Saturday, December 15, 2007

Declutter Your Office

An excellent site sharing how to declutter your home office of high-tech equipment in a cheap & effective way.

http://www.decluttered.com/

"Organized gadget owner Van Mardian cleared his desktop by mounting all his peripherals - external hard drives, USB hubs, network router - under his desk with pegboard and wire" (via LifeHacker)

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

SharePoint event log errors

I found my event log on COGNAC chock full of SharePoint errors, almost one every five seconds!

Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Windows SharePoint Services 2.0Event Category: NoneEvent ID: 1000Date: 11/14/2007Time: 10:27:58 PMUser: N/AComputer: COGNACDescription:#50070: Unable to connect to the database SPS01_Config_db on COGNAC. Check the database connection information and make sure that the database server is running.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I have been trying to use the SharePoint Central Admin web gui to rectify or turn off this condition for the last 20 mins, to no avail. Before I uninstall SharePoint Services from this box (I don't really use them), i figure a quick Google search is in order:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2350070%3A+Unable+to+connect+to+the+database+SPS01_Config_db

Which lead me to
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=900498&FR=1

But better resource looked to be the blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/cgideon/archive/2006/05/24/605454.aspx

which lead me to another Microsoft support article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;833183

None seems to have the sanwer. I'm just about ready to uninstall...

Then I tried turning off the SharePoint Timer service... This worked. I assume that no SP services will be active, but a little easier than uninstalling.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

RAID 5 and Other Stories

How does RAID 5 actually work? It might have implications on distributed computing architectures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_5

Parity, Hamming codes, distance-based checks, CRCs and polynomial codes of construction, error-correcting codes (ECC, the same stuff used for computer RAM memory and hard drives), TCP/IP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error-correcting_code

Interesting article on the effect of enclosures on the reliability of hard drive storage:
http://www.wiebetech.com/whitepapers/Storage_Enclosure_Reliability.pdf

Interesting link on nanotech from my brother:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18514/page1/

Cool link of the week (or whatever):
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Home NAS Solution

If you know me, you are probably familiar with the freak occurrence that took down in succession a RAID card channel, an IDE RAID drive (or two), and a Dell PowerEdge server SCSI boot drive… After a lot of research (over days and weeks), as well as some key advice from a trusted IT advisor (thanks Steve), I selected and ordered a network storage solution that while not cheap, is pretty affordable and pretty well guarantees that my pictures, docs, and other data will always be available. Hope this is useful… -- Keith


Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ RNV2-S2-0000, no pre-installed HDD with 4 empty disk trays, support X-RAID and RAID 0/1/5, 256MB memory, Silver, SFF desktop - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822329023

This guy is hot-swappable, gigabit-connected, low form factor, low power, and has 4 SATA slots supporting up to 750 GB each (up to 3 TB); and in addition to supporting RAID-5 etc has a cool feature called X-RAID, where you can add disks as you go and it will automatically expand the array.

Following the grit-your-teeth project mandate (“data is valuable”), I opted to start with two enterprise-class server drives (Seagate Barracuda ES drives, below), paying a premium. While you can get consumer SATA drives of 500GB for around $140/ea plus shipping at NewEgg.com, one reads a lot about drives that are DOA, failed after a month, etc. This makes sense and actually matches my experience with the cheaper consumer drives.

With RAID overhead, etc. this should give me a working NAS of around 650 GB. Not bad…

Seagate Barracuda ES ST3500630NS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $199
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148151

Got two of these; can take advantage of price drops in the future to pick up a couple more.

The ReadyNAS has a USB 2.0 output to allow a preconfigured backup, so I bought a USB enclosure and another, smaller enterprise Barracuda ES 250GB. This I will use to back up critical stuff (pictures, documents). I will use Microsoft Backup (or similar) to schedule local computer backups to the NAS, and possibly something like Acronis TrueImage to “image” boot drives to the NAS (so I can simply re-image a new hard drive if a boot drive fails).

To leave no power issues (quality, spikes/surges, brownouts, failures, etc) to chance, I got a APC Smart-UPS 750VA, which not only provides power backup, but a little power conditioning as well as power graphs showing history and quality.

Anyway, I pasted the whole order below for your convenience if you’re interested. -- Keith


Products

Qty.
Product Description
Total Price
Item(s) shipped from CA Tracking Number:

2
Seagate Barracuda ES ST3500630NS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEMItem #: N82E16822148151 Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy
$399.98

2
OKGEAR SATA II cable with metal latch,UV Model GC10AUBM12 - RetailItem #: N82E16812123108 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$5.98
Item(s) shipped from NJ Tracking Number:

1
Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEMItem #: N82E16822148215 Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy
$99.99

1
Infrant ReadyNAS RNV2-S2-0000 Diskless System The Superior NAS for Office and Home - RetailItem #: N82E16822329023 Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy
$615.99

1
AMC VGA, With dual ferrites Male to Female Monitor Cable Model CSV-F25MF - OEMItem #: N82E16812105804 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$9.99

1
OKGEAR 20" SATA Power Cable Model GC20ATA - RetailItem #: N82E16812123168 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$3.99

1
OKGEAR SATA II CABLE-UV BLUE Model GC10AUBM - RetailItem #: N82E16812123107 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$2.99

2
OKGEAR 6" molex 4pin male to two 15pin SATA Power Cable Model GC6ATAM2 - RetailItem #: N82E16812123119 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$3.78

2
Link Depot UV Power Cord into SATA Power Cable Model POW-UV-SATA - RetailItem #: N82E16812189005 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$3.98
Item(s) shipped from TN Tracking Number:

1
AZiO ENC311SU41 3.5" eSATA + USB 2.0 External Enclosure - RetailItem #: N82E16817106097 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy