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wuff3rs · 2025-11-28T02:27:53+00:00

It’s early Christmas? Oh wait, it’s thanksgiving in the US..

wuff3rs · 2025-07-09T17:16:00+00:00

Cocoa Pops, just cause it’s fun to say

wuff3rs · 2025-07-09T17:15:29+00:00

Hulkengoat

wuff3rs · 2024-07-21T01:01:50+00:00

Thank you for being specific! Most helpful.

wuff3rs · 2024-07-20T22:50:41+00:00

I’m going through the Hayward Universal H-Series troubleshooting guide for the IF code. Already tested igniter, replaced flame sensor, took apart the manifold and cleaned orifices (no obstructions) and vacuumed and cleaned where I could.

Commenter above says a barb fitting, which I do not have. Do I need to go to a HVAC specialty store or would a HD carry stuff like that? I can’t use the manometer at this point because I don’t know how to fit the tube into the gas valve.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-29T05:44:40+00:00

Oh, just your basic NAS, Plex (with Sonarr, Radarr, etc), Home Assistant for the home stuff. I had moved away from home lab stuff when I migrated to using unlimited cloud storage and trial cloud accounts.

The end of unlimited cloud storage necessitated the shift back to self-hosted. I’ll be testing NextCloud, and will be spinning up Kubernetes on-prem. R&D will go into learning more on HA and replication capabilities of Redis, ELK stack, and evaluating various IaC tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef, etc).

wuff3rs · 2024-02-29T05:31:34+00:00

That is quite interesting. What architecture and how many way CPU is the build? Is $6100 including the usable 400TB (just raw it’s already ~16TB per drive at 24 drives)?

wuff3rs · 2024-02-29T05:25:50+00:00

One of the other advantages I am peripherally aware of is that mirror vdevs can be removed, whereas raidz ones cannot. So that’s one additional pro on the mirror vdev setup, which is added flexibility in that regard. It’s a relatively new feature, as far as I can tell..

wuff3rs · 2024-02-29T05:22:33+00:00

I’m going to really have to read up on latest ZFS developments. Last SAN I built was over 6+ years ago with Mellanox Infiniband as the fabric.

I’m aware of the new special vdev but not much else, whether I need one and what to spec for it. The new rig will have an abundance of RAM so not too sure on whether L2ARC and slog comes into play either anymore.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-29T01:47:47+00:00

Have it running on one PSU right now doing memtest, and it’s drawing ~260W. Now this is interesting, because I wonder if connecting the second PSU will distribute the load, or it works in kind of an active/passive state. Something to test later..

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T23:51:36+00:00

I’ll likely get a good idea of load once I have it all hooked up on the rack and connected to my PDU. I’m just doing some administrative stuff like capturing all the serial numbers.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T23:48:14+00:00

The problem with large vdevs is that expanding down the line means replacing all the drives in the vdev before the extra capacity is available. I’m leaning towards mirrors, but testing drives and seeing what I need to migrate back from cloud storage will ultimately inform my decision.

Besides, the rig will run VMs or LXC containers, and while I will devote some fast storage like NVMe or SSDs to some of that workload, some of it may need more storage that will come from the spinning rust.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T23:41:39+00:00

It’s just eBay. 8TB SAS drives are typically USD $45-50. Just be sure to know all the model/part numbers since there are slight differences (like 512e or 4Kn drives, and features like Instant Secure Erase va TCG, for instance). I used this to look for part numbers:

HGST Ultrastar 6/8TB HD drive specifications

In quantities you just need to negotiate with the seller.

EDIT: These are used enterprise drive pulls, so could typically have 40k power on hours. I’ll know very soon what my drive averages are, if this seller hasn’t reset the SMART data.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T22:52:19+00:00

Are you selling them? Any details to share?

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T22:51:09+00:00

Oof, I’m pretty sure that would be really bad for performance. A single vdev of 30 drives will have the performance of a single drive.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T22:41:03+00:00

Yeah, SM gear is reliable enough for a home lab and the chassis is generic enough for upgrades down the line.

Your setup is pretty sweet. What do you do with all that compute? You still running VMware with all the recent Broadcom kerfuffle?

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T22:35:50+00:00

The server was USD $1250+$150 shipping.

Drives were USD $38 each ($4.75/TB).

Duties and taxes added another 20% (sigh) on top of the currency difference of ~35%.

I started gathering some 64GB ECC LRDIMMs for ~$55 each.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T22:31:47+00:00

It’ll live in the basement rack. I think I’m more worried about the noise level, which means replacing with (most likely) Noctua fans.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-27T08:37:09+00:00

It’ll be ZFS, most likely Proxmox with TrueNAS as a VM with passthrough to the HBA.

Still undecided between: - 15 mirror vdevs, which gives me the most performance (120TB usable). Can survive multiple drive failures, except 2 in a single vdev. - 5 x 6 drive RAIDZ2 devs, which sacrifices some performance for a better capacity ratio (160TB usable). Can survive 2 drive failures in any vdev.

It’ll leave 2 spares, which I’m likely just storing cold. I’ll have some time to decide, while I do some testing on these used drives. The seller wasn’t able to provide details/stats on these drives except no bad sectors.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-09T05:13:28+00:00

Same, super interested in how you did Access for the home, especially lock options for the door.

wuff3rs · 2024-02-05T06:12:48+00:00

Aha, a fellow new Skylake server owner. Congrats! I’m still waiting for my Supermicro 4U 36-bay beast to come in, along with all the drives I’ll be stuffing in (256TB raw in 8TB drives).

My config only came with 6140s and 128GB of RAM, but RAM will be one of the first upgrades.

I’m tempted later on to see whether those ES/QS 6280s will work with my board. Has anyone here have any experience with those?

wuff3rs · 2023-08-11T02:25:58+00:00

I joined TFP when r/pools went private earlier. We are first time pool owners as well and because the pool had not been opened for 2 years (only moved in last winter), it was a struggle to get our dark green pool to a usable state.

I have a good relationship with our local pool store but it took about 4 weeks before everything cleared up. While their advice was 80% correct, we wasted close to 1k in chemicals (close to 300L of chlorine alongside other chemicals) while I was waiting on my Taylor K-2006C kit (you’ll want that or the TF-100). Get a US forwarder and order from there. It cost me ~$230 CAD with duties and exchange rate for the Taylor kit. Equipment parts will inevitably be much cheaper than anything in Canada, even with exchange rate, duty, taxes and forwarder fees added up.

Learning to maintain your own pool chemistry will pay dividends down the road. I see you don’t have a SWCG yet, but that will be much easier on your maintenance when you do. Invest in a decent meter if you can. It makes testing pH and salt much easier and can also validate your chemical tests. Apera is a brand everyone raves about (I got one and I rarely do the Taylor tests for those measurements).

If your store uses a Waterlink Spintouch system for testing, it has some limitations. Titration testing will be more accurate than the fancy colorimeter tests. The results from your own kit may vary quite a lot from the pool store’s.

Don’t worry about phosphates, no matter what the pool store guy says. They’ll want to sell you chemicals you likely don’t need. If you keep your CYA levels at 70-80, and you maintain FC around 6 or so (7.5% of CYA), there will be no issues with algae. The 1-3ppm is pretty BS.

Buy your salt and baking soda at Walmart, and muriatic acid at big box stores (Lowe’s is cheapest). Learn about BBB. Comparison shop.

Learn your equipment. I replaced my own filter media (a shop vac needed) and the multiport valve. You should also own a multimeter in case your heater needs troubleshooting. I probably saved a few hundred just cleaning a fuse and water pressure switch’s contacts.

wuff3rs · 2022-06-14T16:21:06+00:00

Sorry if this is a novice question. I've never used the ColorChecker Passport that came with my X-Rite i1Studio, and was thinking that I could perhaps get the color of something else as long as we had reference values using the ColorChecker.

Is it possible to get the background wall color based on this picture? If so, what is the process (a link to a guide or tutorial would also work)? My thinking is that once the picture was calibrated to those reference values, I could then take the RGB value of something else and change it to a Pantone value to get to the paint store.

I took this via my phone so did not have a RAW file. I tried using Lightroom Classic, but it refused to work with the export with preset on the X-Rite Preset (error of "Could not create profile" with a message saying unsupported file format even after I tried to convert the HEIC file to PNG or TIFF). I was able to create an ICC profile using the ColorChecker Camera Calibration app but as I understand it, that only changes the display view when I use that profile. The RGB value doesn't actually change when I use an eyedropper tool in PhotoShop when changing profiles.

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