HYPERAXE

For the many years I’ve been working with computers, I never really got the chance to try out Wake On LAN, or usually referred to as WOL. For those who are not aware of this, this is simply a way of turning on your computer remotely by sending out network packets to it. Click here to get an in-depth explanation of what it is. 

Most modern motherboards or network cards supports WOL and you can easily enable this on the BIOS. Lucky for me, that my old Pentium 4 PC with on-board network interface already has this feature. Since my home server is located downstairs along with all my network routers and modems, I decided to try WOL so I don’t have to come down every time I want to boot up my server. Most people might prefer their home server to run 24/7, but not me. I just want it to be on whenever I need to use it. Usually during daytime or if I need to sync up some files locally or onto my remote servers.
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I had always been longing to have a home backup server, but didn’t get that much time (and of course budget) to do so. But just a few days ago, I decided that it’s just about time that I set up one once and for all. There are a lot of NAS servers available out there, but they are quite costly. Though they have this cool features such as multimedia streaming, web interfaces, and multiple users management, I still can’t justify the cost compared to the flexibility of using a linux box can offer. Looking at all those NAS servers’ feature list, I don’t see anything that I can’t do with a linux box, so I decided not to go for a dedicated NAS server.

I have this old Pentium 4 PC which I don’t use that often, and this is a great candidate for the home backup server that I had always wanted. Not only can this machine host my backups, but it can also host services I need for work (another thing I don’t want NAS devices), which are usually java application services (e.g. app server, message broker, etc.). 

Basically here’s my setup:
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For the past few days, I had been accompanying my little Angel to her summer swimming class, and there’s one thing I noticed .. “I’m the only dad.”. Well, it’s not the first time I experienced this but last summer when she took ballet lessons, it’s the same scenario. It’s kinda weird for some people who got used to the norms, but it’s how it is in my situation.
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