General

  • A foray

    Having run Xandros on a spare laptop for a while, and been reasonably happy with it, but not bowled over I’ve been scouting around for something to run that I can use for a foray into the realms of PHP/MySQL for web sites. As all I’ve done to date has been of the ASP/SQL Server… Continue reading

  • Extreme Paranoia!

    Coming to a web server near you: the ultimate in low(ish) cost high availability web serving. The concept is to use another dedicated server from the same company, but physically located in a different country. Load up all the relevant files, install SQL Server and set up replication between the two sites at hourly intervals.… Continue reading

  • Backup paranoia

    Having had so many things go down unexpectedly recently I’m still in backup paranoia mode: saving files regularly whilst working on them; using my external hard drive to copy all my working folders and files; using SQL server’s DTS scheduling to download stored procedures and databases that aren’t copied using replication. Of course, as long… Continue reading

  • Did I mention fours?

    I haven’t been able to bring myself to mention the fourth disaster. To a certain extent it was a planned outage. We did the backup, notified users of down time and then proceeded to rebuild the server. The server came up, SQL was installed, the SQL backup was restored … not! Did anyone ever mention… Continue reading

  • BT Eclipsed by Eclipse

    I have two broadband accounts at different locations, both required to have a fixed IP address. One, provided by Eclipse Internet allowed this by logging on to my account and ticking a check box. BT have so far: 1. Sent me a new broadband modem (not required). 2. Scheduled a time for the upgrade (a… Continue reading