A short post continuing the subject of builds with this one covering the use of virtualised infrastructure.

I would advise any software development department to make use of virtualisation – especially for appliances such as Build Agents. The choice of virtualisation product in a commercial environment typically comes down to one of two choices. Microsoft offer Hyper-V for free as a role on Windows 2008 and newer and VMWare provide ESX (both free and paid versions). Both are excellent solutions though at this time my preference is with VMWare – it’s simply a more mature product with a greater feature set. I have no experience of ESX setup/configuration however and whilst this is an area where Hyper-V scores well I would still put ESX ahead.

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Tags: Hardware, TFS

My PC has been limping along for a long while now and whilst I did promise to buy a new one when the [in]famous Duke Nukem Forever game was released I didn’t get around to it – the game hasn’t exactly chalked up many good reviews (most of which from people who never purchased it and/or expecting something it simply was never going to be).

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Tags: Hardware, Retro

If you’re into retro games then you’ll surely be aware of Roland’s MT32 MIDI synthesizer. Sierra used this device to great effect in a number of their adventure games.

There’s quite a bit of history to the project (this is, in effect, its 3rd life) and as such it’s the best yet. Check this thread on VOGONS for download details.

Tags: Hardware, Retro

“It” being the long awaited release of Duke Nukem Forever. Scheduled for early May (6th in Europe) the game now being completed by Gearbox software (I hope they don’t make a hash of it) and not 3D Realms (who did seem to be making a hash of it!) has been voted top vapour ware title for the past decade or so! Looks like that award might finally be offered to another deserving product!

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Tags: Hardware