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!

After turning in my cable box yesterday and cancelling my residential cable service through Cox, they came out this morning and disconnected my business internet service as well. Argh.

And just as I was getting packed to head to Los Angeles for TEC2010.

As you can see, though, all is back up and running. I did say that Cox customer service was great, didn’t I?

Well, that wasn’t two, so I’ll compensate by adding a few more.

Today, we ditched Cox cable for Verizon FiOS TV. Cox, the regular local cable provider, is actually not bad. They have great [for a cable company] customer service, but I’ve been disappointed with the service itself. The signals are low and I absolutely deplore the DVR. If you’ve been reading the blog [here, here, and here], you know that I have finally put together a media center PC.

What’s not listed there is that it’s all new. Over the past several months, in order to “make it right” I’ve been working on the computer to make it behave like it’s supposed to.

The old PC just wasn’t up to the task. I had been thinking about upgrading it when an opportunity fell into my lap. I mistakenly ordered the wrong CPU for my server and was unable to return it. So – I “repurposed” it. With the addition of a new motherboard, matching 4GB of RAM and a case, I was all set to build a media center out of a Quad-Core Xeon server processor. That’s total overkill for those not geeky out there.

The first problem, though, was that I ordered the wrong motherboard – it wouldn’t fit in the case. I returned it and ordered another one only to find out that I actually had the wrong case. I replaced the case and found out that I had the wrong power supply. I quick stop by the local computer store solved that problem. I assembled all the parts and it was working. Performance-wise, it’s the fastest “desktop” I’ve ever owned. Only, it’s not a desktop: it’s a server with a server case… which sounds like a jet engine.

So: to solve that problem, I replaced the power supply and it got a smidge quieter. Hmm… the case has 3 fans. I replaced those with whisper-quiet 120mm case fans and wow… Except: it was still very loud. All that was left was the CPU fan. This tiny little thing must have been making the most noise. It was spinning at 6000 RPM and so I replaced it with a large heatsink and fan combination that is now virtually silent.

Media Center “Server”: Awesome!

It’s VERY fast, responds very quickly, and I have about 1.2TB of storage. I think I can record several weeks of TV in HD without stopping. It all works just like it’s supposed to.

But…

All the problems didn’t go away. We used to get digital artifacting [little random squares on the screen] and noise which I thought was due to performance of the machine. It was still there. Come to find out, our signal with Cox was so bad, that some channels were just plain unwatchable. I couldn’t even eliminate the cable box like I wanted to. So much for saving money.

Now, along comes my friend Jack who tells me of his experience with Media Center, CableCARD and FiOS. Now, I was hooked. See, Cox requires a “tuning resolver” to allow you to change channels on their less-watched shows. That way, they can save bandwidth by not showing stations to a neighborhood that no one is watching. Only it doesn’t work all that well. There were many times that our shows wouldn’t record because of some switching error.

No more! I called and scheduled my FiOS appointment and I’m now free from the Cox prison [except for Internet]. The media center is working as it’s supposed to and the signal is strong and clear. Life is great!

The only thing left is to get an additional tuner. I have a Ceton tuner on order which has 4 tuners in it. That will solve the recording conflict problems and should be the final upgrade of the machine for some time to come.

I took the Cox equipment in to the store today. That alone should save us $20/month or more on our cable bill.

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…

This year, after saving up lots of money by selling off old books, I was given a gift card to make up the difference and purchase a Kindle! For those who don’t know, it’s an electronic book reader which will store tons of books and even automatically download new ones.

Here’s a card Laura put together for my birthday which shows a picture of the old generation one (and a little Photoshop manipulation):

So, it’s been ordered and I’m eagerly awaiting the new device. I’ve even queued up some free e-books to have them downloaded when I turn it on. Book like Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” and Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” are public domain now and free for downloading. If I were to just read those free books, I’d likely never finish before I turn 80…

But, I’m getting rid of my old paper books and going for the new, easier to store e-books.

Then, Laura can use my old, empty shelves like she wants…

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.

All is not lost, however, since I have Windows Live Sync keeping copies of all my data from the laptop to a share on my server. Of course, the program works flawlessly by replicating the deletion and thereby removing the server copy of my file.

Not to worry, I think. I know that not too long ago, I set up Shadow Copies on the server, which keeps snapshots of changed files. The only problem with this is that it only goes back as far as when I turned it on, which was 2 weeks ago – AFTER the file in question had already been deleted.

My last hope: my online backup system – Elephant Drive. This, like Mozy and other online backup services, has a desktop client [or in my case a server client] that runs and copies files and changes up to the Internet for backup. This is exactly what happened shortly after July 2nd, which was the last time I changed this file.

A simple browse and right-click later, I was saving the file back into its old place on my laptop.

I like Elephant Drive for the main reason that all the other services wanted to charge me MUCH more money just to be able to install their client software on Windows Server. If I have a server, I must therefore be a business and be made of money or something. This is not the case – I’m just a geek with a server or 7 at home and want to keep all of my data and files in one place. So, for $4.95 per month, they let me run it.

It’s now proven its worth. While that particular file might not be worth the $35 I’ve spent so far, the experience I’ve just had certainly gives me a degree of comfort that my files are safe.

My recommendation to you is this: find a backup solution that works for you, but be sure to include automated off-site [or Internet] backup as part of it.

So, if I hadn’t replied to you for a while, now you know why.

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

I have decided to wait, really, since we’re doing a number of things and we still have the old DVR to fall back on until things get more settled around here and we can really think about what we want to do with the cable.

One day, this will work.

One day…