Today we were researching VDIs in the office for a client and came across Hyper V server from Microsoft, after looking around it appears that it’s free. We are currently downloading it and will be testing it out over the course of the next week, along with CitrixXen Server and XenDesktop.
Do you have a favourite VDI or virtualization platform? Then be sure to let us know in the comments.
WordPress 3.0.1 is now available. So it’s time to update. Just remember to backup first, you might want to check out our blog post about backing up your Cpanel WordPress installation.
Here is an extract from the WordPress Blog about the latest release:
After nearly 11 million downloads of WordPress 3.0 in just 42 days, we’re releasing WordPress 3.0.1. The requisite haiku:
Three dot oh dot one
Bug fixes to make you smile
Update your WordPressThis maintenance release addresses about 50 minor issues. The testing many of you contributed prior to the release of 3.0 helped make it one of the best and most stable releases we’ve had.
More information at the WordPress blog.
When working with computers you can almost never have enough cables. The main cables in use are
It’s rather annoying when starting on a project and you get held up because you don’t have the correct cable for the job. (You new mother board came with 2 SATA, and your trying to install 3 SATA devices). So by investing in a little bit of cash now you can save yourself time, effort and energy down the track.
I recently needed a couple of extra SATA cables for a job and some other upgrades. Instead of going to shop and buying them for $5 each I was able to pick up a bulk pack of 10 for under $7 online, with free shipping. That’s a saving of over $43, plus 1 hour of my time (remember time is worth more than gold these days) because I didn’t have to waste that 1 going to the shop.
Lifehacker have a great round up several times a year with some great free software to use on every platform. This week Lifehacker released their Apps Pack for Linux.
Some of the apps are even Cross platform such as OpenOffice.org Firefox/Chrome, Thunderbird, Skype, VLC, Handbrake and GIMP
Check out the full article at Lifehacker
Picture: LifehackerSmall businesses generally have an IT budget of 0, but need the best performance that money can buy.
Most small businesses rely on their little modem/router/wireless access point combination plastic box to perform all the needed tools and utilities to get the internet around their network to all their uses. But sometimes there comes a day where the little router just doesn’t have the functions required for the expanding network. (Such as complex block lists, cache, VPN functions etc). But at the same time, any left over IT budget goes into upgrading staff machines, rather than the network infrastructure.
But you don’t have to pay a lot for these extra features. If you have an old machine lying around the office, the only major upgrade that you might have to do is spend $15 on a new PCI network card and 10 cents on a CD to turn that machine into a fully fledged Firewall/Router/Proxy Server/etc.
What we are doing is turning that old Windows 98 machine into a dedicated (i.e you can’t use it for anything else) firewall and router for your small business network.
Basically all you need is a copy of either of the following operating systems:
And a machine with 2 network cards.
*Endian calls itself a Unified Threat Management & Requires better hardware than the others listed. It can perform virus and spam scans on the data in real time as it passes though the firewall. Pretty cool ey.
Check out Episode 718 of Hak5 to see how they turned a few parts they had lying around (Motherboard with a Intel Atom processor, 2GB of ram, 250GB IDE harddrive, please note they do stress that what they are using is an overkill but the process is still the same. Ed Note: The current Firewall at the office here is a simple 133Mhz processor, with 32 mb of ram & a 3 GB hard drive, it runs 24/7 and serves upto 8 users, IPCop or Smoothwall can run on almost anything) into a dedicated router and firewall.
Once you have it setup, just plug it into your network between the modem and your switch and let it go.
Today we came across an issue while working on a virtual server. We had created a virtual hard drive, attached it to the virtual Windows 2008 Server machine, added some files to it and wanted to unmount the virtual drive and then attach it to another virtual machine.
The virtual machine manager (XenCenter in this case) wouldn’t allow us to disconnect the drive, while the virtual guest OS was still using it.
A quick Google and we finally found this command:
mountvol
Creates, deletes, or lists a volume mount point.
That’s exactly what we needed. Heres how to use it:
Creates, deletes, or lists a volume mount point.
MOUNTVOL [drive:]path VolumeName
MOUNTVOL [drive:]path /D
MOUNTVOL [drive:]path /L
MOUNTVOL [drive:]path /P
MOUNTVOL /R
MOUNTVOL /N
MOUNTVOL /Epath Specifies the existing NTFS directory where the mount
point will reside.
VolumeName Specifies the volume name that is the target of the mount
point.
/D Removes the volume mount point from the specified directory.
/L Lists the mounted volume name for the specified directory.
/P Removes the volume mount point from the specified directory,
dismounts the volume, and makes the volume not mountable.
You can make the volume mountable again by creating a volume
mount point.
/R Removes volume mount point directories and registry settings
for volumes that are no longer in the system.
/N Disables automatic mounting of new volumes.
/E Re-enables automatic mounting of new volumes.
To unmount the drive that was in use we just used:
mountvol E:\ /D
The E:\ drive was then released from Windows and this allowed us to use and mount the disk else where.
One of the many wonders of the modern age is the message delivery known as email. Like all mediums, its not without its highlights and annoyances. Like Snail mail is great for post cards and letters for friends, but junk mail and bills can be annoying.
Lifehacker.com recently asked it’s users what they didn’t like email. Here are some of the highlights:
“Sent From My”
“Sent from my iPhone” may as well say “I don’t know how to change my settings, or am too pretentious to try”
Disclaimers and Reminders
Three paragraph legal disclaimer that’s longer than the message. Also: attached logos or graphics.
Needless, Nagging Euphemisms
Using the CC field when you should use the BCC field to send out a mass e-mail. Keep my address private, dammit!
For the full article head to Lifehacker’s The Worst Email Habits and Annoyances You Should Avoid (or At Least Be Aware Of)
A few other personal annoyances.
If you don’t forward this on you’ll die
Those rather annoying forwards that come around. Although they seem to be dieing out and being replaced by Facebook Groups.
People that think you should live on your email because they do.
As Timothy Ferris explains it in the 4 Hour Work Week – Email is a huge time waster and is rather inefficient.
Let us know what annoys you with your email in the comments.
This week we were updating a clients servers.
Without reading all the fine print, we tried to install Windows Small Business Server 2008 inside a virtual machine with only 2GB of ram available. About an hour into the installation Windows SBS 2008 decided to alert us that it requires a minimum of 4 GB of ram.
Don’t get caught out – always have spare ram.
Image thanks to William Hook
Sometimes it’s useful to leave a PC running while your not at it. It is sometimes also equally useful to be able to turn it off while not at it. Luckily their are several ways of doing this.
Lifehacker recently reviewed a program called Switch Off. Its a small application that allows you to shut down (or restart, log off, lock, start VPN connections, run custom scripts) your computer based on a variety of factors. Such as on a schedule, on CPU load, or even remotely though a web interface. Which is designed for mobile devices. If you setup the correct port forwarding you can shut down your computer from anywhere in the world. For more information check out the lifehacker page
For a simple or quick one off solution you can do a time based shutdown using a built in command on any Windows XP, vista, 7, Server 2003, Server 2008 with the shutdown command.
Just open a Run window (Start – Run or Windows Key + R) Type in:
shutdown -s -t [number of seconds] -f
(The -s is for shutdown, to restart use -r. The -f is to force all programs to shut down, works 99.9% of the time)
So to turn off your PC in 30 minutes you would use the following command:
shutdown -s -t 1800 -f
Some common Seconds to Minutes conversions are:
15 minutes – 900 seconds
30 minutes – 1800 seconds
45 minutes – 2700 seconds
60 minutes – 3600 seconds
120 minutes – 5400 seconds.
This shutdown command also works if you want to shutdown a computer after using Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). When you go to shutdown after using RDC you’ll notice disconnect rather than shutdown. By using this you can shutdown the remote server (or restart) without having to go the the physical machine.
More information on Switch Off or on LifeHacker
A user on Lifehacker has recently posted a video on how to clean the little track ball on a blackberry. (I would say it works for any mobile device with a track ball).
I tested it out on my Blackberry which was having issues scrolling to the right and it fixed it up.
All that required is a blank piece of white paper and you just need to rub the trackball on the paper to clean it. Check out the video
[YouTube via Lifehacker]
Another method that I used just after Christmas involved pulling out the track ball assembly and cleaning the rollers.