Brians Blog

How far am i through ME3? Help!

Posting to myself again but anyway, i totally loved all the mass effect games, I have played, completed and relished 1, 2 & ME3 has been an seriously enjoyable experience I have been playing it for a few hours almost every night (once i get my kiddie-winkles to sleep) but i am hoping that i am close to the ending!

Anyway below is a video of where i am , can anyone tell me if im close to the end?

Comments to Brian@Brianmcmeekin.com

Mass Effect 3 - its here and all i can say is Wow!  This game has taken up quite a few of my nights.

Below is a link to a quick video i uploaded to you tube, apologies for the stupido gameplay, was still figuring the game out:

Preamble:

When i was initially faced with doing this type of migration i asked aunty google and to my suprise there were lots of posts saying "dont to it" or "its not supported" and i thought to myself in theory we are only changing the hardware, how hard can it be?

The Guide:

This guide relates to Windows Small Business Server 2003, hardware tested on was as follows:

Source Server: HP ML350 G3 (Xeon Dual Core, 1GB RAM, 3 x 72GB SCSI , 2 x 500GB SATA RAID).

Destination Server: HP N36L Micro Server (AMD Dual Core, 4GB RAM, 2 x 250GB HDD's,)

The key to this migration is ensuring that the destination server is at the same SP and general software status of the source server.

With Windows 2003 Small Business server after the Post Windows 2003 Server standard install you are immediately plunged into installing the SBS components, STOP!  We don't want to do any of this as it is quite simply a waste of your time.

Install Drivers:

Ensure your network card is operational and any other essential hardware is working, in our case we had to use a USB floppy disk drive for applying the text based SATA RAID driver, once you have your operating system up and running and all service packs are applied we can move onto the next step.

Do not configure your server with its expected IP address or host/domain name as this will be configured in the restore.

Restoring from Backup:

Once you are ready connect your backup media and go to start->Run-"ntbackup" this will initialise NTBACKUP, mount your backup media and select the "C: Drive and System State" from the selections to be restored, next leave "Leave files" on the target system it is labelled as "Recommended" this prevents key files like "boot.ini" being overwritten rendering the system useless and putting another hour into the job by doing a windows repair.

Let the restore process do its job then reboot your server, all going well your server should restart and come up clean configured in its correct domain.

Configure the newly born Server:

Once you are logged into the server we need to reset the TCP/IP stack on it and disable the Windows Firewall service, to do this got to start-run-"cmd" and hit enter and run the following command:

"netsh int ip reset C:\resetlog.txt" dependant on protocols and adapters installed this should run very quickly with no output to screen and should return you to your command prompt, consult the log file for results.

You will now need to configure the reset NIC with its IP address, reboot the server and hey presto your up and running!  I would always plug a laptop or VM onto the same LAN and test incoming/outgoing traffic and ports.

Hopefully this guide helps you out, if you have any questions register and i will do my best to help!

Bye for now!

I have been testing Clustering different resources in Windows 2008 Server R2 and have been struggling to test shared storage without a sophisticated NAS or SAN.

But In our MSDN pack there it is, Windows 2008 Storage Server, shipped with most NAS applianced as an embedded OS.

Will report back on testing, but if you do decide to install this for testing and bang the login Window appears and you dont remember setting a password thats because it doesnt give you the option to set one!

The password is preconfigured to "wSS2008!" this should save you a bit of searching.

Built in iSCSI target and lots of options for getting that storage out there.....

Mass Effect 3 Release Date set for March 2012

I am a huge mass effect fan, completed Mass Effect 2 before i had even played 1.

If you haven't played any of these titles yet, you dont know what your missing.

Mass effect 3 is set to blow your socks off going by the trailers:

Video here for you to salivate over.

Official Site: http://www.masseffect.com

Enjoy ;)