** This is a cross post from a blog I did for The Morning Bulletin website on 6th September 2012. It is written for a non-technical audience.
** The netbook in question was provided to me as part of the TechEd Gold Coast back in 2010.
Last week I dragged an old Hewlett Packard netbook out of the cupboard to put it to use as a secondary laptop. It was released in 2009, has a low power single-core Intel Atom processor, 2GB RAM, 160GB drive, no optical drive, and a very low resolution 10” screen.
My first attempt at getting it back into operation was by installing Microsoft Windows 8. Everything installed perfectly, it detected my hardware, and the performance was reasonably acceptable. However none of the new Windows 8 programs would work; the screen was of such a low resolution that I got errors every time I launched a program – email, web browser, weather, maps, everything. Not a good start.
I then tried an operating system called Joli OS from French company Jolicloud. Joli OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux operating system, and was released in version 1.0 back in 2010. The current release, version 1.2, has been around since March 2011. Joli OS is designe ...
Where I was brave, and decided to migrate between Virtual Server infrastructures without running in parallel.
Background
I have a test network at work which I use to 'mess around with', learning new technologies, programs, and systems. There isn't anything operational on the network, but if I lost anything it would be annoying.
The centre of the network is a Dell server that is currently excess to requirements, part of an EMC Avamar pilot a couple of years ago that is no longer required (the server, certainly not Avamar).
Server Specification
Dell PowerEdge 2950
2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon 'Harpertown' X5460 @ 3.16GHz
16Gb FB-DIMM RAM
6 x 1Tb SATA drives in RAID6 on PERC 6/i
2 x Broadcom BCM5708C NetXtreme II GigE Adapter
2 x Intel Pro/1000 Dual Port Server Adapter
About 12 months ago, I installed VMWare ESXi 4 on the server, and it has been running flawlessly since then. It's not taxed very much, usually having only 2 VMs running on it - a Server 2008 R2 A ...
Where I build a new server. Big on features, and small on size.
It has got to the stage where I can no longer test and learn current Microsoft software technologies on the hardware that I have on hand. The number of products demanding 64-bit only, >2Gb RAM, multi-core, etc mean that my ancient Xeon server, or my Mac mini running VMWare Fusion no longer does the job.
In this series of posts I will be ordering, unpacking, building, and installing a new server. This one is a little different as I wanted something really small and really quiet, but with still sufficient grunt to handle anything I throw at it. So while I can build a tiny Atom-based PC, it's hardly going to run anything useful.
My requirements were:
Quiet
Small
64-bit capable
Multi-core
After a little bit of research I came up with the following list of parts. This will give me a nice portable, quiet, powerful-for-the-size server that is only 220 x 177 x 286mm with a quad core processor and 8Gb RAM, the latest AMD chipset, and current technologies for expansion ...
In which I compare Parallels Desktop 6 and VMWare Fusion 3.1 under Mac OS X, as a virtualisation platform for Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. In this, Part 2 of the review, I install Windows Server 2008 R2 under VMware Fusion 3.1.
We start this entry with a nice clean profile and a fresh install of VMWare Fusion 3.1.1. If you'd like to catch up with where we've been, take a look at Part 1 of the review.
Part 2 - Using VMware Fusion to Easy Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
You can't help but notice that Parallels and VMware might have been looking at how each others product operates, because many of the processes for creating Virtual Machines are very similar. Nice easy installation steps - just like Mac people want/need.
After selecting Continue at the 'Create New Virtual Machine' window (Fusion had detected my Windows Server 2008 R2 disc), you get to use the Windows Easy Install feature. This allows you to enter an account name, password, and Windows Product Key for your Windows version. This will then automatically install drivers, product key and tools. You can also choose to allow the VM to have access to your Mac ...
In which I compare Parallels Desktop 6 and VMWare Fusion 3.1 under Mac OS X, as a virtualisation platform for Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. In this, Part 1 of the review, I install Windows Server 2008 R2 under Parallels Desktop 6.
There have been many reviews on the internet performing competitive comparisons between Mac virtualisation tools, but they generally compare features and performance with consumer based OSs like Windows 7, and gaming performance.
I'm not really interested in one-off VMs, and if I want to run games I'll reboot under Bootcamp or use a PC. But what I do want to do is run up a few Windows Server machines to mess about with different tools, such as Exchange, OCS, SQL, Forefront, etc. Normally you'd configure a PC to run Hyper-V or ESXi and sit it in the corner somewhere.
Being a Mac person, I don't have spare PC hardware laying about and can't justify going out and buying equipment to build a PC that will do justice to a decent virtualisation platform. However I do have a Mac, and TechNet subscription so why not use virtualisation software for OS X for the same job!
Parallels and VMWare have generously provide me with 'Not-For-Resale' serial numbers for their respective ...
A number of people (OK, mainly Nick…several times) have asked me how to do a force reboot on an iPhone.
This can often fix a few issues:
1. Memory clogs
2. Unresponsive phone
3. General odd behaviour
4. Slowdown
If a normal shutdown won't fix the problem, you can try a forced reset.
Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least 10 seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
And there you go.
Nigel ...
I know a lot of people are wondering why on Earth I’d want to build a Windows server out of a Mac mini.
A few perfectly good reasons really :
I wanted to see if it was possible.
Was the performance any good?
You can’t beat the size and power consumption
It dual boots as a Mac!
I started with a perfectly good Mac mini. It’s a recent nvidia graphics Core 2 Duo model, 4Gb RAM and the standard 120Gb drive.
Voila, a Mac mini.
It was running a standard OS 10.6 install with a small Windows 7 Boot Camp partition. First of all I ran the Boot Camp Assistant and reverted back to full Mac volume to start with a clean slate. Then I created the largest Windows partition I could, which ended ...