Jason's questions

I am building another server (cheap) and would like to go with a 256GB SSD drive for my boot and data. This will be enough for my needs, but just having one SSD scares me for a couple of reasons.

If I did a mirror raid with a SSD and an HDD, what would happen?

How much would it slow down the raid on read? Would it read from the faster source?

How much would it slow down the write? Would it wait until writes were sent to both the SSD and the HDD?

Does anybody see an advantage in doing this?

I found this question, but I think it is slightly different: SSD redundancy via HDD

I am trying to setup httpd.conf properly but regardless of the sub-domain/domain combo below, they all resolve to the same internal URL.

<Proxy *>
  Order Allow,Deny
  Allow from all
</Proxy>

ProxyRequests       Off


<VirtualHost *:80>
    Servername      jira.firstfactoryinc.com
    ProxyPreserveHost   On
    ProxyPass       /   http://localhost:8082/
    ProxyPassReverse    /   http://localhost:8082/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    Servername      jira.submitpatientforms.com
    ProxyPreserveHost   On
    ProxyPass       /   http://localhost:8081/
    ProxyPassReverse    /   http://localhost:8081/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    Servername      mddev-jira.firstfactoryinc.com
    ProxyPreserveHost   On
    ProxyPass       /   http://localhost:8080/
    ProxyPassReverse    /   http://localhost:8080/
</VirtualHost>

What am I doing wrong?

I have a DriveImage XML backup of a computer that I have extracted to a local directory.

How can I see which apps are installed (and where) without booting to it? I can browse it, and obviously look in the Program Files directory, but I want to see the details that you would normally see in "Add/Remove Programs".

With Windows 2008 R2 Server, I noticed that if I remotely reboot the machine (because it is hung or I think it is hung), the server, when it restarts, defaults to "Launch Windows Repair" (or something similar) rather than "Start Windows Normally".

To change it, I have to trek down to the server room and change the boot up otherwise it will go into an endless loop (because I don't have the setup media and DVD-ROM installed).

This seems to be new with 2008 R2 because I have not seen it elsewhere.

What do I do? How can I remove this or change the default?

I have a Win2008 R2 server running Hyper-V with two VMs (Win2003 and Win2008R2).

I have two NICs on my server, one for the host, and one for the Virtual Machine Manager.

I have it configured as follows, but the VMS do not have access to the Internet. What am I doing wrong?

ONBOARD NIC for HOST
IP:      a.b.c.19  
Mask:    255.255.255.192  
Gateway: a.b.c.1  
DNS1:    a.b.c.130  
DNS1:    a.b.c.131

Additional NIC for Hyper-V
IP:      a.b.c.30
Mask:    255.255.255.192  
Gateway: a.b.c.1  
DNS1:    a.b.c.130  
DNS1:    a.b.c.131

VM1
IP:      a.b.c.9
Mask:    255.255.255.192  
Gateway: a.b.c.1  
DNS1:    a.b.c.130  
DNS1:    a.b.c.131

VM2
IP:      a.b.c.20
Mask:    255.255.255.192  
Gateway: a.b.c.1  
DNS1:    a.b.c.130  
DNS1:    a.b.c.131

Should my Gateways of the VMs be configured special to point to the NIC for Hyper-V?

I'm having the same problem with a variety of new machines that I have built.

When I RDC into the machine, the display does not update correctly. I get partial images, or refreshes only every 20-30 seconds. It is completely unusable. Eventually, it will even disconnect even though I am logged in.

From RDCing into the machine, it looks like the machine is down, but it is fine. I can connect to it with an monitor and the problem is not visible.

I think it is a problem with my network configuration.

What should I look for to resolve this?

What is the easiest way to convert a Win2003 server to a Hyper-V Virtual machine?

Ideally, I'd like to use a backup tool to create an image across the network.

What is the best way to do this?

I used Windows Server Backup to backup my 640GB boot drive. Only about 30GB is used, and the backup was very fast.

Now I am trying to restore the image to a 500GB hard drive but it is saying that the drive is too small... even though I only had 30GB on the original backup.

How do I overide this and have the restore ignore that I only have a 500GB drive? If I can't, then I can't restore the hard drive with anything except one that is equal to or bigger than the original hard drive - which would be a real bummer.

This software (TAHOE-LAFS) allows you to setup an FTP server that will encrypt and split your data, putting it redundantly on a bunch of remote servers. It is highly customizable so that you can adjust the amount of redundancy that you need and that you can easily add additional severs as nodes to the pool of space available.

I'm looking for something very similar, but instead of servers being nodes, I want normal hard drives to be the nodes. In other words, I want a software RAID (even if it is behind an FTP server) that will allow me to add more drives, adjust the redundancy, etc... without having to rely on standard RAD10, RAID5, RAID6, etc...

The purpose of this system would be to allow me to build a cheap file server that I can expand over time. I want to be able to mix and match hard drive sizes and I do not want to buy a special card for it. I don't want to rely on the Windows software RAID.

Is there anything out there?

How much impact does hard drive cache have on IO performance

Are there any statistics or performance tests available that can tell me if there is a difference is 16MB vs 32MB Cache?

If it matters, I am looking at SATAII 7200RPM Drives.

Can I buy SAS drives on my SATA Controller?

What is the compatibility and restrictions about mixing these?

Using Windows (2008) is there an easy command line tool that I can use to send a test email from a server to test the SMTP, user authentication, ports, etc... without writing my own?

I have the following CPU:

 AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache 
 Series Phenom X4
 Model HD960ZWCGDBOX
 Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core Processor 

I'm getting BSODs and an event code:

 A corrected hardware error occurred.  
 Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
 Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error
 Processor ID Valid: Yes
 Processor ID: 0x3
 Bank Number: 0
 Transaction Type: Data
 Processor Participation: N/A
 Request Type: Data Read
 Memory/Io: N/A
 Memory Hierarchy Level: Level 1
 Timeout: N/A

This appears to be an L1 Cache problem with the 3rd Core in my CPU. I assume I need a replacement, unless this isn't the cause of my BSODs.

Can I simply turn off this core in the meantime? If not, is there any other suggestion?

Can I install IIS7 on a Windows 2003 Serer?

IIS6 had some tools for hardening, against attacks and holes.

Does IIS7 have the same?

If not, are there some standard thingst that should be done to protect it?

I have one machine with Hyper-V (not the bare metal version - the Windows 2008 OS version) that we are experimenting with.

I would love to backup from the host OS and not from each individual virtual machine. I would love to be able to simply make a copy of the virtual drives and/or virtual machine, to my backup drive.

To do this, I need to use Shadow Copy Services... I understand... but how?

It should be easy enough to do with RoboCopy, but RoboCopy doesn't support Shadow Copy Services.

What is the next best thing? What is the easiest way to backup these computers to another mapped drive?

I have the following configured:

1. mail.firstdomain.com - 1.1.1.1 - This domain sends out a lot of email (our newsletter to clients), and thus I keep the two separated.

2. mail.seconddomain.com - 2.2.2.2 - This domain is were we send out email from our app (registrations, notifications, etc...)

3. mail.mypersonaldomain.com - 3.3.3.3 - This is my personal email hosted by Google/GMail

I have some email that are sending from mail.secondomain.com being rejected:

 Could not deliver message to the following recipient(s):

 Failed Recipient: [email protected]
 Reason: Remote host said: 554 mail server permanently rejected message (#5.3.0)

In the header:

 Received: from 1.1.1.1 [2.2.2.2] by mail.mypersonaldomain.com with SMTP; (date and time)

How is this possible?

1.1.1.1 is not involved in the email sending. I assume this is from the recipients server associating the email from 2.2.2.2 with the other IP (1.1.1.1) and further, with my personal email server (mail.personaldomain).

I checked all the configuration, and I don't see anything other than mail.seconddomain.com being used. 1.1.1.1 and 2.2.2.2 are even in separate data centers.

Any ideas?

I'm running Windows 7 on a dual core, x64 AMD with 8 GB RAM.

Do I even need a page file?

Will removing it help or hurt performance?

Would it make a difference if this is a server or a desktop?

Does Windows 7 vs. Windows 2008 make a difference with a page file?

I have approximately 10 servers configured as such:

• AMD 64 X2 AM2 dual or quad core chips
• 4-16GB RAM DDR800+
• Dual SATA II Software Mirrored Boot Drives (Win Server)

I would like to configure them to use their data drives on a cheap DIY NAS in the server.

I am considering using RAID10 or RAID5/6 with 8 SATA II drives in a separate machine. That machine would have 2 GbE ports, connected to a GbE switch that each of the servers connect to with a dedicated GbE port (a separate one for the Internet Uplink).

Is this a really poor idea? How much bandwidth am I really going to be able to get to go through these SATA drives, for 10 servers?

I think that it is easy to see some benefits of separating BOOT and DATA into two partitions or drives; it makes for each backup.

However, I was always under the impression that it is better to separate your BOOT from your DATA drives to increase performance. For this reason, I had 4 drives, configured in two mirrors (BOOT & DATA).

Because drives are so large now, I'd prefer to take two terabyte drives, mirror them, and partition them into BOOT and DATA.

Am I losing any performance benefit here?