Posts tagged setup
5 Ways to Save Businesses Big Bucks, Enhance Security and Evolve
Oct 28th
Electricity is one of the biggest expenditures in the business world. Surpassed only by procurement, and human resources; reducing the amount of power consumed by electrical appliances can save a company millions. The first thing to do is configure your computers as thin clients. A computer can consume 30 or more watts each. If a Corporation has thousands of computers, and a thin client uses 50-75% less energy, then that translates directly to a 50-75% reduction in the utility bill. There might be a setup cost associated with 10,000 new thin client terminal, but that will be made back within the first year of use.
1) To implement a thin client setup the Corporation can use a Microsoft Windows product, which would cost money and be counter productive. The economical choice is to use Linux, and an out of the box setup can be achieved using Ubuntu. Talk about killing two birds with one stone; using Linux will eliminate the costly expenditure of anti virus subscriptions that all corporations have.
2) By implementing Linux the cost of maintenance will be dramatically reduced. You can have Linux machine running for years without serious security problems, and the entire update process can be completely automated and centralized to the thin client server. A corporation can significantly cut their maintenance costs with a thin client setup.
Most database applications nowadays are browser based therefore Linux is perfectly compatible with most existing systems. Firefox works on all Linux systems.
3) After switching to a Linux thin client server, all those pesky Windows license keys can be resold to needy customers. Theoretically the corporation can recoup several thousands of dollars, if not 10’s.
4) Then the old energy inefficient hardware can be resold, or donated to a organization of good will. Either an economical or philanthropic plus.
5) Then security can be enhanced by enforcing an outbound firewall to block all but the needed ports. Theoretically only several ports, clearly port 80, port 25, and several others need to be open. This will dramatically reduce the risks even if a computer becomes infected with a virus. Bye bye Norton, or Symantec. Save that 10-50k per year subscription fee.
Overall there are many reason to convert to Linux and some of the reasons are priceless. You really cannot put a cost savings on potential security risks, which is one of the biggest selling points of Linux. Ubuntu is free, how can that be beaten?
So all you tech savvy, under appreciated employees out there start dreaming up ways to approach the right people in your company with a way to save them million. If thousands of you draft presentations and attempt to talk to higher ups, at least one of you will hit a jackpot. Why not let that one person be you.
VirtualBox Windows Vista – Host Network Bridge and Tap
Jan 12th
This entire post is no longer applicable to the most recent version of VirtualBox. Here is a more recent post.
VirtualBox is well equipped for a Windows environment. Most of its features have a mechanism for automatic installation and setup. To get your guest OS, in Windows Vista, to have a real IP address from your router you first need a network bridge and tap. Open the VirtualBox manager:
Then select a guest OS and open its settings. Then click the network tab:
Then click the add network tap button:
It doesn’t matter what the name is 
Then adjust your guest OS networking adapter accordingly.
Now open your Windows Vista network configurations manager:
This screenshot is what your network configurations should be after everything is done. To achieve this simply select both the VirtualBox tap, that was previously created, and bridge it to your LAN connection. Select both by click on each adapter while pressing the shift key. Then right click on either of the two highlighted icons and select “bridge”. This will automatically create a bridge between the tap and your real host networking adapter. Wham bam, now you can select a real static IP in your VirtualBox guest OS on a Windows Vista system
Update (12/4/2009); At the top of this post I say that the information here is outdated. You can view the post listed above if you want, but here are the pertinent screenshots also:
Here is a screen from Windows Vista. Go to the network tab of the virtual machine settings:
Then select the attach to drop down menu:
Then change the attach to, drop down menu, to bridged adapter:
