Random Technology Musings
Well, the Dell Poweredge Server has been ordered. It should be here inside of 10 days. I think it’ll be alot less as its the most basic system they have, and they have no OS to install in it anyway.
its 2.8Ghz, 160 GB HDD ( I intend to add my 80Gb HDD) 1 GB RAM as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port. Should do the job pretty well. I just wish I could get the other 300 Gb HDD out…. 🙂
WHS is, I believe an inspired idea. Totally beyond any other product yet released by Microsoft. I believe that this is one of the very few releases that targets a nearly untouched market. And that’s why believe that Microsoft will do very, very well out of this.
So, in thinking of WHS I did the obvious and did a Google Blog Search. I found some facinating reviews here and here.
While individual WHS features like full household backup are exciting, the overall direction this product is taking is, perhaps, even more interesting. I hope you’re getting the notion that simplicity is Job One with the WHS team. Well, this mantra extends to every possible facet of the system. For example, WHS servers are headless, and you couldn’t connect a keyboard, mouse, or display to one if you wanted to. Instead, there are only two ports on a WHS server–for the power cord and Ethernet–and a single power switch. (That’s right, it’s wired only. You are expected to connect the WHS box to your home network’s router, and PC clients can be wired or wireless.)
A simple install CD, places in a networked PC, gets WHS up and running. There are few questions to answer during setup, involving passwords, recovery questions, and the standard questions about Windows Updates. From there, you can access the WHS console, where you setup the home server, the users who can access it, and the shared folders you’d like to create. There are no domains–though that was experimented with back in the Quattro days, Microsoft quickly dropped that notion in a nod towards simplicity. Besides, how many users will you need in a typical household?
That’s it: simplicity. How much more complicated can you get? You could try Norton Ghost which, compared to WHS, is as userfreindly as a chainsaw ( and that’s without even using WHS). In any case using Ghost gave me multiple 10-15 Gig files ( 50% compression rate, roughly) for each PC. I have neither the space to store all of that or the time to manually delete old backups ( I’ve tried more than once to get Ghost to do this, without success). WHS meanwhile:
In WHS, Microsoft moves the unit of backup from the PC to the household. WHS provides a single solution for backing everything up in your home, every night, without having to push buttons. This includes a new form of image-based PC backup–similar to Complete PC Backup in Vista, but based on new patent-pending Microsoft Research technologies–as well as drag and drop access to individually backed files, from different points in time. On the server, Microsoft is using its Single Instance Store (SIS) technologies from Windows Server 2003 to keep the backup size as small as possible, and it’s doing so across PCs. (How good is this technology? Headrick said that they’re seeing 15-19 TB of data stored in 300 GB or less of backup space.) So if you have an identical version of foo.dll on five different PCs, only one version of that file will be backed up on the server, dramatically lowering the storage requirements. (This works with PCs based on Windows XP and Vista.) Smart.
15TB into 300GB???????? Yeeeshhhh 🙂 . More space for my hardware buck, eh? Sounds like a winner. The best thing is that Ihave do do absolutely Zero. More than that,t he connector handles all the addressing ( Iwont have to worry about IP address changes every time my PC’s log on to the network in a different order and get different address from DHCP).
Simplicity is key here.
In retrospect, this is part of the same reason that Microsoft released so many different versions of Vista. Why over complicate people with features/capabilities they arn’t going to use?
All things considered, its worth it to buy a new Dell Poweredge 2.8Ghz 160GB ( will go up to 240Gb). I’ll be ordering tomorrow ( no use ordering before I’m ready- they’ll only deliver next week wether I order today or tomorrow).
Until it arrives…..
Now to say things are upside down is a bit of an understatement to make. The install went like clockwork and had most things set up autmatically, except for the device driver for the ethernet port (preversely preventing me activating and updating to get the driver). The only small problem was that the harddrive was not pugged into the machine I was intending to use as a server, but rather my faster 3.06 Ghz machine so I could use the DVD drive to install. After switching harddrives, the thing simply will not boot. I’ve no idea why. I suppose that it could be lack of memory ( I have 384MB DDR RAM installed on it – minimum is 256Mb), orlack of processor power ( Pentium 3 700Mhz – minimum 1 GHz).
I even tried plugging the DVD drive directly into the Pc and booting from the install disk – and it still fails to boot.
The first problem is easily solved, As is the third ( albiet from more costly). But the second is impossible.
These are not problems with the software, its the hardware I chose to run it on. I could use WHS using the only PC I have that boots from that harddrive, but that Pc happens to be my main PC.
So I now have th4e following options to consider:
The Poweredge server may just have to wait a few weeks, but I’m seriously considering it.
Installing Solaris is nearly out as I couldn’t make head or tail of it a few times I used it. Suse Linux recognises NTFS partitions and might be a possiblity.
Or I could do nothing and restore the Windows XP Home Install and use it very little (I suppose that I could simply share the entire harddrive over the LAN).
So until I figuire it out, WHS is not going be running.
I might try do some tests between my laptop and the WHS Harddrive to see how it performs, but it’ll have to be in the dead of the night when theres no actual work to get done.
I actually havent started the install. But my rage is now building up. The reasons are
So my plan for a 380 GB Home server stopped before it started. I’ll have to settle for 2x 80Gb drives. Given the fact that i have at least 30GB worth of downloads and 10GB of music (all legal), It only gives me 180 GB to back up 2 PC’s. Not ideal. Then you have to factor in room for growth.
if worst somes to worst, I have my eye on a nice Dell Poweredge server that will do nicely. But I’d rather use the hardware collecting round my feet before it gets too ancient.
Now if Microsoft could just make a handly MBR restorer…..
And the name of the infernal manufacturer that built my PC with the 300Gb harddrive? You’d never guess: Pc World.
Well, I recieved my invitation to the beta prgram yesterday. I only got round the downloading the iso’s now. Somwhere between one and two hours to go ( depending on speed – I had 300kbps a second ago). I was planning on installing it on my old PC that simply has nothing else todo. But, as luck would have it, it has no DVD drive. Grrr….
I’ll ahve to scavenge one from else where. Or buy a new server, which is just what I’ve been looking at. Dell is hard to beat for value.
I’m rather excited about this. WHS is just what I’ve been praying for. I think that I have a long wwekend of long nights setting things up.
I’d better get to work. 🙂
Update:
Since WHS does NOT use wireless from some strange reason ( Cue a “damn if I know” shrug). I just ordered an ethernet port for my aging PC. Its far cheaper than ordring a new server (its 1/25th the cost of Dell’s cheapest).
Jeff Atwood just wrote a long post on the effect Anti Virus Software has on system performance.
Percent slower Boot
TimeCPU
BenchDisk
BenchNorton Internet Security 2006 46% 20% 2369% McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8 7% 20% 2246% Norton Internet Security 2007 45% 8% 1515% Trend Micro PC-cillin AV 2006 2% 0% 1288% ZoneAlarm ISS 16% 0% 992% Norton Antivirus 2002 11% 8% 658% Windows Live OneCare 11% 8% 512% Webroot Spy Sweeper 6% 8% 369% Nod32 v2.5 7% 8% 177% avast! 4.7 Home 4% 8% 115% Windows Defender 5% 8% 54% Panda Antivirus 2007 20% 4% 15% AVG 7.1 Free 15% 0% 19% The worst offenders are the anti-virus suites with real-time protection. According to these results, the latest Norton Internet Security makes your computer boot nearly 50 percent slower. And no, that isn’t a typo in the disk column. It also makes all disk access sixteen times slower! Even the better performers in this table would have a profoundly negative impact on your PC’s performance. Windows Defender, for example, “only” makes hard drive access 54 percent slower.
True, but the trade-off is worth it, in my view. In fact. I’ve experianced an increase in boot time with Nortons 2007 over Nortons 2006. I’ve never had any serious performance issues with Nortons.
If you want a snappy system for a short while, do a clean boot. Turn off all uneesential services and your computer will feel like an F1 car on steroids. But do disconnect from the Internet first.
Jim Turner, via Scobe, holds this interesting opinion of Adobe in the aftermath of the launch:
I can tell you what they are not doing, they are not having a conversation with the influential people in their industry. Sure they are presenting some cool things and people like Tim O’Reilly, Robert Scoble, and others are all madly discussing the new apps and talking about it, but from the Adobe side I get nothing but crickets chirping. Where is the Adobe blogger? If they are truly in competition with Microsoft, how about competing? Put a company evangelist on a blog and let the blogger talk to all of the people now linking to the rest of the discussion. Adobe may be getting excellent marks for their new and latest in technology but I give them an F in showing that they are truly in the market of discussing their products.
I tend to agree here. Microsoft has changed its public image completely simply becuase of the 3000+ Microsoft bloggers out there. Every single start-up, I’ve noticed, has a blog or two on their site. Seems everyone is jumping into the blogging trend with two feet. Well, nearly everyone. Amazon stands out as the big tech company that dosent have a corprate blogging strategy/guidelines/policy/site going. Traditional customer relations tools simply don’t have the oopmh they used to. Blogging turns faceless corprate giants into somthing a little more human.
Mea Cupla:
Jim Turner says about Adobe: “I can tell you what they are not doing, they are not having a conversation with the influential people in their industry.” and “Where is the Adobe blogger?”
I guess Jim missed that Adobe has tons of blogs.
And, I would expect that Adobe will increase the discussion over the next few months. I am telling them not to invite me next time, but to get a bunch of .NET developers in a room like Scott Hanselman. Those are the influentials that Adobe really needs to have a conversation with.
I’m heading over right now to blogs.adobe.com to see what interesting stuff I can find.
I’ve not that hard a look at AJAX, but this post shared by Roberto Scoble caught my eye. The crux of the post is looking at a new AJAX bases platform, a company called Morfik. From what I read it does push the boundaries as to what can be don within the browser sandbox:
the crux of it is that Morfik uses 100% Ajax and renders in the native browser. Whereas all the other platforms use non-native browser plug-ins (like Flash) or render outside the browser. Adobe’s Apollo and Laszlo both largely output in Flash (a browser plug-in) and Microsoft’s WPF renders outside the browser.
Also, while Google is Java heavy (no offense intended) for their UI’s, Morfik:
allows developers to use high-level programming languages (which give the developer more power – e.g. BASIC, C#, Pascal) to create web apps. It does this by converting apps from high level language INTO Ajax code.
This is great news. As a VB /C# Developer, it might just make ASP.Net 2.0 fade into the background as far as UI is concerned.
I’ll be watching.
I laughed out loud at this. More becuase its funny than anything else.
Former Secretary of Labour Robert Riech makes this analysis of the stock market:
As of right now (11:15 am Pacific time, Wednesday), it looks like Wall Street is putting a the best face possible on yesterday’s “correction.” (A “correction” is a Wall Street euphemism for “holy shit!”)
He also said:
The wake-up call this time was Alan Greenspan, the Oracle of Ayn Rand, whose visage had been beamed by satellite to a group in Hong Kong on Monday (New York time). Greenspan warned the gathering of excess liquidity in global financial markets, leading to over-optimism, and he predicted a recession later this year.
Boom!
Too early yet to tell how big this explosion will be.
If you read his post you’ll see he mentions China. Anything that has an impact on the chinese economy, is of immideiate interest. The reason is right before you.
Fortunatly, I have no stocks to check 🙂
Random Musings 
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