Tag: Server

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Scheduled downtime in September

My hosting service provider just informed me that my server will have a scheduled downtime next month.

They need to physically move some machines into a new data center, and my (virtual) server Gallifrey is running on one of these. Of course in times of cloud and virtualization that should not be a reason for a downtime, but since I'm only paying 30€ / month for a 4 core, 4 GB RAM, 200 GB hdd virtual machine (to compare: a single azure small vm would cost twice as much), I think I am not in the position to complain.

Downtime will be from Friday, 13th of September, 22:00 CEST (20:00 UTC) to Saturday, 14th September, 06:00 CEST (04:00 UTC).

I'm confident that, even if this happens on a Friday the 13th, the move will be finished in time and the actual downtime is possibly shorter than that.

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Windows Server 2012 – First impressions

I thought I could play a little bit with Windows Server 2012. Said that, I logged into my Windows Azure management portal and created an extra small VM with Windows Server 2012 on it.

A few minutes later my VM was provisioned and ready. The virtual hard disk is sized to 30 GB and fits in the free storage that is part of my MSDN subscription. The VM already had a remote desktop endpoint configured and I added a new endpoint for port 80. I then logged into the VM.

At login, the server automatically started the server management application on the desktop. The new console in the 'Modern UI' style (heck, I propably stick with Metro forever), so, the Metro UI console is very clean and lean. With a few clicks the web server role was added and installed.

Even with only about 765 MB of ram the server runs smoothly and fast. The new task manager gives a lot of additional information compared to the old one, and the server manager dashboard hints directly to potential problems.

At a first glance, the system seems very capable and I think it's worth spending some more time with that VM.