CES2014: ORIGIN PC Announces Amazing Customizable PC Case

ORIGIN PC is known for their awesome high-performance PCs. Today, ORIGIN PC has announced two amazing new case designs that will serve as the backbone of their MILLENIUM (mid-tower) and GENESIS (full-tower) PCs. What makes these new cases newsworthy is the combination of striking industrial design, customizability, and extensibility. I had the opportunity to see these new PCs just before CES 2014 started when CEO Kevin Wasielewski gave me a private tour of this new lineup of ORIGIN PCs. I left wanting one!

Bold and clean lines define the look of the new MILLENIUM and GENESIS PCs from ORIGIN (Click/Tap to enlarge)

ORIGIN PC has taken a different approach with the design of this new PC case system. The only difference between the MILLENIUM and GENESIS PCs is the expansion base which can accommodate additional radiators for liquid cooling, or extra drives (up to 12 3.5” drives or 24 2.5” drives). It’s easiest to see the difference when you look at the MILLENIUM and GENESIS cases side-by-side:

MILLENIUM mid-tower case (left) next to GENESIS full-tower case (right) - (Click/Tap to enlarge)

If you own a MILLENIUM PC, you can always upgrade your PC to become a GENESIS by ordering the full-tower expansion kit. Here’s what the expansion base looks like setup for cooling:

Expansion base setup for dual cooling radiators - (Click/Tap to enlarge)

And here’s what the expansion base looks like setup for storage:

Expansion base can be setup to hold up to 24 2.5” drives - (Click/Tap to enlarge)

Here is a summary the unique and notable features included in the MILLENIUM and GENESIS cases:

• Variable Mounting system enables motherboard to be oriented four different ways so that you can optimize the placement and visibility of your PC’s internal components
• 4-Way NVIDIA SLI support in any orientation (using Variable Mounting)
• Dual-Hinge front door enables left-to-right or right-to-left opening directions
• 5 hot-swappable hard drive bays with optional locking mechanism
• Full-tower expansion kit enables MILLENIUM case to be converted to GENESIS case
• Smart Fan Controller allows you to easily toggle between full manual control of fans and motherboard fan control
• Remote controlled LED lighting system

To learn more about the new MILLENIUM and GENESIS desktop PC cases, please visit www.originpc.com.

Find me on twitter! @GavinGear

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HP announces powerful new Z1G2 all-in-one workstation

Today at CES HP showcased the second generation of the world’s first all-in-one workstation. This device builds on the success of the first-generation HP Z1, to include a 27-inch diagonal touchscreen display, lots of power, and a myriad of other features that make this device a real workhorse capable of running the most graphic-intensive and demanding programs.

Let’s first dive into this exciting new form factor. From the pictures, below you can see the compact and slim design. The Z1 G2 features a stunning 27-inch diagonal touchscreen display that is ideal for interacting with 3D models, maps, or other interactive programs. You will be able to take full advantage of Windows 8.1 features and functionality.

The Z1 G2 also has the awesome ability to recline to a position that is most comfortable for you, or to lay flat parallel to your table or desk for servicing. HP has really done some great work in the ergonomics and device flexibility space. If you don’t believe me, check out the HP ENVY Recline.

    

If more power is what you crave, then power you shall get with the Z1 G2. Powered by an Intel 4^th generation Xenon and Core processors, this all-in-one is ready for whatever program you can throw at it (and of course, many more than one at a time). It also pack a NVIDIA Mobile Quadro GPU for excellent graphics performance.

The need for big power, is often correlated to producing big files, but rest assured knowing that you will be able to connect to a flash drive and transfer them up to four times faster than USB 3.0 with the Thunderbolt 2.0 ports located on the side of the Z1 G2.

HP has done a magnificent job with the Z1 G2 and I am personally super excited to get to check one out for myself. If you are interested too, visit HP’s website for more information and expect to see the Z1 G2 shipping in the US later this month.

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New Poster: Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Storage and Virtualization

Another fantastic poster is out.  This one is focused on the storage technology in Windows Server 2012 R2 that you will want to use for private cloud environments:

You can download it here: http://ift.tt/1dV6yJt

And it has also been included in the Server Posterpedia application: http://ift.tt/UGwGbG 

Cheers,
Ben

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Managing Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V from Windows 8.1

In the past we have always required that you use Hyper-V Manager on the same version of Windows as the version of Windows that you are using to run Hyper-V (i.e. Use Windows 7 to manage Windows Server 2008 R2, use Windows 8 to manage Windows Server 2012).  But we have made a change with Windows 8.1.

You can use Hyper-V manager on Windows 8.1 (or on Windows Server 2012 R2) to manage either Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012.  In fact, you can connect to both at the same time if you want to.

What happens is that when you connect to a new instance of Hyper-V, we check to see what the version is that we are connecting to.  If it is Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 we will load the UI for that version of Hyper-V.  If it is Windows 8.1 / Windows Server 2012 R2 we will load the UI for that version of Hyper-V.

Here you can see an instance of Hyper-V manager where I have connected to a number of servers:

Above; I have selected “MELPOMENE” – which is a Windows Server 2012 R2 instance of Hyper-V.  You can tell that this is case because we are using the term “checkpoints”.  Below; I have selected “POLYHYMNIA” – which is a Windows Server 2012 instance of Hyper-V.  Here you can see that we are using the term “snapshots”.

This all happens automatically, with no configuration needed.

One issue that you should be aware of is that there are now two versions of VMCONNECT.EXE.  Hyper-V Manager will always launch the correct instance for the server you are connected to – but, if you start VM Connect directly you should know that "C:\Windows\System32\vmconnect.exe” is the Windows 8.1 / Windows Server 2012 R2 version of VM Connect.  While “C:\Program Files\Hyper-V\6.2\vmconnect6.2.exe” is the Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 version of VM Connect.

Cheers,
Ben

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Local VM Management on Hyper-V Server with FreeRDP

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the Veeam RDP virtual appliance for Remote Management of Hyper-V Server.  Since then I have been inundated with questions, opinions and information about different solutions for managing a Hyper-V server.  I have been spending some time looking at the various options – and one of my favorites has been FreeRDP.

To give some more context – if you are using the free version of Hyper-V Server (you can download it from here: http://ift.tt/JdRv00) you can use the Hyper-V management tools remotely from a full installation of Windows.  But if you login locally to the server all you have is PowerShell.

Now, you can do almost everything through PowerShell.  Almost.  The one thing you cannot do is interact with a virtual machine directly.  Luckily – FreeRDP is a simple project that, amongst other things, supports connecting to Hyper-V virtual machines.

To test this out – I created a new Hyper-V Server – and attempted to create and configure the server without using any remote management tools.  After doing the initial server configuration – I used PowerShell to create a virtual switch:

get-netadapter | new-vmswitch -name "Virtual Switch" -AllowManagementOS $true

(Note, my server only had a single network adapter – so I cheated and made this command simple).

Then I created and started a virtual machine:

New-VM -Name "Test 1" -MemoryStartupBytes 1GB -Generation 1 -BootDevice LegacyNetworkAdapter -Path "C:\VMs\Test 1" -SwitchName "Virtual Switch" -NewVHDPath "C:\VMs\Test 1\VHD.vhdx" -NewVHDSizeBytes 40GB

Start-VM "Test 1"

Now we come to the part where I usually need to use a remote management solution.  I downloaded a Windows version of FreeRDP from here: http://ift.tt/1csja98 and copied it to C:\FreeRDP on my Hyper-V Server.  To use FreeRDP to connect to a virtual machine – you need to know the virtual machine ID number.  To get this I ran:

Get-VM "Test 1" | Select ID

Which gave me a virtual machine ID of a0a23c9b-11ec-4740-82c5-2e0cf55674f4 (you will get a different one for your virtual machines). Then I  ran:

C:\FreeRDP\wfreerdp.exe /v:localhost:2179 /vmconnect:a0a23c9b-11ec-4740-82c5-2e0cf55674f4

Which worked!

However, I wanted a more elegant solution than this.  So I decided to write a script Cmdlet that would allow me to just provide the virtual machine name that I wanted to connect to:

  function Start-VMConnect   

     {  

     [CmdletBinding()]  

     param  

        (  

        # CMDLet takes a single parameter of VMNames.   

        # Can be single or plural, can come from the pipeline.  

        [Parameter(Mandatory=$True,ValueFromPipeline=$True)]$VMnames  

        )  

     begin   

        {  

        # Path to the binary for FreeRDP  

        $FreeRDPPath = "C:\FreeRDP\wfreerdp.exe"  

        }  

     process   

        {  

        foreach ($VMname in $VMnames)   

           {  

           if ($pscmdlet.ShouldProcess($VMname))   

              {  

              # Get the ID of the virtual machine  

              # If a VM object has been provided - grab the ID directly  

              # Otherwise, try and get the VM object and get the ID from there  

              if ($VMname.GetType().name -eq "VirtualMachine")  

                 {$VMID = $VMname.ID}  

              else  

                 {$VMID = (get-vm $VMname | Select -first 1).ID}  

              # Start FreeRDP  

              start-process $FreeRDPPath -ArgumentList "/v:localhost:2179 /vmconnect:$($VMID)"  

              }  

           }  

        }  

     end {}  

     }  

This Cmdlet (Start-VMConnect) takes either a virtual machine name or a virtual machine object and then connects to it with FreeRDP.  As this is actually a script Cmdlet – you need to use Import-Module to load it:

Once it is loaded you can just use Start-VMConnect and connect to the virtual machine:

Very cool!  I liked this option most of everything I tried – as it was the smallest / lightest weight solution that solved all the problems that I had.

Thanks to Alessandro Pilotti, from Cloudbase Solutions, who gave me the pointers to this solution.

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. Here is a copy of my script Cmdlet:

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