{"id":339,"date":"2013-08-05T18:48:42","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T01:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b2.rayharwood.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2013-08-05T19:04:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T02:04:52","slug":"new-hardware-for-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"New hardware for development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been developing software at home using Visual Studio 2012 on my desktop computer running Windows 7.  But I&#8217;ve really been in need of access to much more robust hardware and software for testing.<\/p>\n<p>So, this weekend I ordered some server gear!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I was originally thinking of getting a current-day laptop, and configure it to do things it wasn&#8217;t really designed for.  But poking around on the Internet (who doesn&#8217;t love surfing the web for bargains!), I found an HP Proliant DL160 server for right around $400.  This model has <strong>two<\/strong> Xeon CPUs, 16GB of RAM, AND 160GB of disk space, with 18 total memory slots and 4 total drive bays. It comes with USB 2.0 ports, but I also got a PCI express card with a 4-port USB 3.0 interface.<\/p>\n<p>Well, if you get a 1U server blade, you have to have a place to put it, right?  So, an under desk 8U cabinet on casters.  And who wants the whole server to die if a thunderstorm rolls through? So a 500VA 6-outlet 1U UPS is on its way too.<\/p>\n<p>I plan to run Windows 2012, with Hyper-V to run multiple Virtual Machines.  This will allow me to create VMs for the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Visual Studio build machines<\/li>\n<li>SQL server, in as many versions as I need for testing<\/li>\n<li>Desktop test machines: XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 (does anybody run Vista any more)<\/li>\n<li>Various Windows Server test machines, as needed<\/li>\n<li>Team Foundation Server, not for production code source control, but I need an environment where I can test installation and upgrade between versions <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fortunately my Visual Studio MSDN subscription allows me to run all this software for free, so no costs there.<\/p>\n<p>Some of this setup will also help me with related tasks at work, especially the TFS upgrade process and SQL on VM.<\/p>\n<p>The whole package including shipping came in under a grand. At that price, I need to learn a lot from this project!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been developing software at home using Visual Studio 2012 on my desktop computer running Windows 7. But I&#8217;ve really[&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[74],"tags":[77,76,78],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dev","tag-racks","tag-servers","tag-ups"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B5b0-5t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}