30
Aug
Upgrading Windows Home Server
Its been a week since I have finished placement and I decided as well as preparing for univeristy which if I am honest has gone as far as checking if I have any days off, thought I would take on a not so small project. Upgrading my Windows Home Server! Its getting on for 3 years old and the hardware is much older and well due for an upgrade.
Its not cost very much so far as upgrading my main desktop a couple of months back. I have a spare motherboard and memory as well as a power supply. The only missing pieces are a CPU and case. I am using my desktop CPU and have a new faster one on order for my main PC. The case, well I have purchased a new one as well as a new hardware as I’d prefer not to use my old drives that are probably starting to degrade.
The case I have got for it is a Fractal Design Define R2. I had seen it a while ago and was impressed with its 7 internal drive bays and sound proofing features. First impressions I see these are actually working and its current near silient sitting on my worktop while its copying data across from the old home server.
3
Nov
Fitted The Xtreamer Cooler
I fitted the Xtreamer cooler the other night. I was a little concerned how easy the how-to made the whole process look, nothing is easy. To be fair though once I’d got the side panel off, which must have been stuck down with the worlds strongest double-sided tape the whole thing was a breeze to complete. It even looks good as an end product with the cooler attached. On a plus note it worked afterwards. I hadn’t slipped and ploughed a screwdriver across the chipset.
I haven’t however watched it enough since to see if the cooler actually works but reading around others seem to think so. Its also stopped acting up. After a little playing around after my previous post, here. It turned out the Windows Home Server wasn’t 100% happy with the Xtreamer on the network. Its fine now, the problem was the WHS, at idle spun down the hard drives when they were not in use and when the Xtreamer started to stream a file there was a delay while the hard-drives spin back up. This is ok when your streaming to Boxee, a PC etc as there is about a 2 second delay the Xtreamer however seems to get confused. I think I’ll file a bug report when I can test this more.
On a similar note the Xtreamer with its HDMI output is pushing me towards getting a HD TV. I’ve been watching the new series Life on BBC/iPlayer and the awesome shots they have in HD are just amazing but I’m stuck watching it on my PC monitor… for now.. any recommendations?
8
Oct
The Xtreamer
So I got a new gizmo a while ago. I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while. An Xtreamer, It streams video and music to the TV downstairs from the WHS. Its a good little product and works well. When it works, when it doesn’t its a little frustrating. I think last night it took 10 minutes to navigate the menus and sometimes it decides not to even play a file.
I have mine set-up on the Wireless N router (D-Link DIR-655) which doesn’t cause any problems at all. I wasn’t sure how well the wireless would work, as I don’t have the option to hook it up to a real connection, but no complaints with the wireless. One annoying point is the cooling fan inside the device. Its whinny even on the lowest of the low settings, sound a bit like a fly buzzing around. However you can turn it off but as I found out the other night after about 4 hours of streaming or being turned on its performance starts to get affected by it over heating. A new head sink add-on has just been released but still it shouldn’t really over heat.
Although when it works its a really good little device. The navigating the menus are quick but sometimes there is a little delay from the remote. I hope a firmware update maybe fixes of these issues when it arrived it needed updating so maybe another one is in the wind. I should ask google.
This is not suppose to be a rant or a review of it I’m just saying. I’ll keep this updated. I think I’ll get this heat sink and with a firmware update then maybe all these problems with go away!
22
Sep
A Weekend of Work
Well its been a very busy week. I went home on the weekend, back to Newark, for a couple of reasons. The first being that I was helping my sister move in to her university accommodation at Sheffield Hallam. She is a fresher and has a very nice room which is bigger than mine was at Staffs and has a double bed, OK its not a double but its bigger than a single. However all was not amazing as her shower area looked like it had not been cleaned in a while. Other than that it seemed a very nice place to live for a year.
The second reason for going back home was to Read more
6
Sep
Windows Home Server In The Office?
This week a nice big box was waiting for me at home. It was a nice new HP ML115 server but unfortunately its not for me to keep, its for my Dad. For those of you that don’t know I handle the IT for my parents business. Its quite a handy role. I can pretty much do everything remotely, it helps towards refilling my pockets and its getting me quite alot of experience in all sort of areas in IT which I can then use on my placement or when I need to look for a job in 2 years time.
Anyway back to the point. Why the nice shiny server I hear you ask? Well its part of a plan I am putting in place in order to keep everything on the business computers backed up! There is a simple backup system in place but it doesn’t cover everything. Only the important bits. So its Windows Home Server to the rescue. Yep that’s right I’m going to put Windows Home Server on the new machine. Windows Home Server (WHS) is quite handy when it comes to small business’s and/or offices. In this case the backup of networked computers is the main reason WHS is being deployed and here is why…
- Backs up all the computers daily
- Pretty much restore a computer in 10 minutes.
- Restore a whole computer or that file you just deleted
- Doesn’t use up terabytes of data space
Its an all round win. You can aswell, with a bit of a nudge join it to a domain and run services on it like Virtual Machines, DNS, FTP etc etc..
I’m not the only one deploying WHS in a small business. Microsoft even recommends it and are starting to push the idea to small business’s…
23
Jul
4 Weeks Later
Well it has been a while since I have posted and a lot has been going on so I do apologise. Its been just over 4 weeks since I moved to Birmingham and what a great experience it has been. My placement has kicked off to a great start and I quickly got to know the ins and outs of the company and its systems so a big thanks to Talwinder, the current placement student I will be replacing.
Birmingham its self has been awesome. Last Monday I went with my new flatmate and his friends to The Rainbow to see Kid British! What a great band and they played amazing live! I also saw The Anomalies which were also awesome and other band which were very good but I have no idea what they were called… Any who it got me in the mood for V festival which is only a month away!
My placement has been a real learning curve and I think its going to get steeper which is always fun. I’m currently looking at a Windows PBX called 3CX which may be implemented at the office.
This weekend I’ll hopefully get round to having a look at the new update for Windows Home Server. Power Pack 3 has been released under a BETA tag, which means its not quite ready for the public as it might still have bugs in the software. It brings support for Windows 7 enhancements to Windows Media Centre. Check it out here.
On that note I have been checking out a new media centre called Boxee! After leaving the Stafford house the original Xbox running XBMC has been retired as I no longer have a TV (Soon to change) so I started using Boxee as a Windows version had just been released. I was very impressed initially and continue to be bemused by its features. Boxee is based on XBMC but does a much better job at presenting its self. The applications feature is also a great edition allowing UK users to watch BBC iPlayer, although here in Birmingham I am on 2mb broadband so can’t stream the HD content. I was going to set up XBMC on my new TV though a PC rather than an the Xbox but I think now it’ll be running Boxee so watch this space!.. Going to have a to buy a TV first though.. and maybe a new small computer..??
Also a quick GOOD LUCK to Andrew, Michael and Dave who are in Germany finishing their first week on placement!