Archive for July, 2009
It’s Sys-Admin’s day again! Check out these funny cards.
Jul 31st
Send an IT eCard
Remind Them Who Makes IT Happen!
You’re the oftentimes unsung hero that makes IT happen…which is why Spiceworks & our sponsors salute you! And, why we’ve created some funny e-Cards that’ll help you get the appreciation you deserve (without unplugging your server!).
Identify your memory without cracking the case.
Jul 30th
We have reviewed Crucial Memory in the past here when we gave away a 2gb memory module to one of our readers. So we were happy to plug them again when Jenny from San Fransisco wrote us asking:
Yo Admin can you tell me what kind of memory is in my PC without me having to open the case? I want to see how much it will cost to upgrade but don’t want to dive into it unless I am going to do it. Dig? I have busted up one too many machines in the past. But memory is a good way to speed up my p4 machine it has 256mb right?
Jenny Needs Memory
Jenny yes 256mb of memory is not enough for anything nowadays!
You should but that rig up to at least 1gb. Memory is cheap just go to this link and you will be able to scan your memory and get all sorts of useful facts and prices. And wait there’s more…
You will also be supporting AskTheAdmin by making any purchases via these links.
Why you might ask?
Well it is an affiliate program we have been experimenting with. You buy stuff you need and they give us a little bit o’ cheddar for referring you over to them. It gets expensive running a website where advertising revenue brings in next to nothing. But I love helping you weirdos!
Awww don’t blush! I have seen your temp files and browsing history pervo!
But back to the hard sell…
Crucial makes your life easier by telling you how much memory your system can max out at and what type it needs and best of all how much its going to cost ya! What are you waiting for speed up your machines today!
Memory being the price it is can be a GREAT ALTERNATIVE to buying a NEW MACHINE! Support us to take over the fricking world get us up on our own dedicated server/line…
Maybe we could hire some more quality writers to give you more great information if we had more than .37 in the AskTheAdmin bank account. So instead of me carrying her on my shoulders help out! How does that make you feel? (It makes me feel like a guy in the train going from car to car saying Ladies and Gentleman I don’t mean to interrupt…) Feelings… Death Threats… In the comments!
Fun With Software RAID on Windows Server 2008
Jul 28th
At my company we just got a server back from the field. It happened to be our backup server for our Houston office. My project is to re-purpose it and configure it as the backup server for our co location facility in Denver Colorado. Easy as pie right? Just slap a fresh install of Windows server 2008 on there and call it a day!
Well it turns out this particular server, which is an HP Proliant DL360 G4 only has two SATA hard drives, and the SATA controller doesn’t support hardware RAID. Damn! Who the hell ordered that? I am a big proponent of NOT sending out a production server without some sort of fault tolerance. I mean, what happens if the hard drive fails out in Denver? Now I have to attempt a remote install of Windows, and reconfigure everything from scratch. No thanks!
So what are my options here? I could order a hardware RAID controller, but that costs money, and we have no budget, or I can configure software RAID through disk management. Guess which one I did?
To create a mirror in Disk management is really easy. All you have to do is the following:
- In Disk manager, in the lower half of the screen, click the square labeled Disk 0.
- Right click on the square and select Convert to dynamic disk
- After it is done converting to dynamic disk, make sure your second hard drive is unformatted, and unallocated.
- Now right click on your system partition on Disk 0 and select Add Mirror, now select Disk 1 as the destination for the mirror.
- Do the same thing with any other partitions you have.
- You will now see that the mirrors are syncing.
Hurray! Now we have some fault tolerance! Sure, write operations will be a little slower, but at least your data is safe.
Now if something happens to Disk 1, not biggie, you can break the mirror, slap a new drive in, and recreate the mirror. So what happens if Disk 0 fails? Here is where the ultimate in ass pain is found for Windows software RAID. You now have to create a floppy boot disk so you can boot to your mirrored drive to break the mirror, install a new Disk 0 and recreate the mirror. Yes, I said Floppy! Don’t worry, I said WTF too!
To make your floppy, do the following. I used an external USB floppy drive for this. If your server has a built in floppy drive, well then yours is older than mine, and your in better shape.
- Format your floppy using the quick option
- Open a command prompt
- Run: MKDIR A:\BOOT
- Run: XCOPY /H c:\bootmgr A:\
- Run: REG SAVE HKLM\BCD00000000 A:\BOOT\BCD
Now if Disk 0 fails, you can boot up with the floppy and select…
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 – Secondary Plex
…and boot up to Disk 1. Now you can break the mirror to Disk 0, replace Disk 0, and recreate the mirror. Awesome! You’re not done yet though. If you reboot, you will still need the boot disk to boot until you fix the boot sector on Disk 0. To do that you can restore the boot sector using a little utility I found called EasyBCD from Neosmart Technologies. They have a boot sector restore. Just point it to A:\boot\BCD and select restore. Bam! Done! Now all is right with the world, and your server is running again!
If any of you have successfully made a boot cd from a 2008 Boot Floppy I am all ears. So far, I have been unsuccessful in making one. I can’t believe that in this day and age we still have to use floppy disks!
Have you had to use any software RAID in your environment? What kind of tools/procedures do you use to recover from a drive failure? Let me know in the comments!
By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power
Find all your drivers with Double Driver.
Jul 24th
Do you hate looking for and downloading drivers on every re-format?
Well if you can get to your desktop you should be able to run Double Driver and copy your drivers off your machine to a USB stick and then restore them right back into your fresh clean formatted system! We covered something a little while ago for backing up and restoring printers/print drivers.
Combine these two small apps with the Windows Files and Settings Transfer Wizard and you have yourself a powerful tool kit.
With Double Driver you can view which drivers are installed in your system and you can backup the drivers you choose, save and print the drivers list, and more.
Double Driver is freeware. Feel free to use and give this program to anyone you know. Your donation or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
_TheBackUpAdmiN_
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