my world of IT

A little while ago the guys at Axel let me borrow one of their M80 thin clients to try out with Citrix VDI-in-a-Box and also Microsoft RDS (Server 2008 R2) and I’m happy to say I can easily see this as a good thin client to use in the office although I have my reservations about use in classroom. This review… Read more

After recently performing an in place upgrade from Server 2008 Standard to Server 2008 Enterprise (I was after using the DFS features on this particular server) I started receiving an odd error message when trying to load server manager. The full message is MMC could not create the snap-in. The snap-in might not have been installed correctly. Name: Server Manager… Read more

One of the wonderful things about Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is that any driver that was written for Windows 7 will also run in Server 2008 R2! As such its very easy to take any Window 7 compatible PC (with a processor that can do hardware assisted virtualization like the AMD A and FX series) and turn it into… Read more

One of the main aims of myworldofit.net is to share with other IT Admins simple solutions to problems they may encounter, in part of that goal I have posted up details of some of the bits of server hardware I use to keep things going (e.g. this post on my latest backup server). Through my new website showcaseyourserver.net I’m extending… Read more

When I was first setting up Lync 2010 for VoIP one of the things that really stumped me for a while was Normalisation Rules. In short these rules take human readable numbers and convert them to the standard for international calling (E.164) – its kinda like how computers take human readable DNS addresses (e.g. bbc.co.uk) and converts them to IP addresses… Read more

If you are running System Centre Data Protection Manager (2010/2012) on Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 you may or may not know that when you are running a Bare Metal/System State Backup you are actually using the built in Windows Server Backup feature to keep your data safe. One thing that baffled me is why on some servers the backups… Read more

Currently our VDI setup is only used in the Library and so we very rarely max out the usage on our server, however ealier today I spotted that we had 19 of our 20 VDI clients in use, by in use thats students logged in actively engaging with their computers. I couldn’t resist checking up on the performance stats and… Read more

Unless you have had your head buried in the sand for the past few days you will know that Microsoft has showcased their take on Windows 8 tablet PCs. Dubbed Microsoft Surface (the big table surface has been renamed PixelSense) this new family of tablets comes in a ARM processor based version (aimed at the day to day consumer) and… Read more

Proving that PCI-E SSD works fine in standard servers (like the HP DL line) is a key goal of this series of posts, above you can see the PCI-E SSD churning away quite happily serving up virtual desktops.

Recently we have been deploying shiny new Lync phones at work. These phones mix in with the Lync software client on our staff PCs and in some cases the phones don’t even have dial pads! The Lync phones we are going to be using are- Polycom CX200 (desk tied staff) Polycom CX700 (reception) HP 4110 (common areas) HP 4120 (feature… Read more