Author: sotech
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XenServer 6.2: How to boot a VM to CD/DVD rather than disk
We had a situation recently where a customer was experimenting with XenServer 6.2 and Ubuntu VMs; he accidentally powered off the VM during a distribution upgrade and the VM would only boot with a read-only filesystem. Loading an ISO into the virtual CD drive didn’t do the trick; there’s no obvious way of booting…
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Western Digital Se 2TB (WD2000F9YZ) Hard Drive Review
Today we are looking at a new line of drives from Western Digital – the Se range. Click through to read our review of the baby of the new line – a 2TB drive…
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HP ProCurve 2510-24 Power Consumption
We measured the ProCurve 2510-24’s power usage: Idle: 11.9W Peak: 14.8W This was measured on a 240V power circuit with a handful of devices attached (5). The peak wattage was measured during power-on and idle was steady around 11.9W. We would expect power usage to increase as you add more bandwidth-heavy devices;…
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How to install XenServer 6.2 – Step By Step
With the recent public availability of XenServer 6.2 there are an increasing number of people wanting to try it; here is a walk-through of an install so that you know what to expect if you want to try it yourself. In this example we are using a NFS datastore on the network to store…
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How to install an Asus PIKE 2008 card
As a non-standard PCI-Express card, the Asus PIKE card involves a slightly different installation procedure. The PIKE slot sits on either side of a gap in the motherboard: You’re definitely not going to mistake it for a regular PCI-Express slot. The card only goes in one way, with the heatsink…
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Asus PIKE 2008 card review
Many storage enthusiasts are familiar with the IBM M1015 card, an IBM rebadge of the LSI 9220-8i host bus adapter (HBA), based on LSI’s SAS2008 chipset. Less are familiar with Asus’ PIKE card – essentially the same thing in Asus’ own form factor, fitting only their proprietary PIKE slots. This card activates…
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Ubuntu Forums hacked, passwords + emails taken – change yours if you are a user!
On the 20th July (US time) the Ubuntu forums were hacked and local usernames, email addresses and passwords were taken. The passwords aren’t in plaintext but regardless, change yours if you are/were a user!
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Asus P9D-E/4L – Clearance between PIKE and PCI slots
One potential caveat of utilising the PIKE slot is that there is minimal clearance between the PIKE card heatsink and the nearest PCI slot; once the card is installed; Mere millimeters! A top view: This poses two problems. Firstly, not many PCI cards have low enough clearance to actually fit!…
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Asus P9D-E/4L Haswell Server Motherboard Review
With the recent release of Intel’s Haswell architecture came new server boards to match. From Asus came the new P9D line, and within that line the Asus P9D-E4/L is the flagship model with quite a comprehensive list of features.
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XenServer 6.2: NICs showing as disconnected despite being connected
Sometimes if you connect a network cable to a NIC XenServer doesn’t register it and keeps the status as disconnected; if this happens, try the following via SSH (or from the console, though you will be kicked out of XenCenter once you do it): xe-toolstack-restart It may take a little while for…