Windows 2008 Storage Server - A quick how-to

This is the quick and nasty install guilde.......

Install it - either a physcial server or a VM.  I used Hyper-V.  Stright away, I noticed it did not find my emulated SCSI drives while in the install process - so I went backwards, created an IDE drive and then installed it Windows 2008 Storage Server R2.

The default password is wSS2008!  Once you have installed the OS - please change the password.

I installed the updated Intergreation Serivces and then it found my SCSI drives (after I had installed the OS, of course)

Once that is down - you will want to download and install the following ...
en_windows_storage_server_2008_iscsi_cd_x64_x86_x15-49563.iso  

It is also called 'Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.2 (x86 and x64) on Technet/MSDN etc.  I think that this is 64bit only (there is a 32bit version, but only seems to be the client software for remote machines to connect to your storage server but you should only be running a modern server in 64bit anyway - Hyper V supports 64bit guest operationg systems)

Once installed - you should have Microsoft iSCSI Software Target within Administrator tools.  From here, it should be dead simple.  I hope!

 

Posted by Alan Lee on Thursday, July 02 2009

Microsoft Windows 7 “Play to” under Build 7100

Play to is a new function under Windows 7 which helps brings the ‘home network’ into, well, more of a home network for you and me. It allows you to play (stream) media from one computer to another computer on your local network. Media could be music, videos or recorded TV.

It is based on streaming – and is smart enough to adjust itself to the network and resources of the machine you are playing the media to. It is not based on file sharing of the local network, and as such, you do not need to setup and file sharing between the machines. The actual file does not get transferred to the remote machine, so the remote machine cannot record or copy the media without third party programs or hardware. This function seems to have been created so it will not make groups such as the RIAA upset at Microsoft, but still easy and featured enough to be useful.

It is great because it works straight out of the box with minimal configuration. You do not need to install any additional software. As far as I can see, it should work on any version of Windows 7 (from home versions to ultimate etc). You do not need to have the fastest network, a simple wireless card running at 11mbit/s will be fine. Of course, you this will work great for audio but for video – you would want something a little faster.

From what I can see, there are xxx requirements to make “Play to” work under Windows 7

First – you need to be in the ‘home network’ group for networking. This means, if you are in a domain or public network – you will not be able to stream media from one device to another.


(picture of what the home network group looks like under networking and sharing)

Second – you need to have “Allow remote control of my player’ enabled under Stream of Media Player 11.


(the steps you need to perform under Media Player of the remote machine to enable streaming/play to)

Third – you need to have media player open on the remote computer. Please note – Windows Media Centre is not Media Player, and as such, if you have Media Centre open – the play to function will not work unless Media Player is open too (in the background).

Other then the above – dead simple. Once you have ‘allow remote control of my player’ enabled – from almost any media on your local machine, you can right click it and have a ‘play to’ menu which allows you to select the remote device. You can do this from inside a library, such as inside Media Player, a folder or a file. From my testing with single audio file – the remote computer started to play the song within a second. A video, 500mb uncompressed AVI started in 3 seconds.


(how you would play some media by right clicking on a file)


(this is what the host (ie, the machine you had the media on) will show - you can skip, pause, control audio levels etc)

There are still a few limits in the play to system. Probably the two most annoying at the moment is when I close Media Player on my machine, the remote machine can sometimes take 10 seconds to respond and stop playing the media. The second and most annoying missing feature is random. If I have a folder of 200 songs playing – there is repat but no random which means it will start at song one, and continue until song 200.

But otherwise, this is a nice addition to Windows 7. I would love to see, or hear if they have addressed the random function in a later or RTM build.

 

Posted by Alan Lee on Monday, June 22 2009

Why Twitter needs a kick up the behind

Don’t get me wrong. Twitter is a wonderful tool. It fits perfectly in with the crowd that loves to social network, businesses that want to build their brand and half a million SEO experts. It is kinda like Facebook, without all of the annoying applications. If Twitter ever decided I could send someone a flower via a few clicks, I think I will join Ewen Wallace and we will build a bigger mouse trap without virtual flowers.

Twitter can be best described as a bunch of short messages, from one person (yourself) to many other people (your followers) (works both ways). Your messages can be about anything, such as a funny website you have just found, what you are doing at work, what you are doing over the weekend or a question to your followers. By default – twitter is boring – you need to find interesting people to follow to make it exciting. It helps to be interactive – if you see someone ask a question, try and answer it if it is something you understand. Try and be funny. Have some fun

But saying all of that, Twitter does have its faults. Twitter has recently announced it has 50 people working for them. Yet, some basic things are still broken. Take the ‘Remember me’ tick-box on the front page of their website for your login details. It does not work. How long does it take to fix a server sided cookie issue? Sure, allocate one person for a day and it should be fixed.

Also annoying is how they would implement things and changes, without really communicating to people about what they would like to do. The reply issue is a prime example. They tried to cover the change by saying it was a function which no one really used or understood. A few days later, they came out with the truth that it was due to load on their servers. Why not come out straight away and tell the world that this was the issue? You would have gained the respect of a bunch of people about being open with issues and how you intend on fixing them.

News letters – I have been with Twitter for over two years now yet I have never received one. Do you guys ever intend on producing one? Have you actually sent one? I only found out about your blog address when this huge reply issue came about.

There are other things which I find annoying, like hard to get an idea of if the people you are following are following you back, how there is AJAX to refresh over 75% of the page (click the Direct Messages button) and how there is no transparency or way to vote for someone to be in the recommended following system (like when you sign up for a new account). Some stats or information, such as including a ‘notes’ area for someone who is following you would also be nice (like, hell the hell am I meant to remember why I decided to follow some people or if they changed their name/picture etc).

Twitter can become better. You guys are 95% there already. It is just the last 5% that you need to work on. It is the little things, like the ‘contact us’ system which needs to be improved. I tried to lodge a request the other week, but went around in circles and then could not find a simple way, such as email, to contact you guys. I ended up giving up. I have heard people lodge trouble tickets and get back simple replies such as ‘problem solved, ticket is now closed’ of which did not help or solve any issues. A news letter every so often would also be nice – it will remind the people who have forgotten about the service that you guys are still there and wishing for them to return to new features, exciting adjustments and wonderful new people to follow

It is all of the little things, like if you ban someone for something, give them a reason and be responsive with dialog to and from them. Not everyone is a spammer so treat people better if you decide they need a time out.

You guys are in communication – you guys just need to do it better to your users before someone invents a bigger mouse trap. It is the little things

That is all – have a good evening

Posted by Alan Lee on Friday, June 19 2009

A few notes on Windows 7 software RAID.

RAID0 (mirror) - confirmed under Windows 7 build 7100
RAID1 (spanned/stripped) - confirmed under Windows 7 build 7100
RAID5 - not confirmed - the option is visable but greyed out, even with 5x disks in Windows 7 build 7100

At the moment - during the install process of Windows 7 build 7100 you cannot create a raid volume to install to using software raid.  But you can convert the disk to 'dynamic' and create a spanned or mirroed disk after it has been installed.  The disks need to have the same format - either a 'GPT Disk' or ' MBR Disk'.  If not - you will get a nasty error while trying to create it

 

 

I had asked myself earlier this week - does Windows 7 support software RAID stuff?

I recall Windows XP did not (well, it did with software hacks, but I wont go here) - you had to upgrade to Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 server to get software raid. Of course, Hardware raid worked well as that was 100% independent Windows +

Vista supported spanned drives (raid 0) - as in, take the volume of several smaller drives and use it to make the drive bigger. Other raid levels, such as raid 1 were not available

Now for a nice change - Windows 7 (Currently using build 7100) supports at least raid 0 and raid 1. This means you can make several drives huge, or can make two identical drives redundant to each other. I have tested raid spanned drives successfully at home - created a 3TB raid 0 volume. Tonight I will be doing the same, and creating a RAID 1 (mirror/data protection) volume and will adjust this post with the results. The image below is from a work PC not using software raid, but shows the right click menu.  

BTW using the windows 7 installer - I could not find an easy way to create a drive mirror.  But then I did not spend much time here - just about 10 seconds before clicking next.  Maybe i'll find some time to confirm the software raid things.  Please note this was with build 7100 of Widows 7 (RC)

Confirmed:  Windows 7 (At lest build 7100, the RC) supports RAID1 / Mirrored hard drives (under dynamic mode).  Screenshot below

Posted by Alan Lee on Tuesday, June 16 2009

My thoughts on Bing

Straight off - I have never really used Bing yet. I am not looking at the search results but the actual interface, the search results layout and what I feel about it

The Bing home page
I don’t feel there should be a huge image on the first page. Sure it might be compressed a lot, and/or not eat much traffic to come on your screen. I feel it should not be there because it is distracting.

The tabs provided are what most people would be interested in – images, videos, news and maps. Google does do the same, but it is not as clear on how to get there because they are hidden off at the top of the page. Both sites do a website reload to go between the tabs (ie, going from web to images). It would be nice if this was AJAX or something as it will make it quicker. This will be hard for Google, since they use a different URL for each search system where as the Bing product should be pretty easy to do since it is staying in the same domain.

The more button on Bing is not really a more page at the moment. It is still beta, and one would suspect there will be more and more things there over time.

A nice feature which should not be that hard to implement would be to have a webpage somewhere (probably require a login and/or cookies) where you can add websites. This would be like doing a site:www.alanjlee.com under Google but adding a shortcut / radio button for it. You would enter the site details from an accounts or profile page I would guess.  See picture below

The Bing search results page
This to me feels like a domain parked website for some reason. Maybe it is because there is a left hand collum before the results? Maybe it is because there is an image at the top left? Maybe because the content on the right hand side takes up around half the space of the real results? But then I get the same feeling of a spam website / domain parked website when I see tings like Youtube links with images on Google.

I also don’t like to see pop-ups when I put my mouse over things. Forums which do this, I hate with a passion. They have made it on Bing to do this when you hover your mouse over the right hand side of the search results.

So Bing – when will we be able to create accounts to personalise the home page and the results page?

Posted by Alan Lee on Sunday, June 14 2009

Cooking with Alan

So I have worked on a secret project for a few days.

I now have a cooking website where I list the things I enjoy to make, offer great ideas on cooking and general advice

Check it out... www.cookingwithalan.com

Please let me know what you think...  :)

Posted by Alan Lee on Saturday, June 13 2009

Cool stuff about Windows 7 Media Center functions

Just wow - there are a ton of cool things in relation to Windows 7 and its Media Centre / Media Player functions.
Here are a few (Please note, this is not a RTM review of the full non-beta Windows 7, things may and will change)
 
Out of the box formats (codec wise): 
DivX up to version 6 (DivX 7 was released a few days back, not sure if it will be included in the final version yet) 
DVD support (mpeg2) - can play DVD's straight away after installing Windows 7
H.264 & AAC audio (unless it has DRM, cause Apple wont license it to any third parties) 
 
Things you still need (codec wise): 
Adobe Flash Player
Blu-Ray codec
Codec packs for things like MKV
QuickTime still is a good idea to install
 
This is a welcome change from Microsoft and will make life a bit easier
 
Streaming Media
This is a big leap for Microsoft to try and make Windows 7 the centre point of your entertainment system.  It seems that if it is on your Windows 7 box - and you are based on a home network (please note, Active Directory/Domain Controller networks won’t work due to that not really been a home product) - you can stream and/or play media on anything else in your home which is part of the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance, over 200 companies are part of this).  Media Player ties into the home network a lot more.
 
Media Center
This is just wow.  It runs a lot smoother.  It has far more funky features and it just works.  Things like EPG in Australia actually work!  It is based on the broadcaster’s signal which I suspect is part of how FreeView works here.  Things like if you hold the skip button, it starts to do days at a time on the EPG so you can get around faster.  The animations of moving around are just win.  
 
The home network
This is something I feel Microsoft have improved a lot since Windows XP and Windows Vista.  They have made it a lot easier to share things around the network such as documents and audio/video.  You can from a bunch of simple screens setup a password which authenticates everything to the network.  It ties in with your Live ID (maybe others in the future) to link both internal and external devices together.  
 
What I am doing
I got a few ideas of things I can do at home to make things just work better.  I have reinstalled my main PC at home to have Windows 7 (7100).  I am going to move away from AD at home and into a home network type setup.  I will be doing more reviews, screenshots, correcting the above if there are mistakes and just overall trying to make this less complicated.  There are a few 'gotchyas' which I still have to find myself.  I'll also try and put together some ideas and/or ideal type setups for people to have an idea of what can be done.
 
So - stay tuned... hopefully in a few day's I will have a lot more information here.
 
Thanks to Sydney Windows User Group and Gordon Ryan at Longneck Consulting for their demo on Media Center things
 
 

 

Posted by Alan Lee on Thursday, June 11 2009

New CMS - Graffiti CMS

Hello! 

It has been a while hey, no changes, no updates or anything.  But today - I have fixed up my prior problems and spent the last 5 hours changing to a new CMS called Graffiti CMS by Telligent.  I had played around with it a bit in the past with a few little side projects and have been pretty happy with it.  It does have some limitations but overall, I feel it will fit with what I do pretty well.  I still have a lot to do - such as ensuring I have tags everywhere and to help reduce my SEO hit by patching together the older URL's to match the current system.

Posted by Alan Lee on Monday, June 01 2009

Internet Explorer 8 is not supported on this operating system

 Hi there! So you got an error message like below?

 

Internet Explorer 8 is not supported on this operating system

What does it mean? Two big reasons…

A) You had downloaded the wrong version of IE8.

You might have downloaded the 64bit version rather then the 32bit version or the Windows XP version when you have Vista installed. Go back to Microsoft download page and find the correct version.

B) You are using Windows 7 of which Microsoft has not released IE8 for it yet. From Microsoft’s website …

Windows 7 Beta already includes a pre-release candidate version of Internet Explorer 8 that is optimized for that release. Windows 7 enables unique features and functionality in Internet Explorer 8 including Windows Touch and Jump Lists which require additional product tests to ensure we are providing the best Windows experience for our customers. We will continue to update the version of Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7 as the development cycles of Windows 7 progress and plan to include the final version of Internet Explorer 8 in the release candidate version of Windows 7 later this year. For the latest information on Windows 7, visit the Windows 7 site.

Posted by Alan Lee on Monday, March 23 2009

iPhone OS 3.0 … Still fail

Gosh they are bringing out a new major version of their OS! Version 3. Yet it still fails. No SMS/Text counters (ie, how many letters you have typed) or notification of multi-part SMS/Text messages. How hard can it be? Come on Apple! Get your act together. Give a dev one day and I am sure it will be there and be loved by many…

A little more info about what is actually included in V3
http://news.cnet.com about apple’s v3 OS

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au - look around half way down the page onwards 

Posted by Alan Lee on Wednesday, March 18 2009