Blog update!

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A new era...64bit technology

We just ordered our first 64bit Dell 2950 server. We will be using Windows Server 2008 Data Center edition as a virtual host server using HyperVisor. We are very excited about this new technology. We hope to eventually move all our virtual servers to this new platform over the next year. We currently have three virtual host servers running Windows 2003 Server Data Center with about 15 virtual servers in production. We have been very satisfied with Microsoft Virtual technology especially Virtual Machine Manager. I'll keep you posted on our progress. These are exciting times.

Microsoft Groove....killer ap?

Sometimes we need to step away from a problem in order to find a better solution to the problem.

We are setting up a Groove Server to improve file collaboration among the staff. We have many laptops that depend on offline syncing of server-based files. The Groove sofware solves this problem by sending just the file changes to all Groove Workspace members automatically wheneverthe document is saved. the transmition of the changes is encrpted to all Workspace members. This is not sent by email. So everyone can see the latest changes...very cool. The Groove client software comes with Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.

Could this be a killer ap?

Research Project: Application Virtualization

I have just started to look at Microsoft's SoftGrid program for application virtualization. The prospect of saving tech time and improving our software management are too compelling to over look. We already have about 15 virtual servers running on two Dell servers. So why not try this with applications? I'll keep you posted as we venture out and test this product.

Managing your environment

We are now dependent on WUG (as we call it) for monitoring our network. Its like having another IT staff person monitoring our network while we do other projects. The old days are gone. We really like WUG and have only begun to tap into all the features. Now that we have a tool like this, we will never go back to the old ways. I believe managing your network environment is part of being a good steward of God's I.T. resources.

New SAN is working well

We purchased a Dell MD3000 iSCSI SAN with ten 400 SAS drives for tier1 storage to replace our old Dell DAS server. We also added the MD1000 SAS storage chassis for tier2 storage using 750 GB SATA drives. We have really liked the features, performance and quality of these products. Each chassis can hold 15 drives. We are using one dedicated hot spare drive in our tier1 storage with 2 TB RAID5 volumes.

We will be using Micosoft DPM to store snapshots of our tier1 storage on the MD1000 chassis. We can also add another MD1000 chassis to this solution when we run out of space.

Virtual servers are here to stay

We have made some significant changes to our server infrastructure, over the past few months, by hosting about 13 servers on two physical Dell 860 PowerEdge servers. And we are not done yet. We have about 15 more servers that will be vitualized over the next. We ae using Windows DataCenter Edition to host unlimited VM's per server. It's sweet! All of our storage is stored on our SAN (details in another post). We are already planning for 64bit Hyper-V later this year.