Product Review: Update – 120GB OCZ Nocti Died :(

Go figure, our first OCZ mSATA product, the 120GB Nocti that went into our new Toshiba Portege Z830 Ultrabook died sometime during the night.

We had set up Windows 7 Enterprise, all of our apps, and domain configurations a few days prior.

The Ultrabook was staying at a client site since we were going to be back early the following morning.

The last thing to be done on that Ultrabook prior to leaving was to initiate a BitLocker encryption of the entire drive.

Sometime during that process the drive outright died.

The RMA process on OCZ’s Web Site requires us to create a ticket before making any efforts to get in touch.

NOTE: If advanced swap is going to be a part of the RMA process make sure to put that in the ticket’s notes _first_ or things just do not go too well.

Intel, Kingston, and Crucial have one up on OCZ: Real people on this continent (almost for Intel) that answer the phone.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Kingston DTR500 Series USB 2.0 Gives Great Performance For the Money

We have been looking for a USB 2.0 replacement for the OCZ ATV Turbo USB 2.0 flash drives that give us consistent 35MB/Second read and 30MB/Second writes.

At the recommendation of one of our local suppliers we picked up a 16GB DTR500 flash drive to do some testing with.

Their advertised read/write is 30MB/Second and 20MB/Second respectively.

• Kingston DataTraveler R500 Datasheet page

So far in our testing the flash drive has come pretty close to their claimed read and write speeds. Because we use these flash drives for OS loading we need the read speeds much more than the write speeds.

So, we will be picking up more of these flash drives soon.

By the way, cost wise they are quite reasonable for the size of the drives too. We can now store the required OSs on the flash drive itself and move the required OS to the root to boot and load it with in seconds.

Plus we can augment with the required drivers for the specific boards we work with all on one device. This will make our system loading setup a lot more efficient.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel Server Board S3420GPRX At Full Capacity – 32GB RAM – A Great Virtualization Platform

After deliberating over which set of 8GB sticks of RAM to purchase to outfit our single socket virtualization platforms with a full 32GB compliment we decided to go with the following part:

• Kingston Value RAM: KVR1066D3Q8R7S/8Gi

There is also a 1333MHz version of the Intel certified RAM from Kingston but there were some questions around whether that particular model would back itself down to 800MHz which is where a memory channel will go speed wise when two quad ranked sticks of RAM are installed.

The screenshot above is via an Intel Remote Management Module.

• Intel Server Board S3420GPRX with I/O Shield (previous blog post)
• Intel Xeon Processor X3470 at 2.93GHz
• 32GB Kingston ECC 1066MHz
• Intel RS2BL080 RAID + Battery Backup
• 6x 300GB 15K Seagate SAS (5x RAID 5 + 1x Hot Spare)
• Intel Server Chassis SC5650DP with hot swap backplane.

The system is fairly quiet and is quite quick. We are expecting this configuration to more than meet our client’s needs.

One thing to note when setting up standalone virtualization boxes with the full GUI OS installed is to change the power settings to High Performance.

This particular configuration will be running:

• Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard.
• 2x vCPUs, 16GB RAM
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard in RDS/RemoteApp mode.
• 2x vCPUs, 4GB RAM
• Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard (P2V) running legacy LoB.
• 1x vCPU, 2GB RAM
• Windows 7 Enterprise x64 (one to four or five desktops).
• 2x vCPUs, 1.5GB-2GB RAM each.

Our client is a small non-profit with 8-11 seats depending on the time of year. We are quite confident that they will be happy with their new setup once we have migrated them from their current SBS 2003 R2 Premium.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

8GB Intel Validated Kingston Memory For S3420GP(RX) – Finally!

When it comes to supporting Intel’s server products, one of the first questions we get from the support technician when we start troubleshooting a problem is, “What type of memory is in the system?”

If that memory is not on the tested memory products list for that particular server board then we will be asked to install Intel Validated memory products.

Up to now there have been two 8GB sticks available for the Intel Server Board S3420GP(RX), one by Hynix and the other by Samsung (though not listed now), listed as validated for this series of server boards and the server systems based on them.

That has finally changed!

We now have two new Intel Validated Kingston parts:

• KVR1333D3D4R9S/8Gi
  • Cost: ~$350/Stick
• KVR1066D3Q8R7S/8Gi
  • Cost: ~$200/Stick

The catch for us here in Canada is that there is lots of stock for the 1333 MHz part while the 1066 MHz parts are in short supply at the moment. There are also kits of 2 (16GB) for each part number as well.

• Kingston’s site for the Intel Server Board S3420GPRX
• Intel’s Server Configurator
  • Start with Server Boards –> 3000 Series.

Why is this so important?

Because the Hynix and Micron parts have only been available via resellers in the US. So, any warranty issues were questionable since that list of resellers is very small and they are relatively unknown to us. RMA processes can be painful with some manufacturers and their resellers so we are cautious when it comes to new points of product supply.

We have had a lot of success with Kingston’s memory parts and when there have been times where we have needed to call them they have always been very helpful.

So, this news is a definite plus for us!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Windows Vista - Kingston DTSP Data Traveler Error: Requires Two Free Drive Letters

Having recently placed our first Windows Vista client into one of our accounting firm clients, we are discovering all sorts of interesting hiccups.

One hiccup is with the Kingston DataTraveler Secure - Privacy Edition. Every member of the firm is required to use this device when carrying around client data.

This keeps the client data protected by a strict password and hardware encryption.

On Windows XP Professional, the flash drive works really well. On Windows Vista however, the security software stalls.

Essentially there are two partitions on the flash drive: One that mimics a CDROM and spools up the software to access the second partition that is hardware encrypted.

Even if we allow the software on the "CD" partition to run when prompted by Windows Vista, it stalls.

It turns out that there is a Kingston support entry for this problem on Windows Vista: Issue: KTP-012210-3 After inserting the DTSP into a Windows Vista computer, I received an error stating, "DTSecure Privacy requires two free drive letters.".

To resolve the error, we need to update the firmware on the DataTreveler. We contacted Kingston's Technical Support and were directed to a password protected FTP site with the appropriate firmware update.

Note that the firmware update will format the encrypted partition, so make sure that no data resides on the DataTreveler before updating it.

Once the firmware was updated, we needed to run through the setup routine to set the access password and user information to the flash drive.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.