Technology

A VMWare World

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I have spoken often about the wonders of VMWare. I will keep doing so. I finally got my desktop at work configured with a larger hard drive and have been busy setting up Virtual Machines. I have several deployment projects that are benefiting from VMWare. I can take 2 physical machines and make them into many virtual machines.

Howard finally started using VMWare with Red Hat 9 on his laptop. It is funny that I am getting him to use it more, when my cousin and howard were the people that got me hooked on the idea of virtual machines in the first place.

I am using VMWare on numerous projects currently. I have a test domain controller running windows 2003. That is a physical server. I then take my desktop and attach servers and client machines running VMWare to it to test all sorts of things. Today I created a sub domain on my test domain using a windows 2000 server virtual machine. I then was able to test destroying active directory without worrying about rebuilding a server. I just saved the Win 2000 virtual machine and I can restore it if I have problems.

I have done the same thing with SMS 2003. I am busy now and cannot work on it so I just backed up the virtual machine I was trying it on. I don’t have to take up a server testing with it. it is just 5 gigs on a hard drive.

I was also able to test some security changes we made to my companies active directory without affecting anyone. I just added a windows XP virtual machine to our domain and ran tests on it. I just restored from backup if I messed up the virtual machine. it is great technology.

Keith and I also used a virtual machine of XP to test windows update services we are deploying. that also saved us from creating ghost images of desktops and tying up several in this test.

My next challenge is getting a working FreeBSD 5.1 workstation as a virtual machine.

Microsoft just announced a new version Virtual PC. I will see if it is anywhere near as good as VMWare.

Family Things

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It took me most of Saturday afternoon, but I was able to install all the programs on my dad’s new computer. Then it took me 5 hours to move all his stuff off his old machine and finish setting up the new one on sunday. It didn’t realize he only had a 10megabit network card in his old computer. It took forever to move his 3 gigs of data off the old computer. It took 20 minutes to move it onto the new computer from my laptop.

I was able to setup all his new gadgets to the new computer. he has his new 512 meg flash drive to bring stuff to work on. I also got his Treo 300 to sync up to the new computer.

With all that work done, we went to my sisters for dinner. I got to see Morgan crawl. I helped my sister move some stuff to my parents house for storage. I also burned myself a new CD of morgan from last month. I will update the website soon.

I am cleaning up my place so I can figure out where the furniture is going to go. My sister gave me the number of the movers they used. I will call them this week.

In my spare time I was also messing around with some video editing. I am playing with Final Cut Express. I imported an old family video I had and I am trying to figure out how to do editing. My dad said he has a bunch of 8mm reels that we could get converted to DVD also. I am going to see how much that will cost. Getting a VCR tape into a DV format that Final Cut can edit is a time consuming process. Granted I don’t have the best tools to do that, but it does work after you follow all the steps. I didn’t have much time to work on that project this weekend.

Ongoing Work

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Last night it looks like we got a ton of pages about 1 drive being out of space. Not sure why we didn’t get a low disk warning first. I just tested that dam warning system like a month ago. No one (myself included) woke up to the pages. that is not good.

Justin is out again. He has more dental problems than anyone I know. Keith is coming in late. he did work on our VPN last night. I don’t get him. We discussed the work, but he never asked to take some time off until the last minute. It drives me up the wall when he does that. If I knew that bit of info, I wouldn’t have said ok to the work last night. I needed people this morning since I knew justin was out. I need to teach these guys how to prioritize time. Spending an hour on a minor problem that doesn’t need to get done right away is not worth it if you can be spending that time on something else that people are waiting for results on.

All that being said, today is not starting off very well. At least the Database guys are working on the error we were getting. it doesn’t look like our sites were down, but getting errors is bad.

Yesterday I did more research into using Microsoft Operations Manager for our data-center. I like it, but I also have some issues with it. In our test, I was unable to get historical reports. I also sized the database wrong so I ran out of space. I needed to extend the db. I also don’t know if some of our new internal network security will cause the Operations Manager server to stop receiving data from our production database servers. For now this is all theoretical, but I am trying to hash out a working course of action.

On another project I ordered 2 out of the 3 servers I need for our new MSMQ system. It is a messaging system we are going to use for order processing. I need to order 1 more database server and then I will be done.

I am also trying to find time to work on ISA or a linux proxy server. No time has yet to be found.

Stuff

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Last night I got my new Firewire 200 Gig hard drive. I plugged it into my Powerbook and an icon for it came up on my desktop. That was all I needed to do in order for me to start using it. They sent a CD along with the drive, but it must have been only for windows. I love Mac’s. That was the easiest upgrade I can remember.

I already started offloading data from my powerbooks hard drive onto the firewire drive. Next up is getting quicktime pro and pulling some of my MPEG-1 files into Final Cut Express and editing them for burning to a DVD.

I also received my Dad’s flash memory key chain. I got him a pen sized usb flash drive that holds 512megs of memory. he will use it to shuttle data back and forth between work. not sure how fast it will be but it is USB 2.0.

Monday I ordered his new computer. I settled for a dell. It is probably overkill for his needs, but he likes over kill.

I for one have been shuttling ISO images from work to home. I think I recovered almost all the images now. I just copied over ISO’s for red hat and FreeBSD 4.7.

Treo 600 GSM

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Handspring finally announced the GSM version of the Treo 600. that is the good news. the bad news is that it won’t be actually shipping until November 17. The really bad news is that they are only selling it for Cingular right now. I use T-Mobile and I actually don’t want to switch. I am planning on switching my “good” phone number to T-Mobile on November 24 when number portability becomes available.

Until T-Mobile releases the 600 or until something else comes along I will stick with my Treo 270. I am finding I am using it allot more than I used to. Stuff falls into and out of favor with me all the time. this time last year I was looking to sell the dam Treo.

The Two Desktop’s

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I fixed my broken desktop at work yesterday. The floppy drive wouldn’t eject or take disks. I still use floppies for booting and drivers disks so I needed to fix it. turns out it was just a broken piece of decretive plastic that was blocking the drive. all fixed now.

My desktop at home has XP back on it. I also got all the security updates on it, but I still have not had time to install any applications. I will do that over the next few weeks.

With my hard drive disaster I forgot to mention I blew away my 2003 server and rebuilt it. I wasn’t using exchange so I went back to imail. I still want to get exchange working at work, but I need my mail to be up at home until I figure out exchange 2003.

More Data Recovery

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I got most of the OS ISO disks recovered today. thankfully I had most of them at work. I am still missing some programs but I think I can find them on some backup’s. The rest of the really recent stuff I can always get if I find I need it later.

Most of the video’s off Tivo are lost forever. The VMWare Virtual Servers were also lost. I had allot of them backed on my laptop and work, but some of the configurations I had are lost. I will copy what I have at work tomorrow and bring it back home. I was trying to make a basic VMWare configuration for every OS that I use so I have it if I need to use it.

I also began to robocopy (like rsync, but using a windows resource kit utility) to sync my applications folder up with a drive on my 2003 server. I have realized that I cannot back everything up to DVD anymore. I just have too much stuff. Some things can get backed up, but most will have to sit on more than 1 disk drive. Either that or get a DLT system that I don’t want to get.

Well I am off to bed. My hands are starting to hurt. I need a good night sleep since it will be a long day tomorrow. Keith is taking the day off. As much as I bust on him for stuff, he does good work. He just needs supervision. And if he is reading this, hey Keith you know I am telling the truth!

As the tag below will state I wrote this while listening to one of my all time favorite songs. I am not as big a Creed fan as I used to be, but this song still rocks!

This entry was written while listening to Higher from the album “Human Clay” by Creed

Recovery

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So I found a bunch of the video’s that I thought I lost. I still have the video tape originals for most of what I didn’t recover. that is the good news. the bad news is that I only found 30% on backup’s.

My Application backup CD’s also had some error’s on certain program’s. I think they were older versions of stuff, so I am not worried that much. The down side is that I have to go out onto the internet and get ISO’s for Red Hat, BSD, etc. They are gig’s and gig’s of downloads that I need to do again. I will see if I have any of the missing stuff at work.

This recovery has taught me some things. One thing to note is that burning a CD or DVD as backup does not always work. I was able to recover most of what I did have on DVD, but some stuff gave me errors on the restore. I am going to keep everything I have on two different disks. I will sync them regularly. I have wanted to do that in the past but never had a problem with my DVD and CD-ROM backups.

Data Loss

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I may have made a huge tactical error. I went to reinstall windows XP on my desktop at home today. I have 2 drives in it. A 18 Gig 15,000 RPM SCSI drive for the OS, and a 180 Gig IDE drive for all my stuff. So to reinstall XP I just formatted the SCSI drive and expected to just have the data stay safe on the second drive. I have done it before. Always no problem. Well the problem I realized after it was too late was that Windows trys to install on the first IDE drive it can find. It doesn’t matter what you set your system to do. I wanted the SCSI drive to be the master. It didn’t care what I wanted if an IDE drive was present. I lost everything. The correct way to do this was to have removed the IDE drive and built windows. I didn’t figure that out until I lost all my data.

Now I have backups. All my personal files (documents, photo’s, music, etc) is on my mac and safe. I also did a DVD backup 2 weeks ago. What I did loose was all the shows I pulled off Tivo and didn’t have a chance to burn to DVD. I also lost any programs I downloaded and didn’t get to DVD. The last time I did that was the end of July 2003. I am bound to have lost stuff that has changed since then. Not a catastrophic mistake, but a big pain in the ass. I also lost tons of backups that I had. I was doing a project where I took all my old backup CD’s and put them to DVD so I didn’t have so many disks lying around. That project is bust now that all the copies on the hard drive are gone.

I don’t know why I am so calm about this right now. I truly don’t know what really needed and lost.

One think I do know is that I am going out tomorrow and getting a 200 gig firewire hard drive to put my stuff on. I am not taking any chances again. I have been pondering buying one for a while, but now I am going to do it.

If this was at work it would never have happened. Why am I more careful with other people’s stuff compared to my stuff? I guess I cannot get yelled at for messing my own stuff up!

OK, now I am a little pissed that I screwed this up. Not much stuff is lost forever, but what pisses me off is that it will take me months to get everything and organize it the way it was. I think that is what pisses me off the most.

I am now making a DOS bootable disk so I can wipe the large drive again so it doesn’t have an OS on it. Then I can remove it and build my computer with the SCSI drive in it and then insert the IDE drive back and use it as a secondary drive. if you are asking why don’t I just use the IDE drive as my primary drive, the answer is that it has more space. I need it for my stuff. the 18 gig drive is large enough for my OS and applications.