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
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…
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!
First of the Month
Which means it is 27 days till I move to Birmingham. I getting quite excited about the prospect as I get a taste tomorrow with a trip to the data-centre with the current placement student.
May has been an interesting month, I have turned 20, which I still find a little fascinating. It seems a long time yet the last 4/5 years have gone so fast.. Does time speed up as you get older? I’ve moved back home after two years (I don’t think two weeks last summer counted) and well I can’t think of anything to add to the list but anyway…
In my last post I forgot to mention I got a little camera for my birthday.. I’m not a mad snapper but I thought it be nice to have one.. so when I grab some nice photos a new section will come to life on the blog, its hiding away as its got nothing to show for now.
I finally got round to installing Windows 7 on my laptop which I am currently using to write this post. I’m liking the new features and tweaks that keep surprising me, the latest is the sub menus on the start menu. Pined items when hovered over produce a sub menu with options for you, for example its shows the recent history of the devices you have connected to with Remote Desktop which skips a step when accessing the machines as shown below…
Which reminds me! I’ve been quite impressed with Windows Home Server lately which is installed on Stewie. After reading up on the way Home Server backups machines and the restore process when I first purchased the operating system. I was quite confident that if and when my computer fell over it would be ok as I could just restore it from a backup, I never tested this out though.. I suppose it was at a time that it it isn’t broke, don’t fix it as I was in the middle of uni and formatting a pc for the fun of it wasn’t my top 10 things to do.
However the time did come for me to use it. The process was so simple. The restore CD is a Live CD, which for those of you that don’t know, is a bootable operating system that doesn’t require or use a hard-drive . It didn’t require any drivers importing at all and after a few clicks the machine was restoring its self.. Magic!!
So magic I have to say… Matt, a house mate, an avid Mac fan.. has got him self one. A Tranquil SQA-5H I believe… and I do believe soon the Home Server will be able to take backup images of Apple Mac’s using the Time Machine application.. not sure though…
On this point I have to finish and make my way back to Stafford..
Just an update
Just a quick one. Uni has started for the 3rd semester and my last assignment has been handed in so that means its revision time!
I didn’t do much yesterday as I was being lazy for one and also I got a new hard drive for the Home Server racking it up to 3Tb so now I can properly fully backup my PC to it with the extra space.
On another note I thought it worth a mention the blog was put live 2 years ago yesterday. Can’t say I have been using it solidly for 2 years but its birthday was yesterday 2 years ago. Actually that reminds me, I’m 20 a month today… Where is the teen?
Money Saving
The start of term starts to tomorrow (Thank you Google Calender reminders) and the start of my money saving plan! Over the past couple of terms I have had a rough idea on budgeting my money but at the end of the term is seems its all gone down the pan and I have next to nothing left!
So with the new year I have decided to budget my money, my debit card will stay at home and I’ll only have £55 to spend a week! This should leave me at the end not so much positive but a lot less negative.
To kick start this plan I have reduced my mobile phone bill, because of the stupid rules I can only reduce it once and at one step at a time (Oh but I can upgrade how ever many times I want, Grrr, Stupid Orange) but I have now saving a little bit and as they say, A little bit goes a long way..
To help motivate me I have decided that left overs of each week will be set aside and will hopefully build up so I can get some new hard drives for the media server and put Windows Home Server back on it!
