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Home Server: The Concept

I’m currently looking for an elegant and easy to maintain solution for the following Home Server concept:

Running several VMs on top of an hypervisor.

As told, I have acquired a small server. I want to run on top 2 sets of services:

  • A back-up service;
  • A cloud synchronisation service (à la Dropbox).

I want to use virtualisation as I want each service in a dedicated sandbox. I’m not interested in containment style virtualisation because:

  • I probably will be adding new hardware nodes in some years as I will probably want to run other services;
  • I might be trying some of the *BSD OS, although I will be running Linux OS only.

Here are some technologies I want to investigate to see if some fit my needs:

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Planning for a Home Server installation

I just order an HP Proliant MicroServer N40L and my plan is to convert it in a Home server using virtualisation. It is the first step stone of my own personal cloud infrastructure. The idea is to have a core server on top of which I can launch VMs when needed.

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Got a new computer

My old rusty thorsmork couldn’t play flash HD video any longer. Although I do not plan to retire it yet, I needed a new computer.
My wife was not that happy to have another ugly PC in our apartment, and thus she offered me an iPad! Not really open source, but she chose well as there is no satisfying foss solution for a tablet PC yet, IMHO.
A tablet cannot replace a complete PC, but I use my PC much less now, it can be a week without using it. And it would be even less if I would have a real keyboard for the tablet!

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Flash Player “Square” is out on preview for Linux

Adobe Flash Player 64bit

Adobe released yesterday a preview of Flash Player “Square”. It includes native 64bit support and IE9 hardware acceleration enhancement. Yes, you’ve got it! Adobe is again supporting a 64bit release of their plug-in and for all 3 platforms: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

I have updated my previous article on surfing the web in 64bit with the new details.

To get more information, jump to Adobe Labs.

Note: there is a free (libre) alternative to Adobe Flash product called Gnash, however it is still far from being stable enough on all web sites to be widely use. But anyway, it is a highly interesting project which have made recent huge improvements towards reliability and speed. You should try Gnash first and if it doesn’t work for you, then go for Adobe.

Update: Flash Player “Square” is now Flash Player 11, and there is a second beta released this August 2011.

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An Icelandic Saga

On the road...We are on the edge to write a new Icelandic saga. In a few days, we will embark on a plane direction: Iceland.

10 years ago we were leaving Iceland after an incredible time there. Now we are going back with our bicycle to explore it differently.

Iceland is an amazing place, but it is a difficult one too, especially on a bike. The weather is harsh, the wind strong, the roads are tricky and bridges only exist on road #1! But Iceland is a magical place, it’s wild, it’s colourful, it’s warm and cold.

Just let’s go exploring it!
Continue reading “An Icelandic Saga”

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How do geeks have fun?

How do computer geeks have fun?
Warning: If you are not a geek, you better not read further for 2 good reasons:

  1. you will not find that funny at all!
  2. you will be scared about the psychic health of geeks and ask the police to arrest them.

While installing a software, I stumble on this small message:

If you are a hardcore computer nerd staring at this file through your favorite text editor, you are probably hunting [the build instructions!] Well it’s not here. […] Because all the build instructions are now in Apache’s cool web-site.[…]

Continue reading to learn more about the context.

Continue reading “How do geeks have fun?”

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Testing DNS response time

Since Google released its Public DNS, I was curious about how it would really perform. Thus, I have looked around and I have found a script on the internet that I ran at home, here are the results:

+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| Domain           | My ISP | Google | OpenDNS|
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lifehacker.com   |  17 ms |  68 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| facebook.com     |  18 ms |  69 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| manu-j.com       |  19 ms |  79 ms |  70 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| reddit.com       |  58 ms |  88 ms |  66 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| tb4.fr           |  16 ms |  64 ms |  67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| bbc.co.uk        |  55 ms |  65 ms |  67 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| lemonde.fr       |  58 ms |  63 ms |  78 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| dailymotion.com  |  58 ms |  66 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| faz.de           |  57 ms |  65 ms |  99 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+
| gmx.de           |  56 ms |  62 ms |  68 ms |
+------------------+--------+--------+--------+

Google Public DNS and OpenDNS performed quite similarly. However, my own ISP is still quicker to respond, a possible answer is that Google DNS in Europe are located in Frankfurt, Germany.

N.B.: these tests were performed on a wireless link under Mac OS X Leopard in Toulouse, France. If you want to run the script on a Mac, you should change the first line of the script to #!/bin/bash

Update 2009.12.10: