The Equipment Arrives

The hardware started arriving this week and I am overjoyed. One KVM switch (shop) has successfully eliminated two monitors, keyboards, and mice from my office. The other (shop) is waiting for the new servers to arrive. The current KVM switch used for the servers was built in the late 19th Century and must have cost almost $4. I believe its power source is coal.

The LTO drive also arrived. I settled on a rack-mountable Quantum (shop). Thankfully it came with a SCSI cable, terminator, and two tapes. Usually I get everything barebones, no matter what I pay. I suppose the cable and terminator don't cost what they used to but it was nice to see them and two tapes included. I bought a box of 20 tapes anyway.

TechSoup (site) and CDW (site) sent the licenses nice and fast. Microsoft and Symantec (antivirus) delivered the media just as quick. I'm still deliberating on which backup software I should use. With no real-world experience with either Yosemite (post) or EMC's Retrospect (post), I dread I will remain with Symantec. I'm really bummed about this but I don't want to gamble with the company's security. My testing went fine but virtual servers can't be considered a solid test environment. This is all new to me anyway so I'm sure I didn't take testing as far as I could have. Plus I have limited time. This is when I wish I weren't a one man operation.

Much is piling up on me all of a sudden but since the hardware is here and the servers are only days away, I hope to commit to the migration at the end of the month. Much progress in under two months!