NT4 (and later versions) can work very reliably. No sweat. Just get reliable hardware like a Proliant or Dell server with ECC memory and make sure the drivers are OK and the software is compatible. Move anything that isn't working to a different machine/OS. In my experience trying to get too many different functions out of one Windows server is a world of pain. Just don't go there because Windows can't do that. Simply split the functionality over multiple machines and/or operating systems.
I've setup/seen/maintained NT4 and Server2003 machines reaching uptimes of over a year without problems. Same goes for Linux BTW. Even at small companies I used to place a Windows server and a Linux server. Windows for file serving, Exchange and printing, Linux for security (firewall) and miscellaneous tasks.
Its not about load. Its about keeping a system going so you can sleep at night. Downtime costs a lot of money and causes aggrevation by users (bad for moral). It is very comforting for users to be able to rely on a system to just work.
--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
No. 'And' means I can work faster from a local server. The quicker I finish what I'm working , the sooner it gets shut down. Without a dedicated server, files are scattered over hard drives, CD-ROM, DVD & USB sticks all over the place. I may have five computers up to find what I need. I also want to run a real NNTP server to allow me to filter out some idiots and countries before they ever hit my computer.
Would you like to compare electric usage?
--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.
That's why I use email exclusively. No worrying about "what time is it *there*?"
Hmmm... so you cut down a 2x12? Or, built up a 2x8?
Yeah, I am nervous about framing anything "in metal". Supposedly a lot easier to work with. But it always
*feels* flimsy!
No. The "ink" is suspended (? is that the right term?) in wax. The wax is liquified (melted) when the printer is turned on (i.e., it needs to "warm up"). Then, the liquid ink is "sprayed" onto the paper like an inkjet would (only different, of course :> ).
When the printer is powered off, the unused ink resolidifies.
They are expensive to operate (not just because an ink kit is pricey). In addition to the long warm up period, there is a cleaning cycle (which increases the warm up) which discards a boatload of "ink" each time you power up the printer. I.e., you don't use these for printing
*a* page :-(
(that's why the LJ6P is so wonderful -- though monochrome -- as I can turn it on and print 15 seconds later)
Ah, OK. So, if you had *two* of a particular printer, there is no way to tell them apart (?) (i.e., in a large business)
Windows broadcasts "device names" and expects "folks" to notice those broadcasts. I.e., it can't find your printer until your printer says "Hi, I'm here! My name is..."
By contrast, I name everything explicitly (i.e., I can always find my web server or file server using its IP) and talk *to* them (instead of waiting for them to tell me they are available).
Imagine if you had to wait for google.com to tell you "I'm here (in case you want to access me)", etc.
When I build a new machine, I go through each piece of software that was on the *old* machine and ask myself:
- do I want to keep this?
- do I want to *upgrade* this?
- do I want to abandon this?
I record detailed notes about each installation (what got installed, where in the filesystem it resides, any tweeks I had to do to menus, authorization codes, etc.). So, if I want to build a new machine, I know what steps to follow.
(often the order of installs makes a difference -- -- so I keep track of what works... and *why* if I can sort that out!)
In the analog world one often can't do that. Many times I am on the phone with a client, they have a weird problem and keep sending me scope plots every few minutes. Until we found where the problem is.
They didn't even have 2x10 so I built up a 2x8. What's really time consuming is picking through at the store. Often 90% of boards are seriously warped, cracked or have chunks missing. The good ones are all at the bottom of the pile, sez Murphy.
Well, these were. I don't want stairs to sag when I step onto them.
Clever! So it won't ever dry out.
Whoops, that's not cool.
Same here with the 5L. Small jobs of just a few sheets are printed on that. Larger runs on the Brother because that spits out pages at a blazing speed but then the fan will come on and keep running for 10 mins or so to cool it back down.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Sure you can. I accepted the default names because there's only one each. But you could also name one Alpha, the next one Bravo, or whatever. Or HP5L_Office, HP5L_Lab.
But what's wrong with that? This way if it doesn't answer a light may come on in your head such as "Oh, yes, I serviced it yesterday and probably forgot to turn it back on".
I don't want to talk to them before they are available. Else you'll have print jobs hanging in the queue forever and when in a rush that's not good. I'd rather see that a printer has reported for duty and _then_ send a job to it. After all, that's how the whole military works, once a soldier reaches his station he must report to the sergeant that he did :-)
I don't see anything wrong on a LAN. In fact, it's good. If the printer doesn't show that means something electrical must be broken.
Looks like we are very similar in that respect. The directory pattern is the same on all computers here, except that many softwares are only installed on one because of license restrictions. Each computer also has its own manila folder with the manuals, notes, disks and so on in there. If there's a problem I turn around on my chair, open a file hanger drawer and pull the respective file.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Understood. In my world, it's clarifications on BoM's or arguing about how I've decided something is going to work in a specification, etc.
And, since software never has *bugs*, once it leaves my desk, it's done! ;-)
Exactly. "You always find something in the last place you look for it!" (D'uh!)
I try to purchase kiln dried wood so WYSIWYG. Otherwise, you have to carefully examine the grain in the wood to determine how it will warp or twist WHEN DRY.
I've got a 2x4 stud in an exterior wall that was *going* to be the king stud for the new kitchen window. But, it's got a terrible twist so I'll have to remove and replace it. Hard to blame the builders (since that was decades ago) but you sure want to blame SOMEONE for all that extra work that you'll (I'll!) have to do!
Yup. I suspect they would be very sturdy. But, sure wouldn't
*feel* like it! Sort of like walking across the Royal Gorge Bridge while a car is driving across :-/ (the "road surface" is wooden planks)
Exactly its appeal.
And, no doubt someone has a patent that protects the *ink* itself (I think the "shapes" of the ink blocks are copyrighted... their shapes act as "keys" to prevent other inks from being used in their place)
Yes, very *uncool*. It is a shame as the resulting pages are almost like pages out of a magazine (that waxxy, glossy finish "with body")
That's how the LJ4M+ is. I think 12 PPM -- which is really amusing to watch when using the duplexer (sort of like the entertainment value of watching a pen plotter years ago). Any "productivity gains" are usually lost because I so enjoy watching the pages get "spit out" and then "sucked back in".
I don't think that would have enough "balls". E.g., when I build projects (make all) it's *nice* to have the speed available. OTOH, when I'm just typing in emacs, I cringe to think of all the (virtual) NoOps that are being executed...
The boxes I am looking at next are 1GHz, 1GB. A compromise (more RAM, less CPU and peripherals) that I hope better fits my actual usage.
On a sunny day (Mon, 17 May 2010 15:27:41 -0700) it happened D Yuniskis wrote in :
backup.
emacs? I could never understand the key combinations. Just an OS on top of an OS, for dummies only. I use 'joe' as an editor. Turned of syntax coloring in asm last week, better readability and more programming speed is the result. Joe starts in a femto second or 2, been using it for more then 12 years (since Linux 0.98 SLS IIRC). It was already fast on a 486. Just wrote 9789 lines of asm that actually works...
Well, I always wondered in C when using a 64 bit integer as a flag... PICs have nice bit set instructions.
I dunno what you do, but on my webserver the traffic is not so big you that need 1 GHz, or even 1 GB.
The Linksys has a MIPS processor at a few hunded MHz running Linux. The bottle neck is the serial SDcard. But it is fast enough to stream mp3.
And it uses less then 6 W (runs from 12V 500 mA adaptor), the router takes more.
Hell these days people are sold a 3 GHz quad core to do text editing and send emails. And then it is still slow in WIndows because the thing has become part of a botnet and is spewing spam all over the globe likely.
I.e., if I you went out tomorrow and bought *two* MORE LJ5L's and plugged both of them in at the same time, how would they appear in your "printers list"? How would you know which is A and which B?
It doesn't scale well. Imagine 500 nodes all announcing themselves to the world *periodically* -- even if no one cares about them! And, everyone has to remember who has announced themselves (or, force the user to wait for a cycle before you know who/what's available)
But the same naming mechanism is used for machines as well. And, just because something announces itself as "available", doesn't mean it will *still* be available when you use it.
MS protocols aren't used on the 'net because they don't scale. There's be nothing but hundreds of thousands of announcements (which have to be BROADCAST since you have no idea who might want to reference a particular name, etc.)
Even MS realized their folly when they belatedly added support for the TCP/IP protocols.
Different for SOHO applications in which you can eliminate the need for a name server, etc.
I have been trying to separate functionality between machines. Just too damn hard to keep a (Windows) machine running when you have a boatload of different applications on it. Things like DirectX always seem to get wonky based on who installs first, etc.
(I think Windows remembers too much state whereas other OS's rediscover things each time they run)
I've discarded (after scanning) almost all of my manuals to save space. Aside from service manuals, most of the stuff that I might need I can usually find online (e.g., "What's error 50?").
I used to keep my logs in bound books. But, that was hard to maintain. Build a new machine, have to write a whole new book??
So, now I keep each machine's log on the machine itself. Of course, if the machine dies, the log is inaccessible. So, I push a copy onto my FTP server each time I make a change to it (this is a weak link as there is nothing to force me to do this :< ).
When I build a new machine, first thing I do is retrieve the log from FTP server for whichever machine is closest in personality to the one I am building.
I wouldn't recommend this approach to larger businesses. But, for me, it is a good balance between recordkeeping and efficiency (I can't afford the time to *be* an IT department!)
Control Panel -> Printers and Faxes -> right-click on the Printer where you wish to change the name -> Type in a name that sounds cool.
I am not an IT guy but at least here in the office that doesn't seem to happen. The main router is under my desk on a shelf I built for it. When nobody is working I can't see traffic on the LAN.
Of course meantime a major earthquake could have happened or a volcano might have erupted underneath that printer :-)
Well, ok, for a company the size of Dupont or Ford this might not be so good. But here it simply works.
Yes, that's a problem. Although again, for small offices like mine it doesn't seem to be an issue. I use hibernate to shut down PCs and they would have to become hopelessly clogged over a few weeks. But they don't.
Larger businesses are actually going paperless. Well, some. I have as well but I can't part with my old databooks and I will never trust manufacturers to keep legacy datasheets because mostly they don't. So those 10ft of shelf space in the hallway must be mine, and my wife knows that. She stopped asking for it :-)
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
I've never found my choice of editor/IDE affected my coding speed. Seems to be limited more by the stuff between my ears than anything technological!
Depends on what you are doing and the resouces you have available. I just wrote a piece of code that uses 32b values to represent
4 choices :-/
The host has to run:
- DNS (to resolve my hostnames)
- NTP (to provide time-of-day information)
- TFTP (to serve diskless client "images")
- xfs (to serve fonts)
- HTTP (to serve my web pages)
- PostgreSQL (to support my databases)
- FTP (to serve files)
- SSH (for secure access)
- NFS (to serve configuration files)
- LPR (to serve up the printer it supports)
- NAT (to allow connection sharing)
- IPf (firewall/packet filter)
- general routing (between the different NICs)
None of these are large *static* loads. But, the speed of the processor and amount of RAM available make a big difference as to how quickly, for example, an SQL query executes. Probably the biggest *noticeable* load is packet filtering between the 5 network interfaces (at
100Mb rates)
If this box work well, I will combine my media server functionality into it (streaming audio and video) as well as the rest of the home automation chores (HVAC, security, irrigation, lighting, etc.).
1G of RAM is a win as it will let me eliminate the need for rotating media and still get good performance.
emails.
botnet and is spewing spam
Windows is just slow. With other OS's, you can fit the entire OS into some of these large processor caches and things *really* scream. Windows apps need all that cache just to get started! :<
Not all servers are energy hogs. The main difference is redundant power supplies and cooling fans to improve reliability. The other difference is the case. Rack mounted to keep them and the cabling in its place while allowing easy access for service or upgrades.
Some gaming computers have a 1 kW power supply. You can run multiple commercial servers on less power.
I'm talking the total usage for your home & business. My bill has run around $50 for the last few months. There is at least one computer on, around the clock. At times, there are five or more for hours at a time. If you can get by with what you have, that's great, but I have close to 500 CD-ROMs full of driver software, and around 120 GB of drivers and other information scattered across a bunch of older hard drives. Also, a server doesn't have to run 24/7 for my needs. I generally only spend some time, two or three days a week working on old computers. Your image of a server is a full rack with a dedicated 30
240 VAC service. Mine is a rack mount cased computer that draws about the same as an average desktop computer.
The HP ProLiant DL140 I posted a link to has a single 325 W power supply, which is smaller than a lot of desktop computers. For one thing, servers don't need fancy video cards that can double the power requirements. Some have redundant supplies, but can run on a single supply. Server power supplies are usually better designed, and more efficient than the $6 supply shipped with a new desktop. If they weren't, servers would drop like flies. It would cost a lot more to cool a data center, and require larger backup power sources.
Servers don't need large and power hungry monitors. They don't need chrome bumpers or tail fins, either. They are designed to do a job reliably, and efficiently
--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.
Now where on the subject of electricity usage: anyone knows how much his refrigerator uses? A couple of months ago I found myself in the refrigerator department of a white goods store. The average consumption is about 300kWh per year (I'm talking about a small European size refrigerator). That is about 10% of my total electricity usage!
--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
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