VMware ESXi 3.5 on Dell PowerEdge 1750 and 2650 Update

A Quick update. I have installed VMWare ESXi 3 on four DELL servers, and I am having nothing but trouble free operation from them. I have installed it on a PowerEdge 1750 and three Dell PowerEdge 2650's, and they all work without any problems. The machines just run and run. I have not yet had a power outage with them, but I expect that they will come back on line without issue after an outage just like before.

I would encourage anyone with DELL PowerEdge 1750's and 2650's to install VMware ESXi. You might need to download the HDD driver image (Dell 1750) or update the Bios to the latest version, but apart from that things will be really easy.

It is to the point now where I almost never log into the admin console. There is simply no need to.

Whilst I am posting here, I would encourage people to head over to InLocality and check out their Indoor Tracking solutions. This is an organisation I have just set up to handle tracking people indoors. In order to build business, I will return a commission to anyone who refers a new client to me. All you need to do is ask.

Menus with Microsoft Expression Web 2

I have been puzzling over Web Site software for the past few weeks looking at what is best for my InLocality business Web Site. And what I came up with is this... As much as I dislike it, Expression Web is better than anything else I could find. It is better than any Web Site editor I could find, and was more reliable and more user friendly in getting things how I wanted them than any CMS I could find.

But menus has been a problem. I really don't understand DHTML or CSS. Although I sort of understand CSS, they are still black magic really. What I wanted was a menu that I could insert on certain pages. And only edit this in one place. And I could not find a solution. And then i started thinking. How did this get done in the past. Well... I am glad you asked. More information is available here.

First is Server Side Includes. SSI's. Then there are PHP includes and Javascript includes. But these are a pain. Then comes 'Frontpage Includes'. And these seem to be undocumented in the help system. Frontpage Includes allow you to include a HTML file at any point on another HTML file. And they effectively get compiled in when the site is published.

The problem is that there is no menu to deal with this. The good news is that it is there if you customize the User Interface in Expression Web. You just need to go to the CUSTOMIZE menu and find PAGE INCLUDE. Then drag it onto the INSERT menu. How simple is that!