Category Archives: Home Lab
Home Lab Overview
Since I work with different customers all the time, I am constantly testing things for work in my home lab. When customers and co-workers hear about my lab they often ask what hardware is in the lab. I’m putting this post together so I can point people here and say “this is it.” The current… Read More »
Adding an isolated network to my home lab
Last week I set up a Satellite server in my home lab so I could test out deploying systems via kickstart. I wanted to kickstart the VM’s using DCHP and PXE but I didnt want the DHCP server running on my single flat internal network (I know, I know I just haven’t had time to… Read More »
Configuring Infoblox in the home lab for vRO
Infoblox’s IPAM is an awesome product for IP address management, DHCP, DNS, etc. It is used by lots of companies and is often integrated with vRA/vRO. Because of this, I have a local install of the IPAM in my home lab. Infoblox provides a 60 day trial license for customers to try out the product.… Read More »
Installing Fedora 21 and ESXi 5.5 on my new Shuttle DS81
As I previously wrote, I recently assembled a new workstation for the home lab that I will be using as both a Linux and ESXi host. I’ll be using it as an admin workstation while not traveling (Linux) and then leave it running as a hypervisor in my lab while I’m on the road (ESXi).… Read More »
New Fedora 21 and ESXi Host in the homelab
A while back I wrote about setting up an old Toshiba laptop we had laying around as a workstation to manage my VMware environment including vCO (now named vRO). That laptop has been working well but I wanted something a bit more powerful to use as a permanent Linux workstation as well as possibly dual… Read More »
Repair a vCenter SQL Express Database
The day before yesterday the power flickered at our house and because I had procrastinated installing a UPS in my home lab, my systems all powered off unexpectedly. Yesterday I went out and bought the UPS and powered everything back on but my vCenter instance was throwing SQL errors all over the place in the… Read More »
Linux Desktop for VMware Administration
I recently replaced my daughters aging Toshiba laptop with a used MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro was much faster and she reallylikes working in OS X so it was a great fit for her needs. With the freeing up of the old Toshiba, I thought I’d install a recent Linux distro and see if the… Read More »
VSAN in the home lab
Today I received the 3 mSATA drives I bought from eBay with some NCAA tournament winnings. I got the cheapest mSATA drives I could find which ended up being 32 GB Samsung disks for $25 each with free shipping. I think they were produced for either a Thinkpad or HP laptop but it does not… Read More »
MacBook Pro 8,3 Linux Success… Kinda
In my previous post about my frustration getting Linux installed on my 8,3 MacBook Pro I mentioned that I could not get an installer to boot. Well, with Open SuSE 12.1 I was able to finally get the installer to load and got Linux installed! Most things are working and the system is usable under… Read More »