This is another backing-up-your-data rant, but even though I’m posting this second it technically comes first in the order of shooting. And I think it’s a bit more informative and organized. So if you only watch one rant about backups this year, make it this one.
Viva 2018.
I converted an older HP DL380 Gen8 (aka a StoreOnce 2900) from using a hard RAID controller to an HBA for software RAID. The conversion is simple, but the video is long af because I spend a lot of time discussing the “why” more than the “how”.
In this excerpt from the below video, I talk about the total cost of ownership of RAID arrays.
This describes why I created the RAID HDD TCO Calculator which helps you figure out the total cost of ownership of a RAID array, inclusive of stuff like electrical and cooling costs.
I take a look at the Teclast F7 Plus which I bought on a whim to see if a cheap laptop could compete with my similarly-valued X1 Carbon Gen 2 from 2014. Turns out it could not, except in battery life (spoilers).
I actually purchased the laptop about a year ago and started making a video about it, but the farked around without working on it in the interim. Hence, we are here now.
For some reason I did a full walk-through of the Teclast’s rather robust BIOS, which you can see here:
I’ll admit I was charmed by the full-sized specs of this diminutive laptop (or netbook, as you will), and I have a thing for tiny laptops in general. So I couldn’t resist it when Banggood offered it up to me in a full-on tracking cookie assault of marketing. (That being said, I purchased it from Amazon to avoid paying duties.) It’s a solidly built little machine, and a solid performer save for one thing: It’s not what I would consider to be a gaming computer. Though it is indeed sold as one, what with it’s somewhat-included side controllers and advertising to that effect. Sure, it can play some games just fine, but without some kind of even halfway-decent (even mobile-optimized) … Continue reading
This is the prelude to a future project, wherein I stick an ancient Atom motherboard into an unpronounceable QILIPSU outdoor enclosure. (The enclosure seems to be pretty good, though!)
You can access the computer here for fun and no practical reason whatsoever: http://outdoor.s.co.tt
My endeavors in live streaming continue. This time I’m disassembling a Sonic Foundry Mediasite Recorder from over 12 years ago. That device was also capable of live streaming events, so it’s only fitting that I’d disassemble it live. I guess.
There are tons of posts about this subject, but none of them offered the very simple solution that worked for me: Make sure the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant is running on the mailbox server. We had a catastrophic crash of a VM host, on which our Exchange 2013 server was running as a guest. Everything seemed to come back up just fine, and all Outlook users were back online with Exchange, except for two. One user was running Outlook 2016 like the rest of the org, but one was running Outlook 2007 (don’t ask). They seemed to have nothing in common, but they both were throwing errors that network problems were preventing communication with the Exchange server. I did all … Continue reading
This is partially just for my own reference, so I don’t have to go down this rabbit hole again. (But I hope it helps you, too!) The Situation I wanted to upgrade the LITE-ON 256GB SSD in my trusty ol’ Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop to a snazzy new Samsung 960 EVO 2TB drive. I have a version of Acronis that came with a Crucial (or Kingston?) SSD, which has worked great in the past. The problem? There was a system reserved partition at the very end of the disk, and Acronis therefore would not proportionally scale the OS partition to fill the disk; It would only scale that system reserved partition. In a moment of errant stupidity, I said, “Ah-hah! … Continue reading
Intro My friends will tell you that I’m obsessed with redundancy, both in life and in I.T. At home I have two main internet connections, via Altice Optimum (“cable”) and Verizon FiOS. They’re both relatively high bandwidth, and are connected to my two core routers that operate in an active/passive configuration. Basically this: O——O +——–+ / \ | |————/ O +——————+——————–| Core | / / | Optimum Router | | Router |———-O / +——————+\ ______________| 01 | \ O \ / | |————O \ \ / +——–+ / \ X Keepalived | / Various O / \ Heartbeat | O Networks / / \ +——–+ \ O +——————+/ \_____________| |———–\ \ | FiOS Router | | Core | \ O … Continue reading
A while back I created a HDD TCO worksheet showing the relative costs of certain drives in no real context. This spreadsheet aims to calculate the total cost of ownership for a RAID array, which is a much more involved affair. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dM2vO08gmX3VwYyJtTE5D1Gu75TTU-nUW95j1_DVx8c/ That’s a read-only version, but you can easily make your own copy to play with: If you have a Google account and are logged in, you can just hit File -> Make a Copy.. to save it to your own Google Drive. If you hate Google sniffing into your private affairs, you can hit File -> Download As and grab a copy in the format of your choice. I hope I’ve provided enough of an explanation as to … Continue reading
