::: jeffphillips.org ::: » Site News

Ooops – I Upgraded…

Jeff — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:08:41 +0000

It wasn’t intentional, at least the scheduling wasn’t intentional. However, last night there was a power outage and our servers crashed and then came back on. What is different, though, is that the firewall server is now running Forefront TMG instead of the old ISA 2006. This is much better, of course, but previously I hadn’t been able to get it to work properly.

As you can see, it’s working now. This means that the configuration I had was working just fine. When the servers rebooted, the new server came up first and took over the network and became the production firewall server. I only found out because I hadn’t put the new mail certificate on the listener. The old server came up second, but because it has the same IP address, it couldn’t connect to anything.

I needed to upgrade it because it was running Windows Server 2003 and the old version of the firewall. The new version is running on Windows Server 2008 R2 and is all current and up to date.

It seems to be faster, too.

I’ve turned off the old server and deleted it’s virtual hard drive. No going back now!

Almost Destroyed

Jeff — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:48:51 +0000

Some of you may have noticed this morning when the blog was unavailable. As you can see, it’s back now and working properly. I guess that some of the “fixes” I put in place broke things over the weekend and I only now got it back up and running. It as almost completely lost. That would have been bad. At least I had a backup.

Anyway: all is well now with the world and the web server.

Enjoy!

New Web Server

Jeff — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:26:04 +0000

I bet you didn’t even notice, but we’re now running on Windows Server 2008 R2, which is 64-bit only.

Yay!

This is has been an ongoing project which I started a while back when 2008 came out. I wanted to migrate all the sites from 2003 to 2008. I got bogged down and then R2 was release and I couldn’t just upgrade the new server, so I had to deploy a new one. Presently I have 3.

Soon, there will be only one.

There is still much work to be done, but it won’t be the onerous task I thought it would be… I hope…

Server Room: Complete

Jeff — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:28:06 +0000

Upon arrival back from our trip to Houston, it was good to arrive back at the house to see that our basement work was complete. The wall was done and painted, the wall trim installed, and the door put in place.

It looks like it was always there. Here are some pictures of the inside:

So, I’m pretty excited about the room. Tonight, I’ll be moving the servers into the room, so the site will be down for a bit.

More Home Improvements

Jeff — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:01:26 +0000

This week, we’ll be modifying our basement. We’ll be walling in a nook to contain all my servers and networking equipment. It’s the latest phase of getting our basement set up for photography. This will allow us to move all the excess computer equipment out of the main basement area into a closed room. In this room will also be some shelving for storing other unsightly materials. Here is a pictures of the nook [after we moved all the servers away from it]:

Previously, there was a desk [and then a table] holding printer, monitor, CD filing units on top and computer part holders and a server or two beneath it. It was quite messy.

Over the next few days, there may be some few outages as we move wiring and other things around to accommodate the new space.

Not that I’ve been posting anything recently… I know: I’m a slacker.

Email: Bad

Jeff — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:07:23 +0000

So, in the process of upgrading my email server to Exchange 2010 Release Candidate, the power went out [it was out for a whole day] and now it’s VERY messed up. I’m trying to restore services, but we cannot send or receive any new emails right now…

So, I’m not deliberately ignoring you. This time.

Database Migration

Jeff — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:07:02 +0000

I know many of you won’t care too much about this, but I’ve migrated my web site photo gallery from MySQL to Microsoft SQL Server 2008. It’s now working on the new server. It was actually rather painstaking to get it set up correctly, but it’s done now.

The only thing you might miss is the links are kind of ugly now, not the neat links they used to be. I may be able to fix that in the future.

UPDATE: I fixed the links and they’re back to what they were.

A Day of House Work [In and Out]

Jeff — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:20:57 +0000

Gardening is hard work – especially when you find some kind of rock under the topsoil. Digging around it, we found that it could be broken into pieces. Not easily, but it could be done. So, for the last hour or so, we’ve been digging through it just to get holes deep enough for some flowers. Of course, we had to borrow a shovel to do this work, so that’s now on the list of stuff we have to buy.

The barbeque is going well – I think I have the temperature down where it needs to be. It takes a lot of work just to check on it during the day. I’m glad I have nowhere else to be!

I’m also working on the new web site, or rather, redirecting the old website to the new domain name. This is the web site for our new photography business name: Phillips Photographik. It’s the same site for now that the old one pointed to, but now I’ve changed some of the language to reflect that it’s Laura and I, and updated the contact emails. I still have to update the banner.

It will take some time for us to finalize a logo, but we’ll get it done. At least this gives us a start!

We’ve been stagnant for so long, but things are going to change soon.

Long Time No Blog

Jeff — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:31:52 +0000

I’ve been slacking off. It’s just that simple.

I do have some excuses… Wanna hear ‘em? The server’s been broke and I’ve been working to fix it so I had no time to blog… Work’s been kinda busy, so I’ve had no time to blog… We’re moving to a new house soon, so I’ve had no time to blog…

These are all true, but if I’d really wanted to or had something to say, I probably would have made time. There’s just no excuse that’s good enough.

However, after fighting a long, arduous battle with my server, it’s now up and running very well. It’s rock solid and the environment is all mostly virtualized [5 computers out of 8 are virtual] and faster than it was before. There will be some down time, though. When I go home tonight I have to move the server back into the closet where it lives.

And then, there’s the “data center move”. We bought a new house and will be moving in a couple of weeks. There will be some down time for that. Not much I hope, since there will be a week’s worth of overlap in my Internet service.

We’re really excited about the new house – we won’t have to be at the whim of the landlords and can chose when we move next.

Maybe, I’ll have some more time to blog after the hecticness of the next few weeks passes…

Server: Good

Jeff — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:45:40 +0000

After trying many things including getting the product team involved in diagnosing the problem, I decided to rebuild the server from scratch. That seemed to correct the problem of Hyper-V not working correctly. No one is sure why, but my guess is that the install got corrupted for some odd reason.

I have to say, though, that getting the product group involved was kind of cool even though they couldn’t help – which wasn’t their fault, but the fact that I didn’t have the equipment to do the kernel level debugging that they needed to do.

Now, however, the web site is back up and running on the new Hyper-V box!