- Jun 30, 2004
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I've had a "household server" since the beginning of the millennium -- consequence of having a LAN and being a professor in an Information Systems department of a small graduate school until I retired from my main civil service job in 1999, and the school where I had taught took a different direction. [They lost their accreditation after I left. I try to remain humble in the temptation to speculate that their accreditation depended on my last name -- uniquely the same as a distant relative who won a Nobel Prize in the late 1980s.]
I think I started using Win NT 4.0, eventually "upgraded" to Win Home Server 2011, which I replaced with Windows 2012 R2.
The server box is nothing prodigious. It basically has a PCIE controller board sufficient to create a Drive Pool with Stablebit. The other hardware is simple: A Z-77 motherboard and Ivy-Bridge 37xx locked processor, with 16 GB of RAM. Well-filtered; well-cooled. I had it upstairs in a spare bedroom, with a monitor that mostly stays turned off unless I have to be there to access the system that way.
The server was protected by a UPS by APC which I'd bought used from a reputable battery re-supplier in New Jersey. I'd noticed over the last week that it wasn't charging itself anymore, and it was chirping about every couple seconds.
I've had an APC BACK UPS 1500 Pro sitting in the carton downstairs here for more than 6 months -- not enough to use up the shelf-life of a new product, but I had delayed using it. It was intended to replace another unit similar to the server's which is connected to my favorite and main workstation down here. I chose to swap the old unit with this new BACK UPS, thinking that I could just install the PowerChute Personal software and it would work with the server. But it doesn't work with the server. It DOES supply battery-backup power, but in a power outage, I'd have to get upstairs within about 5 minutes to manually shut things down the way the software would if it could configure to Win 2012 R2.
The truth of the matter suggests a simple swap. I could take the UPS backing up my workstation upstairs and swap it with the new one, bringing the BACK UPS 1500 down here for the workstation. But I think the batteries on the downstairs "server-class" APC are heading toward an end-of-life, and need replacement. I could just replace the batteries, or I could buy another refurbished unit from the battery-reseller.
Even so, I'm wondering -- the question I pose here in case someone knows -- if there isn't some other non-APC software that would recognize the new UPS on the server and function the same way.
This all comes at a time when we ended our holiday season on a sour note -- the sudden death of my brother on January 2, who assisted me in caring for our 96-year-old bed-bound Moms. Right now, I'm struggling to tie up Bro's loose ends, arrange for his cremation, planning how to deal with inquiries that result from his death notice and obituary, re-working the household financial plan, and especially -- cleaning up our house in addition to keeping Moms clean, fed and happy. Those upstairs bedrooms need special attention, and my Brother's room is no exception, but a first priority. I can see the year ahead clearly. It will be a massive project. If I had the sort of health problems Bro and Moms had, I'm not sure what I'd do.
We've gone from a house with three active users and four or five computers, to two active users and now only one with the same number of PCs. I need to re-think how I use computers, how I back up my data and share it to maybe one other PC and all our mobile devices. In the meantime, the server must remain operational and it must be behind a UPS.
I suppose the LAN and the surplus PCs only add to the loneliness I feel at the moment.
I think I started using Win NT 4.0, eventually "upgraded" to Win Home Server 2011, which I replaced with Windows 2012 R2.
The server box is nothing prodigious. It basically has a PCIE controller board sufficient to create a Drive Pool with Stablebit. The other hardware is simple: A Z-77 motherboard and Ivy-Bridge 37xx locked processor, with 16 GB of RAM. Well-filtered; well-cooled. I had it upstairs in a spare bedroom, with a monitor that mostly stays turned off unless I have to be there to access the system that way.
The server was protected by a UPS by APC which I'd bought used from a reputable battery re-supplier in New Jersey. I'd noticed over the last week that it wasn't charging itself anymore, and it was chirping about every couple seconds.
I've had an APC BACK UPS 1500 Pro sitting in the carton downstairs here for more than 6 months -- not enough to use up the shelf-life of a new product, but I had delayed using it. It was intended to replace another unit similar to the server's which is connected to my favorite and main workstation down here. I chose to swap the old unit with this new BACK UPS, thinking that I could just install the PowerChute Personal software and it would work with the server. But it doesn't work with the server. It DOES supply battery-backup power, but in a power outage, I'd have to get upstairs within about 5 minutes to manually shut things down the way the software would if it could configure to Win 2012 R2.
The truth of the matter suggests a simple swap. I could take the UPS backing up my workstation upstairs and swap it with the new one, bringing the BACK UPS 1500 down here for the workstation. But I think the batteries on the downstairs "server-class" APC are heading toward an end-of-life, and need replacement. I could just replace the batteries, or I could buy another refurbished unit from the battery-reseller.
Even so, I'm wondering -- the question I pose here in case someone knows -- if there isn't some other non-APC software that would recognize the new UPS on the server and function the same way.
This all comes at a time when we ended our holiday season on a sour note -- the sudden death of my brother on January 2, who assisted me in caring for our 96-year-old bed-bound Moms. Right now, I'm struggling to tie up Bro's loose ends, arrange for his cremation, planning how to deal with inquiries that result from his death notice and obituary, re-working the household financial plan, and especially -- cleaning up our house in addition to keeping Moms clean, fed and happy. Those upstairs bedrooms need special attention, and my Brother's room is no exception, but a first priority. I can see the year ahead clearly. It will be a massive project. If I had the sort of health problems Bro and Moms had, I'm not sure what I'd do.
We've gone from a house with three active users and four or five computers, to two active users and now only one with the same number of PCs. I need to re-think how I use computers, how I back up my data and share it to maybe one other PC and all our mobile devices. In the meantime, the server must remain operational and it must be behind a UPS.
I suppose the LAN and the surplus PCs only add to the loneliness I feel at the moment.
)
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