Brian Boatright's questions

We are purchasing two new dedicated servers. I originally had planned to purchase the XenServer 6.0 Advanced add-on which gives you the following features:

Specifically these features

• Distributed virtual switching
• Heterogeneous Pools
• High Availability

The standard (free) version includes VM disk snapshot and revert and XenMotion Live Migration.

We plan to have one server in one of SoftLayer's Dallas data center's and one in their Washington D.C. data centers. They will be able to talk to each other over the private network that is setup once we allow the two vlan's to "bridge".

Thinking about it more now, just a few days before the order is placed. I wonder if we will actually get any use out of the Advanced features which seem to be geared towards having two XenServer's in the same V-LAN.

We will only have a few VM's on each server and they don't need to be immediately moved from one to the other. If something happens to one we will take it down and manually move the VM to the other machine.

Between the two servers having the Advanced feature will cost $100 additional per month.

I'm looking to purchase a new dedicated server and have XenServer 6.0 installed. There is an option to include XenServer 6.0 Advanced which has some additional features. However we don't need those additional features for a few months.

Is "Advanced" something you can add-on without a complete re-install of XenServer or must it be part of the original installation of XenServer?

Are there any techniques to use mysqldump (or similar command) to make incremental or differential backups for MySQL?

A few years ago I switched from using Thawte SSL's (a verisign company) to Verisign because of the better name recognition Verisign provides. To that end I've been happy with it and believe it gave our e-commerce visitors a better sense of security when using our sites.

Now with the EV SSL (extended validation SSL) that will show a green bar or text, depending on browser. I wonder if continuing with Verisign just for their brand recognition is the right choice vs upgrading to a EV SSL from DigiCert or GoDaddy. DigiCert and GoDaddy have good reviews from customers and both have a good root certificate that is compatible with every modern browser.

EV SSL Prices (as of June 2009)

• Verisign charges $995 yr
• DigiCert is only $488 yr

A few months ago I did some research on Digicert and GoDaddy both seem to have a good reputation and reviews. Their root certificates should be as good verisign's and DigiCert even allows you to use your domain plus the www prefix in one certificate. To get that with Verisign you must purchase two certificates.

Is having an EV SSL from DigiCert or even GoDaddy better than having a standard SSL with the verisign brand?

I have a server in the closet and an extra monitor which I setup on the wall just outside the closet. I would like to have it display various status tools. I like RDP as is but want to have the experience something like VNC provides without it's sluggish performance.

Is it possible with Windows Server 2008 R2 (or prev server versions) to have RDP act like VNC?

The server is connected directly with a VGA cable to 15" LCD that I can see from my desk about 10 feet away. The feature I would like to have from VNC is being able to see my keyboard and mouse interactions on the monitor. Usually RDP acts like a separate login instead of taking over the screen like VNC.

How do you get back Recent Documents feature that was in XP on Windows7?

How to Rename Part of a File Name from a Selection of Files in Windows?

I know about the Windows trick where you just select a group of files and upon renaming it will add a sequential number to make them all unique.

However I'm looking for a way to rename a selection of files using a search and replace or Regular Expression.

For example starting with:

• Menu1_Off.jpg
• Menu1_On.jpg
• Menu2_Off.jpg
• Menu2_On.jpg

I would like to change Menu1 to Home like:

• Home_Off.jpg
• Home_On.jpg

Or change the On to Hover like:

• Menu1_Off.jpg
• Menu1_Hover.jpg
• Menu1_Off.jpg
• Menu2_Hover.jpg

I have cable internet now but it goes offline from time to time during the day. I work from home so that is a problem. I can get DSL as well.

What hardware do I need to add a backup internet connection or load balancing between the two connections?

What is the best method or tool to migrate a database from MySQL to Microsoft SQL Server?

My database is MySQL 5.0.27 and has 74 tables and 41 stored procedures.

The current site is ASP/VBscript and uses dynamic SQL statements in the code. The stored procedures are mostly used in the mysql admin to manage specific tasks. It would be great to have the stored procedures be converted but I'm not that hopeful.

I have two goals: 1) Migrate the database from MySQL to SQL Server 2) Convert MySQL SQL statements in VBScript to SQL Server

There are a lot of datetime columns in the database and I expect to have a lot of problems with those during the conversion process.