WeaselSnout | Server Upgrades

Thursday, 7. February 2008

Server Upgrades02/07/2008 12:13 AM

Server Upgrades

Yes, I have actually been busy since we arrived home from our holiday in Robe, primarily doing work on the home network which I have avoided for quite some time, but as always it’s amongst other things such as a new kitten, Caitlins Birthday, helping my Brother in-law out, Connor starting back at school and Caitlin starting at school for the first time.

As you have probably noticed by the lack of updates on the website I’m a bit bored with “Technology" at the moment and even taking any photos.

I’ve had a new server at home to replace the existing file and print server for the last 4 plus months but I just haven’t been able to find the energy or will power needed to deploy it. The old server has a nasty habit of locking up which is a right pain because the MediaPortal PC which is connected to the TV gets rather grumpy whenever you try to access files on this server.

This combined with the fact that the Domino web server was almost out of disk space which made updating the website take 10 times longer than it should and that my desktop desperately needed the removal of Vista and a reinstall of good ‘ol XP. (In my opinion Vista is without a doubt the worst Operating System ever created by Microsoft, far worse than even Windows ME and I blame this as a major contributor to my lack of interest in my PC’s of late.)

So anyway it all started because I went to turn the cartoons on for the kids the other morning only to find that the MediaPortal PC wouldn’t boot. As far as I can gather the PC had filled up with dust, overheated and then spent the night rebooting causing XP to corrupt itself. So after messing around trying to fix it I gave up and reinstalled XP and everything is up and running again.

And this is where it all started …… 4 days later and I’m still going!

From here I decided to run up the new server and as “matts-domain” has been around for more than a few years and its pretty well stuffed after playing around with Windows 2000 and 2003 I decided it best to start from scratch so say goodbye to “matts-domain” and hello to “WeaselSnout”. Like everything it all takes time, moving files, reinstalling corporate antivirus, re-creating Windows Software Update Services, joining all the PC’s to the new Domain etc, etc.

So with out boring you with all the details of what went wrong, what went right etc, as of the time of writing this is how it is-

The new File and Print Server is a 3.4Ghz Xeon with 3GB of Ram, disk storage is 3x 72GB 15k rpm SCSI disks in Raid 5 and a 500GB SATA. This box does most things including Windows Updates, Antivirus stores all the Digital Pictures, software, games, drivers etc.

The new web server is the old file server with dual 500mhz CPU’s, 1GB of Ram, 3x 36GB 10K rpm SCSI disks in Raid 5, 2x 18GB SCSI disks in Raid 0, a 120GB, 200GB and 300GB IDE disks. This box looks after the website and stores all downloaded TV series, DivX movies etc.

The old web server has been effectively decommissioned and is delegated to do nothing more than downloading Torrents.

The MediaPortal PC is an Intel Core2 Duo 6300 with 1GB of Ram and has a 400GB, 500GB and a 750GB IDE disk in it. This is connected to the TV and does all TV recording and stores all the DVDs.

So total storage is now around the 3500GB for the network!

And finally as I write this my desktop has had a format and the removal of Vista and the reinstall of XP and I’m still reinstalling games and software….and only another 200GB to be re-installed *sigh* so as soon as I finish installing I will update the website with the last few months of news...

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All original content copyright Matt Arber all rights reserved, no reproduction allowed without written permission.

This website was taken down in 2014, but in 2023 I decided to resurrected it and bring it back online, as it is now over 20 years old, expect bugs and features to no longer work as they once did.

The website is 90GB in size and contains approx 30,000 photos taken by us between 2003-2011, it is hosted at home on an old HP Proliant NAS running Lotus Domino 8.5 and spanning across multiple databases.