servers

Manage display arrangement errors in OS X

When you connect an external display to your Mac, the system will usually by default resort to its native resolution and arrange it to the right of your main display. You can modify these settings in the Displays system preferences, which should preserve separate settings for each display you use with the system; however, after updating or upgrading OS X the system may not keep these changes and persistently revert to defaults every time your display is attached or when the system restarts.

If you use the default arrangement then this issue may not be much of a problem, but … Read more

Pirate Bay ditches servers and switches to the cloud

In the midst of threats of a possible police raid, the Pirate Bay decided to armor itself and become literally raid-proof. It's ditched its servers and moved to several cloud-hosting providers in different countries around the world.

"Slowly and steadily we are getting rid of our earthly form and ascending into the next stage, the cloud," the Pirate Bay wrote in a blog post. "Our data flows around in thousands of clouds, in deeply encrypted forms, ready to be used when necessary. Earth bound nodes that transform the data are as deeply encrypted and reboot into … Read more

Google tries wowing the world with a look at its data centers

Google only rarely gives outsiders a look at its data centers, but today it's trying to make up for lost time with a large online photo gallery and Street View tour of the computing hardware.

The company launched a new site, "Where the Internet Lives" with a lot of eye candy for people who enjoy racks of computer gear, raised-floor ventilation systems, multicolored cables, and massive air-conditioning chillers. Urs Hoelzle, Google's senior vice president for technical infrastructure, announced the site in a blog post today.

It's short on details for those who want to eye Google's servers up close, … Read more

Chip startup Calxeda raises $55 million for ARM-based servers

Calxeda, the startup that's building data centers with chips normally found in cell phones, has raised an additional $55 million, signaling that its low-power server technology may be gaining traction.

The company, which was founded four years ago by former Intel and Marvell engineer Barry Evans, is an early proponent of using ARM architecture in servers rather than traditional x86 designs popularized by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

"This significant infusion of capital will accelerate the exciting trajectory we've been on for the past four years," Evans said in a statement. "Businesses require a more … Read more

Do you need OS X Server?

In addition to the standard OS X installation that you purchase from the Mac App Store, you can use Apple's OS X Server package to convert your system into OS X Server. If you're wondering what it is for and what it will do to the system when installed, read on.

MacFixIt reader Pedro recently wrote in with questions that others interested in the server will undoubtedly have:

[With regard to Apple's Server package], can you run OS X Server on an iMac running Mountain Lion? Do you end up with two machines: the server and the … Read more

IoSafe unveils disaster-proof, Synology-based dual-bay NAS server

If you want the best network-attached storage (NAS) experience, get a Synology NAS server like the DiskStation DS412+. But if you want to guard data from even the worst disaster, an IoSafe storage device, such as the Solo G3, will fit your needs. In fact, you can use those two combined for the best of both worlds.

Now, what if you just need a single device that offers both a great user experience and top-notch data security? There's something you can look forward to: the N2 that IoSafe announced today.

This is a new NAS server, which the disaster-proof … Read more

Play it all and then some with VLC Media Player

What's the top media player? Opinions differ, but if you mean one that's open-source freeware, plays more files than the others, can be totally customized and configured to suit, and is not only updated frequently but also regularly offers new features and options created by a huge community of programmers and users, the answer is VLC Media Player.

Our default media player for years, VLC has managed to stay ahead of the competition in features and performance, if not always looks, though that's easy enough to fix if you want to. VLC and its source code are … Read more

RIM: Next server will work with all BlackBerry devices

Research In Motion said today that the next iteration of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server will be able to handle both past and future BlackBerrys, assuaging concerns about compatibility issues and the need for companies to run multiple servers -- sort of.

RIM said it would launch BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10 at the same time as the launch of the first BlackBerry 10 phone early next year. Existing BES customers will get an upgrade to BES 10 to ensure they'll be able to handle both new and legacy devices.

The comments answer a concern that RIM would move on to … Read more

Mac Pro users experiencing random log-outs in Mountain Lion

A small number of Mac Pro owners who have upgraded to Mountain Lion are reporting an issue where the system seems to randomly log out, quitting all applications without any warnings and returning to the log-in screen.

While this may appear as if the system has restarted or even performed a standard log-out, the system is in fact experiencing a crash in a critical process called the Window Server that supports the current log-in session by managing the drawing and representation of windows on the screen. Crash logs that affected users have revealed show that the problem is rooted in … Read more

Amazon aims new rentable servers at app developers

In an effort to attract app developers to its cloud storage, Amazon has introduced SSD-backed rentable servers through Amazon Web Services.

Launched Wednesday, the High I/O Quadruple Extra Large EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) includes 2TB of local SSD-backed storage running on eight virtual cores, 60.5GB of RAM, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. The new rentable EC2 instances will be an "exceptionally good" host for NoSQL databases such as Cassandra and MongoDB, Amazon Web services said in a blog post.

"Modern web and mobile applications are often highly I/O dependent," Jeff Barr, a senior … Read more