I have a client who needed to get a new file server for their office location.
Deciding that Windows was just not going to do the job for various reasons, I used a great open source solution FreeNAS to get the job done.
Everything was going great until OS X got involved.
BranchCache is a network performance tool available in Windows 7 and Server 2008. It acts like a proxy in that it works only when requested by a client user. The typical user scenario where BranchCache will be useful is where a branch office has a slow link back to the central office. Any downloads that might occur will be slow because of the bandwidth connection. BranchCache is designed for such remote office operations.
There are two modes in which BranchCache works, hosted or distributed. In hosted mode, a 2008 server located on the branch office hosts the cached files. In Distributed Cache mode, a branch server is not necessary; file copies are directly cached onto the PC’s at the branch location.
When BranchCache is enabled, if there is a request for data across the network, a copy of the data or file is downloaded from the intranet website or a file server and it is cached locally within the branch office. As the need arises if another user in the branch requests the file, the user gets access to the content almost immediately as it is downloaded from the local cache rather than over a limited bandwidth connection back to headquarters.
Virtual Machine Technology is like having a computer inside a computer. It allows you to work with applications, create networks, write code in the .NET environment, trouble shoot applications, all in a sandbox environment. Here the virtual machine and its operations are kept separate from the core-host machine. If the virtual machine blows up, the host machine is unphased.
Virtual Machine technology allows businesses to have multiple servers on one main server. Suppose a company needed to have a mail-exchange server, a database server running Oracle, and another running Sql server 2005, another server running financial software and one or two servers running manufacturing and engineering software. This could get very expensive. The company would have to purchase the hardware and the software. But by having a virtual machine environment, instead of having to purchase 4 or 5 computer-servers, each costing between 7 and 10 thousand dollars, a company only needs to buy one. That server would be loaded up with RAM and Multi-Core processors to handle the operations of several different virtual machines. Indeed the server may well cost upwards of 15,000 dollars. Still this would be a lot less than spending 40 to 60 thousand dollars on hardware. Now, the company only needs to buy one server, and the software to run on each virtual machine.
This is the way of the future and Windows 7 offers an opportunity to do this.
Once you have Windows 7 in place, Download the Virtual PC 2007 Progarm from Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft has released their first Windows 7 update, and interestingly enough, it improves Windows 7 compatibility with certain popular programs.The update helps to resolve issues with some legacy applications, such as problems during installation, interaction, instability, and World War 3. It hit Windows Update this week, but if you haven’t seen it already, it’s also available on Windows Update (Windows 7 x86 & x64, Windows Server 2008 R2 x64, and Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-Based Systems).
Not only that, but Microsoft has stated that this should be one of many application compatibility updates (let’s hope that this promise isn’t like the Vista Ultimate promise), so users (and businesses) whose programs are still incompatible can safely look to the future and hope that their product will eventually be supported in Windows 7.
I get a call today from one of my clients to let me know that they have not gotten any faxes emailed to them as PDF files from GFI Faxmaker for over a day.Figuring this was one of those run of the mill “issues”, I had them reboot their server and assumed all would be right with the world.
I was wrong.
The GFI Faxmaker monitor tool is pretty useless, I was getting errors listed about being unable to deliver mail because of a moved folder. No mention as to what that folder was though left me with only one real option, GFI’s own support forum.