*Cough*

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Whoah, the dust.

Anyway, got myself a nice subscription to Office 365 business, so I’m going to see how it can be used in a VERY simple home environment.

Why should a small business virtualize?

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I’ve seen it a hundred times. A customer invests in a server only to have it experience some kind of failure.
Be it storage, memory, some other component, or even time.

But what if there was a way to help safeguard your backbone and allow your business to become more flexible?

It’s simple, virtualize! Read More

Linux Wyse update

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So, doing some digging revealed some possible fixes to the black screen I’m getting on startup.

Now my problem is that I’ve updated my Thinstation build but now I can’t update the terminal because my flash drive died. ARG!
Going to wait until I can get another flash drive to boot off of, or get a PXE server to push SystemRescueCD so I can update the unit.

Linux on Wyse status

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Progress!

I have successfully wiped out the WyseOS on the terminal device, and got Thinstation to boot.
My only problem now is that when it tries to load X, it stops displaying anything on the screen.
I noticed that X also craps out on SystemRescueCD when booted on the terminal.

It uses a Via Chrome 9 graphics chipset according to lspci, so we’ll see if there are any known issues or workarounds.

Too late for me though, we’ll see what tomorrow brings!

Next project, Linux on Wyse!

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So I’ve had this Wyse terminal for a while now from the company I work for.

While the installed OS is nice, it’s lacking a few features I’d like.
So with their blessings I was able to take one some to see what I can do with it!

It’s got a 1GHz VIA CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a 128MB IDE SSD.

I initially tried to get Windows 7 Embedded on it after adding more RAM, but the performance from running Windows from a flash drive leaves a lot to be desired. Read More

And another piece of history dies

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As Kotaku has reported, Maxis has been shut down.

I’ve loved the SimCity franchise since I first saw it, with SimCity 2000 as the first I owned.

Thank you Maxis for everything!

So many Pi’s, so little time

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So I got a Raspberry Pi B+ and I really like it.

I tried to set it up as a Minecraft server but it wasn’t able to handle the stress.
A lot of articles say it works great but they are older articles pointing to an older version of MC server.

But now that they released a NEW Pi 2 model with MUCH better specs and at the same price, I’m converting the B+ to a LAMP server and going to make the Pi 2 my MC server, and possibly Windows 10 test machine on the side, so amazing!

Xen on hold

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So yet again my planned Xen hyper-visor is on hold.

After converting my Server 2012 R2 from a generation 1 guest to a generation 2 successfully it has jumped up greatly in performance. Short version: Converted boot drive from MBR to GPT and added EFI boot, see here. FYI, you can do this from a Windows 8 install disc, but it must be a 32-bit disc, as gptgen is not 64-bit.
Also the fact I was able to get Ubuntu Server to install as a Gen 2 and get great performance.

Considering how nicely Windows took to not only being converted from physical to virtual into Hyper-V, it also took to moving from MBR/BIOS to GPT/UEFI, I don’t think Xen will get me any better performance, especially with the lack of specific official drivers for devices.

I’d like to use Xen in the future for Linux boxes since they love it, but I’m holding off until I can get another server for that.

Stage 1 complete

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Finally converted my main server from a physical machine to a Hyper-V server.

Went fairly straightforward except that I should’ve initially added the VHDX to a Gen 1 VM and not a Gen 2. Oh well.

Now I’m getting some experience running and administrating a Server 2012 R2 core OS. Not too bad with RSAT on another PC. 😀

Links coming tomorrow to what helped me get up and running. Too tired right now.

It lives! Sort of…

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So I decided not to go with Hyper-V.

After reading several sites trying to do what I am and having less than stellar performance I went back to Xen.
Amazingly Citrix completely opened up Xen and even made VGA Passthrough easy as anything else.

I’ve already tested with Xen on my main gaming rig and was successful in getting it to go through my main graphics card and display on at least one monitor.
Next step it both monitors, pass through USB for my devices, and test game and benchmark performance pitting my current Windows 8.1 rig against a virtual Windows 7. If it’s within a few percentage points I’m all in!