Hello, and welcome to EuroBSDCon 2021's Building and Running a BSD Home Lab session. So I guess we get started with introductions. Hi, I'm Alan Jude. I'm a CTO at Clara, and I'm a free BSD source and doc committer. I also do a number of podcasts, including BSD Now, one eighth of the work, apparently. Tom and I figured out earlier. And wrote the ZFS and Advanced ZFS books with Michael W. Lucas. So Michael, you want to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Michael Lucas. I write books, some of them about you people. Okay, I guess I'll go. I'm Kyle Niesel, known as Dr. KK on some of the forums, and I come to free BSD by way of free NAS. Tom, do you feel you had to unmute yourself? Just below the slides, there's a little mute button. It seems like you did. There's a lot of latency in the big blue button now. Yeah, so I'm Tom Jones. I've been joining this panel 48 seconds ago, and I build research to do internet experiments and have it appear as a home. So talk a little bit about what a home lab is and why you might want one. If you don't already have one, but it's oftentimes just a place for you to experiment and learn and build things. Oftentimes, it's kind of like the dev environment that everybody has at work. And then there are those lucky few who also have a production environment. But it gives you something like that at home, and it lets you try things and play with things and so on. And some people also use them for development, like I do, or testing, or just exploration and learning. Oftentimes, a home lab kind of grows organically. You don't start out planning to build a home lab so much as you repurpose an old machine as a home server, and then there's another one, and then you add this and that. That experiment you're running turns into something you use frequently. And then, all of a sudden, you have this big home lab, and you're doing all these interesting things at home with what started out as just one spare machine. And a home lab can range from something big and rack mounted like I have some pictures later, or it could just be one spare machine that sits on the floor by your desk like what Kyle has. So here's a quick tour of Kyle's home lab. Kyle, do you want to walk us through this quick? I think it's mostly self-explanatory, but years ago, I started a free BSD home lab in that black box on the right. Today, as Alan was saying, today that has sort of become my backup for what is now my primary home lab server, which is the white box on the left. And so, you know, this is distributed throughout the house, of course. I have the office, but that black box is in a completely different room entirely. So this is one of the organic natures of the home lab, especially if you're trying to avoid problems with your wife. So in any case, that's kind of a tour of my stuff. It's as simple as that. I don't own a rack at all, and all of my three or four BSD systems are just like this scattered around. Back to you Alan. Yeah, that's a topic we could touch on at some point is that sometimes the other people you live with don't want wires running everywhere, and, you know, things kind of cobble together, and it has to look nice. So there are quite a few different factors that can factor into the design of your home lab. You know, one of the things we talked about later is noise as well. So we kind of repurpose a dual purpose slide. So here's a bit of a picture of my home lab. This is as much of the rack as I could fit in the frame because it's so close to the wall, I couldn't get any further away from it.  There's about 750 terabytes worth of disks in the rack and four dual processor and then four more single processor servers. And it uses about 1700 watts and is backed by a six kilovoltamp UPS. And then I have this amusing graphic from my electric company, which shows kind of the bell curve of what everybody else in the neighborhood uses the 646 other accounts in my postal code. And then you can see this kind of outlier way off to the side with the red arrow that that's my house. So I'm wondering if the people over here maybe also have a home lab. And you know, I think it's probably worth pointing out since it is Euro, BSD, come that this is very good North American pricing. You guys would be in especially in Germany, I think in much worse shape than Alan, if you were running that. Yes. And you know, the 1700 watts for everything that runs through the UPS in the rack doesn't account for the cooling. There is some cooling involved in, you know, one of the ways that this home lab is able to work at my house is that it's in a room in the basement that has a door. And when you close that door, you don't hear all the servers. And there's also an air conditioner in that room that keeps the servers from overheating that small basement bedroom. And yes, like Patrick in the chatroom says, you always pay twice for energy after you reach a certain threshold, because not only do you have to use the energy to make the computing, but then you have to deal with the heat that's left over from it. I saw someone raised their hand with a question. Please just type the question in the chatroom and we will answer it. So talking a bit about the hardware you might select for your home lab, it doesn't have to be servers. My home lab kind of started out as a pair of Lenovo X220s I bought on eBay for about $100 each. And it was just I need these separate machines so that I can test, you know, booting with an encrypted disk or working on the installer. And so just I'm just going to build this USB stick with the installer on it and I'm going to run it many times and do bad things with it and, you know, mount it, rewrite and modify the script and keep working on it. And it just I needed it to be a separate machine or, you know, for some of the bootloader stuff, having a physical machine worked a bit better than a VM because I managed to make virtual box crash itself when trying to run my bad code. But then when it came time to actually get bigger servers, I went to UnixSurplus.com and they have a lot of used Super Micro and other rack mount servers that you can get at good prices. They also list their stuff on eBay frequently with a or best offer and they will sometimes accept offers less than the list price. But if you are going that route, I would avoid any of the Super Micros of the X7 series or at this point probably even the X8 series. The older hardware uses a lot more power and it creates a lot more heat than the newer stuff. And the other thing to be aware with when you're buying rack mounted machines is that they tend to be very noisy. They have very loud fans, although I think as we talked about on another slide, you can replace the fans with quieter ones and it will reduce the noise significantly. But the other tip, kind of like I had here is that the noise generated by these servers is mostly high frequency noise, meaning it doesn't penetrate things very well. So sometimes something is as simple as a curtain or a sheet or just, you know, a thin, it's not even a wooden door. It's practically, the door is made out of cardboard basically. And when you close it, most of the noise just doesn't get through.  So Morgan asked, is there some kind of hardware compatibility list for cheap and BSD compatible parts? In general, most server grade stuff should just work. You know, I've never really run into compatibility problems with the super micro hardware that I bought. As you can see, my racks are full of it. And it's oftentimes what you run into if you're renting machines from dedicated server providers and so on as well. There are lists on as part of the previous two release notes, although they're sometimes hard to comb through. And yes, as Devil points out, most of the time the man page for the driver has the specific parts it supports, although you have to be at least somewhat familiar with this stuff to know what driver is going to end up being to know which man page to check to find out. You know, for example, the LSI disc controllers are in the MPS and MPR man pages. And, you know, you can easily find out which one supports which devices, but you'd have to know that. Most of my home lab gear is old laptops that I've worn out one way or another. And generally, any BSD I try just works. I have them stacked up in the basement and I plug monitor and keyboard into them. The network works, disk works. And that's really all that matters for what I'm doing. Yeah, oftentimes the advantage that your home lab has is that it's made up of used hardware, which means it's had lots of time to get support in all the BSDs. So, outside of a couple of, you know, specifically known parts that just never have any support on any BSD, the old stuff tends to have the highest chance of working. Right. Until you get too old. I think, I mean, check me if I'm wrong on this, but I think you'd be very unlikely with any kind of reasonable used hardware that you would try nowadays, with the possible exception of some of the HBAs and things like that. But in terms of the NICS and, you know, the other elements of the main hardware platform, I think it would be unlikely that you could even run into any trouble vis-à-vis BSD with that. Isn't that correct, Alan? I feel that way as well. You know, Wi-Fi is the only thing that you are likely to have trouble with. An older Wi-Fi tends to, while not being as fast or whatever, do actually be supported, but, you know, your home lab is usually involving some ethernet cables anyway. I could say tend to be more fixed installations or whatever. And so, yeah, I generally don't have many concerns. But again, the advantage of used hardware is you can do some Google searching and often find people who ran BSD on whatever it is you're looking at buying and even be sure of it. Like using the New York City BSD user group's D-message servers. You can so maybe even find the logs of other people having booted BSD on the hardware you're targeting. Especially, again, when you're looking at server-grade hardware, there tend to be not quite so many models and things are kept more specific than laptops because, you know, replacement parts are a long-term thing for servers versus laptops and so on. And so, I expect you to have fewer problems there. Alan, there's a question from DSL, which I think is a good one about non-X86 platforms and how that might fit into a home lab. And I know you know something about that. Yeah, there's a couple of different options. It depends what your goal is. The one we talked about, I think at my user group last or earlier this week, was the Honeycomb. Solid Run makes this ARM Dev workstation called the Honeycomb. It's an ARM64 mini ITX board with like 16 ARM A72 cores at 2 gigahertz, an ADEX PCIe slot for a disk controller or something, but it also has four onboard SATA ports so that you can power your disk that way and supports up to 64 gigs of RAM and even has four 10 gig ethernet ports. So you can do some pretty high-end stuff with it. Of course, that's, you know, a brand new board more designed for developers than necessarily sysadmins or whatever, you know, for a home lab. It runs about $1,000 US, but if you wanted, you know, basically your whole home lab as a server and not x86, you know, that's a lot of machine for that price. But you can certainly use smaller things.  Although, if it's going to be a NAS or something, you probably want something that has real SATA rather than trying to use USB or something to connect to your disks. But the Honeycomb is what was recommended to me when I was asking more along the lines of is there something modern you can get like that? There was a desktop workstation that was ARM. I'm trying to remember what it was called. It was a couple of years ago, and it doesn't really exist anymore. And it was, you know, is there some kind of replacement for that? And this is what was recommended to me. But I don't have that much experience with small non x86 stuff. I can tell you as someone that I see it on Torrent, the all of the free BSD distros, including the ARM stuff for all those architectures. And I've been noticing a real uptick in the past couple of months and the number of people getting those. I think we're going to get more of these questions moving forward. Yep. So talking about some lessons learned from having a homelab, you know, we already kind of mentioned the special approval factor or just, you know, it has to not be messy and have tripping hazards and so on. And obviously, noise can be an issue. But something that I ran into that I didn't really expect as my homelab grew was that suddenly I needed a production site for my lab as well. Because little things I had stood up and started using for things suddenly became production and other people would complain if they were down. One of the VMs that I happened to run on my dev box, which because it's being a dev box often gets rebooted, that VM is now important to other people and it has to keep working. So whoops. Or, you know, the biggest machine in my house was running a GitLab instance for some internal projects. But that means that that has to be kept up most of the time. Or then it got really bad with Plex, the video streaming app that we use to access our media archive on our TV. And it has a sharing feature and that means that my sister uses it. And which means her kids use it. And then now my parents use it. And so suddenly if my Plex is offline, I'm getting text messages from my family being like, you know, why is our TV not working anymore? What'd you do? And so suddenly it becomes a production service.  And, you know, it can be, maybe some of those things shouldn't be in the lab and they should run somewhere else. Or just, you know, being cognizant of the fact that, you know, other people are using some of these services you're running now and you have to keep that in mind when you're suddenly your lab needs scheduled maintenance. And you probably want to avoid that because it really limits the usefulness of your lab if you can't work on that project because you need to reboot the thing, but other people are using it right now. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I can't tell you how many times I've had to set the alarm for four in the morning, because that's the only time I can safely do some of the upgrades and changes to the configuration on the homelab stuff without creating a massive outcry here. So that's absolutely correct that you do have this creep from homelab into production, especially if you start running services like you're talking about. That's true. And it's very easy to think you can take advantage of systems you have in the house that are production to squeeze them into just a little bit of homelab roll. I have a free NAS box, a free NAS mini. And it would be very easy to just deploy some jails on it for this small thing that I need on for testing. And in theory, nothing would go wrong. I could just destroy the jails. I wouldn't have to reboot that critical host. But especially these days now that people are working from home, the home production environment is very vital. So you've got to keep that separation. Yeah, and this tends to be how your homelab keeps getting bigger is because now you need another machine to either put all the production stuff on or to actually be able to do your not production lab stuff on. And then even here, I noticed the other day I said, well, you know, some of my lab is a bit cooperative. I let other people use it for stuff as well. And so it's like, right, that machine is currently being used by somebody to work on this research. And I'm using that machine to run a demo of this. And I don't have a machine to do the work I want to do.  And it's like, well, you know, we're also using it for this other day. It's like, ah, I want that machine for this. And it's like, I'm going to need to like make a schedule of who uses the machine when kind of thing, a sign up sheet or something to try to manage the resources of what work should happen on what machine. And it's suddenly getting very complicated. So, you know, sometimes you can get away with, I'll just have one big machine, and we'll run lots of VMs on it. But sometimes you're actually better off with two smaller machines so that you can kind of separate the production in the lab side of things. Oh, here's a question about why not just put this all under a hypervisor or a beehive or something like that. I don't know that I have a lot of thoughts about that that are cogent anyway. So I'm going to let you two answer that, I think. Does Michael have any thoughts? Well, for me, often the answer turns out to be lazy. If I need something with a network, I find it simpler and less error prone to just swap a couple cables. In theory, all of this could be done under beehive or VMM. If you want something complicated, then you're more stuck with beehive because the net graph. But my brain still understands cables.  So for me, I run a lot of stuff on beehive in a data center machine. But I find that the small army of dedicated machines really helps for testing performance critical stuff and testing timing critical stuff. Because the big problem with virtual machines is time doesn't really exist inside a virtual machine. And so if you need to do any network emulation, which I do a lot of, you have to have physical hardware. And it's really difficult to get good results if you cannot just pull together a bunch of machines. Right. And the machines don't necessarily have to be very big. They just you need a bunch of them. No. And so my home lab last year that I was very happy to share pictures of on Twitter because of how horrific it was was for APU two boards and a Raspberry Pi, which was a head node, which acted as a NAT gateway. Because I didn't care about performance, the outside world, I just needed the physical hosts inside the network, inside the testbed to speak to each other. And so you don't need big machines. But when you need machines, virtual machines just don't work as a good substitute. Yeah. The other thing I was going to mention is if you do need to virtualize a network and you don't necessarily have a bunch of machines and some switches and some cables or whatever, Tom wrote a great article on virtualizing the network stack in FreeBSD using the VNetJails to actually be able to create a complex network inside a single machine. But like Lucas was saying, sometimes being able to actually see the cables and be sure that's plugged into that. And when I unplug it, I can see that it's unplugged and so on. It can be easier to think about how it's connected and make sure that it's not working. Is it because I did something wrong or is it not configured the way I think it's configured? Whereas you can see the cable going from that machine to that machine. You know it's either connected or it's not. Not a bunch of software that could be confusing you. But like Jen pointed out, having a hypervisor where you can snapshot things and undo things easily can be helpful. Although my stack of machines mostly run ZFS. Although a couple of the machines usually more on the lines of VMs that I do ZFS development on use UFS because it means I can then unload and reload the ZFS module without having to reboot. Meaning that I only reboot when I crash it. Which is usually when UFS makes me regret using it. So another thing that came up, a trend I noticed based on questions coming into the podcast and so on is that the pandemic kind of changed a lot of people's home networks. Suddenly at home wasn't just for media consumption or whatever. People were spending more time at home and having more people at home needing more internet. Especially when kids were attending school via video conferencing tools like this as well. It meant that now you have three or four people trying to use video conferencing at once in the house. And maybe one of them is also trying to watch Netflix or something. And you know it became we need something better than just the off the shelf router that came from our ISP or was you know that we bought at the big box store. We needed you know a BSD powered router of some kind that we could configure to say you know prioritize this traffic or you know make sure that one user isn't it's in hogging all of the internet. And so that led to some very interesting changes to people's networks and home labs. Suddenly you know maybe you had Nat Gateway or something that's put in your home lab but you didn't write everything through it. But suddenly you had to or you know the machine you were using had to get bigger just because the amount of stuff going through it went up. Yes your home production network. Another thing I think we'll spend a few minutes talking about is just you know when you are building a home lab and you're picking your network components it can be a bit daunting to decide what to do or you know find something that has the features you want to do interesting things in your home lab without breaking the bank. You know I spent a long time trying to find a switch that could do 10 gigabit between you know my NAS and my other machine to be able to do the the SSH benchmarking I did a couple years ago and so on without causing me too many problems. The one I bought originally was this net gear thing with like eight ports but it could only be configured with an adobe air app or something and all kinds of other terribleness and so I give it to Lucas when I managed to finally get something better which at the time was that the ubiquity edge switch 16 which I have the model number and stuff on the slide here for which give us 12 svp plus 10 gig ports and then four 10 gig cup reports which allowed me to network a bunch of the stuff and the reason I wanted the cup reports is the machine I'm sitting at right now is upstairs on the other end of the house from my basement data center and the cables in the wall happens to be cat six and so I can actually connect this machine to the NAS at 10 gig but it would have been very difficult to do a fiber run for that but there was copper ethernet there so I was able to use that but that switch is not loud but it's not quiet it's not the kind of thing if your homelab was everything in one room and you know I don't know if you see over here I have a stack of laptops for working stuff but if my switch had to sit here it would be too noisy and annoying to have that one you'd have to you know swap up the fan or somehow make it less noisy and you know $700 is a lot if you're mostly just doing it to learn and not doing higher end stuff and so I recommended Microtech makes a little switch that gives you four 10 gig ports and one ethernet port and it's only about $150 which you know if you just need to connect two or three machines together is is a much more attainable thing and then for the network card side of it I have bought a few too many of the Melanox connect x2's on ebay they're like usually under $25 I even got lucky and got one set of them that came with the DAC cables included in the price which made it very nice to get you know all the machines in that rack you saw pictured earlier connected to each other via the switch and see I just run Alan's cast-offs no matter how annoying the stupid app is well as long as you don't need to configure a bunch of VLANs or reconfigure the VLANs very often it's not really a problem I suppose as I said no matter how annoying the app is and a user in the chat points out that Microtech also has a small switch that's eight one gig ports with two 10 gig uplink ports which can be enough if you just want to link you know a 10 gig out of your NAS to the eight other machines in your house or to one other machine that also needs 10 gig kind of thing that is definitely an option as well yeah if you're if you're just getting into 10 gig switching and routing it's going to be very hard to even remotely approach Microtech's bank per dollar ratio so I think that is definitely a good place to look and a number of offerings for routers and switches under a hundred dollars that Microtech have that really do really do seem like you know four and five hundred dollar class equipment for your network as well so I would personally encourage everyone to really look at Microtech it's the kind of equipment that will be I think agreeable to people who are interested in something like BSD in the first place so that's a that's a real good real good place to start looking for some of this equipment yeah so Kyle's put the model numbers of two of the very nicely priced Microtech routers in the notes here as well and you see the second one there even has two and a half gig so if you already have cat five in the walls of your house one option is to upgrade the equipment to support two and a half gigs over those existing cables rather than having to rip them out and go to something like 10 gig and that router also has a 10 gig port as well yeah somebody also has mentioned the Microtech 4011 which is you know there's a series of routers I think those are the big red ones that those are those are also excellent but really if you haven't heard of it this Microtech hex is a very unassuming looking router about the size of a paperback book and for $60 its specifications are just really absolutely unbelievable and it comes with a level 4 router OS license and it is enough to run almost everything that I need run to the WAN anyway so that is one thing I would suggest people look at is that device there and this RB5009 is a new offering and as Alan pointed out it's got a number of you know very nice features like the 2.5 gig so and that is an extraordinary price as well Microtech has a promotional video I think on that if people are interested in that one thing I recommend to people more than once is to build your own packet filter firewall for your your home border it's it's an education that's hard to get any other way but after you've done that three or four times you're not going to learn anymore I also use Microtech at the home border because it's cheap I tend to buy two of them at a time and every time I change the config I keep my backup the power requirements are so trivial that and the cost is low so that if it dies I just unplug it put the other one in copy the config over and we're done so I'm unwillingly impressed yeah I agree with you completely now everybody who is in a conference like this is generally going to be you know pretty inclined to a lot of the more technical stuff but those that have not used Microtech in the past there is a there is a little bit of a ramp up there is a sort of an admission fee that you that you pay to really get it done because with Microtech it's kind of the C programmer kind of philosophy that you're really totally free to make a circular firing squad and do whatever else you want to do there are absolutely no protections against that when you're using Microtech hardware and software and the router OS that they come with so it's it's it's both appealing and dangerous for that for that reason and particularly for the price so there there is a little bit of a front load to this to the Microtech community but those of you that have not um maybe you use ubiquity or something like that you would you would find the the change to Microtech to be uh just very compelling probably in many cases when you've got to use it so especially on a per dollar basis and and some of these new offerings are exactly what a lot of us would want for our free psd home labs so yeah you know the typical Unix philosophy of don't stop you doing something stupid because that would also stop you doing something clever being paid by Microtech i'm just honest thoughts on it yep um and then for wi-fi uh you know ubiquity used to be pretty highly recommended but there's been quite a few shenanigans shenanigans lately uh like Patrick mentioned just the docs aren't great but um you know if you use their cloud management tool and suddenly there's advertisements in it now as well and you're like hmm i don't know that i really want to you know have the control panel for my you know important network here uh having ads in the control panel because it means you know does that mean it could leak information about my config or something it's just not great um and sometimes yes the new UI is just uh too candy coated for some of us um and not to mention too uh ubiquitous some of ubiquity's recent firmware updates they pushed out for some of their access points and other devices have been total bombs i mean they they they they didn't work on a majority of of people's devices so it was it really lowered the confidence in the past 18 months or so with some of the uh uh ubiquity firmware so that's that's another reason i'm a little skeptical about ubiquity in addition to all of the reasons that that you're talking about and i used to really like ubiquity but i'm off of it now yeah in general for wi-fi i look for something dumb for the access point you know it's like i either have something like uh microtik or in my case just a free bsd box running ipfw um that's going to do my routing for me so my access point is literally just a wi-fi to ethernet bridge and it doesn't need to do anything beyond that okay i i have to ask why are you running ipfw because i like it because i'm trying to force myself to improve the way you configure ipfw you you understand that uh they make hair shirts for people like you uh it's more along the lines of developers tend to fix the things that annoy them so by forcing myself to be annoyed by the way you configure NAT in ipfw maybe it'll get fixed i you know i've used pf as well i'm fine with it i have some uh pf config file that that NAT's my network and it works fine but uh i've always been an ipfw guy yeah me too all of my uh digital ocean droplets uh on free bsd they all use ipfw sorry michael well uh and that's not horrible michael it's it's not horrible just having to configure it all in one line instead of being able to have a config file or whatever yeah it could be better but it's not awful michael maybe you just not looked at it for a long time oh i i used it quite a bit in the 90s and the early 90s and i was thrilled to put it aside i mean it was completely rewritten since the the 90s michael i understand there was a new uh update for multi processors and such well it's like literally it's like ipfw two or three and there's like rewritten from scratch by luigi okay i'll take another look for me i think the the feature that really sold me on ipfw very early on was being able to have a count rule for each user on the system and use that to feed into our billing system and be like this user is abusing the bandwidth on the shell server uh and things like that or even to the point where i um wrote a uh a denial of service mitigation system that looked at incoming uh bandwidth on each of the 200 ip addresses bound to the machine uh and when it saw one of them having you know its average over a couple of minutes going too high meaning somebody was attacking it uh it would unbind the ip and do the right stuff upstream to cause traffic to that ip to get blocked uh further up the network so that the traffic would stop hitting my server and hopefully mean the machine stayed up uh for everybody except for the person who was being denial serviced off of irc so i don't know if you're watching the chat michael but there is a request for an ipfw book from you that's a lovely request um how does it feel to want well the other thing i was going to mention is that the other big feature that draws people to ipfw was dummy net but christoph recently committed support uh to split some of the dummy net stuff out into its own tool uh with an eye towards hooking it up to pf as well which sounds very interesting dummy net is fantastic i used it to move a uh a conference room in detroit to germany which saved a lot of trouble uh i used it during the experimentation with the ssh performance to simulate uh you know different latencies and making the thing further and further away so that uh you could see how that impacted the uh socket buffer and so on and got some interesting uh results there so maybe maybe you can just keep the book about dummy net and not make it specifically about it i don't know ipfw deserves some love and yes uh as trooper in the chat points out i was guilty of using w ipfw for a while uh when i needed dummy net for some video streaming stuff uh i got the version for windows somebody ported luigi's work to windows uh and i was able to use dummy net on windows to simulate slower connections or bad wi-fi for video streaming of course then my router became previous d and i was able to do it from there instead of having to do it on the machine that was i was fiddling with but and of course i've used dummy net to simulate a lot of satellite networks but i'm going to talk about that tomorrow yes i see uh daniel was mentioning similar things uh so yeah for wi-fi uh tp link uh i i like um on the two and a half admins podcast we just did a talked about jim's review of their point to point stuff and it was interesting uh and i remember a couple years ago when we did um a group buy uh for bsd can and bought 20 of these tp link routers little MIPS things that can actually run for bsd on them uh and mine i have one sitting in a box somewhere in my lab uh that has like previous d 11 or something on it because that's what current was when we did it it's been a while uh and then i guess the other bit of advice i was going to give was um fiberstore.com for optics for the 10 gig stuff but you're probably better off buying DACs which are basically copper cables with the optic connector on either end uh because they're less fragile and they're cheaper than buying two optics and the bit of plastic tubing to go between them uh and they're more durable you know you can you don't have to worry about bend radius quite as much uh with the DAC versus the uh the cables or uh fiber cables uh and then i guess just a quick word on disks uh don't buy smr disks uh shingle magnetic recording does not work for zfs or raid or anything other than an external usb hard drive for backups um these days i mostly prefer seagate uh you know i'd love to tachy but they're owned by weston digital now uh oh yeah and then ssds are great uh you probably want to avoid the really low endurance ones or the the qlc ones for uh heavy workloads because they will wear out and go read only on you and uh that can be pretty annoying and then i think as always if a disk is starting to act dodgy it's just not working properly uh i give up on it i i really don't like this idea of keeping a bunch of suspect disks around and using them you know you could use them for scratch and just playing with but you know if you care at all about the data put it on disks that you have some level of trust in like yeah i you never trust a disk uh the you know disks are plotting against you and zfs can sound the alarm for you but you know if a disk has has shown itself to be uh a bad actor you it's it's better to give it away and make it somebody else's problem i have a box full of bad disks specifically so that i can write about bad disks however throw those bastards out yeah uh it is useful to sometimes to actually have bad disks to see how they act and and how it causes problems but that's for the developers to have to deal with you know it is your home lab is your data uh hopefully you care about it enough uh but remember that raid is not a backup you have to have back real backups and you have to test that you can restore them uh because you know a backup is not what you're after a restore is what you need to work uh and so you need to test the restore any final comments i think for at the end of our time now we have a bit time for any more questions that come up uh to daniel's comment about fiberstore.com they can configure your DAC to pretend it's from one of like 30 different vendors uh and they also when you order them you can tell them what switch or device you're plugging it into and they have samples of a lot of those and will actually test it for you and make sure that the way they've uh you know programmed the DAC to pretend to be a sysco actually tricks your particular sysco uh someone asked about my mathematics background yeah my phd is in complex dynamics and uh fractals and stuff like that so like real math yeah yeah i think that's it thank you for hauling us together alan yes thank you for coming and thanks for time for filling in at the last minute thanks alan thanks


from the Regency Center in San Francisco, it's theCUBE.  I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of Serverless Conf 2018 here in San Francisco at the Regency ballroom. Happy to welcome back to the program, Simon Wardley, who's a researcher with the leading edge forum. Spoke with you last year at Serverless in New York City and thanks for joining me again here in San Francisco. Absolutely pleasure, nice to be back. All right, so many things have changed, Simon. We've been talking off camera and we're not going into it. Your wardrobe stays consistent. Always. Technology tends to change pretty fast these days. You do a lot of predictions. And I'm curious, starting out, when you think about timelines and predictions, how do you deal with the pace of change and put things out? My CTO is like, well, if I put a 10-year forecast down there, I can be off on some of the twist and curve and kind of hit closer to the mark. Give us some of your thoughts as to how you look out and think about things when we know it's changing really fast. Okay, okay. So there are a number of different comments in there. One about how do you do predictions. One about the speed of change, okay? So I'm going to start off with the fact that one of the things I use is maps. And maps are based on a couple of characteristics. Any map needs an anchor. In the case of the maps of business that I do, that's the user and often the business and often regulators. You also need movement and position in a map. So positions relative to the anchor, so a geographical map, if you've got a compass, then this piece is north, south, east or west of that. In the sort of maps that I do, it's the value chain which gives you position relative to the user or the business at the top. Movement, in a geographical map, you have consistency of movement. So if I go, I don't know, north from England, I end up in Scotland. So you have the same thing with a business map, but that evolution is described, sorry, that movement is described by evolution. So what you have is the genesis of novel and new activities, custom-built examples, products and rental services, commodity and utility services. And that's driven by supply and demand competition. Now, that evolution access in order to create it, you have to abolish time. So one of the problems with when you look at a map is there is no easy use of time in a map. You can have a general direction and then you have to use weak signals to get an idea of when something is likely to happen. So for example, if I take nuts and bolts, they took 2,000 years to go from genesis to commodity, electricity was 1,400 years, from genesis to commodity, utility, computing, 80 years. So there are weak signals that you can use to identify roughly when something is going to transition, particularly between stages like product or commodity. Product, product substitution, very unpredictable. Genesis of novel acts, you can usually say when stuff might appear, but not what is going to appear because in that space is actually what we call the uncharted, the unexplored space. So one of the problems is time is an extremely difficult thing to predict without the use of weak signals. The second thing is the pace of change because what happens is components evolve and when we see them ship and product to say more commodity and utility, we often see a big change in the value chains that that impacts. And you can get multiple components evolving and they overlap and so we feel that the pace is very, very fast despite the fact that it actually takes about 30 to 50 years to go from genesis to the point of industrialization becoming a commodity and then about 10 to 15 years for that to actually happen. So if you look at something like machine learning, we can start with it back in the 70s, 3D printing, 1968, the Batille Institute, all of this stuff, virtual reality back in the 1960s as well. So the problem is one time's very difficult. The only way to effectively manage time is to use weak signals, it's probability. The second thing is the pace of change is confusing because what we're seeing is overlapping points of industrialization, like for example, cloud and what's going on here with serverless. That doesn't actually imply that things are rapidly changing because you've actually got this overlapping pattern. Does that make sense? Perfect. It does actually because you think we have in hindsight we always think that things happen a lot faster but it's funny. Infrastructure space, when I talked to some of the people that I came up with, they were like, oh, yeah, come on, we did this in the mainframe decades ago and now we're trying again, we're trying again, things like, yeah. Containers, for example. We've got LXC before that and we had Solaris zones before that. So it's all sort of interconnected together. Okay, so tie this into serverless for us. You were a rather big proponent of platform as a service. Is this a continuation of us trying to get that abstraction of the application and was it something else? What is the map we are on and help us connect things like paths and serverless and that space? So back in 2005, the company I ran, we mapped out our value chain and we realized that compute was shifting from product to utility. Now that had a number of impacts. That shift from product to utility tends to be exponential. People have inertia due to past practice. You see a co-evolution of practice around the changing characteristics. It's normally to do with something called MTTR, Mean Time to Recovery changes. And so you see rapid efficiency, rapid speed of development and being able to build new sources of new areas of value. So that happened with infrastructure and we also knew it was going to happen with platform. Which is why we built something called Zimki which was a code execution environment, totally stateless, event driven, utility billing and billing to the function. And that was basically a shift of the code execution platform from a product, lamp.net stack to a much more utility form. Now we were way too early, way too early because the educational barriers to get people into this idea of building with functions, functional program, much more declarative environment was really different.  And now of course now we're in 2014, Lambda represents that shift. And the timing's much, much better. Now the impact of the shift is not only efficiency and speed of development of new things and being able to explore new sources of value but also a change of practice. And then the past change of practice created DevOps. This is likely to create a new type of practice. But of course we've also got inertia to change because of pre-existing systems and governance and ways of working, sunk capital, physical capital, social capital. So it's all perfectly normal. So in terms of being able to predict and far predict these types of future, well for me actually Lambda's my past because that's where we were, it's just the timing was wrong. And so when it came out, it was like for me, it was like, this is really powerful stuff and the timing is much. And we're seeing it here. It's now really starting to grow. All right, you've poked a little bit at some of the container discussions going on in the industry. I look at the ecosystem here and of course AWS is the big player but there's lots of other serverless out there. There's discussion of multi-cloud and how does things like Kubernetes and there was this new term, Knative or Knative project that was just announced and we're all, don't expect that you've dug into it too deeply, but if you look at kind of containers and Kubernetes and serverless to these combined intersects, fights, how do you see this playing out? So when I look at the map, you've got the code execution layer, the framework which has now become more of a utility and that's what we call platform. So the problem is people built application containers and therefore described their environments as application container platforms and the platform term became really messing, basically meant everything. But if we break it down into code execution, this is what we call frameworks, this is becoming utility, this is where things like Lambda is. Underneath that are all these components like operating systems and containers and container management, Kubernetes type systems. So if you now look at the value chain, the focus is on building applications and those applications need functions and then lower down the stack or all these other components and that will tend to become less visible over time. It's a bit like your toaster.  Do you care? Have you ever noticed? Have you ever broken one open and had a look? Only if something's not working right. Only if something, maybe. Well, a lot of people these days wouldn't even go that far. They're just going by themselves a new toaster. The point is what happens is as layers industrialize, the lower order systems become much less visible. So containers, I'm a big fan of containers. I know Solomon and the stuff in Docker and I take the view that they are an important plus invisible subsystem and the same with container management and things like containers. The focus has got to be on the code execution. Now, when you talk about Knative, I've got to say I was really excited with Google Next last week with their announcements like functions going GA. I thought that was really good. We've been hoping that it would have happened last year. Yeah, exactly. I wanted this before, but I'm really pleased they've got functions coming out GA. There was some really interesting stuff around Istio and there was the GRPC stuff, which is sort of, I think, a hidden gem in terms of the Knative stuff. Really interesting stuff there in terms of demos. Not something I've played with. I'm sort of waiting for them to come out with Knative as a service rather than having to build your own. I think there was a lot of good and interesting stuff. The only criticism I would have was the emphasis wasn't so much on basically serverless code execution building. There was too much focus on the lower end systems, but the announcements were good. Have I played with Knative? No, I've just gone along and seen it. So Simon, last question I have for you is we spoke a year ago to today. What are you excited about that's matured? What are you still looking for in this space to really make the vision that you've been seeing for a while become reality and allow serverless to dominate? So when you get a shift from, say, product to utility, you get this co-evolution of practice. This practice is always novel and new and it starts to emerge and gets better over time. The area that I think we're going to see that practice is the combining of finance and development. And so when you're running your application and your application consists of many different functions, it's being able to look at the capital flow through your application because that gives you hints on things like what should I refactor? Refactoring's never really had financial value. By exposing the cost per function and looking at capital flow, it suddenly does. So what I'm really interested in is the sort of new management practices, the new tooling around observing capital flow, monitoring, managing capital flow, refactoring around that space and building new business models. And so there's a couple of companies here with a couple of interesting tools. It's not quite there yet, but it's emerging. Simon Wordly, really appreciate you helping us to map out the space a little bit, understand where things have been going. Absolutely pleasure. And thank you so much for watching as always. The Cube.


Tom here from Lawrence Systems, and we're going to talk about using a FreeNAS Mini as a ice guzzie on a Windows machine for Steam. This is actually a follow-up video to that video I did a little while back. I'll link to that video as well. If you want to learn more about me and my company, head over to LawrenceSystems.com. And if you'd like to hire short projectors, a hires button at the top. If you'd like to reach out to us other ways and have a chat, absolutely. There is the forums for that as well if you just want to talk about video suggestions and such. Also if you want to support the channel in other ways besides pressing the like button which does help a lot or subscribing, there are some affiliate links down below that give you discounts and deals on products and services you talk about on this channel. So FreeNAS Mini E. This is in no way a high-powered machine which was actually part of the point of using it. It's nice, it's quiet, it sits in my gaming room and my son's Steam library is on here. I did this video a little while ago and I wanted to follow up to say how is it going? So currently it's running the latest release of FreeNAS 11.3. This is an Intel Atom C3338 at 1.5 gigahertz with only eight gigs of RAM. So not a whole lot. There are four hard drives in this and they are Western Digital Purples. Not because I think they're the best drives or maybe the Reds might have been a little better. I happen to have these from another project that didn't get used. So I had four 10 TB purple drives, the 5400 RPM ones. So these are not fast drives either. And that's also part of the point of this. I mean there's plenty of videos that can be done on super high-end hardware and build NVME arrays, but that's not affordable for everyone. This for the most part, building something with a low-powered motherboard and some reasonably priced drives, that is something a little bit more attainable and I want to see how it performed. It's actually performed quite well. So the system, my son has about TB so far moved over there and we're going to talk about first the performance. Now there is a boot drive in this system of NVME and there's a Western Digital Black, which was the drive that was getting full because, well, games are big. And I don't play a lot of games. My son does and it was constantly running out of space so we're doing the shuffle of what game do we have to get rid of. So by setting up a iSCSI and 10 TB of iSCSI spread across the drives, I was able to provide a very nice platform by which to install a lot of games. And I wanted to show the performance. And the performance because this is only connected at one gig is dramatically going to be affected by that. This was the beginning point. Later, my plans are to upgrade this to maybe a faster system with a caching drive and a 10 gig setup. But for now, this is all being performed at one gig and it's not bad. So here is what the 64 megabyte test performance looks like on the Western Digital Black right here, which is the D drive and we meet S for SCSI, the drive that controls the system on FreeNAS. So you can see not too bad. We get faster read performance here, faster sequential performance here. So 193 IOPS versus the 104. So yeah, we are faster with the onboard drive until you get down to the random 4k, then it slows down substantially. You just don't get that same lower performance you get. Now you do, of course, on the NVME drive, which is the boot drive, the C drive here, but the Western Digital Black, it doesn't quite do as good. You know, of course, it's spinning rust. Everyone can point out that you'd be better off with an SSD.  And 10 terabyte of SSD is going to cost you quite a bit of money. But when we get down here, this is where things really fall flat when you go to the one gig performance. So now we start looking at the sequential the sequential in here, we're actually even better over on here. And you can see, especially when you talk about random 4k with ZFS and the caching, you get quite a significant boost comparatively, not still as fast as an NVME, but compared to a spinning drive and having 10 terabytes of storage, I'm pretty impressed with how it performs. And I want to dig a little further into that to talk about like, so to speak, the real world performance of this. And if you haven't seen this tool, it's called wonder stat. And I'm remote it in, I'm here at my office, remote it into my computer home, which is why it's taking a second to redraw the screen. But what you can see is when you start looking at different games that are installed, different games have different ways to lay out the asset files. And when you start looking at like arc, which has a absolute crazy number of files, there's a 115,000 files files in here, around 11,974 folders, that's where those tiny little reads and writes kind of go crazy. Arc loads, I didn't do a timer with a stopwatch, but arc loads substantially faster and plays better, running off of iSCSI than it did on the Western digital black. So that's where it is, I started really thinking about like, what's the differences on there? Now DOOM seems to distribute things a little differently. They only have 542 files for the 668 gigs they are. But of course, when you look at some arc, it's 187 gigs. And it's the way they do the asset files. So it seems like games, and it's been my experience so far, that some of these games, like DOOM doesn't seem to be any different arc substantially faster. And I think the reason why is some of these games, my son did say Gary's Mod got a lot faster too. But the commonality is there are 47,833 items in Gary's Mod, even though it's only 34 gig. So that comes down to tons of tiny little reads and writes and lots of seeking. This is something ZFS handles well, this is something that's going to get cached into the RAM quite well. And one of the things I had showed right here at the beginning, was how much right now is in ZFS cash, we got 3.8 gigs, that's in cash, ZFS will cash where the location files are a lot of that read information. Now I was thinking about I may add an SSD to this as well, which will probably increase performance even more. So that's going to be upcoming. But my long term test with this kind of basic, really relatively low budget system, and low powered system has been really impressive. And some of these games borderlands as well. There's 6000 assets in there. It's impressive how much better some of those run, I don't see like I said, much of a substantial difference with doom, it seemed to load the same. But I've also had just generally no problems since been running this. It's been several months ago that I installed all this. And it hasn't any problems. So I like to do these follow up videos to say, is that system he built to working or did you just trash it because it fell apart? No, I didn't trash it, it didn't fall apart. It still works well. The only disappointing thing is my son has so far only added 873 gigs of games to it. He didn't move everything over. And some of the EA games, and some of the other game owners that aren't steam, don't have as easy of a method to transfer things between there. Some of the games actually require a reinstall. And you don't have to say re download it, you got to move this move that there's a couple processes. And one thing I'll say for steam is they've eliminated all those headaches and you can just grab a library and move it somewhere else. But gamers are going Tom, we know that well, I'm not a gamer. This was interesting to me that you could just move the install filter through through steam and with relative ease to move to another drive. So overall, I'm still happy with this setup, I will be expanding on it. I might even try setting up as I we built another gaming system, and I may put two systems on one free NAS, but I think it may exceed the ability of this particular free NAS to do that. So I may have to upgrade that as well to make that work with some efficiency. But from a one to one standpoint with this low power machine, I'm overall really happy with it and press that it works. And this is just a follow up video on that. And if you haven't heard of winder stat, it's a great utility. It kind of helps you visualize what I'm saying here about games that have like crazy amounts of files, like ARC and some of those, it's just when you look at ARC, I can't believe how many files they chose to build out the assets like that versus some of the other games. And some are more uniform than others. All right, and thanks. And thank you for making it to the end of the video. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you'd like to see more content from the channel, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon. If you'd like YouTube to notify you when new videos come out. If you'd like to hire us, head over to LawrenceSystems.com, fill out our contact page, and let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on. If you want to carry on the discussion, head over to Forums.LauranceSystems.com where we can carry on the discussion about this video, other videos, or other tech topics in general. Even suggestions for new videos, they're accepted right there on our forums, which are free. Also, if you'd like to help the channel in other ways, head over to our affiliate page. We have a lot of great tech offers for you. And once again, thanks for watching and see you next time.


Hello, Ron. Get ready to make 22 choices. Analog or digital? Analog. So how shall Ron Burnett's time as president of M.W. Carr be remembered? A bust of Ron carved out of ice, melting away to expose a meaningful message about the campus move. Once the ice melts, there's something that Ron will have on his desk the rest of his life. Out of all of the strengths and skills that exist for us as human beings, the most profound strengths and skills are those of generosity, kindness, inclusion, and love. He's someone who is both endlessly curious and driven to learn. You think about the incredible effort that Ron has put in in feeding the forces of inclusion and starving the forces of exclusion. How many people have been able to get engaged in their life's work, in their art, in their creativity because of Ron's work? Ron, you accomplished something that the world envies. Ron, you have been tenacious to get here. Ron is one of those greats that will never know the full extent of his efforts, his tireless 20-hour days. This campus will be here long after all of us in this room are gone. He uses his great imagination. This whole campus grew from visions in his mind, and then he used his initiative to build a campus truly one of a kind. Celebrate the culture of Emily Carr and invite and make accessible the exhibitions, the programs, the events, the energy, and the innovation that happens daily on campus. That building, it was lost during the Ikea uprisings of 2040 in which you proved yourself to be a valiant warrior in all of the parking lot scrimmishes. Say something wise, share some information, suppose the walls have ears. In response to Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Message, he wrote, the discourse is the message. Ron was asking students to think about the complexity of the creation of discourse that both involves the medium and the message. Thank you so much, Ron. You have emerged as a beloved leader and a dear friend. May you continue to thrive, bathed in the knowledge that you have brought light to a difficult world. Ron, you can let down your hair now. We give you permission to play. Ron, Ron, Ron.  Congratulations, Ron. You chose fairly. Fair. Well. Okay, Ron. This is goodbye. Or is it hello? End of message.


So, when I was preparing for this video, I decided to Google what other people think is attractive for women that turn on men. And I thought it was very fascinating. Some of the comments or some of the blogs that I read were all centered around hyper-focusing on looks as a way to be highly attractive to men.  And I thought it's so sad that many of the articles, and they were actually written by women, which fascinated me, were all hyper-focused on looks. And not what I think is the more important aspects of a relationship, and that's hard. And that's partly, I think, due to the fact, I think one of the real challenges today when it comes to dating, mating, or relating is a lack of commitment, a lack of commitment. And I'll explain that in a moment. Why I'm bringing this up, because when you think about these articles that were hyper-focused on the physical attributes of a relationship, it seems to me that there's this hyper-focus on pleasure and more so individual pleasure. I'm going to repeat that. There's a hyper-focus on pleasure and, more importantly, individual pleasure. So, and I said a moment, what seems like is missing today is a lack of commitment. And I don't mean that two people meet for the first time, and they should be, you know, tied at the hip, like they're committed to one another. I'm really talking about a commitment to exploring a relationship from a place of what you can give instead of what you can get, or worse, what you can give instead of what is missing inside of you that needs to be gotten.  In other words, there's something missing inside me, and I need you to fill that so I can feel good about myself. In fact, sadly here in the United States, we are suckling on the nipple of the need for constant validation, and I need you to love me so I can feel good about myself. It's all individualized in the need, and this is true for men and women alike. Look, ladies, I know I throw men under the bus frequently, and I also throw you under the bus as well. And what I mean by throwing you under the bus is to call attention that women are just as bad at this process as men. And that's because, sadly, the number one emotional health issue facing most everybody deep down, whether it seems like it's there or not, is I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, and I'm not likeable. And nothing triggers this wound like the dating process, especially today when we're meeting total strangers for the most part, and that need to feel some sense of connection from somebody else is because when somebody is a stranger, we feel tremendous doubt. And the minute you begin to like someone, and yet they're a total stranger, we need this almost this constant need for validation, these constant text messaging to know that this person is legitimate. And that puts so much pressure on forming a relationship that it can either come across as too overbearing, it can come across as desperate, it can come across as needy, and this is true of men and women alike. And so it's no wonder that dating marketplace is a clusterfuck right now because of the fact that we're meeting total strangers and there's a real lack of commitment to wanting to explore a genuine relationship with people because there's more.  What's needing to complete is that there's this peace with inside so many of us, especially those of us in midlife who have gone through a divorce and roughly about 75% of singles who are in midlife over 45 years old are divorced and there's this unraveling of the tapestry of your old life. And then there's this there's need to connect with someone else. So so many people are desperate internally for a sense of connection with another human being. And along with connection, you want a little bit of companionship to do something with somebody. And in addition to that, there's this desire to be physically intimate. So what I'm really expressing here, there's this dysfunctionality within our our peer group, if you will, from our mating peer group of the need for companionship connection and sex and what yet is missing is this piece of commitment. And what I mean by commitment, I'm also meaning trust is do I can I count on this person to care about my feelings as much as my own? Are we committed to looking out for the other person? Think about that for a moment. Are we committed to looking out for the other person that we don't actually hurt somebody but are by our own dysfunctionality? Look, many of you know I'm your big brother. If I could be there on a first date, I'd have the shotgun out pointed that the guys face and I'd say, what's your intentions with my little sister? Why would I do that? It's because I know that someone else's nativity, ambivalence, arrogance could affect another person's emotional well-being. And most importantly that am not ambivalence, but that that I said, nativity, but that that oblivion to that your actions actually could have consequences on another. Why do you think we are suffering a huge mental health crisis these days?  I think we have something like 50, 60 million singles in the United States. That number might even be higher. That might be even a hundred million for all I know and someone Google that real quick. Think about that. And one of the importance of being mated to someone really mated from a healthy place is it provides stability in our lives. And so when we're we're searching to fill that gap within us, it oftentimes takes us away from the more important things we need to do in our lives, which is actually heal that wound of not being good enough, not being lovable and not be likable. This is why folks, I wrote my book, what the heck is self love anyway, a journey of personal development, self health and spiritual work. By the way, there's a link below to get a copy of my book. Well, I'm sure it look at my book is very remedial. Let me be clear. It's a simple guide to beginning to love on yourself. It is not an in depth guide. This is why I continually recommend things like the Hoffman process insight seminars. Just to name a few. Because if we can't heal that wound inside of us, at least begin the process of healing that wound inside of us, how can we ever be truly attractive, wildly attractive to another human being? So many women, by the way, right now you see a link to a free call with me. That's a free discovery call to see if working with a coach is right for you. My job is to help you do a better job of vetting men. Okay, that's just one piece of the puzzle. What's the more important piece is actually being in an empowered place in your life. Because sadly women give their power away to men. You do this habitually. It's one of your gifts and yet it's one of your weaknesses in life is that you're there's this.  What? How is that being empowered?  I am a big proponent of every human being.  What matters most is stepping into your empowerment. And as I said a moment ago, ladies, you have this a beautiful capacity to love and at the same time you leave the relationship you leave your relationship destiny up to men and I'm here to say you're giving the job to the wrong person. You are in charge of your relationship destiny. That's why I continually recommend this book and I don't love every aspect of this book. There's some game playing in here, but I love the empowerment aspect of why men love bitches and bitches stands for babe in total control of herself. Yes. Ladies. It's incumbent upon you to take charge of your destiny. Look, there are a lot of good men out there. There really are. Sadly, you reject a lot of good men because they lack edge. Let me repeat that. They're nice guys, but they lack the edge that you desire and that edge is oftentimes the the biggest problem of all is because you're addicted to the to the dysfunctional human being.  This is why folks, I continually recommend reading two books over. I recommend. Why do I do this? Why do I recommend books? Books are just an entry way, but I recommend these two books get attached and getting the love you want by a mere Levine and Rachel Heller. Why do I recommend these books is because when you understand your patterning of choosing the wrong guy over and over and over and over and over and over again. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same things over again and expecting different results. So look it. There are good men out there.  There really are. I'm sorry. That's just the knit. We've got to accept that there is a higher percentage of chance that you're going to meet the wrong guy than the right guy. This is why first you have to become the right person within yourself or at least begin the process of that happening. And then do a better job of vetting these guys because if you want that guy who's highly attractive wildly attractive to you. You've got to become that person. So in a moment, I'm going to share what I think in my notes bump bump bump what I think are for feminine habits men find wildly attractive and I'm talking about men who are not overly dysfunctional. I'm talking about the guys that have their act together that do some introspective work. Maybe they're not perfect guys, but they're not complete boneheads and let me just get let me find my chart. Where is it? Okay, listen, you know my chart. It's not a fact. It's merely an opinion roughly 20% of the population men and women alike have clinical issues. This is emotional maturity and relationship skills. And while I say 20% are healthy, most everybody is dysfunctional myself included. I've got dysfunctionality, but I'm moving closer to that this end. So there are guys in this category. And when you can step into your empowerment, you have a greater chance of meeting these types of guys versus those dysfunctional clinical type of guys. And what I mean by clinical is, you know, the type of listen, not everybody who has clinical issues is incapable of being in a relationship. I think there are plenty of people that have clinical issues that are seeking care and they have a capacity to be in a relationship, but that's because they're actually doing some work. And yet many of you are delusional to your own need for work.  It takes more than that. All right. So I'm going to tell you what I think is highly attractive. This is the world according to Jonathan. This is what I think my girlfriend represents. There's a picture of us on our first date. That was in Chicago. I'm happy to say I'm in a juicy, delicious, healthy, happy relationship. I'm excited because listen, I could have come up with 20 different things. I come to come up with three things. These were the three things. These were the four things that actually is what some of some of the many things I appreciate about my partner. And I'll even throw in, there's one superficial thing in here, but what number one, what I think is highly attractive is a woman who is what I call chill and agreeable. Chill and agreeable.  I mean, let me do that again.  There was a lack of receptivity with these women and what I noticed about my partner is she's just chill. She's go with the flow. She's not, there's not this power struggle and not because I'm leading the process per se.  Now, some of you probably going, well, Jonathan, I'm chill and agreeable, but are you really? Do you make it easy to date someone? I got to tell you when we planned our date, she was like, no problem. Sounds good. Easy. It wasn't. Well, I've got this thing going on. I've got this thing going. I've got a yoga class and I've got to drop off my car to get the air fluid, excuse me, the windshield wiper fluid refilled. I just made that up by the way, but I meant like it's like easy to meet. So many of you make it so hard to meet. That is no wonder your budding heads with guys. So make it easy, chill, be agreeable without being a doormat. Let me repeat that without being a doormat because a babe in total control of herself never operates from doormat energy. So chill and agreeable. Number two, she has her act together. Listen, I recognize many of us have been hit with hard times. Certainly COVID didn't make life simple and there could be some things going on in one's life. There could be child rearing things going on. There could be family members and such just to name a few your professional capacity, whatever it is, but ultimately you have to ask yourself, do your problems have a grasp on you or do you have a grasp on your problems? Because the reality is we all have stuff in our lives, but does that stuff take control of your life? I know many of you. By the way, before I go any further, let me repeat this. Men are no picnic either. Okay, I will throw men under the bus just as much as women. Okay, so this is not just a criticism of women. This is a recognition of what I've observed out there and if you want to improve your chances with men. Not the way I'm drinking a green drink. Interesting. So having your act together, that is wildly attractive to a guy that's not looking. Okay, some men are looking for women who are projects and some men are enablers. That's not the guy I'm talking about. I'm talking about the guy that also has his act together. What's wildly attractive to him is a woman who has his act together. Okay. I think that kind of speaks for itself. Number three, you know what these days sense of humor seems to be so there. It's repressed and suppressed these days. You know, I think couples on their first date should go to a comedy club just to see how humor comes out because humor represents play and what I'm really saying with humor. I'm really talking about that playful side of you that looks at life.   You laugh at the absurdity of the chaos that's going on instead of being repressed in the or depressed and repressed by the chaos in the world. You look at the chaos in the world and you laugh because isn't it absolutely insane? You know, I went to go pick up. Okay. Let me give you an example of insanity. I went to go pick up a prescription of medicine yesterday and the pharmacy wanted seven hundred dollars. Now I was shocked because the previous price I paid the few months before was a hundred dollars for this medicine and I and she goes, you got to call your insurance company. I'm like, okay. I know I'm going off on a tangent. Let me say this one. So I finally get the insurance company. They transferred me back to a pharmacy and you know what the pharmacist said? Have you ever thought about using a good RX card? So I'm like, okay. So I googled good RX and I found the same medicine for twenty three dollars.  And as angry as I am, I laugh at the absurdity. So coming back to what's highly and wildly attractive is humor, play and understanding the absurdity of the world and even the dating process is absolutely absurd. I don't want you to compromise yourself in this laughter, but the same time having a sense of humor to it all actually affords you an opportunity to be incredibly attractive to a person. And number four, some of you might disagree with this, but I twisted this a little bit and I think what's highly attractive in a woman is a woman who loves sex and has standards.  Do you know what? It's so easy for men to get sex from women without any level of commitment. And remember, I said earlier what's missing in the dating marketplace today is a level of commitment by having a standard by loving sex and having a standard, I think is highly attractive to that emotionally mature grown up man that you all seek to desire.  Even if the way you I'm sorry, this is going to sound like a judgment, but I look at dating profiles where women are absolutely flaunting their asset of their physicality and then they wonder why men only want sex with them. Set a standard for yourself and be that individual that radiates that internal desire for sex, but without exploiting it in such a way or setting your standard too low that you'll have sex with men whom you barely know. Look at I might sound like a Puritan, but I said before I'm your big brother, I would rather you choose better men and take a little time to get to know a guy.  Read the book eight dates by doctors. Julie John doctors. John and Julie Gottman, John Gottman and Julie Gottman. Chapter one is about commitment and trust. Read that together as you explore getting to know one another and I only recommend those for the women who are dating men who are oblivious to the mechanics to a healthy happy relationship. I happen to study this stuff and there are other men that study this too. I will tell you I have women who write me continually say, Jonathan, I'm reading the book with the guy and it's making such a difference because it's allowing us to connect at a more heart centered level. So that's my invitation for you all is to do that. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know. All right. I think that covers the four feminine habits that men find wildly attractive. I think we're going to jump into the Q&A portion of our live stream tonight. So if you have a question for me, write the word question and post the question there after or purchase a super sticker super chat. There's a little dollar sign in the chat box or if you're listening to the replay, there's a super thanks all the monies from the super sticker super chat goes to a scholarship fund in the name of my son Connor Asley. That's a picture of Salty right there. He's my son who passed away a few years ago in his honor. I donate monies to like insight seminars in the Hoffman process. So if you have a question for me, write the word question and post the question there after. All right. I think it's time to jump in. Do you have a question for me? Post that question down below. Let's go through the board and see what we've got so far. Rula says, what are your current? What are your current 20 22 thoughts on long distance relationships? Well, that's an interesting one because folks, you know, I met a woman. It's a long distance relationship. Actually, I don't really consider it a long distance relationship and let me explain why before we agreed to exploring this relationship after we first met. I was completely convinced that she was open to moving to Los Angeles from Chicago. She grew up here in Los Angeles. She has family here in Los Angeles. She has many friends. In fact, a good friend of hers lived literally 500 yards away from me. So I was completely convinced first that she would agree to move here. Otherwise, I wouldn't have explored the relationship. Why? Because then it was just a matter of time and we made a point to in a in literally in a three month period of time, we actually physically spent 40 days together out of 90 days. Let me repeat that 40 days together out of 90 days. That's a lot of time. She came to visit me for two weeks of the time and I went to go visit her. In fact, I'm heading off to Chicago next week. So, okay, so now coming back to long distance relationships. I would not agree to explore any long distance relationship unless there is a plan to take that distance and shorten the gap together. I wouldn't invest in time. Meeting someone for the first time, you can do that, but be careful for first time meetings because a lot of times they're sex oriented and then you never see the person again. And remember, I said about the standard around sex, so I would be highly suspect. So again, that's my opinion on long distance relationship. Only agree to explore it if there's an agreement to shorten the gap of the distance. All right. That's my two cents. Anyway, thank you so much for the question. All right. Cecilia question. I'm a giver. How do I get my daily love letter fix and gift giving as an anxious attachment style? Well, a giver doesn't work from the opera up. Okay. A giver doesn't operate from a give to get you chose the word. How do I get my daily love letter fix? How about how about how is your just daily love lever giving love letter giving? If you operate from a give to get you're already setting yourself up for failure. Just give love. If you're misaligned from each other, that's a different story. If your love languages are different, then maybe purchase the book. The five love languages, the five love languages by Gary Chapman. All the books I recommend are in the description below. But the other thing I would invite you to do is have a conversation with your partner and say this, what can we can we ask each other the following same question? What needs do you have in this relationship? That I'm not meeting for you. What needs do you have in this relationship? That I'm not meeting for you. I'll repeat that. What needs do you have in this relationship that I'm not or let me reframe the word needs. What desires do you have in this relationship that I'm not meeting for you? You could simply say I would really something. I really would want not need but want. Is an occasional love letter from you or can it be a simple text message? It could be a kiss emoji something that's sweet and loving that would make I would feel really good if you could do that. What could I do to make you feel more desired in this relationship? So you do it mutually for each other. I think that's a better approach than operating I give to get because we are a lot of ladies you are suckling on the nipple is if you give give give give you're waiting to get get get get get and that's not unconditional love. That's conditional love. So that's my two cents on that Celia. Thank you so much for your question. I really appreciate it. Gorni Cobb has a personal question for me. Considering your spirituality in your book recommendation such as the Buddha dated. Have you ever considered vegetarianism or veganism? No, I have not. I love red meat and I'm not going to change. That's my two cents on it. I don't need to expand upon that anymore. I just happen to be a carnivore just like my ancestors. I am a lion. I'm a Leo. So I'm a lion and that's what my ancestors were. I was once a lion. All right. Thank you. Gorni Cobb for that question. Ru says thank you for answering my question. I really appreciate your very welcome. Brenda says is romance an illusion? Being romantic is just an expression of love in my opinion. Expecting romance to convince you to love someone or to to convince someone to love you or to feel love from romance. That's an illusion because it's unsustainable. I think being romantic. Look at every relationship every to every healthy happy relationship typically has the three A's the three A's attention affection and appreciation. Let me repeat that attention affection and appreciation. So when a relationship has that it's less likely that's that to me is romance. You know it's doing the little things that makes you appreciate another person and yet sadly we so expecting grandiose I expect to be treated so fantastic on Valentine's Day. Quite frankly you know I am so grateful because my partner we both aren't really big gift givers gifts in the five love languages isn't our our primary love language it's actually last on the list and we both said you know our gift to each other is to invest each month in a travel fund. And next year we have four trips planned we're we're doing the Panama Canal in January we're going to the Mediterranean September and well we don't have four trips right now we have three trips plan because there's a good chance we might be going to Antarctica we'll see what happens with that one so that's that to me is romantic investing in your travel fund together that to me is romance anyway my romance anyway thanks for your question I really appreciate it. Susan says question do you get jealous and how do you handle it.  By the way I'm a horny bastard folks so yes I'm going to admit that I love sex okay and when I'm when you're in a healthy happy sexual relationship with one another you know what why should I get jealous if she talked to somebody else you know now if there's deficiencies in our relationship well then there's something that needs to be worked on so there's no need to go elsewhere to get that need met and I'm conscious enough to be to invest in the relationship in such a way that I'm not worried about that so I hope I answered your question Susan thank you so much for it. Rissa or list says I was in a long distance for five months moved to a city and country and moved in with him knew I wanted to leave after the first week. Well do a better job vetting a person that's why with my girlfriend I we literally we the first visit was four days two weeks later she came for 12 days two weeks later she came for three weeks then I went out a week later to visit her for a week we spent a lot of time together more caught by the way I think everybody should be okay you're going to love this one. It's a new thought I have. I think everybody okay if you decide the two people are going to explore a relationship together you have to be locked in a room together for one solid month and I mean in a home together. One solid month figuring out how you're going to make this work. By the way ever by the way most people will tell you traveling with another person will give you insight into how they would be as a living with them. So rather you know that's why I'm grateful my girlfriend I traveled together we got that we really traveled well together so anyway I'm sorry you experienced that list thank you so much for sharing. All right what else do we have oh my God we have a lot. Bump bump bump bump let's go swimming. Let's says what kind of wine do you like with your filet mignon I do not like filet mignon I like rib I steak and I usually I'm a big Pino fan more than anything okay. Jennifer do you think religion is an issue with dating I find it hard enough to meet the right partner and put a spirituality on my dating profile. So I think that's a great question Jennifer. I think if you are a person that's an atheist and you're dating a person that goes to Bible study every day of the week and twice on Sunday there might be some problems with that relationship okay. I think extreme views on religion are probably problematic but the reality is is most people are relatively centric when it comes their religion and yet the people that are devout probably need someone who's devout as well and a person who is probably a bit benign on religion probably is better served with someone else who's benign on religion so it's the extremes you need to worry about and that's my two cents on that one so thank you so much. I want to thank Cecilia for the taller 99 super sticker I really appreciate it Terry Logan writes question I'm in an I'm in an odd and we talked and met on Skype and discussed all our wants about the future but now after meeting he says he needs time for folks folks dating through these devices as my friend Mac says it's not real until it's real folks unless you're spending three or four days and nights a week together doing shared activities hobbies mutual interest spending time with family and friends traveling together teamwork building skills both in your personal and professional life unless you're spending up a lot of time together once or twice a week over a period of time you're never really going to get to you cannot get to know someone over the telephone you don't get you don't you only get to know people through the doing of things when are folks going to get this through your fucking thick ads men don't bond through the telephone we get horny through the phone will have phone sex with you love sex when we meet you but we don't bond unless we're doing activities with you for the most part and I'm talking about emotionally healthy men emotionally dysfunctional men the sky's the limit of how fucked up your experience will be folks you have to do things together don't invest time with someone unless you're physically seeing each other a couple times a week and see each other a couple times a week over a six week period you need to get at least ten to ten face-to-face meetings and you need a hundred hours of face-to-face time just to build the first layer of trust I'm yelling because you guys don't seem to get this you know I wish I could be every one of yours parent and you were growing up because I would have sat you down at age four and every year giving you a dissertation of what to expect in the dating marketplace so you don't act so so ignorant let's stop yelling let's stop yelling thank you so much and I'm sorry I got on your case Terry Cecilia says thanks Jonathan I was giving and you're right the guy like the gifts I gave him as his main love language but I like to give words and he didn't like that much in writing okay good to know Gina says you mentioned you're a Leo how much merit do you put into horoscopes I don't know I have mixed feelings on a horoscope so I can take it or leave it Antarctica sounds dangerous please be safe okay thank you all right Barbara's in the house question guy I dated wants to be friends how do you connect with a guy who wants to be friends without making him nervous how do you share with him your day without being annoying well folks if you're looking for a healthy happy relationship how many male friends do you need in your life just curious and are you going to be friends let's let's just say you're friends with this person and all of a sudden you meet the love of your life will you still be friends with this person are you going to still like to me building a friendship is a big investment of time energy and resources of emotional resources so why are you doing it why is he doing it folks I'd rather you put all your energy into working on working on oneself emotionally and then become a magnetic attractor for the right partner in your life because how many of these friends are going to be in your life when you meet that partner it's just a question I have all right that's my two cents on that thanks Barbara Cecilia again do you know of a book written by relationship aggressive I'm no I don't know that book sorry about that that's a question is it best to ask the guy what his love languages are trying to figure it out myself I'd say both do there's a if you can go to the go to five love languages dot com and take the test together that would be my suggestion before the penis ever goes inside the vagina Jerry says how do you deal with someone who has to think about our relationship when their issues arise remember I started this conversation what's missing today is a level of commitment how committed listen the guys committed to wanting to have your vagina on a regular basis how committed is he to working through problems folks the reason why I recommend reading the book eight dates by doctors John and Julie Gottman is if you go to hold on chapter two agree oops agree to disagree addressing conflicts folks if you don't know conflict resolution skills is one of the fundamentals for relate for relationship success but somebody needs to think about it how committed are they to the relationship if they're not committed to working through problems it's just my two cents anyway let's keep swimming chaos says if after three or four dates you can tell if a guy likes you is it all right to be direct and ask them if they're interested or not it seems kind of awkward and desperate to ask you know I'm a big proponent of radical honesty laying your cards on the table because by the way you all know I wrote a book chapter one my book is called what the heck a self love anyway chapter one speak your truth chapter nine if it's sincere and from the heart you can't say the wrong thing to the right person if he's the right person he's going to lean into it have radical honesty lay your cards on the table stop being so benign you guys mostly are dating like this how's your day going did you have a good day I hope you had a good day my favorite meme right here I hate small talk I want to talk about Adam's death alien sex magic intellect the meaning of life far away galaxies music that makes you feel different memories the lies you've told the lies you told flaws your favorite set your childhood what keeps you up at night your insecurity and fears I like people with death who speak with emotion from a twisted mind I don't want to know what's up folks don't be afraid to have deeper radical honesty type of questions this is why I highly recommend reading the book emotional intimacy by Robert Masters so you can get a better sense of your own level of emotional acuity you've got nothing to lose except the wrong person that's my invitation anyway uh let's see question from corny cop is a bad sign if my boyfriend spends a lot of money lot more money read readily than me he keeps buying rotisserie chicken meals and it's driving me insane you ask me a more serious question come on is it a bad sign that you're asking this question let's ask him what he thinks of your question that's what I want you to do I want you to ask him I want you to cut and paste this and ask him this question and see what he thinks if it's a bad sign you're asking this question corny cop I'm being a little bit tongue-in-cheek all right who Renee says I just ordered emotional indices I'm so excited let's see is he answering these questions from a live chat or from somewhere else no I am doing it from the place I'm almost always doing it all right let's see you know I've got to get going I've got a dentist appointment shortly Jamie says the sky is the limit of how fucked up things can be keep calm John you are right I am laughing at the absurdity of the insanity of human behavior human beings absolutely listen there's a little kid inside of us that all feel unloved not likeable not good enough and that's sad that's not something to laugh about that is sad true love true unconditional love recognizes that human beings are hurting and at the same time we act as little children when it comes to the dating experience so yes I yell sometimes I draw attention to the absurdity but what's most important is a genuine focus on putting the oxygen mask on yourself first and not hyper focusing on men God universe spirit I invite genuine love in my life first I invite that love within myself that embodies love and I can express myself in a healthy happy way to another human being and when I'm and because of this I put the work in to be ready for a healthy happy relationship where you have mutual chemistry with one another where our communication can go on for hours and hours of the time from a healthy place and we can blend lives together we're emotionally mature to build the deep roots of trust that can sustain a healthy happy relationship God universe spirit I invite in that love with first inviting that love into myself and so I will date myself as I'm preparing to attract an amazing partner in my life God universe spirit I invite that in thank you so much I invite you all to invite deeper love in your life because it is through that expression you have a greater chance for attracting a beautiful partner in your life and my hope is you all attract that in and let me just say this they're amazing beautiful men out there for the women are watching they do exist. A lot of times they don't have their they don't they don't have edge sometimes their nerds sometimes they don't dress too well sometimes they're holding a fish up in their profile pictures they're clueless yet many of these clueless men can make great partners in life don't discount the clueless guy from the outside world because what matters most is does he have a genuine heart that's what matters most and I invite you to look for the man who has a genuine heart and if you need some help and support in figuring out who that guy is schedule the free discovery call with me to see if working with the coaches right for you check out all the links below join my group called midlife love master if you find out in this video please share this with friends please subscribe to my channel if you got this far and please like this video if I didn't already say that alright folks I think you get the gist of where I'm going invest in yourself and also just remember the real journey is the self journey that you're loving oneself and my invitation for all you or my hope is for all of you is as you do that when you stand in your empowerment your sovereignty you will attract in a great partner in your life and then on that note I will wrap up today's videos I always do please first off give myself a big gigantic job of self love I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay I'm going to ask you to turn to someone a pat a teddy bear pillow and give it or them a hug because hugs are a great source of love and let's face it we could all use more love in our lives I want to and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart oh and I want to thank roller girl and Jennifer and Mel and grace and Brendan J 10 and JJ and Rhonda and Rula and Susan and chaos and Alexander and Renee and grace and Mel and Cecela and I butcher everyone's name because I'm terrible at it everyone thank you so much have a good one.