servers

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

Western Digital ships NAS-specific WD Red hard drive

If you have a network-attached storage (NAS) server, such as the Synology DS 1511+, and are wondering what hard drive you should get for it, here's another easy answer: the WD Red.

Western Digital announced today the new 3.5-inch SATA hard drive that's specifically designed for home and small office NAS systems of up to five drive bays. WD says the WD Red has been tested with "top NAS box manufacturers" and is optimized for power and performance.… Read more

Microsoft reveals versions, licensing for Windows Server

There will be four versions of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft officials revealed on July 5, two of which will be licensed to customers on a per-processor basis.The four SKUs are Foundation (available to OEMs only); Essentials; Standard and Datacenter. The Essentials SKU is for small/mid-size businesses and is limited to 25 users. The Standard and Datacenter SKUs round out the line-up. The former Windows Server Enterprise SKU is gone from the set of offered options.Here's Microsoft's new SKU/licensing chart for the four editions of Windows Server 2012:

"There were about a dozen SKUs … Read more

The 404 1,086: Where we left our dreams in a cab (podcast)

Filling in for a Justin Yu who thinks his air conditioner got him sick is the wild card Joey Kaminksi, a man who can apparently talk about -- in painfully great detail -- tipping etiquette in and around New York City. We love Joey for his tangential speaking habits, but also because he lends us his unique skew on the important matters of the day -- that and the fact that he brought us a Google Nexus 7 tablet for us to play with.

Do you have a game plan if you ever left your phone behind in a cab? Our producer Ariel Nunez tells the tale of such a predicament. Does Ariel get the phone back? Or is he forced to plop down $500 on a new device in addition to non-defective shorts?

The 404 crew also dishes out the dirt that saw multiple Web sites and services go down over the weekend including enormous time-suckers Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest. How did planet Earth go 45 minutes without commenting on a sepia-filtered photo of your dessert? Find out inside!

Make sure you start your holiday week on the right foot by listening to these stories and so much more on today's show! … Read more

Flame virus spread through rogue Microsoft security certificates

Microsoft revealed yesterday that the infamous Flame virus gained a foothold by spoofing one of its own security certificates.

Specifically, the virus tapped into rogue certificates for Microsoft's Terminal Server that appeared to be signed by the company and were therefore seen as legitimate. In response, Microsoft has taken several measures, including the release of a Windows patch to fix the security hole in Terminal Server, a feature that allows for remote desktop connections. The company detailed the discovery in a blog posted yesterday.

We have discovered through our analysis that some components of the malware have been signed … Read more

Intel's 'Centerton' is first Atom chip for servers

Intel announced its first Atom chip for microservers at a major company confab in Beijing today.

The new Atom, codenamed Centerton, is a system-on-a-chip, which makes it even more power efficient than less-integrated older Atom chips.

Centerton's power envelope -- what the industry sometimes calls TDP or thermal design power -- is six watts. While not as low as the power envelope for Intel's smartphone Atom, six watts is still a lot more power efficient than Intel's more mainstream chips. Those have power envelopes of 15 watts or higher. To date, Atom has been aimed at small … Read more

Restoring OS X server using Time Machine may take additional steps

Apple's Time Machine is a convenient option for backing up files in OS X, and for most people running the standard "client" version of OS X, the use of Time Machine is fairly straightforward. However, Apple offers a Server variant of OS X that can be used for running work groups, classrooms, and other business applications, which, depending on your setup, might take some extra steps when managing via Time Machine.

If you run into a problem with the configuration for a single service in your server, then restoring components is usually fairly straightforward. In most cases … Read more

VLC supports more video formats

VLC Media Player is a longtime open-source favorite, and the latest version offers fixes and feature enhancements for the Mac version that make it a must download. It's not the only option for free video playback, but it's one of the best, and it's often the go-to media player for Mac users who can't seem to play a specific media file.

VLC Media player offers a number of tools and customization options to manage and watch video. Users get frame-by-frame advancement; granular speed controls allowing for on-the-fly slower or faster playback; and live recording of streaming … Read more