Category Archives: Blog

Blog: Building a Test Lab – Part 2

In this post, the second of the “Building a Test Lab” series, I’ll run through how to build a virtual machine using VirtualBox. Although this is a relatively straight forward task, there are a few things to bear in mind, such as the size and location of the virtual hard disk (VHD), the amount of RAM you allocate to the virtual machine and what naming convention you should use for your suite of VM’s.

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Blog: Building a Test Lab – Part 1

A vital tool in an IT Professional’s armoury is a test bed or lab. In this series of posts and tech notes I’m going to detail how I built my test lab. I will detail what software I use and why, where to download it from, how to install and configure it. In this first post, I’ll run through the host hardware, the Operating System on the host machine, and then the virtualization software. Continue reading

Blog: Replacing Perc6i Battery in Dell R710 Server

Having worked with a lot of server hardware over the years, the two vendors which really stand out are HP & Dell. Both provide a wide range of sever models offering superb reliability and performance. One of the server models I’m particularly fond of is the Dell R710. Having worked with this server for a number of years I can personally recommend it for is build quality, reliability and versatility.

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Blog: 2016 Looking Forward

Looking forward to 2016 I’ve already thought about my IT Certification goals and where I want to be this time next year. As you probably know, back in July I achieved the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MSCA) certification in Windows Server 2012. This involved passing 3 exams, 70-410, 70-411 & 70-412, all are challenging in different ways, which I have already documented in this blog.

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Blog: Tech Support Pro Year 1 Review

On the 1st January 2015 TechSupportPro.uk launched. One year on I thought it would be worth reviewing the year just gone, from where the blog started to where it is now. There were a lot of unknowns going into the project, what was I going to write about? Would I get any traffic to the site? How would I get visitors to the site, and who would they be? Well, here is what happened, read on…. Continue reading

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Blog: Home Network Setup

Last week Virgin Media experienced some packet loss on their network, which in turn impacted my surfing experience for a number of hours. After running through some diagnostics on my own devices to confirm the issue was indeed down to Virgin, it occurred to me that it may be a good time to document my network. It’s been something I have been meaning to do for a while, and you know, just not had chance to do it. So here goes… Continue reading

Blog: Future Decoded Day 2

On Wednesday I attended the Microsoft conference Future Decoded. Unfortunately, due to my late arrival, I missed the opening Keynote from Scott Guthrie. However, I did catch the closing moments of his presentation where he demonstrated how to create a data warehouse using the Microsoft Azure service.

In this post I will report on the presentations I attended, and a few other things I ran into on the day.

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