AASFSHNR Jan 2010 Loan-a-thon

Just to let you know that the AASFSHNR January 2010 Loan-a-thon on Kiva resulted in the following:

New Members	69
Loans Made	958
Dollars Loaned	$30,325

Unfortunately, we're not able to pull the figures on how much of that $30,325 was in new money (ie, not repayments that were reloaned) but from the responses in the mailing list, it seems that quite a bit of new money was injected by many of the AASFSHNR members where they could.

So, as it stands at the time of posting this entry, the Kiva AASFSHNR lending team is at $1,399,650.00 in dollars loaned through 45,696 loans.  All I can say is that I'm glad to be a member of this team and be able to help out where I can without any need for superstition/theology being bundled with the loan.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

FreeBSD under Hyper-V

OK.  I'm playing with FreeBSD 8.0 under Hyper-V R2.  I looked at FreeBSD 7.0 under Hyper-V R1 about this time last year and without a kernel patch, it had issues shutting down (and starting, and running...).  Well, the shutdown bug and the starting bug and all others seem to have been addressed fully aside from one slight networking issue.  So here's the lowdown on this one remaining issue...

As there's no synthetic network adapter driver for the "good" NIC in Hyper-V for FreeBSD (nor OpenBSD nor Linux), then you need to use the "bad" NIC - the Legacy Network Adapter.  The issue with this is that it is slow - only 100 Mbps.  Under FreeBSD it is detected as a "de" NIC - the first one being "de0".

You can either configure this during the initial setup of FreeBSD using sysinstall, or by manually editing the /etc/rc.conf file and adding ifconfig_de0="DHCP" to that file.

There seems to be an issue with the way Microsoft built this adapter as under FreeBSD it doesn't properly obtain a DHCP-assigned address no matter where the DHCP server is - on a Windows box, a *nix box or a firewall/router/modem device.  Real, physical "de" NICs work fine.  At least there's a workaround that allows the DHCP-assigned address to work - you need to stop, start and re-acquire the DHCP-assigned address by running:

ifconfig de0 down
ifconfig de0 up
dhclient de0

Now, you can run this manually every time after you reboot the box, however that means that the box is offline until you log into it using Hyper-V Manager.  A better way to handle this is to create an /etc/rc.local file, add these commands to it, then chmod 755 /etc/rc.local to make it an executable file for root.

Obviously, once this has been done, a portsnap fetch then portsnap extract is a good idea.  (Or whatever way you want to keep your FreeBSD ports up to date.)  And then installing any updated portss that are available using ports, portmanager or portupgrade or whatever method floats your boat.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

SSD vs SSD vs SSD vs Velociraptor

OK, here's one of the best comparative reviews I've seen on any technologies in quite some time.  Tom's Hardware recently compared an Intel X25-M G2 160 GB SSD, a Transcend SSD25D 64 GB SSD, a Kingston SSDNow V-Series 64 GB SSD and a Western Digital Velociraptor 300 GB hard drive (running at 10,000 rpm).

Now, we all know SSDs have a number of advantages over hard drives, yet high-rpm hard drives have some wins over SSD.  So, this review won't stun you with the facts you already know, but it does give a good balance of synthetic and real-world benchmarks.  And the results, while not anything you'd not expect, are still well worth looking at.

So, if you're considering an SSD for your system, take a wander through this review before you drop cash on a card.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Exchange 2007 SP2 and SBS 2008

Well, after 4 months of slaving over hot keyboards, the SBS team has managed to come up with 601 KB of code that works as a wrapper for the Exchange 2007 SP2 update that was released back on 29 August, 2009.  4 months to release a wrapper that we were initially told wouldn't be needed as SBS 2008 uses standard Windows and Exchange code - which obviously proved to be plain misleading (see, that was politically correct).

So, for anyone who didn't read my previous blog post and try to manually work through the steps to get Exchange 2007 SP2 installed on SBS 2008, now you can go to this site and download this wrapper.  Please be aware that you'll first need to have Exchange 2007 SP2 (x64) downloaded and extracted, then install and run this wrapper.

I've installed this on a number of SBS 2008 systems and so far, it has worked on all of them - just like the manual install did on some test installs of SBS 2008.

Don't forget to perform this update (like all updates, ESPECIALLY Service Packs) when there's nothing else happening - in particular, no backups being made!

Oh, and budget about an hour for the upgrade - it takes 40 minutes for the actual upgrade, not counting the extraction, stopping and starting of services.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

SSDs And Their March Forward

I was lying in bed reading an article this morning on SSD technology and the economics of this compared to HDD and the author's comments on when and why we'll move from HDD to SSD.  I pretty much agreed with the article, however one area that people don't seem to have caught on when it comes to SSDs is that although everyone says "HDD will replace Tape for backups" it simply hasn't in the enterprise market and it won't - however SSD will.

This is the coment I made on that article:

Aside from the impact NAND SSDs are starting to have and will increasingly have in the hard drive space, one big area people continually seem unable to focus on, nor even recognise, is that they will be a disruptive technology when it comes to the backup and archive market which is currently dominated by tape drives and media.


People keep claiming that hard drive backups will replace tape backups and they've made nothing more than a dint in the backup market and barely a scratch in the archive market. Sure, Microsoft may have dropped tape support in their Windows Server 2008 operating system's native backup application, but pretty much anyone who uses tape drives for backup uses both a third party tape driver and third party backup application anyway. This change by Microsoft will have very little impact on the devices used for backups in the IT industry.

What *will* make an impact, in my opinion, is NAND SSD technology.

HDDs are too delicate to be taken seriously as a backup and archival technology in the enterprise arena. Sure, they are a cheap and viable option in the SMB market, but tape still has enough advantages down here to be a valid contender. However Flash will become a serious contender as capacities increase. One of the reasons was touched on in your article - IOPS. As the backup window decreases, the slow (relative) speed of tapes means that they can't be used directly for backups and an initial backup is made to HDD on either that server itself (on an additional spindle set) or to another dedicated backup server, then this is taken to tape. All of this adds cost and another layer of complexity which is, quite effectively, more cost.

When SSD capacity and cost starts coming into competition with tape drives (and this will happen before SSDs compete with HDDs due to the expense of tape drive systems), we'll find enterprises starting to look seriously at SSD as a cost effective replacement for tape for both backup and archival purposes.

Another reason for SSD being extremely useful for backups is the speed of restore which will vary from significantly faster to a few orders of magnitude faster.

So, both technically and economically, SSDs will play an increasingly important role as not only primary storage, but also as backup and archival storage in place of the Tape.

Then I got out of bed, put the kettle on for my first cuppa and posted this blog post.  :)



Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

(Trying to remember that he's on holidays.  As in *NOT WORK*.  Holidays.  He has 10-15 minutes work to do today and that's it, so why is he thinking about this stuff this early in the morning?)

Encrypted Backups

Up until now, Windows Server Backup and Backup Assist couldn't encrypt backups.  And that hasn't changed at all!  :)  But what has changed is that the CRU Dataport 10 Secure and DataPort SecureDock devices (available through Datastor Australia) now work well with Backup Assist!

What this means is that using Backup Assist and a DataPort 10 Secure (or DataPort SecureDock) device, any backups written to the device are encrypted with 128-bit AES encryption - and this is whole drive encryption.  So if someone gets hold of a drive (ie, breaks into your house while you're at work and steals your offsite backup drives), then all they will see when they mount the drive in a computer is an uninitialized disk.  The only way to retrieve the data from the drive is through a DataPort 10 Secure or DataPort SecureDock device *and* using your hardware encryption token.

So, the upcoming Backup Assist 5.4, with its Hyper-V Granular Restore Console option and with the support for these secure CRU DataPort devices, will enably fully encrypted backups.  As a bonus, any additional data written to these drives, such as LOB database backups and/or accounting system backups will be AES encrypted!

This is great news for our clients - the reason I first spoke with Linus about this option was that we have a number of clients who have sensitive data (patient records, financial records, HR records, etc) that cannot really be stored offsite in an unencrypted format.  Previously, using Backup Assist, there was no real option to take this sort of data into account.  So I spoke with Linus, indicated the issue we have, worked with him on getting some DP 10 Secure devices to trial and then hounded him until he got it working!  (It didn't take much hounding, however, he's pretty responsive (and have I said yet that he's a nice bloke?) and easily saw the potential benefit.)

We've now got options.  We can use ShadowProtect where that's appropriate and Backup Assist where that's appropriate - we finally have real choice when it comes to fully encrypted backups!

Have a read of Linus' blog post on this enhancement to Backup Assist here.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie
(Who is still supposed to be on holidays but has been working on this and a number of server sales - when this is all done today, he really, REALLY should take tomorrow and a few days after it off and have a real break!)

Immortality

Do you want to know what's REALLY going through my mind?  Immortality.  And how much of a crock it is.  :)  I was sitting by the pool eating a nice hot (as in chilli hot) pizza, partaking in some Jim and this thought crossed my mind, so I couldn't resist blogging it.  :)

The only things we *KNOW* are immortal are...  cancer cells.  Yes, cancer cells.  The most well known immortal cells are known as HeLa Cells which is a line of cells derived from the Cervical Cencer cells of a Henrietta Lacks who died back in 1951 aged 31.

A normal human cell will divide around 40 - 60 times before it stops dividing, becomes senescent and eventually dies.  That's regular human mortality.  HeLa Cells don't do this - they don't enter senescence.  They are immortal.

And as far as immortality goes, the reason these cells are immortal is that they don't suffer from the regular telomere shortening that occurs upon every cell division.  They achieve this by having an active Telomerase enzyme during cell division which prevents this shortening of the telomeres.

Aha, yes - telomeres are the protective ends of our chromosomes.  They act in a way similar to how melting the end of a nylon rope protects it from fraying.  When the melted section is shortened and worn away, the rope frays.  In a similar process, as our telomeres shorten to a crucial length, those cells no longer divide and eventually die.

So, as far as immortality goes, the idea of an immortal being is cancerous (on so many levels) and not something we should really aspire to, let alone worship!  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie
(who is on holidays, so this sort of thing, instead of IT, is entering his mind once again!)

NetBIOS Attacks

OK, here's another silly "let's make life simple for stupid sysadmins" setting that can be easily used by a malicious attacker to gain knowledge of data that should have been secure - including ssl-encrypted data.

This information is *especially* important for any notebooks you may have that are used in hotels or other public locations.  It is less relevant for machines that remain connected in the office - though if you have WiFi that's not running 802.1x and/or network points that are able to be used by malicious people, you may also want to seriously consider the scenarios I refer to.

Hands up if, by default, you disable the "Automatically detect settings" option in the LAN Settings part of Internet Explorer?  OK, so I don't see any hands...

Have a read of this post to get a bit of background on how NetBIOS works.  Now have a read of this post to see how it can be exploited even more readily.  And then have a read of this post to see some examples of this exploit in action.

Microsoft gives a way to disable this ON YOUR LAN, but this in no way will help when the laptop is off your LAN and in a hotel - which is the main cause of concern for this exploit.

And if you think that this is only a newly discovered exploit, have a read of this post from January 2008 discussing this issue.

Maybe, if Microsoft won't do it, we need to do it for them - use GPO to disable this setting.  Of course, if a laptop with "Automatically detect settings" disabled is connected to a network where the user isn't given proxy details and the owner of the network only knows "just set your computer to automatically detect the proxy" then I suggest this is a location that you DEFINITELY shouldn't be using - find another hotel where they have at least some vague idea about the services they are providing!  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie
(who is on holidays and REALLY shouldn't be thinking about this stuff!)

FSM Appears On Mars

As it is still around FSMas time, I thought it only appropriate that the FSM has showed me this image of himself on Mars.  Obviously, the guys at NASA, being scientists and not true believers, needed to come up with some sham scientific-style explanation for the impression, however we true believers know that science is a crock and His Noodliness is real, simply because he says he is.  We don't need any real proof of this, however this image goes a long way to proving what we already know as fact.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Thoughts On Various Imaging Solutions

ShadowProtect, Windows/SBS Backup, Backup Assist, Acronis TrueImage, R-Drive Image, Macrium Reflect, Image for Windows, DriveImage XML and a number of similar products exist and will all provide faster recovery times on the same hardware than a file-based backup and server rebuild could possibly enable. Some of these products also enable Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) as well, enabling you to restore an Open License/Open Business/FPP licensed (but not an OEM) Server or Desktop OS from one piece of hardware to another - ShadowProtect and Acronis being the most common two for this, however Backup Assist can also manage HIR quite nicely.


Now, there's 2 main ways that these products handle Full + Incremental backups - most of them create a single full image and then create additional incrementals, each building upon the full + previous incremental (or they handle full + isolated differentials), however Windows/SBS Backup (and therefore Backup Assist as it uses the Windows backup engine) creates a full backup that is the current/latest backup and negative incrementals (or decrementals) which are what was changed to go back in time. Basically the two methods are diametrically opposed in their thinking - most products give you a full that requires all incrementals (or the latest differential) to get you back to "latest" whereas Win/SBS backup and Backup Assist only require restoration of the last full backup to get you where you want to be.

Now, this difference in methodologies doesn't mean one is more right nor more wrong - it is just a difference in approach.

If you're looking into image backups as a (or part of a) backup strategy, I'd strongly recommend having a separate spindle in the server itself and then having the removable hard drives located in whoever's computer is tasked with taking the backups offsite - this works for all products that are *not* based on the Windows Backup engine as it requires Volume Shadow Copy snapshots to be present, and these are not copied across from the internal HDD to a removable HDD using RoboCopy. This is a much, much better option than having users add/remove hardware at the server directly - it is never really a good move to have users physically touching the server if you can possibly help it as their grubby, greasy hands, swine flu sneezing and dandruff will often make a server feel uncomfortable. OK, maybe not quite like that, but you know what I mean... :) Have the snapshots on the extra spindle then copied using some form of magic (robocopy, richcopy, goodsync, etc) across the network to these removable HDD units overnight and they will appear ready and willing for removal when the users rock up to work, bleary-eyed from a hard night on the turps.

If you're looking at replicating this same backup strategy to a cloud-based service (including to a large system on your own site) then you should look at using an Incrementals Forever strategy as this will reduce the size of data streamed across the Internet. Using Win/SBS Backup and/or Backup Assist won't work well in this scenario because of its "full = latest" strategy, unfortunately. ShadowProtect (and likely Acronis) will work rather well. One good thing with ShadowProtect (and I assume Acronis have this feature, too) is a handy little util that will look at an incremental and the whole tree back to the full backup and verify it. Another good thing is the ability to roll up daily, weekly, monthly, wheneverly incrementals into a big single incremental to save the need to keep multiple incrementals and need to restore them all, however there is no *need* to do this as the latest incremental will cause all prior backups right back to the full to be used for the restore.

So, having a client use, say, hourly incrementals between 8AM and 6PM weekdays that are based off a single full backup, then a midnightly incremental, and rolled up on Sunday to a single incremental will keep the file manageability down to a sane level, will mean you can push the daily backups up to an online bit bucket using rsync, and if this system is on your site (or a hosted server somewhere) then you can schedule image verifications daily and be notified if there are any issues as and when they occur.

All up, Image backups have many ways they can be used and offer a good form of onsite/offsite/online backup in almost a single process.

I'd *still* perform file backups onto a different media (such as DVD-RAM or Amazon S3) of what I call the client's "bankrupt data" - the data that if they cannot get back almost immediately, can send them into bankruptcy - their accounting data and quite possibly a LOB application's data.

Regards,
 
The Outspoken Wookie

Hyper-V Guest Licensing (including Hyper-V R2)

Some people are still confused with how Hyper-V Guest Licensing works.  This also goes for Hyper-V R2 which hasn't changed *at all* as far as how it can be licensed goes.  So here's a first post on this topic.  If there's more clarification needed, I'll likely post again with all of the questions covered that may arise from this post:

Hyper-V Guest Licensing really isn't in any state of flux - nothing's changed since it was first spoken about. (Well, the price changed, but that's irrelevant to Licensing concerns.)

Now, there's three ways to obtain Hyper-V and Hyper-V R2 and these will change the answer to your question:

1. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a stand-alone hypervisor that is available for free. It is very much like ESXi in that it installs directly onto hardware (let's ignore the embedded ESXi variants for now). It is licensed for installation onto any compatible hardware, basically, and doesn't need any other OS License with it. Any and all OSes you wish to install on top of Hyper-V Server require their own licenses, whatever they may be.

2. Install Windows Server 2008 Standard (or better) x64 Core (or GUI) and then install the Hyper-V role onto this OS. If done this way, the Hyper-V role comes as part of a Licensed Microsoft Windows Server operating system. There are 3 main variants on this theme:

    2.1 Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard - One Physical and up to One Virtual License

        2.1.1 If the Host WS2K8 R2 Std OS that the Hyper-V role is installed on (W2K8 R2 Std Physical License) performs additional functions such as RODC, AD, DHC, DNS and/or other non-virtualization roles, then the License for WS2K8 R2 Std is completely in use and any guests need to be licensed separately.

        2.1.2 If the Host WS2K8 R2 Std OS that the Hyper-V role is installed on (W2K8 R2 Std Physical License) performs no additional non-virtualization-related roles, then the WS2K8 R2 Std Physical License has been used *only* to provide a host environment, so the single WS2K8 R2 Virtual License can be used for any roles you so choose (except, obviously, Hyper-V). Any additional guests need to be licensed separately.

    2.2 Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise - One Physical and up to 4 Virtual Licenses

        2.2.1 If the Host WS2K8 R2 Ent OS that the Hyper-V role is installed on (W2K8 R2 Ent Physical License) performs additional functions such as RODC, AD, DHC, DNS and/or other non-virtualization roles, then the Physical License for WS2K8 R2 Ent is completely in use and there are only 3 of the 4 WS2K8 R2 Ent Virtual Licenses available for use. Any additional guests need to be licensed separately.

        2.2.2 If the Host WS2K8 R2 Ent OS that the Hyper-V role is installed on (W2K8 R2 Ent Physical License) performs no additional non-virtualization-related roles, then the WS2K8 R2 Ent Physical License has been used *only* to provide a host environment, so the 4 WS2K8 R2 Ent Virtual Licenses can be used for any roles you so choose (except, obviously, Hyper-V). Any additional guests need to be licensed separately.

    2.3 Windows Server R2 2008 DataCenter - One Physical and unlimited Virtual Licenses

        2.3.1 Regardless of whether the Host WS2K8 R2 DataCenter OS that the Hyper-V role is installed on (W2K8 R2 DC Physical License) performs additional functions such as RODC, AD, DHC, DNS and/or other non-virtualization roles or not, then the unlimited WS2K8 R2 DC Virtual Licenses can be used for any roles you so choose (except, obviously, Hyper-V). Any additional guests need to be licensed separately - such as SBS 2008 and/or EBS 2008 or RedHat Enterprise.

3. If you buy SBS 2003 Premium Edition or EBS 2008 Premium Edition you are supplied a Primary OS (SBS/EBS) and an additional Server + SQL License (and in EBS you also have the Management instance and the Messaging instance).  This Primary OS instance cannot be used as a Hyper-V Host and this is detailed in the EULA.  The additional Server License that comes with Premium can (as in can) be used as both a Hyper-V Host and Guest.  So, in these environments, and we'll stick with SBS here for ease of describing how this would work, here's your options:

    3.1 SBS 2008 Standard Edition

        3.1.1 Install SBS 2008 Standard on Physical - no Hyper-V in use, so we don't care about its Licensing  :)

        3.1.2 Install Hyper-V R2 Server (as mentioned above in Point 1.) and run SBS 2008 Standard as a virtual guest using the SBS 2008 Standard License.

        3.1.3 Purchase an additional Windows Server 2008 R2 (or WS2K8) License and use that as the Hyper-V Host, then install SBS 2008 Std as a virtual guest using the SBS 2008 Standard License.

    3.2 SBS 2008 Premium Edition

        3.2.1 Install SBS 2008 PE Primary Server instance in hardware on one machine and the Secondary Server Instance in hardware on a second machine - we're not using Hyper-V, so we don't care about its Licensing

        3.2.2 Install Secondary Server Instance as Hyper-V Host and then virtualize both SBS 2008 Primary and Secondary Server Instances.  This is very similar to 2.1.2 above - the Secondary Server Instance is providing only virtualization-related services, so it can be used as a licensed virtual guest, in addition to this the SBS 2008 Primary Server Instance (the bit with SBS, Exchange, CompanyWeb, etc) is also virtualized using its virtual key (included with the OS).

        3.2.3 On a second physical server, install Secondary Server Instance as Hyper-V host providing only virtualization services, then virtualize it as a guest and then run the SBS 2008 Primary Instance on the main server.  The second physical server is properly licensed, however here's the options for the main server:

            3.2.3.1 The SBS 2008 Primary Instance can run on hardware, Hyper-V not in play

            3.2.3.2 Hyper-V R2 Server can be used as the host (see Points 1. and 3.1.2 above) and the SBS 2008 Primary Instance as a licensed virtual guest.

            3.2.3.3 An additional License of WS2K8R2 can be purchased and the SBS 2008 Primary Instance as a licensed virtual guest (see Points 2.1.1 and 3.1.3 above).

Now, the only real clarification to this is that Virtual guests can run the OS as Licensed and any other lower product. So, if you have a WS2K8 R2 Ent License, the WS2K8 R2 Ent guests can be WS2K8 R2 Ent, WS2K8 R2 Std, WS2K8 Ent, WS2K8 Std, WS2K3 Ent, WS2K3 Std and so on. If you have a WS2K8 R2 Std License, you cannot run WS2K8 R2 Ent guests unless they are separately licensed. If you wish to run NOWS SBE, SUSE Linux, Free BSD, SBS 2003 or any other OS then you need to be separately licensed for that OS as applicable.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Drool...

I sooooooo want a RAID 10 array of these in the new DL380 Server we're getting for the office: pureSilicon Nitro N1 SSDs

Yes, the 1 TB units of course!  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Australian Facist Party

It appears that The Australian Facist Party - or at least one of its elite members, Senator Stephen Conroy - has managed to twist the arm of the auDA into deregistering a website - http://www.stephenconroy.com.au/ - because it contained the most sane and technologically literate Senator's name.

Now, auDA has policies that need to be complied with, sure, and the owners of the site had phenomenally limited time given to them to prove that they complied before the site and domain was taken off the air.  A variant is now available at http://www.stephen-conroy.com/ where an article outlining the recent actions is available on the main page.  It also has a YouTube video that someone seems to have shot with a hidden camera in Senator Stephen Conroy's office when this website was brought to his attention.  :)

If you're interested in an organization that will aim to protect sensibility, freedom of culture, the protection of civil liberties and inalienable rights of the nation's citizens and to protect the freedoms of the newly evolging global information society, you may want to have a look at http://pirateparty.org.au/.

Regards

The Outspoken Wookie

Microsoft Clusterfu^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLicensing Site Still Not Functional

Well, in a move that doesn't bode well for Microsoft's ability to host our emails and data, Microsoft's Volume Licensing site underwant an upgrade last week, was due back online on 6 December, and now on 18 December, it still isn't fully functional.

It is bad enough not being able to install software and obtain keys easily with this site being down (and being given the runaround from MS Licensing staff who don't know what to do in this situation), but imagine if this was an Azure, BPOS or other MS Hosted platfowm where they botched an upgrade this badle and took your business data offline for the best part of a fortnight - would your business survive if Microsoft made your data totally unavailable for a week?  A fortnight?  Even a day or two?

Microsoft has some *serious* learning to do over this complete clusterfuck of an upgrade before they start seriously asking for us to host our business critical data with them.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

CERN and LHC Take A Festivus Break

Well, all's good with the LHC over at CERN.  On November 23 it created history with its first collision, on 30 Nov it created more history with a world record collision at 1.18 TeV.  It has been creating collisions at 2.38 TeV for the past week or so and has now been closed for a shortened winter maintenance window to allow some system enhancements and tests before reopening for physics in February and aiming at 7 TeV collisions in early 2010.

That sort of collision energy requires around 6000 Amps of current in the superconducting magnets surrounding the beams - a serious amount of power, and this is what the enhancements are being put in place for.  Testing of each beam at 3.5 TeV will begin in January in preparation for full commissioning and operation in February 2010 at 3.5 TeV/beam (a 7 TeV collision).

Out of interest, each of the hadron groups that are moving at very nearly light speed through the LHC's superconducting magnetic path carry about as much energy as your average passenger jet at cruise speed.  That's quite a punch they are packing!  So, should a condition arise where one or both of these beams need to be dumped - such as a "quench" situation in which the temperature of the superconducting components rises to 8K (from its normal temperature of 1.9K or -271.25 degrees Celsius) they are dumped ito one of a number of 7m long graphite blocks which are encased in steel, then water cooled and further wrapped in 750 tonnes of iron shielding and concrete.  Basically, this will result in an event that the CERN guys notice but no-one above the LHC would even be aware of.  And it would all be over rather quickly!  :)

No, not life as we know it - the proton or ion beam dumping.  That would be over rather quickly.  The LHC isn't going to create a black hole that wil consume the Earth nor open doors to extra-dimensional space that will allow creatures that look like a red, pulsating Cheese Burglar to come through and enslave us all.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie