Now had the new desktop up and running for a while and have used it lot more no issues found so far. I like the boot up of around 30-40 secs from pwr on to login including entering user and password. The Ubuntu 9.04 is working well and using 64bit desktop version rather than going for the server version.
Installed VMWare Server v2 and then copied some existing images across plus created a new image based on Oracle Enterprise Linux. This has worked well and the learning process has proceed with a few hiccups with the 11g database but all now sorted and good experience. Over the last week have learnt a hell of lot of stuff around the base product set and the potential pitfalls that you can encounter. This all ended with a customer presentation and workshop that was very successful. As a follow-on from that this week has been hectic as we are getting more and more enquiries.
I expect that June is going to be a very busy month and the start to an epic journey around EMEA or at least some of it working with customers and the local Oracle teams.
Spotted an excellent offer from ebuyer today that was a 1TB 3.5 7200rpm hard disk with 32MB cache for £60 so decided to get two to add to the desktop for backup and file server purposes.
now that I have been in IT for a while ok over 20years I have just decided to build a PC server for me to play with some software. I spent some time researching options and did originally start by looking at just buying a configured/customised desktop. This was proving a bit of a challenge as I really wanted a box that could hold 8 plus GB of RAM but didn’t want to pay server prices.
After a look around I decided on a bunch of component to build my own server/desktop. This is what I have decided to get and before anyone hassles me I have gone for RAM and horsepower at this stage as it will be for running test environments and not for photos or video or something like that.
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66GHz Socket 775 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache Processor
- Innovision 3D Geforce 7200GS 256MB DDR2 DVI PCI-E Graphics Card
- Samsung TS-H653B 20X Black SATA DVD±RW Dual Layer Bare Drive
- ASUS P5QL iP43 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
- Casecom Piano Black Mid Tower Case with Blue LED Strip
- Arctic Power 700W PSU – With PCI-E, 4x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors
- Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 XMS2 Memory CL5 2.1V X 2
- Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
It should be here in about a week and thats when the fun starts. Once it is built I will do some tests and see how it performs. The initial plan will be to install Linux server current looking at Oracle Ent Linux or Ubuntu. Will also run either Oracle VM server or VMWare Server. Will also add some more disk drives once I have it running.
So I thought as I have a load of admin type stuff to do today, plus a few calls I would try and multi task and start the rebuild of my laptop ready for the new year. So the first challenge was digging out my XP cd and created an updated version with SP3 included. Although the slipstreaming piece was straight forward I discovered that my burning software refused to recreate a bootable CD so had to hunt around for some trial software. After some digging I downloaded a trial of Nero 9 to see if this would achieve the desired goal.
Whilst that was going on I started the job of tidying my current disk drives so that I would be able to swap the 200GB D drive with the 100GB C drive and have a larger partition. The main reason for doing this was in prep to dual boot with Ubuntu client that I have been trying on my other laptop and seems to work well. I will have a dual boot so that some of the software I have will need to be run native on Windows for customer demos.
So waited an hour and still no serial number from Nero, so I decided a plan B was in order so I used my install of ultraISO to create an ISO from the original CD then replaced the contents with the SP3 version. I started the process of installing Win XP and all the associated application I seem to need to do my day job. The list was nearly two sides of an A4 sheet so lots to be done. I will need to visit an office shortly to complete some of the setup as I will need LAN speeds for some configurations and to test the internal wireless authentication.
Next step is dual boot with Ubuntu, this will be done very soon. Although a lot of my colleagues are hassling me for even reinstalling Windows natively on my drive and not using a VMWare image for my needs. My one arguement is that I have not road tested this TP with Ubuntu in real life scenarios such as a customer demo/presentation so once I have completed a couple successfully I will then move to a VM image for Windows. I am hoping by this time some one would have furnished my with a shiny new MacBook or MB Pro..
