I just wanted to show you all my current setup for my home network.  pictured below is the “heart” of it.

(Click on picture to see bigger version)

On the far left is my keyboard, mouse and monitor for the PC directly to the right of it (the black on).  That computer is my main server.  It runs many Virtual Machines providing different services to me.  One of the main ones is my VPN.  To the right of the black server is the backup drive for it.  Nightly backups are sent to that.  Next is my Wireless Access Point.  Followed by that is my NAS drive.  To the right of that is my NAS server.  To the right of that is my modem.

Below all that is my 24 port Smart Switch in which divides my network into 5 VLANs.  To the right of the switch is my router.  Yes, my router is a PC.

Finally on the far right is my power for all this.  Everything except the monitor is on a UPS.  This UPS keeps everything you see (except monitor) running for about 15 minutes in the event of a power outage.

Almost everything on my network is wired.  As you can see I have a lot of wires.

Keep in mind this is just the heart of my network.  There is a switch downstairs also.  I have a 100′ cable running to that.

Oh, and my server, nas, and router all run Linux.  No Windows junk slowing down any of these machines.

Last week I found a good deal on Newegg on a 40GB Intel Solid State Drive (Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5″ 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive). I got it on sale for $100 with free shipping.

Here is the link to it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167025

For those of you who don’t know what a Solid State Drive is, I will briefly explain.

A Solid State Drive, or SSD, is a storage medium that uses flash memory instead of disk platters to store data. Unlike Hard Drives, SSD’s do not contain moving parts. Solid State Drives typically have much faster read times than a hard drive. However, a hard drive will normally have faster write times.

The end result of the faster read times is your computer will respond faster to opening applications and booting up. Although a SSD will have slower write times, this is not a huge deal because of write caching. Write caching is where your operating system holds data to be written to the disk in RAM until there is free write time available. The danger of this however is you could lose data in the event of a sudden power outage. Luckily that is not a concern for me since my computer is backed up with a UPS (it will continue running during a power outage). My UPS will tell my computer “hey you are running on battery power” and the OS will respond by flushing its write cache to the disk.

I have not had a lot of time to test how much faster things are but I can say that one application I use a lot which is Dreamweaver opens in 1 second or less. This application when it was on my hard drive took about 5-10 seconds to load. Windows 7 boots cold to the desktop (ready to use) in 20 seconds.

How I have this setup is my operating system and all applications files are stored on the 40GB SSD. All my other data like downloads, music, movies, and everything else is still stored on normal Hard Drives.

All in all I am very happy so far with my Solid State Drive.

I now have an account for Google Wave and I must say this is a very interesting new development from Google.

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool.” It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking (Wikipedia).

If anyone wants an invite to Google Wave, I have 5 available to give out. Just leave a comment saying you want an invite and leave your email address in the appropriate field and I will send one to the first five people who requests.

DO NOT leave your email address in your actual comment or I will delete the comment and not honor your request. Only place the email address in the email field. Your email address will not be displayed to anyone but me. Please note that it may take a couple days after I invite you to receive your invite. I will email you back personally telling you if I invited you.

Well, my old PSU for my desktop PC exploded on me yesterday.

I was actually using the computer when all of a sudden I heard this loud pop and saw a flash of light in the corner of my eye. My PC case has a see-through side allowing me to see a flash from the explosion.

I have already replaced the exploded PSU with a new one. Luckily it didn’t damage any parts inside the computer.

What I believe happened was on of the capacitors inside the PSU exploded. However, I opened up the PSU and saw no evidence of anything burnt. Although there was a spark plug thing that appeared to have blown. There was also this hard brown substance along the bottom of one of the capacitors.

Anyways, I knew the fan in the PSU was bad for a long time and was putting off replacing it. I guess it finally overheated and exploded. I also knew there was something wrong with the PSU beforehand because I would always have trouble getting the computer started, although once on it was fine.

Lesson to be learned: When a PSU is going bad, replace it before it explodes

Anyways, I instantly went to best buy and bought a $75 new PSU. Its working much better and is much quieter than my old one.

Click here to see the PSU I bought. (Note this is the newegg page for it not the best buy where I bought it)

Unfortunately my grandpa Jefferson passed away yesterday. He got sick all of a sudden and passed away about an hour later from what we believe to have been an aneurysm.

He was a devoted Christian and a huge influence in my life. Here is a picture of him taken about 11 months ago when his first great-grandchild, my nephew, Kaleb was born. He will be deeply missed by many.