Home office setup (geek pr0n) :)

Following in Scott's posts on the Ultimate Developer Rig and Steve Harman's home network post, I decided I'd throw a shot of my workspace at home that is quite modest, but does a great job.

Click on the picture to the right to jump to Flickr get a description of everything in the image. This is only a portion of the Connell Home Network, but it's the hub (minus the Media Center in the living room that has all the music, photos and videos). I do most of my work on my laptop, but these days living in the world of SharePoint, I spend a considerable amount of time in the virtual world. That little tower to the right is where the work happens. While the host OS is the hub of the house (running Win2003 Server x64 with AD and SQL 2005 x64), the bulk of the work is going on in Virtual Server machines (or VMWare Server machines which I'm contemplating a move to from the MSFT virtualization products).

Yes, the desk is a bit of a mess... just got back from a week-long vacation on the beach.

Been playing with the idea of adding a second machine as a hard core virtualization box and leaving the white one as a home server of sorts. I am definitely going to go with that Antec Gun Metal Black case that's built to kill noise as my current box is a bit to noisy. Also need to spend some time and making it more of a quiet box, adding some foam and quieter fans.

Hey Spence, notice the little blue placard on the all-in-one? Still have yours? :)

Oh... better not tell my wife about my idea for a 2nd LDC and mounting them on the wall. :P

posted on Tuesday, August 07, 2007 1:14 AM

Feedback

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/7/2007 7:47 AM Sahil Malik

Contemplating a move to VMWare? Oooooooooooohh.. irony in it's best form :).

BTW - thought I'd warn ya about 2 more disadvantages of VMWare I ran into.

a) It likes the drive letter to not change :-/, which is kinda screwy if you put your VMs on C:\. I have started putting every VM on a Z:\ drive now.

b) I've had issues in moving the VMs between physical machines. I created VMs on an external disk using my previous laptop (core 2 duo). They won't work on my desktop (dual core), but they will work on my new laptop (core 2 duo). On my desktop, it warns me that the VMs were created using a different host hardware and will have problems. Problems oh all right - the thing barely works. (boots up, half the time).

Other than that, I love it.

SM

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/7/2007 8:42 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Sahil-
You're kidding me. It doesn't like to have VM's move between different hardware? Uh... isn't that a critical part of virtualization... that it's easy to move VMs around? That's a critical point for me as I use my server when I'm at home, but use my laptop when i'm on the road. Need to be able to move VM's between hosts. Great... another huge thing I have to test. That's pathetic!

re: Home office setup 8/7/2007 9:52 AM Jon Santarelli

I will have to say that I takenv VM's from VMWare Workstation 5 to 6 and on hardware at work to hardware at home without any problems. Have not tried taking a VM v6 to v5. Wouldn't really expect that to work though.

I have 5 vms on a USB drive and have not had any issues.

Jon

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/7/2007 11:35 AM Steven Harman

Damn... now I'm envious of your home server. Its not that I need the dual core goodness... but I really want it!

# VMWare 8/7/2007 2:02 PM John Ross

I've moved VM's between hardware several times without issues. I've always installed my VMs to use external drives so I'm not too familiar with the c:\ issue. As I understand it, the files are basically just a config file and virtual hard drives. I've used both the free VMServer product and the much more expensive ESX Server both with similar results.

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/7/2007 5:03 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Jon/John-
Yeah, tested and I see that it works just fine. Sahil made me wet my pants for no reason :)

Steve-
Dual core x64 rocks... then again, I'm only using it as a workhorse for virtualization.

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/7/2007 9:39 PM Spence

what on earth is that white oblong thing on u're desk dude?!!

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/7/2007 9:50 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Spence-
In front of my laptop? DIY wrist guard. The ones you get from the store are too short, so I took a hand towel and rolled it up to make my own that's long enough :)

re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/9/2007 4:13 PM Josh Madagan

Not bad. The P182 is a nice case. I have it myself and it's pretty close to silent with my huge heatsink. Don't let the wife talk you out of the 2nd LCD either. Just started using a 2nd at work and it's definitely worth the money/desk clutter.

# re: Home office setup (geek pr0n) :) 8/9/2007 10:10 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Josh-
The challenge is I already have a dual LDC, laptop + LDC, but I want a 3rd :)

Post Feedback

Title:
Name:
Email:	(email will not be displayed)
Url:
Comments:
Please add 4 and 1 and type the answer here: Remember Me?

All Comments Are Filtered & Moderated
Unfortunately comment spammers are just too effecient and are constantly dirtying up blogs with irrelivant and unwanted comments trying to improve their standing on search engines. All comments on this blog are moderated. I do not censor comments, but I don't approve comments with vulger language or those soliciting products. Most of the time comments are approved within a few hours of being submitted with the only exception when I'm traveling.

Why are you asking for my email address?
The only reason I'm asking for your email address, which isn't required to submit a comment, is to provide a gravatar if you've created an account for yourself and associated your email address with a small image. If you have a gravatar created for the email address you submit, it will appear next to your comment. Otherwise nothing will appear.

What is a gravatar?
A gravatar is a "globally recognized avatar." You can get more information about gravatars, as well as create your own for free, at www.gravatar.com. You can also view my gravatar here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Site design by Heather Solomon.