ASUS P7P55D-E Premium Motherboard Review

Features:
* LGA-1156 CPU Support
* Intel P55 Chipset
* DDR3-2200 (OC)
* SATA 6Gb/second
* Dual Gigabit LAN
* 10 Channel Audio
* USB 3.0
* T.Probe
* Unique Layout
* TurboV EVO
* Precision Tweaker 2
* MemOK!
* StackCool 3
* Q-Design
* 48 Hybrid Phase Design
* Windows 7 Ready
* TurboV Remote
* SLI and CrossfireX support
* 100% Ultra-Long-Life Japan-made Solid Cap
* NVIDIA PhysX ready

The ASUS P7P55D-E Premium is based upon Intel’s P55 chipset. The LGA-1156 CPU interface has moved the PCI Express lanes to the CPU from the Northbridge where they were previously. This means that the Northbridge and Southbridge combination found in earlier motherboards has been replaced by the CPU+Platform Controller Hub combination.

The memory controller on this new platform is on the CPU itself, meaning that the memory supported by the P7P55D-E Premium is up to DDR3-1333 (CPU). Faster speeds are possible and with overclocking the board can support up to DDR3-2200MHz memory. The ASUS motherboard also supports Intel’s eXtreme Memory Profiles allowing the memory to use the higher settings stored in SPD.

Part Number P7P55D-E Premium
Manufacturer ASUS
Chipset P55 Express
North Bridge N/A
Socket LGA-1156
Memory speed DDR3 2200 (OC)/1600/1333/1066
Processor Types Core i7, Core i5
Number of CPUs 1
QPI Up to 4.8GT/second
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Channels Double
Maximum Memory 16GB
External Graphics PCI Express x16 2.0 x2
IGP N/A
South Bridge P55 Express
Audio 8-channel
IDE 133/100/66
SCSI None
SATA 3.0 GB/s, 6.0Gb/s on two ports
RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10
LAN 10/100/1000 4 LAN Ports
Firewire IEEE 1394a
USB USB 3.0
BIOS AMIBIOS
Form Factor ATX

Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008 is one of Microsoft Windows' server line of operating systems. Released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and officially released on February 27, 2008, it is the successor to Windows Server 2003, released nearly five years earlier. A second release, named Windows Server 2008 R2, was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009.Like Windows Vista and Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 is built on Windows NT 6.x.

Originally known as Windows Server Codename "Longhorn", Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced its official title (Windows Server 2008) during his keynote address at WinHEC 16 May 2007Beta 1 was released on 27 July 2005, Beta 2 was announced and released on 23 May 2006 at WinHEC 2006 and Beta 3 was released publicly on 25 April 2007. Release Candidate 0 was released to the general public on 24 September 2007and Release Candidate 1 was released to the general public on 5 December 2007. Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on 4 February 2008 and officially launched on 27 February 2008.
Features
Windows Server 2008 is built from the same code base as Windows Vista; therefore, it shares much of the same architecture and functionality. Since the code base is common, it automatically comes with most of the technical, security, management and administrative features new to Windows Vista such as the rewritten networking stack (native IPv6, native wireless, speed and security improvements); improved image-based installation, deployment and recovery; improved diagnostics, monitoring, event logging and reporting tools; new security features such as BitLocker and ASLR; improved Windows Firewall with secure default configuration; .NET Framework 3.0 technologies, specifically Windows Communication Foundation, Microsoft Message Queuing and Windows Workflow Foundation; and the core kernel, memory and file system improvements. Processors and memory devices are modelled as Plug and Play devices, to allow hot-plugging of these devices. This allows the system resources to be partitioned dynamically using Dynamic Hardware Partitioning; each partition has its own memory, processor and I/O host bridge devices independent of other partitions.[
Server Core
Windows Server 2008 includes a variation of installation called Server Core. Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no Windows Explorer shell is installed. All configuration and maintenance is done entirely through command line interface windows, or by connecting to the machine remotely using Microsoft Management Console. However, Notepad and some control panel applets, such as Regional Settings, are available.

Server Core does not include the .NET Framework, Internet Explorer, Windows PowerShell or many other features not related to core server features. A Server Core machine can be configured for several basic roles: Domain controller/Active Directory Domain Services, ADLDS (ADAM), DNS Server, DHCP Server, file server, print server, Windows Media Server, IIS 7 web server and Hyper-V virtual server. Server Core can also be used to create a cluster with high availability using Failover Clustering or Network Load Balancing.

Andrew Mason, a program manager on the Windows Server team, noted that a primary motivation for producing a Server Core variant of Windows Server 2008 was to reduce the attack surface of the operating system, and that about 70% of the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows from the prior five years would not have affected Server Core.
Failover Clustering

Windows Server 2008 offers high-availability to services and applications through Failover Clustering. Most server features and roles can be kept running with little to no downtime.

In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the way that clusters are qualified is changing significantly with the introduction of the cluster validation wizard
The cluster validation wizard is a feature that is integrated into failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. With the cluster validation wizard, you can run a set of focused tests on a collection of servers that you intend to use as nodes in a cluster. This cluster validation process tests the underlying hardware and software directly, and individually, to obtain an accurate assessment of how well failover clustering can be supported on a given configuration.It is done by "dcpromo" command in windows server
Windows PowerShell
Windows Server 2008 is the first Windows operating system to ship with Windows PowerShell, Microsoft's new extensible command line shell and task-based scripting technology.[PowerShell is based on object-oriented programming and version 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework and includes more than 120 system administration utilities, consistent syntax and naming conventions, and built-in capabilities to work with common management data such as the Windows Registry, certificate store, or Windows Management Instrumentation. PowerShell's scripting language was specifically designed for IT administration, and can be used in place of cmd.exe and Windows Script Host.
Self-healing NTFS

In previous Windows versions, if the operating system detected corruption in the file system of an NTFS volume, it marked the volume "dirty"; to correct errors on the volume, it had to be taken offline. With self-healing NTFS, an NTFS worker thread is spawned in the background which performs a localized fix-up of damaged data structures, with only the corrupted files/folders remaining unavailable without locking out the entire volume and needing the server to be taken down. The operating system now features S.M.A.R.T. detection techniques to help determine when a hard disk may fail. This feature was first presented within Windows Vista.
Hyper-V
Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based virtualization system, forming a core part of Microsoft's virtualization strategy. It virtualizes servers on an operating system's kernel layer. It can be thought of as partitioning a single physical server into multiple small computational partitions. Hyper-V includes the ability to act as a Xen virtualization hypervisor host allowing Xen-enabled guest operating systems to run virtualized. A beta version of Hyper-V ships with certain x86-64 editions of Windows Server 2008. Microsoft released the final version of Hyper-V on 26 June 2008 as a free download. Also, a standalone version of Hyper-V exists. This version also only supports the x86-64 architectureWhile the x86 editions of Windows Server 2008 cannot run the Hyper-V integrations, they can run the Manager Console and Hyper-V tools.

OVERVIEW:AutomatedVotinSystem-AVS

Proposed

The Automated Voting System is a computerized voting mechanism that enables user to vote for any candidate in an easier and more convenient way. This system will be implemented in a small scale environment more specifically Universities and Schools. AVS prevents multiple voting entries from same user via user identity scanning. A user presents a unique voter’s ID and is recorded in a database. Thus, all voters in the vicinity are recorded in one database as records of their existence. In a university/school in particular, a voter that is not recorded in the schools database is an invalid entry and AVS will not accept any point/s from unknown voter/s.
The database that is the back-end of AVS is impossible to have redundant entry of same ID or user information since the ID is the primary key of an individual and tracks any kind of entry that resembles that of another data. AVS is database dependent that it is functional with the correct record connected to its mechanism.
AVS provides a user-friendly user interface that enables users to have an easy voting process. It has buttons and dialogue boxes that prompt errors of progresses to ensure user stability and consistency. AVS is a distributive system, in cases the AVS is divided into two major sectors: the Administrator’s and the User’s. The Administrator is the main server of the AVS and it will be connected to two (2) or more nodes via LAN connection. All entry and result will be passed on to the server where the moderator is the only one to see the partial or the final result of the election. The user’s accessibility is limited such that the system installed to a node separated from the server offers voting functionality only and doesn’t have any viewing or advance way in, neither they can re-vote or re-edit any of their entry unless prompted by the system to do so. As a start, the candidate also has to fill up a form in the system, serves as a candidacy form for the program to initiate the proper student or candidate to receive a point.
In the Administrators part, the main functionality that is able in administration is the viewing of results, posting the final tally of votes and resetting the system for system reuse. The Moderator cannot modify any entry from the user nor change the existing result from the system. In cases such that the system will be used for another set of candidates, the moderator has a function in resetting the system to its default settings. Where everything is blanked, from candidates up to the points produced, and will need to re-enter another set of election candidates and in some cases another set of data or database to connect to the AVS.