blogs.conchango.com

Browse by Tags

• Architecture
• Commerce Server
• Engineering Practices
• PowerShell
• SQL Server
• SSIS
• Virtualisation

• PowerShell + Microsoft Hyper-V

  I recently blogged about PowerShell + VMWare . I have also taken a look at the PowerShell management offering around Hyper-V . Hyper-V places WMI as the primary management interface. That makes perfect sense as the lowest common, standards based, denominator. Read More... Posted 05 September 2008 15:13 by James.Saull | 0 Comments Filed under: PowerShell, SQL Server, Virtualisation

• Apparently Google Chrome is Snappy

  Everyone seems to be very excited about Google Chrome so I thought I'd add some cynicism. Yet another browser. Woohoo! Just what everyone building web sites needs. Because the test matrix of all the Operating Systems and Browsers multiplied by the different Read More... Posted 05 September 2008 10:35 by James.Saull | 0 Comments

• Megastructure Data Centres

  RunAsRadio first introduced me to the topic of vast next-generation data centres being built near cheap renewable power and an Internet connectivity nexus whilst being provisioned, lego-brick-style, floors at a time. Not server, by server. Not rack by Read More... Posted 01 September 2008 14:19 by James.Saull | 1 Comments

• SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Not all indexes can be re-built online.

  When designing your application schema you need to spend some time planning for operations. You may plan to rely on the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server to bring you online index rebuilding to ensure that index maintenance does not require downtime. The Read More... Posted 08 August 2008 17:25 by James.Saull | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL Server

• Windows Home Server, the iPod and the XBox

  With all my music safely stored on the Windows Home Server (and Amazon S3 courtesy of Jungle Disk ) I installed the Home Server client software on the wife's laptop (so it would get backed up). I mapped a drive the Music share and then told iTunes to Read More... Posted 05 August 2008 09:56 by James.Saull | 1 Comments

• When is a PowerShell script not really a script anymore? Why not just code it as a C# command line application?

  After all, can't I just use notepad and csc.exe as long as I can remember "public static void main"... First of all, why was it written as a script in the first place? What were the perceived advantages? After all, just because you can doesn't mean you Read More... Posted 04 August 2008 21:14 by James.Saull | 0 Comments

• PowerShell + VMWare

  Our development endeavours often include many tens of developers each with their own managed virtualised development environment. Typically, on top of these, there are multiple test and pre-production environments (each with clusters or load balanced Read More... Posted 29 July 2008 14:18 by James.Saull | 2 Comments

• Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 and WHS+USB 1.0 == Misery!

  I pushed too much data on to the Windows Home Server (WHS) and I started to get health warnings indicating which files it could no longer duplicate. My data was stored OK, just at risk. Given that the WHS experience was going well I ordered up a Lacie Read More... Posted 23 July 2008 21:39 by James.Saull | 0 Comments

• Windows Home Server

  I successfully installed Windows Home Server on a 7 year old Athlon 1800 with 512MB of RAM and two ATA drives (100GB and 200GB). My first concerns were: would the BIOS support booting from the DVD drive and was it a USB 2 card in there? Thankfully yes Read More... Posted 15 July 2008 13:03 by James.Saull | 1 Comments

• At the time, did you know it was the last time?

  As a parent you watch your kids go through phases, just you aren't always aware that you are entering a phase or leaving one. For example, when is the last time you actually change a nappy? When was the last time you used the buggy to cart them around? Read More... Posted 16 June 2008 22:50 by James.Saull | 1 Comments

• NUDA

  With plenty of people anticipating the massively multiple core CPU era, NUMA architectures in regular workstations, and all the wonderful developments in parallel extensions to development languages and software transactional memory to take advantage Read More... Posted 04 June 2008 23:43 by James.Saull | 0 Comments

• Invoke-RemoteCommand - PowerShell CmdLet to tide me over until PowerShell V2

  To tide me over until PowerShell V2 ships and we can perform remote PowerShell out of the box, I have created a simple WMI based CmdLet that will asynchronously execute a command - remotely. You might find it useful too. The main limitation is that it Read More... Posted 04 June 2008 23:22 by James.Saull | 0 Comments

• Partition, Federate, Aggregate and Synchronise

  It is common practice to use a partitioning function to scale out a solution. For example, you may divide a database among four equal geographical regions and have four separate installations of the database each with the same database but only a quarter Read More... Posted 04 June 2008 23:01 by James.Saull | 0 Comments Filed under: Architecture

• People and Process over Technology

  As technology and engineering zealots there is nothing we can't build. Seriously. It is all a question of time, resource and budget. And there's the rub. There comes a point in almost any business process where we hit those points of diminishing returns Read More... Posted 20 May 2008 21:42 by James.Saull | 0 Comments Filed under: Architecture, Engineering Practices

• History is our greatest teacher

  IT is old enough now to see itself repeating itself. It is also old enough for a lot of us not to remember a lot of it and benefit from the history lessons. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose " . One particular example that made me smile was VMWare Read More... Posted 24 April 2008 14:05 by James.Saull | 0 Comments