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• What are the most important aspects to consider when choosing a SAN for a small office virtualizatio

  - by Prof. Moriarty

  I am in the process of consolidating 6 physical servers running 6 different operating system flavors (don't ask) into two identical physical servers (Dell PowerEdge 2900), using the free VMware ESXi 4.0 platform. We will install an iSCSI SAN over a 1GbE network, and store all virtual machine images on the SAN. Each physical server would run 3 VMs, and in the case of a physical server failure, we would manually switch over the other 3. These are all internal servers, while important, they can tolerate some amount of downtime (say <1h) to keep cost and complexity associated with HA down. I now need to choose the SAN to be used for the setup, on a low budget. We currently have about 2TB of data, but of course I want to able to grow, do backups of VM snapshots on other drives and remove them to a different location, etc. So what I would like to know is: Which are the must have features for this setup, without which using a SAN is not worth it? We are mostly a Dell shop, so I have been looking at the EqualLogic PS4000E High Availability model. Any opinions, anecdotes, bad experiences with this model? (This is one of the few models which could accomodate our existing disks from the physical servers.) If you can recommend something that is not Dell, but it has better value, I would most definitely consider it. Caveats, things to look out for?

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• Some free cloud solution to enhance your business

  - by Saif Bechan

  I am co-owner of a small internet business. I am in charge of IT, and I try to get things done as low cost as possible. When investing in servers, resources and overall business costs your project can soon turn into a financial disaster. Cloud solutions can help you in solving some financial problems, they can help you in scalability problems, and overall performance problems of your server or web application. Recently I moved the whole internal/external communication(email,calendar,documents) of my business to the cloud. I did this by using the free version of Google Apps. This works great and is a big advantage on multiple levels. I do not have to fight spam anymore on my system, and there are less resources used on my system. Also switching servers will go a lot easier. Questions Can you name some cloud solution that you have used, or some you just recommend. They can fairy form financial benefits, organizational benefits, performance benefits. It doesn't matter as soon as it helps you spread the load of your business.

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• Access keystore on Sun ONE Webserver 6.1 for 2048 bit key length SSL

  - by George Bailey

  We want to get 2048 bit key length CSR requests. The browser based GUI provides us with a 1024 bit CSR and I don't know how to change that. It seems that 1024 bit key lengths will no longer supported by SSL companies. (Lower cost options only support 2048 bit. Thawte who is much more expensive say they accept 1024 for only one or two year certificates, but not 3). The legacy systems in question are running Sun ONE Webserver 6.1. Upgrading would be time consuming and we would rather not have to do that right now. We will be phasing these out but it will take awhile, so... Got it!! http://middlewarekb.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/how-to-generate-2048-bit-keypair-using-sun-one-or-iplanet-6-1-servers/ It is for the same version webserver I am using. /opt/SUNWwbsvr/bin/https/admin/bin/certutil -R -s "CN=sub.domain.ext,OU=org unit,O=company name,L=city,ST=spelled state,C=US,E=email" -a -k rsa -g 2048 -v 12 -d /opt/SUNWwbsvr/alias -P https-sub.domain.ext-hostname- -Z SHA1 Previous efforts edited out.

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• Kickstart CentOS 6 prompting for TCP/IP with network set to DHCP

  - by Andy Shinn

  I am trying to stop my kickstart CentOS install prompting me for TCP/IP information. After I click through this prompt (keeping IPv4 and IPv6 to their defaults) the installation continues and completes just fine. Below is my kickstart file: # Andy's super awesome VM kickstart file install url --url=http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/x86_64 lang en_US.UTF-8 keyboard us text %include /tmp/network.ks rootpw --iscrypted $6$RA8DyrNTsVJkGIgY$ohZ62HHiOjNnn1yDMZlIu3lQ63D3plGPcbVZtPKE8Oq6Z.IGUgN.kNLkxs/ZymZuluRDWsW2eey5zLOl2G3mp. firewall --service=ssh authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=sha512 selinux --disabled timezone America/Los_Angeles bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=vda --append="crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet" # The following is the partition information you requested # Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed # here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is # not guaranteed to work zerombr clearpart --all --drives=vda --initlabel part /boot --fstype=ext4 --size=500 part pv.253002 --grow --size=1 volgroup vg1 --pesize=4096 pv.253002 logvol / --fstype=ext4 --name=lv_root --vgname=vg1 --grow --size=1024 --maxsize=51200 logvol swap --name=lv_swap --vgname=vg1 --grow --size=4032 --maxsize=4032 repo --name="CentOS" --baseurl=http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/x86_64 --cost=100 repo --name="Puppet Labs Products" --baseurl=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/products/x86_64 repo --name="Puppet Labs Dependencies" --baseurl=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/dependencies/x86_64 repo --name="EyeFi" --baseurl=http://flexo.eye.fi/6/eye-fi-api %packages @core @server-policy puppet facter %end %pre --erroronfail #!/bin/bash for x in `cat /proc/cmdline`; do case $x in SERVERNAME*) eval $x echo "network --onboot yes --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp --hostname ${SERVERNAME}.eye.fi" /tmp/network.ks ;; esac; done %end %post puppet agent --waitforcert 10 --onetime --no-daemon --pluginsync --server puppet.eye.fi %end reboot My kernel arguments are in this following virt-install command that I use to start the install: virt-install -n zabbix -r 2048 --vcpus=2 -l http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/x86_64 --disk /dev/vg_inf1/zabbix --network bridge=br85 --initrd-inject=/home/ashinn/vm_kickstart --extra-args "ks=file:/vm_kickstart SERVERNAME=zabbix" --autostart During the install, I can pull up a console on the second terminal and verify the contents of /tmp/network.ks are: network --onboot=yes --bootproto=dhcp --ipv6=auto --hostname=jenkins2.mydomain.com Why might Anaconda be prompting for the TCP/IP settings when they are already set to DHCP?

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• Dell Studio 1555 not starting up

  - by Abhishek

  This is a 3-year-old laptop. I never had a big problem with it until now. I updated Kubuntu the night before yesterday. And Firefox got updated to version 18 and a few other related packages got updated. Then I shut down the laptop and restarted it, but it failed to start. I could hear the fan and the hard disk and the optical disk drive initialize. And the power button also lighted up. But there was no video - no POST or BIOS menu. I even opened the laptop up to the point when only the motherboard was the only thing attached to the base cover. I took it to the technician this evening. He checked it casually, and said that it might be a motherboard problem and will cost quite a bit to fix. Though he was not sure and said that he will give me a call after confirming the problem. Has anyone else had the same problem? What was it and what was the fix?

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• Have it fixed or buy a new one?

  - by Workshop Alex

  My dual-monitor system has just become a single-monitor system again when the older monitor decided it would be nice to just turn to black. It's a Samsung LCD monitor and is over three years old. Not sure if the warranty is still valid but I just wonder what option would me more efficient: 1) Have the monitor fixed for a small amount. 2) Buy a new monitor for a slightly bigger amount. When monitors were still expensive, I wouldn't doubt about this and would just have my monitor repaired. But prices are so low nowadays, (and repairs are expensive) that I wonder if it's worth the trouble... Of course, I'm in no hurry since I still have another monitor. It's just that I liked the dual-monitor setup. Solved! Just ordered a new monitor. A Samsumg Syncmaster T260HD 25,5". Much more than it would cost me if I just had my old one repaired but I noticed that this one has a build-in TV tuner, plus speakers. It's way more expensive than a repair, but it's worth the additional value it provides.

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• Disaster recovery backup of files/photos for personal use

  - by Renesis

  I'm looking for the best method to store a backup of important files and 5+ years of digital photos that is safe from some type of fire/flood disaster in my home. I'm looking for: Affordable: Less than $100/yr or first-time cost. Reliable: At least a smaller chance of failing than there is of fire or flood Easy for initial backup and to add to, and at least semi-easy to recover. I recently purchased a small home safe for physical vitals. It was inexpensive, solid, and is fire/water safe. If I had a physical copy of the digital files, the safe would work fine for this, but I don't know what to store in it that adequately meets the requirements above. Hard drive - I read that the danger of it not spinning up makes a hard drive a bad choice for this type of storage, although it was my first thought and would definitely be the simplest choice - very easy to take out once a month and add files to. DVDs - Way too much of a hassle for both backup and restore. Tape - No idea on the affordability of this option Online - Given that I have at least 300GB already and ever-increasing megapixels means ever-bigger files, and my ISP upload is about 2Mb at the best, this just doesn't sound like a good option for me, but I could be convinced. Other - Have I missed something? Also, I'm already covered both for sync between computers (Dropbox) and a nightly backup of these files (External HDD). The problem with the nightly backup is obviously that it's always with the computer and in a disaster would be destroyed along with it. Is anyone else doing something similar? Is the HDD as poor of a choice as I read, or is it a feasible option? Maybe two to reduce the likelihood of failure?

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• Is it worth hiring a hacker to perform some penetration testing on my servers ?

  - by Brann

  I'm working in a small IT company with paranoid clients, so security has always been an important consideration to us ; In the past, we've already mandated two penetration testing from independent companies specialized in this area (Dionach and GSS). We've also ran some automated penetration tests using Nessus. Those two auditors were given a lot of insider information, and found almost nothing* ... While it feels comfortable to think our system is perfectly sure (and it was surely comfortable to show those reports to our clients when they performed their due diligence work), I've got a hard time believing that we've achieved a perfectly sure system, especially considering that we have no security specialist in our company (Security has always been a concern, and we're completely paranoid, which helps, but that's far as it goes!) If hackers can hack into companies that probably employ at least a few people whose sole task is to ensure their data stays private, surely they could hack into our small business, right ? Does someone have any experience in hiring an "ethical hacker"? How to find one? How much would it cost? *The only recommendation they made us was to upgrade our remote desktop protocols on two windows servers, which they were able to access because we gave them the correct non-standard port and whitelisted their IP

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• My PC is powercycling, what's going wrong?

  - by Renai

  So here is my sorry story of woe. My PC has been functioning normally for some time. Last week I bought a cheapish powered USB hub and plugged it into my home PC, which runs Windows 7. This weekend I plugged that hub into my home PC. At some stage I hibernated the PC. Then later on I plugged my Kobo eReader into the hub to charge. Later on I started the PC up. Only thing is, it now won’t start up. It just powercycles on for a second and a half with the fans at full, then powercycles off. Then back on for two seconds, then back off. There’s no display at all and it won’t get to the BIOS screen. It looks like anything USB is not functioning — the keyboard and mouse are not lighting up etc. I’ve taken out the BIOS battery and reseated the RAM, reseated the graphics card and so on, but my suspicion is that I have blown the USB section of the motherboard somehow. Suggestions? All else failing, where is the best place to take this machine in Sydney to get evaluated? It’s a fairly powerful beast, all up has cost me about $2500 over the years, including upgrades and a recent new graphics card, so can’t just start from scratch.

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• What is the best way/Software to manage multiple short lived instances of virtual machines ?

  - by Newtopian

  Hi, We have a QA department that have to test our software on multiple combination of OS and DMBS. With Windows spewing out many different versions the combinatorial math of all this can be daunting. So we decided on visualizing our setups but so far it only displaces the problem. The cost of hardware is expensive and we need many different combination far exceeding your server capacity to deliver. Also, these instances are throw away, once the test is complete we no longer need it, furthermore to ensure proper test isolation we should start fresh from a new instance. Lastly we only need a small subset of these system online at any given time. What I am looking for is a way to manage inventory so that our QA staff can order instances to be put online as required and discarded once used. Instances are spawned from a pool of freshly installed systems with the appropriate combination ready to accept our software. It also should be possible for two or more people to start the same instance at the same time, though we could manage without this if it proves too complex to put in place. Finally our budget is pretty thin, we can probably make some purchases but ideally expenditures should be kept to a minimum. To summarize we should be able to : Bring instances online on demand. Ideally should offer queue and scheduling management Destroy instances on demand Keep masters in inventory but not online. Manage large inventory of VMs (30-100 maybe more) with small staff of users (5-10). Allow adding, deleting and changing instances from inventory (bring online, make changes and check back in, or create new and check in). Allow few long lived instances for support tools (normal VM server usage) Thanks for your answers

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• Is there a way to run CUDA applications with the CUDA device being a secondary adapter?

  - by Slartibartfast

  I've been trying to run a CUDA program on a remote computer which has Windows 7 installed. The GPU is GeForce GTX 480. One of the problems I've been facing is that, the computer has two adapters, 1) Standard VGA Adapter 2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Even though this shows in the device manager. The desktop uses the standard VGA Adapter. I'm assuming this is because the Standard VGA is the primary adapter. Also the device manager shows that the monitor is connected to the standard VGA Adapter. In this scenario if i try to run any CUDA application it fails to recognise a CUDA capable device. Is it necessary for the NVIDIA adapter to be the primary one? Or is there any way to use CUDA when the graphics card is a secondary adapter. I've seen a few posts in the NVIDIA forums on this before, one suggests using another low cost NVIDIA card as the primary adapter, but that is currently not an option. I couldn't find any other solutions. Thanks I tried running the deviceQuery test from the NVIDIA GPU Computing Samples. This was the result i obtained CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking) cudaGetDeviceCount FAILED CUDA Driver and Runtime version may be mismatched FAILED The driver version I'm using is 263.06. The CUDA version is 3.2 I ran the same test on my desktop which also has windows 7 and a GeForce GTX 465. The CUDA toolkit version is 3.2. The driver version was the same and the test passed, although it failed with an older driver.

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• How is made sure magnetic or electric fields from devices like transformers or fans close nearby do

  - by matnagel

  Fans and transformers which are inside the server case create magnetic and electric fields. Electric fields can be easily shielded, but what about magnetic fields, they can only be shielded with high cost materials like mu metal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu-metal If a hard drive is installed too close to an intense transformer field, how is the magnetically stored information on the ferromagnetic surfaces of the disk kept safe? Even if drives are shielded, where are the limits? Is there some technical investigation or recommendation from manufacturers about this? (I never heard about something and never had any problem but I am interested in some facts. This is much preferred over what you believe or a habit you developed. Please try to give some solid infromation.) I have built and repaired many servers and sometimes I did put the harddrive on top of the power supply. Edit: This question is not about frequencies that could affect the drive via the power or data connectors of the drive, those are electronically decoupled and that's another question. Edit 2: The wikipedia page states that the motor inside the drive is shielded with mu metal. It is obvious that manufactureres have to take care of this. This question is about such influences from outside the drive.

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• DNS failover in a two datacenter scenario

  - by wanson

  I'm trying to implement a low-cost solution for website high availability. I'm looking for the downsides of the following scenario: I have two servers with the same configuration, content, mysql replication (dual-master). They are in different datacenters - let's call them serverA and serverB. Users use serverA - serverB is more like a backup. Now, I want to use DNS failover, to switch users from serverA to serverB when serverA goes down. My idea is that I setup DNS servers (bind/powerdns) on serverA and serverB - let's call them ns1.website.com and ns2.website.com (assuming I own website.com). Then I configure my domain to use them as its nameservers. Both DNS servers will return serverA IP as my website's IP. If serverA goes down I can (either manually or automatically from serverB) change configuration of serverB's DNS, to return IP of serverB as website's IP. Of course the TTL will be low, as it's supposed to be in DNS failovers. I know that it may take some time to switch to serverB (DNS ttl, time to detect serverA failure, serverB DNS reconfiguration etc), and that some small part of users won't use serverB anyway. And I'm OK with that. But what are other downsides of such an approach? An alternative scenario is that ns1.website.com will return serverA IP as website's IP, and ns2.website.com will return serverB IP as website's IP. But AFAIK clients not always use primary nameserver and sometimes would use secondary one. So some small part of users would use serverB instead of serverA which is not quite what I'd like. Can you confirm that DNS clients behave like that and can you tell what percentage of clients would possibly use serverB instead of serverA (statistically)? This one also has the downside that when serverA goes back up, it will be automatically used as website's primary server, which is also a bad situation (cold cache, mysql replication could fail in the meantime etc). So I'm adding it only as a theoretical alternative. I was thinking about using some professional DNS failover companies but they charge for the number of DNS requests and the fees are very high (why?)

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• Install and enforce a scheduled task across a Windows domain

  - by Ricket

  We have a small domain of about 70 Windows computers (XP and 7). We want to schedule a command (an update mechanism) to run on all computers periodically, and we want the task to run regardless of the computer's connection to our network (i.e. the task should run even on a laptop that isn't connected to our VPN). We have a Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 server so that might come in handy. The options I see are these: Do it completely manually. Install the scheduled task by hand or remotely using psexec (and the at command?) for each computer in our network. Enforce that newly imaged computers should have this task installed on them before deployed to the employee, or the task should be in the image. High initial cost (having to do this for each of 70 computers) but building it into the image might work... But there is some maintenance in making sure the task is added to everything. And I fear that a year or two down the road, we will have forgotten about it or gotten sloppy or had new IT employees who miss this step and some computers won't have the task. Having one of our servers run a script that loops through all computers and psexec's the command on each computer in the network -- it would only run on running, connected computers, so this solution wouldn't work. I suspect SCE could do something like this too, but again this is not a good solution. Neither of these are ideal, and I'm certain there is a better way to do it -- right? What is the best way to accomplish this task?

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• 10GE network: Is it still deadly expensive? Any options?

  - by BarsMonster

  Hi! I am building home cluster where I going to have about 16 nodes which can live with 1G ports, but I really want to have 10GE on file server & central node. It's all local, so no need for cabels longer than 3-5m. And ofcourse I want to spend as little money as possible (not going to spend more than whole cluster costs) :-) What are my options? 1) Legacy solution is to take some 24-48 port 1GE switch, and connect to file/central nodes via 4-8 aggregated links. This will work I guess, cost is very acceptable, but I am not sure if it's ok to use that much aggregated links. And ofcourse it would be hard to double bandwidth when needed... :-D 2) Switch with several 10GE uplink 'ports'. As far as I see, they all require modules which costs about 1000$, so I will need 4 10G modules, and 2 10GE cards... Smells like way more than 5000$+... 3) Connect file & central node via 2 10G cards directly, and put 4 quadport 1GE NICs on fileserver. I am saving on 2 10G modules and a switch, fileserver will have to do packet routing, but it's still gonna have alot of CPU's left :-) 4) Any other options? Infiniband? 5) Are MyriNet adaptors works fine? I guess there are no cheaper options? 6) Hmm... Scrap fileserver, put it all on central node and provide dedicated 1GE port for each of the nodes... This is sad...

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• Getting rid of your server in a small business environment

  - by andygeers

  In a small business environment, is it still necessary to have a central server? Speaking for my own company (a small charity with about 12 employees) we use our server (Windows Server 2003) for the following: Email via Microsoft Exchange Central storage Acting as a print server User authentication / Active Directory There are significant costs associated with running a server like this: Electricity, first for the server itself then for the air conditioning required (this thing pumps out a lot of heat) Noise (of which there is a lot) IT support bills (both Windows Server and Exchange are pretty complicated, and there are many ways they can go wrong) I've found ways to replace many of these functions with cheaper (better?) alternatives: Google Apps / GMail is a clear win for us: we have so many spam related problems it's not even funny, and Outlook is dog slow on our aging computers You can buy networked storage devices with built in print servers, such as the Netgear ReadyNAS™ RND4210 that would allow us to store/share all of our documents, and allow us to access printers over the network The only thing that I can't figure out how to do away with is the authentication side of things - it seems to me that if we got rid of our server, you'd essentially have a bunch of independent PCs that had no shared pool of user accounts / no central administrator. Is that right? Does that matter? Am I missing any other good reasons to keep a central server? Does anybody know of any good, cost-effective ways of achieving the same end but without the expensive central server?

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• What's needed in a complete ASP.NET environment?

  - by Christian W

  We have a ASP3.0 application with a few ASP.NET (2.0) dittys mixed in. (Our longtime goal is to migrate everything to ASP.NET but that's not important for this issue) Our current test/deploy workflow is like this: 1 Use notepad++ or VS2008 to fix a bug/feature (depending on what I have open) 2 Open my virtual test-server 3 Copy the fixed file over, either with explorer, or if I can be bothered to open it, WinMerge 4 Test that the fix works 5 Close the virtual test-server 6 Connect to our host with VPN 7 Use WinMerge to update the files necessary 8 Pray to higher powers that the production environment is not so different that something bombs. To make things worse, only I have access to my "test-server". So I'm the only one testing it. I really want to make this a bit more robust, I even have a subversion setup running. But I always forget to commit changes... And I don't even work in my checked out folder, but a copy of what is currently in production... Can someone recommend some good reading on deploying, testing, staging and stuff like that. I currently use VS2008 and want to use subversion or GIT (or any other free VCS). Since I'm the only developer, teamsystem is not really an option (cost-related). I have found myself developing an "improved" feature, only to find a bug in the same feature in the production system. And since my "improved" feature incorporated deleting some old functionality, I have to fix bugs directly in production... That's not a fun feeling... (I have inherited this system recently... So it's not directly my fault that it is like this ;) )

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• Server 2008R2 in Extra Small Windows Azure Instance?

  - by Shawn Eary

  Windows Azure hosting for an Extra Small (XS) Windows VM seems to come out to be about $10 a month right now. I think this XS instance gives you the equivalent of a 1 GHZ CPU with 768MB of RAM. I think the minimum requirements for Server 2008 is 1GHZ CPU with 512MB of RAM. Also, I think the minimum requirements for SQL Server Express is 1GHZ CPU with 256 MB of RAM and that the minimum requirements for Team Foundation Server Express 11 Beta is 2.2 GHZ CPU with 1 Gig of RAM (this 2.2 GHZ part could be a problem for my 1 GHZ XS VM...). Given the performance of the XS Azure instance, would I be able to install: a very basic MVC web site; a free instance of SQL Server Express; a free single user instance of Team Foundation Server Express 11 Beta and run the XS VM instance without serious crashing? I know there are other Shared WebHost providers that can provide these features for me, but those hosting providers have the following disadvantages: They sometimes cost a lot of money after all of the "addons" are in place They probably don't provide the level of security and employee integrity that Microsoft can provide They don't provide the total control that an Azure VM seems to provide

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• Why do hosts prefer Linux to Windows Server?

  - by iconiK

  So far I see a HUGE majority of hosts provide only Linux shared hosting, providing Windows only to VPS (or even to only dedicated servers). Why is it so? While Windows is a lot more expensive than Linux (though it depends on a lot of factors, not just initial and support license cost), it also provides ASP.NET, IIS and of course, Microsoft SQL Server. I know in the past it might have been because of cPanel being Linux only but now they have a Windows version. But still, why is Linux predominantly used on shared hosting? PHP works on both systems. IIS can be (and probably is) faster. MySQL runs on both systems as well. cPanel has a Windows version. Python, Perl, Ruby, all run on Windows as well. You even have MS SQL Server Express, which I find more superior than MySQL in both speed and features. Access is there for low usage requirements, as is SQLite (which is so great for quick small stuff). And with PowerShell you have a good alternative to the Unix shell. EDIT: I am looking for common reasons, I realize each hosting company (and/or it's clients) may have different needs. This becomes very important when you get to VPS or Cloud which give you a full operating system to use.

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• Setting up MySQL Linux slave with a Windows master

  - by philwilks

  I'm running a MySQL 5.0 database server on Windows Server 2008. The total size of the database is about 1Gb. I make daily backups, but I'd like to step up to having a slave server for extra protection. My thinking was that I wouldn't need the expense of a Windows machine to do this, and a Linux "cloud server" from RackSpace would do the job well for quite a low cost. However I have little experience with Linux, so I have a few questions... Does this sound like a good idea? Is there anything wrong with linking Windows and Linux MySQL servers? Does Linux have the equivalent of Remote Desktop Connection? If so can I use this from a Windows machine? Would a particular Linux distro be well suited to this task? RackSpace offer ArchLinux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu. My immediate thinking is to go with Ubuntu as I've heard it's more friendly for people coming from a Windows background. Any comments you have would be very appreciated! Phil

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• Why do you use a 3PAR SAN? [closed]

  - by Starfish

  If you use a 3PAR SAN, I’d like to hear what you think about it, particularly compared to the HP EVA. What do you see as its advantages over other SANs like the EVA? What’s so special about the ASIC? We had HP quote us an EVA P6500 and 3PAR V400 with equivalent storage and the 3PAR was nearly twice the cost. My site has two EVA SANs with a combined capacity of ~80 TB. We want to replace the older and larger of the two. We’ve been looking at the EVA and the 3PAR to see which would be a better fit for us. I’m struggling to understand how the 3PAR differs from the EVA from a practical technical standpoint. When I read the sales literature and speak with the HP sales engineers, they spend a lot of time talking about how the 3PAR is better because of its ASIC. It’s ASIC this and ASIC that, but when I press them on how a 3PAR with thin provisioning is better than an EVA with thin provisioning, I can’t get a straight answer. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues, who has more say regarding which SAN we get, is enamored by the 3PAR, and he can’t explain clearly to me why he wants it over the EVA. Our needs are pretty simple. We have 10 servers running VMware and ~100 VMs. We use VMware’s thin provisioning currently, but we would like to start using thin provisioning on the new SAN. We don’t have a need for SSDs or migration between storage tiers. We plan on having FC or SAS drives for our most used data and SATA/FATA drives for the lesser used data which is how we have the EVAs configured. We also do not need any SAN-level snapshotting or replication.

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• Can any iSCSI NAS appliance replicate / clone a LUN to an external drive?

  - by Boden

  I would like to backup using Windows Imaging to some kind of NAS appliance. I believe this will require the NAS to support iSCSI. I would then like the appliance to support the replication of the iSCSI LUN to an external eSATA or USB disk connected directly to the appliance. I've found plenty of NAS appliances that can do iSCSI and replicate to an external drive, but none that I've found thus far can do both at once. That is, the devices can do iSCSI, but then the replication feature doesn't work. The idea here is to backup to an appliance located in a secure office far away from the server room. Offsite backups to external hard drive could be managed from the appliance. The benefits of such a setup would be: 1) very unlikely that fire or random theft would affect both server-room backup and "remote" backup appliance 2) offsite backups could be managed by multiple trusted people without granting access to server room 3) Windows imaging provides poor man's deduplication, so each backup volume can contain a decent backup history. I understand why this would be a non-trivial thing to implement, but I'm wondering if such a thing exists? Preferably a tabletop, low to medium cost device. Alternative solutions welcome. NOTE: I'm backing up very few but very large files, so file replication is not a good option.

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• Docking Station Sound Doesn't Work on Dell D830 with Windows 7

  - by cisellis

  I have a Dell Latitude D830 laptop that is running Windows 7 Enterprise x64. I connect to a docking station during the day with multiple monitors, a keyboard and a mouse. Everything runs with no problems including most of the docking station ports (usb, monitors, etc.) However, the sound port from the docking station does not work since the upgrade to Windows-7. Even with the laptop plugged in, the sound always comes out of the laptop, not the headphones plugged into the docking station. Here's what I've tried: I've seen other issues like via Google this that seem to be mostly unanswered. I found one or two that referenced using the Vista x64 drivers, especially the Nvidia drivers. I do not have an Nvidia chipset but I've reinstalled the sound drivers and that has not helped. I don't have a support contract and considering the cost is usually high to call Dell, that's not an option. Dell's forums are pretty much a wasteland and I've found no help there. Since this is a docking station I thought I might need to try the SATA or Intel chipset drivers from the dell site instead, however I'm not really sure and I need to work on this laptop in the meantime. I can't really afford the downtime to experiment with random drivers all day in case they turn out to be incompatible (Dell still hasn't added Windows 7 to their support site as far as I can tell). Does anyone have any other ideas? Has anyone had this issue and solved it? If so, how? Thanks in advance for your help.

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• Why does my PC successfully boot only when unplugged for more than a few minutes?

  - by philg

  I have an HP Pavilion Elite desktop computer, model HPE-490t. I like it because it didn’t cost too much, boots itself from an SSD, came with 16 GB of RAM, and has 6 CPU cores for editing video and camera RAW images. It has one behavioral quirk that I cannot explain, however. The recent power interruptions here in the Northeast got the machine into a state where it could not be restarted. It would power up for a second or two, shut down, and then power up again, never being able to get to the point of showing anything on the monitor. I unplugged it for about 10 seconds and plugged it back in. Same behavior (fails to boot). I unplugged it and walked away for an hour, then plugged it back in and it worked perfectly! I think something similar happened after installing a second hard disk drive into this machine. So the question is why does the computer behave differently depending on how long it has been unplugged? Where is energy stored that affects the machine’s ability to boot? Capacitors in the power supply? Battery on the motherboard (there is one for the clock, but that wouldn’t be exhausted by being unplugged for an hour, I don’t think)?

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• How far should we take the N+N redundancy craziness ?

  - by Brann

  The industry standard when it comes from redundancy is quite high, to say the least. To illustrate my point, here is my current setup (I'm running a financial service). Each server has a RAID array in case something goes wrong on one hard drive .... and in case something goes wrong on the server, it's mirrored by another spare identical server ... and both server cannot go down at the same time, because I've got redundant power, and redundant network connectivity, etc ... and my hosting center itself has dual electricity connections to two different energy providers, and redundant network connectivity, and redundant toilets in case the two security guards (sorry, four) needs to use it at the same time ... and in case something goes wrong anyway (a nuclear nuke? can't think of anything else), I've got another identical hosting facility in another country with the exact same setup. Cost of reputational damage if down = very high Probability of a hardware failure with my setup : <<1% Probability of a hardware failure with a less paranoiac setup : <<1% ASWELL Probability of a software failure in our application code : 1% (if your software is never down because of bugs, then I suggest you doublecheck your reporting/monitoring system is not down. Even SQLServer - which is arguably developed and tested by clever people with a strong methodology - is sometimes down) In other words, I feel like I could host a cheap laptop in my mother's flat, and the human/software problems would still be my higher risk. Of course, there are other things to take into consideration such as : scalability data security the clients expectations that you meet the industry standard But still, hosting two servers in two different data centers (without extra spare servers, nor doubled network equipment apart from the one provided by my hosting facility) would provide me with the scalability and the physical security I need. I feel like we're reaching a point where redundancy is just a communcation tool. Honestly, what's the difference between a 99.999% uptime and a 99.9999% uptime when you know you'll be down 1% of the time because of software bugs ? How far do you push your redundancy crazyness ?

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