IT Infrastructure

I was reading someone's blog post a while back about how stuff can make you happy. I guess it can, for a while. My computers are a double edged sword. I buy them, sure that they'll make me happy forever and they end up giving me a headache. I just got done re-doing my office computer infrastructure, which consists of four computers, not to mention the three others I have dispersed around the house. i recently bought a new Dell system because my own desktop was getting to be five years old, which is ancient in computer years. It was a top of the line system when I bought it and I'd upgraded it to the point that it was a souped-up duct taped system that was choking with all of the load I was putting on it.

I took that system and turned it into a central file, multimedia, backup, web and application server. I re-loaded it from scratch and have it set up to mirror all of my data around the house, and serve my iPods, stereo systems and other desktops with music, pictures and video. I've got it setup with a scheduled on-line off-site backup, so that I'm not at risk of losing any data should my house burn down or if i were to spill a cup of coffee on my system. I need to pick up another disk and set it up as a mirror for my data, but that can wait a little while - I hope. I've also got it setup as a centralized torrent server that my other systems can feed as well as running all of my web services to give a more stable environment for the family photo gallery and my iTunes playlist publisher for my blog.

I think everything is just how I'd like it for now, until another computer dies. I've finally rebuilt the kids computer and got that up and running and I still have a laptop that needs a new hard drive. Some guys have a honey-do list of home-repairs, I have one of computer infrastructure.