Life is a State of Mind

Last week I set up Mom’s TimeCapsule and new 20″ iMac so that when she returns to central New York she can get regular backups done automatically. It is pretty impressive as a backup device, network storage, 4 port LAN hub, DHCP server, and 802.11N wireless access point. As a router and firewall it is rather minimalist, and serious network weenies should probably get their own cheap firewall/router.

That, and some amazing cabling work done by co-workers Alan and Dave, inspired me to plug in our own TimeCapsule and start user-space backups of all the computers Erci and I share. I am thrilled. In our case, since we already have a Linksys firewall/router/DHCP server, our TimeCapsule is simply a faster wireless access point (802.11n/g/b) and a huge NAS disk for backups. The device handles backups from as many machines as you have space for (which was one of my big concerns), so we are backing up both laptops, and both desktops just fine (she’ll need to upgrade her iMac to Leopard for TimeMachine to work). We may even get her Windows box backing up in time. The 802.11n wireless network reaches to nearly every room in the house, which is better than the Airport Express (802.11b/g) wireless we had before.

I still use Carbon Copy Cloner to make image dumps of bootable hard drives (because TimeMachine does not make a bootable copy, at least that I can see so far), and every once in a while you want to boot from a different disk; but TimeMachine over wireless makes it trivial to get generations of revisions into a rolling incremental backup system. Very nice.

This also means that I now own two of the three big things announced at the 2008 Mac World San Francisco keynote, and I previously owned an AppleTV. Kool-aid? No, they are just reliable, useful, and affordable devices that let me focus on my life rather than perpetually fiddling with Win-bloze crap.

My new employer has several Apple XServe 1U rack-mount servers more than they actually need. Is there any interest in XServe G5 hosts? What value do these things have?

Each is a dual 2.3GHz G5 with 4GB memory, gigabit ethernet, multiple firewire slots, and two to three hard drives.

I cannot sell them for Ruckus – but I can put you in touch with the corporate comptroller who can. He knows nothing about how to move older server gear on the open market.

There are three sitting near my desk that can move right away, and we have as many as 40 in use around the country. If we get enough, it becomes worthwhile to exchange the ones in production today with something else, and sell those too. If they are not worth much on the market, we’ll be lazy and leave most of them in service.