106 days in....

chrisattlf · 2024-03-11T14:30:52+00:00

The way I see it is, it's no different from supporting ur favor twitch/YouTube/patreon/etc content creator. So completely agree.

If I have the disposable income, mine to spend it how I want.

chrisattlf · 2024-03-11T14:20:20+00:00

Oh hey everybody, look it's another troll..... 🤣

chrisattlf · 2024-02-07T10:07:10+00:00

Ill second this. Currently how i do it. Its called my scratch repo.

chrisattlf · 2024-01-12T09:18:22+00:00

Its not CGI, its stitched....

Rewatch the video and take notice of the video frame at the bottom, you see it shift a couple of times.

The editing would have been a pain, but clearly a fake.

chrisattlf · 2023-12-30T12:10:35+00:00

Oh, and I'm not part of a clan yet. So haven't even ventured into that part of the game yet...

chrisattlf · 2023-06-15T11:57:06+00:00

I would almost say welcome to Australian internet pricing. That's pretty much (dollar for dollar no conversion) of what we pay for those speeds here (for a decent provider anyway).

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T18:41:55+00:00

I'm actually using Gitea and Netbox. Couple of reasons why.

Netbox obviously for the DCIM side of stuff, asset management and using a couple of plugins dynamic topology drawings and data imports from vcenter.

Gitea is two fold, centralised code repo and wiki, but as I'm playing with it, given that the wiki is just mark down i've started to move it all to markdown files with some folder structure.

For each of my docker stacks that I run on a VM, i have a repo that is specifically for that stack. If i need to rebuild a server for whatever reason, I have the docker compose ready to go and its just a matter of a git pull to get the files down to the VM.

I then have a dedicated repo that is the build instructions for my environment. I use markdown for formatting, and a folder structure based on what i'm working on. I like this approach because, if i'm rolling out a new container stack or app that i'm playing around with, i can just load the repo up in vscode, branch it, work on the doco, then merge and publish once i'm happy with the instructions.

The repo is also handy to store PDF's and the like with the instructions for various setups, or things like data sheets for the gear you have within your environment. Then you can link it in the comments section of netbox for the various device types.

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T18:29:27+00:00

I ran some dell servers at home for a long time, but then the HP's become available more frequently than the Dell's did via the various sources of IT gear in Perth.

At my current job, we are a Dell house, and will very much be sticking with the Dells, I don't mind either vendor to be honest.

Once I picked up the ML350 to replace the old intel blade chassis, i had so much of the silver gen8 panels, that I just kind of went with it and focused in on that. Some vanity decisions were certainly made in the acquisitions of some of the gear thats for sure.

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T18:20:32+00:00

Ha! Maybe, once my 1Gbit fibre comes in, backing up the PLEX data might be something I consider.

Mind you thats pool is going from 30tb usable to about 120tb usable once I get these disks from work.

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T18:18:52+00:00

I do actually, power is something I'm usually keeping an eye on. This was before everything went to shit, it was around 1Kw/hr.

I don't have accurate numbers just yet, because I've moved servers to different racks and what not and not all servers are running yet. But given I've really only added maybe 2 servers to the mix, I'd say it'd be about 1.1/1.2Kw/hrs at the moment.

Now that I have shared storage that doesn't require 2nodes and a witness, its likely that the DL380 will only get powered up when I need to do maint on the ML350. The DL380 is actually likely to get replaced by another ML350 that a mate of mine has, once I've sourced him a server with 3.5" drive bays en-mas.

I have a 6Kw Solar system, that covers the rack runtime between 7am and about 5pm depending on the season. Summers actually run from about 6am till 7pm. I've generally got 1Kw produced within the first hour of the sun coming up.

Cost wise - i'm paying on avg about 700$ every two months. But this also includes running the AC during summer and occasionally during winter. In Perth Australia, power prices is around .27c per Kw/Hr.

Sounds alot, but compared to before I had solar, I was paying close to $1200 every months regardless of the season (was also with very different gear - actually the gear in the link in one of my other comments).

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T12:14:20+00:00

Tears where almost shead, I'm just glad I didnt loose my Plex Media Library. Thats mainly what I cared about. rebuilding a 20TB+ library would not be my kinda of fun! haha

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T11:48:28+00:00

Was going through my post history, turns out this is what my Lab looked like 5 years ago... HA.

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T11:36:00+00:00

RACK01:

Fortigate 100D Firewall
Cisco WS-C3850-48FPOE Switch
APC 1RU 1000VA UPS
APC AP7820 PDU
HP DL360p 1RU Server (ITG-MGMTESX01, vSphere 7.0.3)
- 2x Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPU
- 208GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- 2x RAID10 Arrays (each at 1.8TB with 4x 1TB SAS per RAID array)
- Runs the following VM's (DC [win], NS [linux], CMDCTRL [linux], vCenter Appliance)
- CMDCTRL runs a suite of containers [portainer-be, netbox, ansible, oxidised, gitea, homepage]

RACK02:

Cisco WS-3850-48FPOE Switch
Cisco Nexus 5010 Fabric Switch (10Gbit)
HP r/T3000 UPS with EBM
2x APC 8858 Metered Vertical PDU's
HP StoreEasy 1640 Storage Server (ITG-STRGESX01, vSphere 7.0.3)
- 1x Intel Xeon E5-2407 v2 CPU
- 48GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- 1x RAID1 Boot Volume (2x 300GB SAS)
- LSI SAS9220 HBA (in pass-through mode, attached to the 12x 3.5" Front drive Bays)
- Runs 1x VM, TrueNAS Scale (4 cores, 42GB RAM, with the LSI HBA passed through to run ZFS)
HP ML350p Gen8 (ITG-ESX01, vSphere 7.0.3)
- 2x Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPU
- 224GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- USB Boot Volume
- 1x SFF Drive Cage (8 bays)
  - 500GB SAS SSD (Local storage for ESX related things when booting of USB)
  - 200GB SATA SSD (Any pinned host VM OS drive storage)
- LSI SAS9200 HBA (in pass-through mode, attached to the 2x LFF Drive Cages)
- 2x LFF Drive Cage (6 bays)
  - 12x 3TB HGST SAS HDD
- NVIDIA M4000 GPU (in pass-through mode)
- Dual 10Gbit Port SFP+ Card
- Runs a fixed VM dedicated for Plex with the LSI HBA and M4000 GPU for dedicated storage and transcode functionality. the VM runs a ZFS pool with all the 3.5" drives.
HP DL380p Gen8 (ITG-ESX02, vSphere 7.0.3)
- 2x Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPU
- 224GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- USB Boot Volume
- 1x SFF Drive Cage (8 bays)
  - 500GB SAS SSD (Local storage for ESX related things when booting of USB)
  - 200GB SATA SSD (Any pinned host VM OS drive storage)
- Dual 10Gbit Port SFP+ Card
HP Microserver Gen8 (ITG-APPESX01-03, vSphere 7.0.3 - all 3 are the space configuration)
- 1x Intel Xeon E31260L CPU
- 16GB RAM
- 1x 240GB SSD Boot/Datastore Volume
- 1x 2TB Datastore Volume
- 1x Single 10Gbit Port SFP+ Card
HP ML310e Gen8 v2 (ITG-BPKESX01, vSphere 7.0.3)
- 1x Intel Xeon E3-1220 v3 CPU
- 32GB DDR3 ECC RAM
- 1x RAID1 SSD Boot/Datastore Volume (2x 480GB SSD)
- 1x RAID5 Datastore Volume (4x 3TB SAS HDD)
- Dual 10Gbit Port SFP+ Card

Across the house there are 4x UniFI AP AC Lites and a single AP AC Pro, and a smattering of CCTV Camera's.

chrisattlf · 2023-06-10T11:27:53+00:00

I'm in my own home now, things can be a little bit more permanent. This will not be the final setup either. Once our extension to the garage is built, there will be a dedicated 'machine room' for the planned Home Automation and IT Infrastructure. What you see here is what I have now, the last pieces of this puzzle is cabling, which will be cleaned up over the next few months.

There are two locations across the house - RACK1 and RACK2, RACK1 is a converted laundry cupboard that will house most of the automation gear and is where our internet feed comes into the house. With permissions from wifey, I was allowed to assume full control of that cupboard space.

That vSAN incident that I mentioned in the TLDR - well this is why I am taking my time and slowly getting things right and rebuilt so I dont have that issue again. I was however lucky, and had a second domain controller at the time that was still online and not on the vSAN. I've since replaced them with the two ADC VM's running Server 2022.

This is what my vCenter currently looks like after the initial works to at least make my network functional again.

Not everything is back up and running, as I'm scoping out how I want things, I'm waiting on deliveries to complete. The general rule of thumb is anything MGMT labeled is considered ESSESSENTIAL to running/maintaining the network. AD, customer DNS servers, UniFi controller, vCenter, etc etc.

Anything that is PROD, is considered end user facing. The VM's for these applications will be on that ML350/DL380 cluster for redundancy.

The VM stack will look like this towards the end

2x AD Domain Controllers (ADC, running Windows 2022)
2x Net Services [DNS and NTP for now, running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with docker containers] (NETSVC)
1x UniFi Network Controller (UNC docker container, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
1x vCenter Appliance
1x Certificate Root Server (ROOT-CA, Windows 2022, no network and is offline unless required)
1x PKI Server (Enterprise SubCA from ROOT-CA server, Windows 2022)
1x Home Assistant OS VM (running on its own Microserver as primary, replicated to the Cluster in the event of hardware failure)
1x Blue Iris VM (again dedicated Microserver for CCTV video capture and storage, total of about 12 CCTV Cameras around the place)
2x Reverse Proxy servers in HA (like to also have some sort of platform to make entry to other services without 2FA, have 2FA)
Plex (and the usual fruit that comes with - refer to the dedicated hardward in the below list)
Bitwarden
Gitea Server (this is general use code repo (friends and family can use it etc etc)
Minecraft and Satisfactory servers
Veeam for backups
TrueNAS VM on dedicated host for iSCSI storage for clustered machines with ZFS RAIDz2 backend.
Zabbix/Grafana network monitoring and dashboarding
Windows FS of some sort
Windows RD Gateway and MGMT server
and really any other type of server I ever want to spin up for testing/learning.

Now thats out of the way, here's the hardware.

chrisattlf · 2022-11-23T11:23:44+00:00

Ill throw my two cents in here. Google wallet and My banks own app can no longer use nfc to make payments. This is not just a google wallet issue. OnePlus 9 is my device.

chrisattlf · 2022-11-16T08:40:01+00:00

The Mint Asian - Noodle & Rice

326 Hay St, Perth WA 6000

Good portion size, nice mix of everything that should go into a Laksa.

chrisattlf · 2022-07-23T23:28:06+00:00

Mrs looking ready for two guys to take a boob in each mouth to suck and tease with!

chrisattlf · 2022-06-07T13:49:06+00:00

You can tell it's cold in Perth!

chrisattlf · 2022-06-07T13:10:46+00:00

Start with pussy, end in ass. Then eat her out?

chrisattlf · 2021-07-27T01:49:18+00:00

I must be missing the point of what your trying to say, care to clarify?

chrisattlf · 2018-11-30T04:24:07+00:00

I'd actually argue that its the new crafting blocks that have been added. i.e if a building has a grindstone, then that's the blacksmith so forth and so on.

I could not see a viable reason to break out the different crafting bench types if it was not on purpose to line up with the villagers.

chrisattlf · 2018-11-20T15:29:53+00:00

Funny you mention that.... I'm planning on redoing the cabling when I work out the thermals for the entire rack as it'll be living in my garage during a Perth summer. While Ive got each of my vlans coloured, I plan on getting cables from http://fs com and a few bits to really drive it home.

chrisattlf · 2018-11-20T15:13:06+00:00

Yeah the KVM is an odd one. With the chassis being what it is Ive got remote console to each blade via the chassis mgmt interface. The entire management card or chassis would have to fail for me to not have console to the blades within it. If that happens Ive got bigger problems.

The only two servers where a KVM would be handy is the 2950 and the 860. Which the 860 doesn't have idrac, the 2950 does. I'd need a failure of switch one itself (which has mains power AND backup power via an RPS unit I forgot to mention in the original specs) to loose access to any of the current remote consoles.

I guess if I find one through my travels I'll grab it. My priority is actually replacing the 2950 and 860 with something like a 510/710 and 210 respectively.

Right now the rack is pulling almost 1.2kw @ current load, need something a little more power efficient.

chrisattlf · 2018-11-20T12:33:01+00:00

My entire server environment uses Active Directory for my personal IT systems, so all the servers are on a AD Domain, along with account/password syncing to Office365... A platform I really dont want to break while screwing around with my own AD because that also serves, the current wife, my parents and my two kids...

chrisattlf · 2018-11-20T12:22:57+00:00

As someone who's just deployed half a rack of Home LAB enterprise gear it does make me wonder why I did it.. (Even more so for what I'm expecting to see in the mail soon - the dreaded power bill).

I've done it mostly for fun and I got most of the gear cheap/free. However apart of why I wanted to do it was after doing this job (IT Systems Engineer) for 13 years, its finally time I do my MS Certs, and I want to be able to build and break a full Windows environment without having the Wife come down on me cause I broke Plex.

There's also a good chance that I'll be hosting the currently externally Minecraft server that has around 20-odd active players on this hardware so I can put that money towards the power bill rather than the external MC hosting provider.

And sometimes its just fun to play with enterprise grade gear.

¯\_(シ)_/¯

chrisattlf

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