Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD – Getting the image ready

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD

One of the great things about VDI is the ability to create a ‘golden image’, that’s one single image that includes the OS and Software which can be accessed from any endpoint. Whatever VDI software you go with will then take that golden image and duplicate it multiple times to provide the desktops for your users. However this masse creation… Read more





Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD – Intro

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD

In this series I am going to be looking at how PCI-E SSDs can be used with VDI, I’ll be covering the hardware in use, the user experience and also why I believe PCI-E SSDs to be the best option to get your virtual desktops running as fast as possible.



Enabling the RAID Cache on a HP DL385 G7 Server

After posting about how having lots of RAID cache has a positive impact on local disk VDI I thought it best to mash together a little guide on how to get this cache setup so here it is! All screen shots are from a HP DL385 G7 server – other HP server models may have a different UI but the… Read more



RAID Cache and VDI

For the past few days I’ve been doing a little performance testing to see just how much an influence RAID cache makes when provisioning Virtual Desktops. The test was to create 20 virtual desktops and see how long it takes to get the first one spun up and ready for use and then to see how long it took to… Read more





SeaMicro and Opteron 3200 – its all falling into place for AMD

A press release today from AMD (AMD Launches New Platform for Dedicated Web Hosting Providers) seems all too convenient after AMDs recent purchase of SeaMicro. The basics of it all goes that AMD now has a server class processor with a low power consumption, high core count that fits in a desktop class motherboard all of which is perfect for so… Read more



3 months in – OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 in a Server

Its been a little while since posting What happens when you put a OCZ PCI-E SSD in a server? and I thought I would give an update to its progress. After 2520 hours powered on (about 105 days or 3.5 months) the SSD is yet to give us any trouble – that’s while hosting 3 a fully active virtual machines… Read more



DPM 2010 won’t allow unauthenticated SMTP relay

If you are trying to setup System Centre Data Protection Manager 2010 with a SMTP relay that dosn’t use authentication (e.g. you use IP address filtering to allow access to your SMTP server) you may come across a problem where DPM throws up a error every time you try and send a email stating that a username/password must be entered…. Read more