Nothing to see here

Symptoms:

The computer crashes and reboots for no apparent reason, and now users get an error message when trying to access any of the file or printer shares on the server/computer.  This is related to a registry setting, the Security Event Log filling up, and a possible bug in 2008 R2 that doesn’t allow users to access the server even after the Security Event Log issue has been resolved.

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Having some fun with iometer recently.  I had the opportunity to compare benchmarks on SAS vs. SATA vs. SATA SSD.  Also been working on a OpenSolaris 10 alternative to a NetApp filer.  Benchmarks for that setup are here.  Test specs, hardware specs, and full documentation should be contained in each link.  If you find something missing or want see more, drop me a comment in the space below.

7 pages: Average size of a print job in my dept.

13%: Amount of printed pages wasted by banner pages: 13% (1 out of 8 pages is usually thrown away recycled).

1,050,000 pages: Average yearly print volume in my dept (yes, over a million)

$932: Money wasted on paper to print banner pages each year.  That’s just the paper cost, and does not include toner, printer maintenance, etc.

Call them what you want: banner pages, separator pages, job sheet, etc.  These things are a waste of money.  I’m looking for solutions to eliminate banner pages from my department.  So far, I’ve found two options. [Read more →]

I’m lucky enough to work in an academic environment, which means I get to work with (and for) lots of really smart people.  They ask tough questions and don’t hesitate to call BS when they get a BS answer.  This has prompted a lot of new service offerings that don’t always follow status quo.

For example, 250MB of storage space for students on the departmental server used to be status quo.  A while back, we increase that by 800%, and will continue to grow to meet the needs of our students.

Another example, a 2MB mailbox for plain text email, using a client such as pine (or elm, mail, mailx, etc.) used to be the status quo.  Now, anyone can go online and get a 5GB+ mailbox, rich text email, and much, much more for free from places like Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail.  Email (let’s use a more general term like electronic collaboration) has become a commodity.  Lots of people/companies do it better than I do for cheaper than I can, so why would I bother hosting my own server?  That’s a good question! [Read more →]

This is just the beginning of a work-in-progress to fully utilize the extra storage available on the 200+ workstations in my department.  Updates will be posted regularly (hopefully).  In the end, I hope to present a step-by-step guide to fully utilizing the untapped storage potential of departmentally owned workstations. [Read more →]

On Wednesday, we got enough snow in College Station to make snow men and igloos.

This is more a reference for me than anything else. It took me over half an hour to find how to do this correctly, so I figured I would document it.

Installing Windows 2003 Server’s Network Monitor on Windows XP

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Last week I was given the opportunity to perform my first ever VMware to Hyper-V migration. This was primarily done to get the Exchange 2003 virtual machine on a supported platform so Microsoft’s PSS would support it. VMDK to VHD conversion takes a while, but was very straightforward. Everything else is documented here.  [Read more →]

If you’re reading this, chances are friends and family ask you for tech support. Even worse, they usually call you from 100 miles away and want you do talk them through something over the phone (like finding the any key). I find it much easier to tell them to get out of the way and let me fix whatever is broken.  But when they do call from 100+ miles away, what do you do? Here are some viable options I have come across recently. [Read more →]

Kris Nelson & Alicia Williams got married in New Orleans on April 19th.  I was in the wedding, so I don’t have any pix to post.  Sorry.