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New StarWind iSCSI – High Availability for SMBs

Charlie Russel — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:06:21 GMT

The new version of StarWind’s iSCSI SAN software is coming soon, and promises to add full high-availability clustering, with fail-over and fail-back support. While I’ve had a look at their video demo , I haven’t had a chance to actually install it or...(read more)

Moving (and we lost our "skin")

Charlie Russel — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:44:00 GMT

If you noticed that the blog suddenly went back to basic ugly, that was an unfortunate and unanticipated side effect of preparing to move my blogging to a new location . We'll be moving to http://msMVPs.com/blogs/russel shortly, but in the process...(read more)

SBS 2008 – a 64-bit OS to Love

Charlie Russel — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:53:17 GMT

As many of you know, I wrote the book on Windows Small Business Server 2008, as well as earlier editions. It’s an operating system and a good deal more, giving most small businesses (up to 75 users or devices) pretty much all the infrastructure and enterprise...(read more)

HVRemote Updated

Charlie Russel — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:27:20 GMT

In case you missed it, John Howard has updated his HVRemote utility. This little gem, which keeps getting better and better, can completely configure both the client and the server to enable you to connect to a Hyper-V server from your Vista or...(read more)

StarWind Software iSCSI Target

Charlie Russel — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:41:00 GMT

This is just going to be a quickie. I’m busy working on a new book for Microsoft Press, and as part of that I needed to set up a failover cluster to test Hyper-V’s new Live Migration. Well, the folks at StarWind Software were nice enough to send me an...(read more)

HP ML350 G5 – 26 Months Later (Part 2)

Charlie Russel — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:22:08 GMT

Well, sorry about that. Got a bit distracted after I started writing up my experiences with the ML350 and buried in a project and forgot to get back here. And I’m still a bit buried, so I’ll keep this a bit shorter than I might otherwise. First, the good...(read more)

Acer Ferrari Repair

Charlie Russel — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:11:00 GMT

I've had my Acer Ferrari 4000 for four years now, and it has been a great laptop. Yes, I wish I had a dual core. Yes, I wish I had a laptop that had 4 GB or even more. But honestly, the Ferrari was still a quite good little laptop, iwth a great display...(read more)

HP ML350 G5 – 26 Months Later (Part 1)

Charlie Russel — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:33:55 GMT

I got my HP ML350 G5 just about 26 months ago, and as I was sitting here today, thinking about it and what a difference it has made, I thought it was time to provide a real world look at it's strengths and weaknesses after living with it for over...(read more)

Auto-Publish with VPC7

Charlie Russel — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:21:54 GMT

Windows 7 will support a new version of Virtual PC known as VPC7. The big feature that VPC7 adds is application publishing using RAIL technology. This enables the application to directly integrate into the Win7 desktop and Start menu, running as if the...(read more)

Windows 7 and Virtual PC

Charlie Russel — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:48:10 GMT

A very interesting post on the official Windows Team Blog: Windows XP Mode for Windows 7. If I read this correctly, it looks like we’ll have a virtual Windows XP embedded directly into Windows 7, with the ability to run applications directly from Windows...(read more)

Windows Foundation Server 2008

Charlie Russel — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:02:27 GMT

Microsoft announced last week the release of a new edition of Windows Server 2008, The Windows Foundation Server 2008. This a limited version of Windows Server 2008 that requires no CALs, and is only available from hardware OEMs. You can’t go out...(read more)

Connecting Your Zune

Charlie Russel — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:45:00 GMT

A few months ago, I wrote about how to connect your iPod to your TS RemoteApps Server running under Hyper-V , which really simplified my life and made it simpler to keep everything in one place. I made that even easier by running FabulaTech's USB...(read more)

iPods and iTunes with Hyper-V and TS RemoteApps

Charlie Russel — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

One of the problems I have working on many different computers and constantly rebuilding even my main workstation for whatever beta build of Windows happens to be available, is having a "stable" environment for some of the little things that...(read more)

Windows Memory

Charlie Russel — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:31:00 GMT

I ran across an excellent article on Windows memory use today. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3602/sponsored_feature_ram_vram_and_.php This article covers both the limitations of 32-bit Windows memory models, and the ways to get your applications...(read more)

Windows Home Server Saves Another User

Charlie Russel — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:10:00 GMT

As I was rebuilding my main workstation again (life running pre-beta OS's is always fun), I was very much appreciating the simplicity of Windows Home Server. I have my main workstation set up as an 80 GB OS drive (C:) and data drives of D: and E:...(read more)

Configuring Hyper-V Server for Remote Management

Charlie Russel — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:31:00 GMT

I've seen folks disabling the Windows Firewall on Hyper-V Server and on Windows Server Core in order to get Remote Management to work correctly. Bad idea, and not necessary. Instead, you should enable the appropriate firewall rules to allow Remote...(read more)

Hyper-V Server Releases to Web

Charlie Russel — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:05:00 GMT

The standalone Hyper-V Server is RTM and should be available for download free from the Microsoft downloads site shortly, if not already. Press Release < URL:http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-01HyperVRTM08PR.mspx > Web <...(read more)

DQSD 4.1 64-bit Beta Releases to Web!

Charlie Russel — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:59:00 GMT

Old timers here will know that I simply love Dave's Quick Search Deskbar (DQSD). And that there was a semi-custom solution to running it in 64-bit that I used. Well, with a lot of hard work and persistence, we now have 64-bit support built into the...(read more)

USB over Network - Update

Charlie Russel — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:28:00 GMT

A few days ago, I wrote about FabulaTech's USB over Network solution . I'd just installed it and started using it, and I was moderately impressed. It solves a very real problem for those of us looking to do more virtualization of our environmets...(read more)

DQSD v4 - With Support for x64

Charlie Russel — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:39:00 GMT

As anyone who has known me for a while will tell you, I can be qute passionate about applications I really like. Well, one of those little gems is an opensource project called "Dave's Quick Search Deskbar" or DQSD as it's commonly known...(read more)