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Top Tips to Improving Your System Administration Skills

By marketing@site-a.com

You Envision the Future

LAKE FOREST, CALIF., SEPT 12, 2019 — PSSC Labs, a developer of custom High Performance Computing and Big Data computing solutions today shares their top tips for improving your system administration skills.

At PSSC Labs, our mission is to deliver reliable, high performance turnkey platforms that help organizations like yours perform necessary data tasks without giving up control of your data.  That means keeping your system administration skills up-to-date is more important than ever! Of course, we’re always here to help you should you ever encounter any issues. In fact, you can contact our Support line at any time and we will be happy to assist you. But just to give you a little boost, we’ve outlined the top five support issues that on-premise model users encounter, and what to do if it happens to you.

Machine Not Powering On

PSSC Labs produces turnkey platforms, so they’re ready to be plugged in and get going upon delivery. Should you ever notice that one of your machines isn’t powering on, the first thing you should check is power supply. Verify that the power supply is receiving power from the source by verifying that the power connectors are securly plugged in on both ends.

If this doesn’t work, try a new power port on the PDF and then move on to a new power cable. If your machine still does not power on you can try using a power supply from your spare parts kit (if a spare parts kit was provided with your order) or from another working machine.  Machines with faulty memory can also exhibit this type of behavior, so shuffling or re-seating the memory is also worth trying. 

Machine Has Crashed or Rebooted

On-premise models can crash or reboot for various reasons. They’re often accompanied by BMC System Event Log messages.  Start by checking the output of the command ‘ipmitool sel list’ and check “/var/log/messages” for errors correlating to the date / time of the crash.

Updating your machine’s BIOS to the latest version is recommended as well, as it can fix crashing systems as well as improve the machine’s overall performance.  Verify that the CPUs are not overheating by checking the “sensors” command while the machine is under load.  Faulty memory can also cause crashes, so re-seating or shuffling memory can help to resolve these issues as well.  The causes of system crashes are sometimes hard to pin down, so do not hesitate to contact the PSSC Labs support team for troubleshooting assistance.

Software Support

PSSC Labs solutions often come pre-installed with multiple software applications, ranging from job submission software to parallel computing platforms, from weather modeling to data analysis.

Many of these packages are third party applications and not created by PSSC Labs, so if you ever have an issue with pre-loaded software, it’s recommended to first contact the software developers. If you still need assistance afterwards, contact the PSSC Labs support staff who can promptly assist you further.

Machine is Reporting Hard Drive/RAID Errors

This error is sometimes challenging for even those with years of experience and expert administration skills. Whenever your hard drive fails, your server’s data is at risk.  If you see errors indicating a possible issue with one of your hard drives, a PSSC Labs support technician can assist you with checking the drive’s built in SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) data, which will show the drive’s health and indicate whether or not it needs to be replaced.  It’s possible that the drive is healthy and there is another underlying issue which needs to be remedied, so please contact PSSC Labs should you encounter this error.

Machine is Reporting Memory/CPU Errors

PSSC Labs servers come equipped with large amounts of memory and speedy CPUs. When issues occur with these components, users will often see slow / degraded system performance accompanied by MCE (Machine Check Error) messages.  You can contact PSSC Labs and provide these messages to a PSSC Labs support technician who can assist you with determining which memory DIMM or CPU the error is coming from.  Memory can be easily replaced, whereas handling CPUs is an extremely delicate process — one that we recommend avoiding unless absolutely necessary. Often times MCE messages can be resolved by simply reseating or shuffling the memory around.

About PSSC Labs 

For technology powered visionaries with a passion for challenging the status quo, PSSC Labs is the answer for hand-crafted HPC and Big Data computing solutions that deliver relentless performance with the absolute lowest total cost of ownership.  

 We are true innovators offering high performance computing solutions to solve the world’s most demanding problems. For 25+ years, organizations of all sizes and from a variety of sectors rely on PSSC Labs’ computing systems. We are proud to support many departments within the United States government, Fortune 500 companies, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.  

All products are designed and built at the company’s headquarters in Lake Forest, California.

Government Agencies Leverage New Technology for Data Flow

By marketing@site-a.com

LAKE FOREST, CALIF., AUGUST 20, 2019 — PSSC Labs, a developer of custom High Performance Computing and Big Data computing solutions today shares how the CyberRax Data Flow Pipleline is helping various DOD organizations achieve their goals.

The Federal Government has spent decades collecting and storing huge data sets, covering everything from census and population records to crime reports and infrastructure data. The analytics retrieved from this data has assisted our government agencies in commissioning greater responsiveness and efficiencies at every level, making it truly invaluable to our society. Federal agencies simply can’t afford to suffer from computational roadblocks. Government servers need to be able to perform streaming analytics while also providing full control over their own data, especially when it comes to governance, security and performance.   

PSSC Labs, in partnership with Cloudera, is deploying the CyberRax Data Flow Pipeline as a truly turnkey system engineered specifically to meet the data transport needs and security requirements of Federal Agencies. The CyberRax Data Flow Pipeline comes complete with all necessary storage, network, operating system and application software including Cloudera Data Flow (CDF). CDF is built on top of Apache Nifi, a powerful and user-friendly data routing application originally developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). With CDF, users have the ability to create simple graphical models that direct data across multiple networks with all necessary data provenance required for the most secure environments.  

A Truly Turn-key Platform 

According to Alex Lesser, PSSC Labs Vice President, the real value of CyberRax Data Flow Pipeline is a production-ready platform out of the box. “What we see happening with the delivery of CyberRax Data Flow Pipeline is a significant reduction in time and cost, allowing federal agencies to see true value much sooner,” says Lesser. With 48 processor cores, 4 GB memory per core, 264TB RAW storage capacity and dual 10GigE network backplane, CyberRax Data Flow Pipeline can fulfill the most demanding environments. Federal agencies can leverage the engineering expertise of PSSC Labs high performance and high reliability platform. That’s why it only makes sense that government agencies including NASA, NIH, DOD and many more have partnered with PSSC Labs in an effort to quickly process, store, analyze and protect their massive amounts of data. 

The U.S. Air Force recently deployed several CyberRax Data Flow Pipelines for both their NIPR and SIPR networks. The goal of these deployments is to collect, transport, and distribute cybersecurity data from every Air Force installation worldwide on both NIPR and SIPR. This solution allows for data to be sent to multiple core locations and fed downstream to multiple cybersecurity tools for analysis. 

American Made

As an American manufacturer, PSSC Labs provides a level of security and trust that other foreign manufacturers simply lack. The CyberRax Data Flow Pipeline can be purchased via several contract vehicles including GSA, CHESS and NETCENTS. PSSC Labs is already working closely with Department of Defense agencies to help them achieve their operational mandate to ingest and direct data from disparate sources all with the required security provisions out of the box. We know that government servers need to be 100% operational at all time, without sacrificing speed, analytics, or security, which is why our team of engineers is available for support for the lifetime of your system.

About PSSC Labs 

For technology powered visionaries with a passion for challenging the status quo, PSSC Labs is the answer for hand-crafted HPC and Big Data computing solutions that deliver relentless performance with the absolute lowest total cost of ownership.  

 We are true innovators offering high performance computing solutions to solve the world’s most demanding problems. For 25+ years, organizations of all sizes and from a variety of sectors rely on PSSC Labs’ computing systems. We are proud to support many departments within the United States government, Fortune 500 companies, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.  

All products are designed and built at the company’s headquarters in Lake Forest, California.