Home Lab ⁽²¹⁾

According to some industry commentators, Broadcom's changes to VMware licensing may drive adoption of alternative hypervisors such as Proxmox. By extension, Proxmox might also be considered as an alternative to other paid-for hypervisors, like Hyper-V. However, whilst tooling and knowledge exists regarding the migration of…

I'm currently experimenting with a refurbished small form factor Dell OptiPlex 5050 as a Hyper-V server in my Homelab. This model of computer is widely and cheaply available and supports 64GB of RAM, making it a cheap and accessible virtualisation host. However, by default Windows…

Although no official guidance or repositories are provided, it is easy to install PowerShell on ARM Mediatek and Snapdragon Chromebooks. Assuming you have the Linux container installed (via Developer Options in Settings) then the ARM build of PowerShell can be installed following a similar method…

I recently purchased an aging Toshiba Portege Z30-A-189 for a bargain price on an internet auction site. The Portege is a lightweight ultra-portable laptop with good battery life and delightful ergonomics; I was lucky enough to use one a daily driver in a previous life,…

I recently purchased an aging Lenovo Thinkstation M92p Tiny from an auction site for a bargain price. It has an i5-3470T processor, 8gb Ram and a 120gb SSD. My intent was to install VMware to host a couple of very lightweight but critical VMs required…

I waste my money so you don't have to? In this article I explore potential uses for a Dell Wyse 3040 in my homelab, and I identify some roles to which it is definitely not well suited. I recently purchased a Dell Wye 3040 Thin…

An article called VMware Tools for Debian 10 arm64 on ESXi-Arm on Virten.net explains that a compiled version of Open VM Tools is not available in repositories for ARM builds of many common guest operating systems. Their workaround is to compile a version from the…

Here is a technique to permanently enable SSH access on ESXi hosts. VMWare warns against leaving SSH access enabled on production servers due to security concerns. However, in my homelab this is an acceptable risk. Using the VMWare Web Interface, do Host > Services >…

The free license option for VMWare ESXi lacks the backup APIs enabled by a vSphere license. Here is a simple script that I use instead to backup my guest VMs on my VMWare ESXi running on a Raspberry Pi 4. The script assumes: Use SSH,…

The low-power Raspberry Pi is an excellent platform for the modest compute requirements of an always-on Active Directory (AD) Domain Controller (DC). However, building a DC from scratch on a Raspberry Pi can be complex, and few options exist for running AD in a container…

A recent experience demonstrated how Denial of Service countermeasures in network switches can prevent VMWare ESXi NFS datastores working. I recently upgraded the network switches in my home lab. By default, my new switches have a denial of service prevention feature that detect the following…

It is easy to change the time zone of your Linux server from the command line interface (CLI). The following technique should work on all systemd-derived distros including Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc. Check your current time zone with the timedatectl command: $ timedatectl Local…

Ventoy is a simple but effective tool that enables multiple bootable ISOs to coexist on a single USB Pendrive. It is convenient and expedient solution to booting hardware using a range of different operating systems. The problems with bootable Pendrives You are probably familiar with…

If you have a restrictive outbound firewall on your network and you wish to enable WhatsApp on connected devices then you will need to permit the following outbound ports and protocols. Typical problems If you find WhatsApp presence and signalling work, but call setup fails,…

Outbound firewalling is an important step towards improving the security of your network, data and users, but common consumer and SME router devices cannot block outbound traffic, leaving many at risk. If commercial solutions are not an option then free open-source firewall software can run…

A significant proportion of your Internet traffic is likely to be concerned with tracking you to serve you with ever more intrusive adverts. Use an Ad Blocker like PiHole to firstly block ads and tracking, and then to build a Protective DNS service to protect…

As part of the TIG Stack, Telegraf is a great way of monitoring infrastructure and applications. However, monitoring environments where Telegraf is not available can be a challenge. Here is an alternative approach to monitoring using CURL instead of Telegraf that is suitable for use…

The Lenovo Miix 320 is a great quality, well performing Windows 10 convertible tablet and laptop device with a removable keyboard. Well reviewed, it is cheap and readily available as a refurbished device, and is a great budget alternative to a Surface Go. However, like…

Here is how I overcame problems configuring dhcpcd.conf on a Raspberry Pi to resolve hosts in subdomains of a local DNS server in my home lab. Dhcpcd The dhcpcd client on a Raspberry Pi is pre-configured to allow easy and quick connection to a simple…

WMWare's vision to push their HyperVisor to the network edge has enabled ESXi to run on small ARM devices such as the Raspberry Pi 4. Having lived with the ESXi 7.0 on Arm Fling on a Raspberry Pi 4 for just over a year now,…

From time to time, Nextcloud may fail to synchronise files because of file locks. Plenty of resources are available on the internet to help clear locks on MySQL databases, but few exist for clearing locks from the default SQLite database that the official Nextcloud Docker…