The Setup

Inspired by the site over at usethis.com, the following is a brief interview between me and, well, me.

Matthew Juffs
Web Developer, Techie

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Matt, Husband to Anneka and Daddy to Lily (18 months) and Mia (15 weeks to go). By day I'm a Web Developer for IOCEA.com Ltd, the creators of Cshop and by night I develop my own sites and tinker with my servers.

I code primarily in ASP (Classic and .NET) with Microsoft SQL Server, but have been known to dabble in PHP and MySQL. Then I used a splashing of XHTML/CSS to bring it altogether and a sprinkling of Javascript if required.

My personal project, SlickCMS is nearing completion for a public release, over a year after embarking on it. I'm still contemplating going Open Source with it, or simply making it freely available.

When I'm not developing for work or my own kicks, I try to improve my measly XBOX 360 Gamer Score; Fallout 3 is proving to be engaging.

What hardware do you use?

At work, a Dell Optiplex 320 with 2GB RAM and an Intel Pentium D. It has lasted me nearly 3 years of development without any problems. It has 2 Sony 17" LCDs connected to it, with a Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 - an older gaming mouse I found to be perfect for me, a lefty.

At home, a Sony VAIO, again with 2GB RAM and an Intel Pentium (M). It runs Windows 7 fine and my only complaint is the loud fan.

I also run several servers in the loft, including a mini-itx Firewall and an AMD Athlon X2 with 6GB RAM as a Virtual Host.

And what software?

My work desktop and laptop run pretty much the same set of software, with the former using Vista and the latter Windows 7. Visual Studio 2008; Microsoft SQL Server 2008; Office 2007; Notepad++ and 7Zip amongst others.

Browser wise, it's Internet Explorer 8 at work, with Google Chrome at home. I prefer the minimalist approach of Chrome for browsing websites and the Web Developer toolbar of IE8 for development purposes.

The Firewall uses Smoothwall and the Virtual Host uses Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, with the VMs a mix of Server 2003/2008.

Lastly, I am a fan of Star Wars, so my Servers are named after planets: Bespin for the Host; Talus, Hoth and Corellia (amongst others) for the VMs and Tatooine for the NAS.

What would be your dream setup?

At work, a 30" Dell monitor, with the Sonys either side would work well - all powered by a Intel Xenon workstation.

Laptop wise, a bleeding-edge Lenovo, Sony or Dell would be good. Maybe a high-end netbook or lightweight laptop for browsing the Internet when not developing too.

My servers could do with an upgrade and consolidation - there's no need to run all 4 of them 24/7, when just the one with a bunch of Virtuals would suffice.

I used to roll with a desktop at home, for PC Gaming and occasional developing - but have since found a laptop to be ideal for sitting on the sofa whilst coding.

comments Posted: Tuesday 26th January 2010, 01:35pm
Categories: Articles, Computers and Technology, SlickCMS, Slickhouse, Web, Work
Tags: asp, microsoft

Clean Install

Recently, I've been asked to perform a clean install on friend's laptop/desktop PCs. I reckon over the past few years I've installed an operating system over 100 times, of all different flavours. Off the top of my head, I've sat waiting for the following to complete:

Microsoft's Operating Systems are a firm favourite, apart from Millennium Edition - but I forgive them for that. Regardless of the Operating System in question, the process is pretty much the same for all:
  1. Copy all relevant files to another drive (network/external)
  2. Format the hard drive
  3. Pop-in the O/S CD/DVD and follow the instructions
  4. Restart
  5. Install the latest drivers (usually in a specific order)
  6. Restart
  7. Install updates
  8. Install software required
  9. Optimise
  10. Defrag
  11. Test
To elaborate, 1 should include all of the user(s) files which are located in C:\Documents and Settings or C:\Users by default on Microsoft Windows. I also grab any application specific files that would be needed, such as Save Games and configuration files. Then check for drivers that are lying around - Dell tend to put theirs in C:\Drivers or C:\DELL - so copy them to another drive too.

Step 2 is fairly straight forward and can be combined with 3 - as many Operating System installations allow you to format the drive(s) during the process. If you feel it's necessary, run a format utility on the drive to wipe them prior to installation - DBAN is good for this. The installation process can vary from 15 minutes or so, all the way up to a couple of hours. Microsoft seem to be doing better these days, as I've found the installation times with Vista and Windows 7 are far quicker than those of XP and older versions.

A restart is essential after installation. You may need to change the boot sequence within the BIOS on older hardware, to ensure it doesn't perform the whole process over again.

Once you're into your Operating System of choice, it's then a case of ascertaining which Drivers are needed. Usually, the more recent the Operating System, the less drivers you'll need to install - this is due to the vendors packaging many popular Drivers with the O/S.

You have 2 options whilst installing the Drivers - either restart in-between each install, or skip the restarts and wait until all are installed. The former is preferred, as it ensures each Driver is installed correctly and loaded prior to moving onto the next. It also allows you to resolve conflicts quicker if required.

Then you can move onto the updates. Linux/Mac fans would argue that they can get by without updates, but Microsoft users are veteran update installers. Choose wisely, opt for all critical and security updates, then trawl through the optional ones and ascertain whether or not you'd need them. I recommend Microsoft's Update website over the built-in Automatic Updates for pre-Vista O/S's, as it includes all Microsoft Updates, not just those specific to the O/S.

Step 8 is specific to your requirements, but if you've restored a PC to factory settings - now is the time to remove the excess crap that many Manufacturers install. Then add any additional software that you need. My current suite includes:

For my servers, it's usually just updates and then the software required for the Server's role.

Then move onto step 9, which for me involves running msconfig and removing startup programs not needed. Then look at all of the services and disable any unnecessary ones. Finally, tailor the settings to your needs, such as Folder Options within Control Panel and the Taskbar/Start Menu settings.

Finally, give the PC a Defrag. Afterall, it's just had a kicking in the hard drive department. Then it's a case of testing everything works as you'd expect and start using the machine.

Let me know if you do anything different and any interesting stories of your clean install encounters.

comments Posted: Thursday 24th September 2009, 01:35pm
Categories: Articles, Computers and Technology
Tags: microsoft, operating-system, software, windows

Server 2003 Software RAID

RAID (Redundant Array of Independant/Inexpensive Disks) arrays are common in servers and high end workstations. According to Wikipedia, there are 6 official RAID levels, along with several manufacturer specific levels. RAID is available in both hardware and software offerings, with the former being the preferred. Hardware RAID utilises onboard or dedicated RAID controllers, which take the load away from the CPU. They are generally more reliable and better performing than Software RAID - which, as the name suggests, uses Software to create and manage RAID arrays.

As all of my physical and virtual servers here use Microsoft Server Operating Systems (specifically 2003), I decided to research RAID and what was avaiable to me, as my storage is in need of some tweaking. My 2 storage servers, Fileserver and Backupserver both have 4 x 250GB Samsung Spinpoint IDE drives, connected to the mainboard via cheap PCI RAID cards, which only support a handful of RAID levels. As they're not big brand offerings, I am reluctant to use them for creating RAID arrays, in case something goes horribly wrong and I lose GBs of data.

So, I turned to Software RAID and what Server 2003 offers. Microsoft's Technet site has a create article detailing all of the options available to Server Administrators:

At least, that's how I've come to understand them. More detail can be found on both the aformentioned links.

Before I started formatting my ~1TB Backupserver drives, I decided to try out the various options to see which would suit my needs best, which is to combine the 4 x 250GB drives into a larger volume. As the Backupserver keeps a weekly copy of the Fileserver data, redundancy isn't a priority, but as 2 of the 4 drives are nearing their capacity (~232GB formatted) I could do with a larger volume.

Using Microsoft's Virtual Server platform, I was able to create 8 Dynamically Expanding Disks, each of 25GB in size (a 10th of the size of the physical drives). Attaching 2 Virtual SCSI adapters to the Virtual Machine allows you to connect up to 14 drives (7 per adapter), as you can see above. I then switched the Virtual Machine back on and opened up Computer Management:

If you initialise the Disks as Dynamic ones, you can then right click on them and choose which of the available Volume options you want to go with. Above, you can see the options available on Server 2003.

I played around with the Virtual Disks, creating a Striped, Mirrored and RAID-5 array to begin with. The Striped Volume spreads the data over 2 Disks, giving you 2 x 50GB capacity. This effectively improves I/O performance, as you have 2 Disks to read/write to. The Mirrored Volume writes the data to both Disks, giving you just 1 x 25GB capacity, but if one of the Disks fails, you still have a copy of the data. The RAID-5 volume spreads the data over all of the Disks in a way that means if 1 Disk fails, the array can be rebuilt from the remaining Disks. However, if 2 Disks fail, all of the data in the array is lost. In my example, 3 x 25GB drives would give a total capacity of 50GB - one of the drives used for redundancy.

RAID isn't to be used as a backup solution, as other factors can lead to data loss - but some levels provide redundancy in the event of Disk failure and optimise uptime of the system.

To stick with the ~1TB capacity of the 4 x 250GB drives, I opted for the Spanned volume:

In my test environment, I was able to initially create the volume from 4 x 25GB drives, giving me an approximate total of 100GB - which in the Physical servers, would mean near enough 1TB unformatted within a single volume. The beauty of a Spanned volume is that it can easily be extended. So if I find that next year I'm nearing the 1TB capacity, I can chuck another 250GB (or any size) Disk into the Server and extend the Spanned volume onto the new Disk, which would result in a 1.25TB volume. The downside to this is that if 1 of the Disks in the array fails, the whole array is broken and all of the data is lost. However, as I've mentioned, the Backupserver stores a copy of the Fileserver's data, so to have complete data loss, one of the drives in both arrays would need to fail at the same time. Fingers crossed that's something I won't be experiencing.

The performance overhead of Software RAID should be non-existant, as the Spanned volume is simply extending the capacity. Software RAID5 and Mirrored options do put additional strain on the hardware though, which should be taken into consideration if you're thinking of opting for this too.

The next step is to mimic this on the Backupserver, which will require a complete format and converting of all the Disks to Dynamic, then creating the volume and copying the data from the Fileserver across. If all goes to plan, I can then do the same on the Fileserver - which will give me a single 1TB volume, allowing me to re-create the shares without worrying about running out of space anytime soon. To give you an idea of how useful it'll be:

That's 928GB formatted capacity, spread over 4 separate Disks. 444.6GB of that is free, but not all in one useful place. Combining the space into one volume would make life a lot easier. I'll let you know how it goes!

comments Posted: Thursday 5th February 2009, 01:35am
Categories: Computers and Technology, Slickhouse
Tags: microsoft, server-2003, software-raid

Windows 7

Microsoft have released their Windows 7 Beta and also increased the download cap - that was previously set at 2.5 million.

I've got a copy successfully up and running within a Virtual Machine (Virtual Server 2005 SP1), utilising 1GB RAM and 1 core of an AMD Athlon 4000+ Dual Core CPU. The install process took much less time than the old XP/Server 2003 installs and possibly even quicker than a Vista fresh install.

Once up and running it was very quick to get used to the improved GUI. Though I think there will be usability issues, especially with less able users - such that the taskbar items are now reduced to icons, with popup tooltips. But, Windows 7 is a public beta, with plenty of time to improve prior to an official release. Microsoft promises much better performance (compared to Vista) and has said that Windows 7 should run on lightweight hardware very well, for example Intel's Atom CPU.

 

Windows 7 desktop

Hopefully Windows 7 will take the best bits of Vista and mix them with new features and also what we're used to. One thing I'm already pleased about is that Task Manager now shows both the cached RAM and available RAM - whereas Vista only shows the former and XP (et al) displayed only the latter. Small changes like this save a few seconds of human processing power, as we no longer need to perform simple Maths calculations in our heads.

Personally, I'm looking forward to Windows 7's release, as it'll suit our 2 laptops better than Vista - if the performance improvements are rolled out. Hopefully Microsoft aren't 'dumbing' down Vista though, just to please those who complained about Vista's issues.

If you've grabbed all 2.5GB of the beta and have installed it - let me know what your first impressions are too.

comments Posted: Monday 12th January 2009, 01:35pm
Categories: Computers and Technology, Links
Tags: beta, microsoft, windows-7

Server upgrade

I had planned to start a server upgrade this holiday - however due to the NTLDR is missing error message appearing during a server reboot, the upgrade was rushed forward to this afternoon.

After attempting a repair from the Server 2003 install CD (which failed), I decided to swap out the 120GB main drive for another I had lying around. Then whilst the fileserver was re-installing Server 2003, I put the dead drive into an external enclosure and attached it to the new server. Luckily the drive was still alive and I was able to copy the 50GB+ of Virtual Machines to the new server.

To cut a long story short, everything is up and running now, with my setup split across 4 servers now instead of the previous 3. You'll notice a slight speed increase from the upgrade - as the slickhouse homepage now takes around 0.5 seconds to generate, rather than the previous 0.7. I'll look into moving MS SQL Server to a new virtual server, leaving MySQL on its own to occupy the full allocated RAM, in the near future - which may reduce that time even further. The new setup is as follows:

Router:

Backupserver (not always on): Fileserver: Virtualserver: The Virtualserver itself still uses Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005, though I tried installing VMWare's ESXi, but it doesn't support the motherboard's onboard SATA controller (AMD 780G Southbridge). The point to mention is that it can support up to 16GB RAM, using 4 x 4GB modules - however 4GB DDR2 modules are still a rarity. At the moment it's using about 1/2 of the 6GB RAM running 7 virtual machines (all Server 2003 at 256/512 RAM allocation).

I've decided to stick to Virtual Server 2005 for the forseeable future, as it's very quick to get a Virtual Machine back up and running if I encounter another problem like today's. It's simply a case of copying across the vhd and either creating a new machine (pointing to said vhd), or also copying across the vmc file to keep the existing machine's settings.

Separating the 1TB storage from the virtual servers should make storage upgrades easier in the future and also allow for less downtime when carrying out maintenance. Let's see?

comments Posted: Sunday 28th December 2008, 01:35pm
Categories: Computers and Technology, Slickhouse, Web
Tags: microsoft, server-2003, virtual-server