After a long time of planning and quote gathering, the task of implementing the new servers is almost here. Next weekend I will be long overdue the task of upgrading the system. Four brand new IBM X series servers, fully loaded with Server 2008 and boasting some nice hardware, we will be up and running. SQL server with its 8 Hard drives flashing away complete with a 3.0GHz Quad core processor and 4 Gig of RAM to start off with. SQL Server 2005, purely because our Business software version won’t run with SQL 2008. I briefly tested the server by setting up a quick Database load. What normally takes me 7 hours to load our Company database only took a mere 2 hours. No doubt that once the system is fully integrated this will reduce. The three other servers, two terminal servers and one for licensing boast quad core processors 3.0GHz and the biggest TS has two quad core processors and 10Gig of RAM.
The old servers are unstable, or more-so the OS has become corrupt, years of tinkering with, power failures, incorrect setups has caused much chaos. It was only in the early stages of my new role that the Servers actually got an Antivirus program on there! we have been very lucky. The two Citrix Servers are my nemesis. Citrix 1 runs, well crawls along and does manage to stay upright more often than not. Citrix 2, oh god Citrix two requires daily restarts, power resets, power cable ripped from its arse end and occasionally I get to actually request that it restarts. It is hard to believe that both these servers are exactly the same machine, spec, OS and updates.
The Business software Sage Accpac 5.4 and Technisoft Service Manager are our weapons of choice. We have invested a lot of time and money with these. I am hoping that we get to move upto 5.5, which features some nice little gadgets and gizmos we could really use. The whole company should run more smoothly once all this has been done.
I am currently working on these new boxes. First task is get them onto the Domain, a relatively easy task, once you have given them a static IP address, subnet and gateway to use, plus pointing the DNS to our Active Directory/Domain Controller servers and adding one more DNS for good measure, so these buggers can resolve anything not on our network. The First TS to be placed onto the domain was the biggest of the two. Powered him up and carried out the usual updates, Service Pack two already. Next task was to see how it connected over RDP. Wow! This thing loaded up and was running on my desktop before the other older citrix had completely loaded and was able to be used. Next step, Printing. As these are all 64 bit machines, I had to ensure the print drivers would run. duly downloaded printer driver package, auto searched for printers and away it went. One printer installed and running without any issues. Next test Adobe Reader. Downloaded and installed in minutes. Opened up a document and fully loaded as if it had been cached. No more waiting for adobe to open up and then load the document.
It will be so nice to run and work with a system that actually does it’s job. It will be nice to ask people to logout, purely because 1, I can or 2, I need to run an update or a patch to the business software.
The servers are being setup for Sydney local and all other states. We can have as many as 20 to 30 people on here in Sydney, whilst Bris, WA and Vic would probably just equal the amount of users on the system here in Sydney. My next task is to install Office. Which one? Well it may look like 2003 is to be the option available to us, however, I am having a meeting with a guy from MickeySoft tomorrow so I hop I can squeeze an option to run 2007. Yes I know Outlook 2007 is slow and can be an arse sometimes, but it has more functionality to it than its predecessor.
So here’s to next weekend
