AIR is a desktop client platform, but given the Web 2.0 world, the line between a client and a server is beginning to blur considerably)
- Accessing global keyboard shortcuts
- Accessing native libraries (the kind that I get with XPCOM on XUL)
- Ability to instantiate external applications
- Greater control on the installer and installation process
Missing in WPF
- Write once, run anywhere ie the ability to run on Mac/Linux (I have already confessed that this is a wish list)
- A full-fledged HTML rendering engine (as opposed to having to instantiate an IE control with limited flexibility)
Hopefully folks at Msft and Adobe are listening
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5 May, 2008
The Paradox of choice
Posted by bhavin.t | (0) Comments
I just saw a profound video (a TED Talk) by Barry Schwartz on The Paradox of Choice. Barry is an author of a book by the same name. The video is short and covers basic logical reasoning on how more choice can actually be detrimental to our welfare. His arguments are mostly compelling (with a few areas I may not necessarily agree with). The macro fundamentals however are something I can relate to.
As a part of running Directi, I have learnt this paradox the hard way. While there exist several anecdotes, one that comes to mind is ResellerClub’s (one of our many businesses) our strategy of selling hosting packages. I remember not too long ago, when Rclub used to offer a complicated configurator for purchasing hosting packages. While other companies had a set of fixed packages, we offered our customers the ability to choose each parameter on their own. One could select the exact amount of disk space, email accounts, bandwidth, number of databases, database space and so on. If memory serves me right each parameter had between 2 to 15 combinations totalling up to possibly well over half a million combinations.
RClub has since sacrificed that system in favor of a simpler set of 4 packages, but not until we went through some of the thought process expounded by Barry in his talk.In summary, excessive choice can -
- Overwhelm a consumer
- Confuse a consumer - especially in a scenario where the customer does not know all the variables
- cause Paralysis - inability to decide which way to go
- result in Procrastination - where one chooses to postponing the choice due to their inability to make one
- manifest Regret - should I have picked the other one?
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5 Jan, 2008
Directi wins the Times Ascent Pinkslip award
Posted by bhavin.t | (0) Comments
Directi won the ‘PinkSlip Choice’ Award for the “most innovative recruitment advertisement”. The ad was our third recruitment ad for Times Ascent.
Spearheaded and executed by our in-house marketing and design team, the ad reflects one of our fundamental principles - which is - “We like to stand out in everything we do”. At Directi creativity is expected in every task. Directi is the only company so far (I think) that has won this award without outsourcing the ad to an Advertising agency.
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26 Nov, 2007
Lucky 13: Our rank in the Deloitte and Touche Fast 50 list
Posted by bhavin.t | (6) Comments
Directi was ranked in the Deloitte and Touche Technology Fast 50 list for the 3rd consecutive year (2006-2007). This time we improved upon last year, garnering 13th position (as compared to 17th last year) with a compounded annual growth rate of 547%. The title is somewhat of a misnomer given that luck had nothing to do with this. Credit goes to the relentless effort of our amazing team.
Directi was the only company in the Top 15 to have won this award 3 years in a row, a commendable feat, considering that each year becomes the baseline for the next year.
(Divyank collecting the award - Looking smart as ever 
)
As I always say … this is just the beginning, and there are many more to come 
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