Well, the new RAM is posting errors.   Haven’t had a chance to fully diagnose the problem.  It’s possible that it’s one of the slots on the motherboard.   I’m going to pull out the RAM that I know is good, and only insert the new RAM and re-run Memtest to see what the results are.

For the record, please never buy OCZ RAM, no matter how good of a deal it seems.   When you look at the reviews on the right hand side, at first glance it appears to be favorable.   But if you dig down into the reviews, you will find a ton of unhappy customers.  :(

Memtest, RAM

I have been using an Intel Smithfield 2.66 Dual-Core machine for just over 2 years to run most of my home lab tests. It’s actually been a very good box, and I’ve built it up and blown it away on many occasions using it for everything from a Domain Controller to a Mediacenter box. But during the last big storm the power went out, and the power surge must have fried the motherboard.

Now it would have been pretty easy to diagnose the problem, and maybe it would be something simple and easy to fix, but this really presented itself as the perfect opportunity (excuse) to build a new system! I had just recently been through a Microsoft Hyper-V class, which only gave me a small taste, and I was dying to play with it some more!  Well, one of the requirements for running Hyper-V, is a processor that supports hardware virtualization assistance. Something my old processor didn’t support.

So I ordered the following system:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45 — motherboard
• Intel Kentsfield Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz — processor
• 8 gigs of SDRAM

The whole thing was pieced together for under $500, so not bad at all. However, I had problems from day one getting the operating system to install. Constant blue screens no matter what I tried. I was pretty frustrated by the end of the evening, but eventually I tracked the problem down to a single bad stick of memory. The memory I ordered came in 2 packages, each with 2 sticks of RAM, so while I only needed to return 1 stick, I was forced to RMA 2.  

The ’server’ has been running great the past month with only 4 gigs of RAM. However, as you can imagine, you can only run so many Virtual Machines with 4 gigs of RAM.  Especially considering Microsoft’s Hyper visor requires a full blown parent operating system to run parallel to the multiple guest operating systems. I could basically get 4 guest operating systems up simultaneously, which really wasn’t too bad. Just not good enough to be able to run a NLB IIS cluster along side of a SQL fail over cluster, which requires a minimum of 5 boxes when you add in the domain controller. Which brings me to my point…. The new RAM arrived! Going to go install it now, cross my finger, and run Memtest and hope for the best.

Cluster, Hardware, Hyper-V, IIS, Intel, Memtest, Microsoft, NLB, RAM