Media Suite PC

Buying powerful PCs pre built is all so well and good but the fun comes in when you build them yourself! That’s just what we have done at work with some media suite PCs which use 6 core processors, modular PSUs and all other kinds of fun things – full specs and photos to come after the video.



OCZ Vertex 4 won’t update/flash to version 1.5

I’m quite a perfectionist when it comes to making sure that hardware runs with the latest firmware, quite often these software updates bring improved stability and features. In SSDs though it quite commonly brings about performance boosts. However when trying to update the Vertex 4s I recently received to build a Custom RDS Farm I would go to update the… Read more



What does it take to run a Citrix VDI-in-a-Box Proof of Concept?

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





Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD – Why HDD should still be involved

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD

One of the most interesting features of the OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 is that in many situations you can boot a OS right off the drive (great for super fast gaming PCs). The only issue with this is not every motherboard out there will support booting right off a PCI-E SSD (OCZ do have a list here though) but also more… Read more



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.





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



Why I’m looking forwards to Windows 8 Tablets

Last year just before Christmas I was very close to getting a Motorola Xoom Android Tablet PC but after much thought I changed my mind and decided that I would wait for Windows 8. Looking at the reasons below most of these relate to my nature as a IT professional and how I would use the tablet at both home,… Read more