Fun Stuff > CLIKC
The PC-building/hardware knowledge thread
pwhodges:
I now have a nice new Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, replacing my previous Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. My "actual" servers are virtual servers that run in Hyper-V, of course (there are two at present: a domain controller and print server, plus a separate everything-Internet server running mail, several websites using various technologies, an SFTP server, and a torrent server*).
I had initially installed the Hyper-V Server as a testbed before setting up a much larger system at work (with clustered hosts and a big RAID-6 disk array). It has served me well. But some time after I upgraded my desktop to Windows 8.1, I discovered that the version of Hyper-V Manager that runs in Windows 8(.1) doesn't talk to Hyper-V 2008, only 2012. Bad move, MS, and a big step back from your generally excellent record in backward compatibility. First move, dig out an old machine and install Windows 7 so I could control (and in due course export and shut down) my servers!
Obvious second move: upgrade Hyper-V 2008 R2 to Hyper-V 2012 R2. What's this? The upgrade isn't possible! Second bad move MS! I have to do a clean install of Hyper-V 2012. Oh well, let's have a new machine as well - so one new motherboard and processor later (second motherboard - the first was not the one stated on the box!), I have a new machine ready to run my virtual servers.
OK - export; copy across; import. Now what? Ah. Third strike. Hyper-V 2012 R2 cannot import servers exported from Hyper-V 2008 R2. I can only do it by importing into Hyper-V 2012, and re-exporting from there. You think I'm setting up a third server?? Easy answer, actually - just create new virtual machines using the old virtual disks - as far as I can see the only setting that had to be redone inside the virtual machines was the IP address, as the new network interface is seen as a different device.
Actually, the whole transfer (once the new machine was waiting) took only about two hours (and another two for the torrent data, but the servers were up and running by then), with the 1Gbps network between the machine running at 95% of theoretical capacity, which impressed me. The performance of the servers is markedly better on the new host than it was on the old one, so that's good - and I'll use the old one (now running 2012 R2 as well) to run a hot backup of the servers, continuously updated, which is a new facility in this version - almost as good as a cheap cluster and RAID combination.
Oh, and I don't think I'll be trying this at work until we replace our current round of hardware!
* Why have I got a torrent server, you ask? I seed for this site.
cesium133:
I'm currently assembling a list of parts for building a new experimental computer for the lab. I'd rather just buy a prebuilt computer, but I can't find one that has three full-size PCI (not PCIe) ports. Since the computer won't need a whole lot of hard disk space (experimental data is stored on our file server which is regularly backed up), I'm considering buying an SSD drive for it. Looking through the specs for the drives, I've noticed that all of them list a MTBF (median time before failure) of more than 1,000,000 hours. If my math is right that corresponds to more than 100 years. Clearly these numbers have to be bullshit, because no modern piece of computer hardware will last that long. :psyduck:
edit -- oh boy. Good thing this post inspired me to check on the backup task on the file server. I just noticed it was trying to back up to drive G instead of drive F. A 2 TB hard disk was being backed up on a 2 GB USB flash drive. :psyduck:
pwhodges:
What, it's not set up to email you on failure?
cesium133:
For some reason Windows Task Manager was interpreting the failure code returned from the backup program as a success code.
edit -- I should note this is a new thing; it was only like that for two weeks. Drive C failed in that computer two weeks ago so I had to reinstall Windows and re-set up that task. And yes, Linux would make more sense for the task we're using the fileserver for, but my advisor doesn't like Linux...
LTK:
My laptop fans have been behaving really erratically lately. Here are my observations: After exiting any program that was using the GPU, the fan gets stuck on a high speed even after the temperature has gone back to normal. Only when I start up a program that prompts User Account Control does it reduce the fan speed to its lowest level. Other programs don't, even if I, say, run Windows Explorer as administrator, the fan speed doesn't change. I can't fathom why; even trying to start up the program but telling UAC 'No' so it's prevented from running also normalises the fan speed, so what the heck is it doing?
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