Virtualization, EUC, and Computing in General
Jacob Rutski Last Friday, 9/6/2013, StarWind released a beta of version 8 of their core SAN product – iSCSI SAN. This version has been in the works for several months – it includes what appears to be a major rewrite of the core storage code as well as a simplified management console. The core includes: All previous beta features are now supported and standard – RAM cache, dedupe, etc LSFS – log-structured file system – groups random … Read more…
I recently upgraded to FreeNAS 9.1 once it was GA. I have always used compression on the volume that stores all of the virtual machines – instead of using DeDupe which requires considerably more RAM, and doesn’t appear to be as forgiving. That being said, the volume has been configured with LZJB compression and I was seeing about 40-50% compression ratios. Then I converted the volume to LZ4 compression. *Note: Modifying compression only effects new … Read more…
After many years (and iterations) of Windows Media Center PCs, I have finally arrived to a place where the benefits outweigh the issues and I have full approval from the ‘Board’. Take a look at all of the previous posts here: http://blogs.serioustek.net/post/category/fine-tuning-media-center-7 We are now using HTPC Windows Media Center PCs on our Primary TVs and for once, everything is working perfectly, and there are ZERO ‘weird little issues’ that I have to explain away … Read more…
The Intel NUC looked appealing ever since I first saw it – it provides HD 4000 graphics, an i3 or i5 processor, an SSD, HDMI output, and 1Gb LAN all in a 4″ by 4″ by 1″ package that can even mount on the back of a monitor with a VESA mount. Here’s the Intel reference page: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/nuc-i5.html When my son started crawling and pulling himself up on things, he became VERY interested in buttons and … Read more…
The StarTech HSB430SATBK is a great drive cage – it fits into 3 5.25″ external bays and gives you 3 3.5″ SATA hot-swap HDD bays. Unfortunately, fans going bad is not uncommon. Here’s a quick how to if you ever need to replace the fans on the StarTech 4 bay HDD cage. First remove all the screws from the back plate – don’t remove the screws from the fans – they are screwed into the … Read more…
After the success of the previous Insteon test as noted here, I decided I would try installing a device into a heavily used area – the kitchen. We did not have any under-cabinet lighting, and 6 large overhead flood lights were just overkill…so I bought some small fluorescent lights and two OutletLinc Relays and figured that I had the perfect location for a SwitchLinc. So I bought a SwitchLinc 2487S to control a light above the … Read more…
A few weeks ago, I received a text from ATT telling me that there was an update available for my Samsung Galaxy S2 – Jelly Bean. The directions included a link to a website (http://www.samsung.com/us/attgalaxys2/update) that eventually instructed me to use Kies to apply the update, just like ICS – no OTA update here. I then realized that I needed to install Kies on the computer I was using and proceeded to do so…this took forever … Read more…
This post is slightly out of order – I’ll do part 2 with all specs, hardware, and pictures shortly. For now here’s some brief preliminary findings – the configuration: 4 mirrors of 2 x 146GB SFF 10K RPM drives ZIL housed on 1 mirror of 2 Intel 330 60GB SSD drives DL380G6 with 30GB PC3-10600R RAM ESX is connected to this via NFS (I know sync writes…that’s why the ZIL is on the SSDs). So … Read more…
SiliconDust continues to give service providers the metaphorical middle finger – with a single device, the HDHomeRun Prime, you can: Watch live TV with Windows Media Center PC Turn your Windows Media Center PC into a DVR Extend the above PC to your XBOX and watch Live TV on it Do all of the above on 3 devices simultaneously Or record 3 shows at once And now, with the introduction of Project:Connect and DLNA certification you can … Read more…
I recently moved all of my CIFS shares over to a FreeNAS box (more on that later) including the share that housed all of our photos. We use an Eye-Fi card in the DSLR to auto-upload all the images whenever the wireless network is in range – and it has worked flawlessly….until now. I have a Windows 7 VM that runs the Eye-Fi helper application since it won’t run as a service and requires a … Read more…