Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between
My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together
Category Archives: Home Network
8 Node ESXi Cluster running 60 Virtual Machines – all Running from a Single 500GBP Physical Server
Posted by on February 25, 2010
I am currently presenting a follow-up to my previous vTARDIS session for the London VMware Users Group where I demonstrated a 2-node ESX cluster on cheap PC-grade hardware (ML-115g5). The goal of this build is to create a system you can use for VCP and VCDX type study without spending thousands on normal production [...]
New Home Lab Design
Posted by on April 2, 2009
I have had a lab/test setup at home for over 15 years now, it’s proven invaluable to keep my skills up to date and help me with study towards the various certifications I’ve had to pass for work, plus I’m a geek at heart and I love this stuff over the years it’s grown [...]
Make Your own Offline Windows Update CD/DVD
Posted by on February 12, 2008
What a handy tool; if you download the app you can select which Microsoft OS/Applications you need patches for and it will download them all via the Windows online catalog to a source directory and then compile a script to auto install them all – it will even generate a .ISO file and handle dependencies [...]
Performance Update on Cheap ESX PC
Posted by on February 10, 2008
I’ve not done anything with my home ESX server this week as I’ve been busy with work; so this will be interesting – it’s been powered up all the time with all the VM’s spinning; but not doing very much. CPU Utilisation Memory Utilisation Disk Utilisation Whist running this set of VMs.. (the CPU [...]
Split Screen Browsing with Firefox
Posted by on February 7, 2008
My home office setup has a 20″ widescreen Dell TFT which I use with my laptop an elevated docking station – my laptop has a rather low screen resolution as it’s quite small so this is a great dual monitor setup. The widescreen is handy for keeping a web browser open for referring to [...]
Problems Restoring a non-SysPrep Vista Image Using DiskPart & ImageX
Posted by on February 3, 2008
Goal: keep a single .WIM file, Multiple instances of the same build in the .WIM file Build001 non-sysprep’d version for maintenence with all latest patches and corp apps Build002 sysprep but no domain for home workers/3rd party Build003 sysprep + domain joining and scripted OOBE for corp machines Build004…etc. tweaks to the sysprep – [...]
Making Something Run When a Windows PE 2.0 CD/DVD Starts.
Posted by on February 3, 2008
I need a DVD that automatically applies a .WIM image when WinPE boots – no prompts; just want to press F9 for the BIOS Boot menu and walk away until build is finished. I built a WinPE 2.0 image the usual way, but I want to add files to it (easy with PowerISO) but [...]
Performance on a cheap ESX PC
Posted by on February 1, 2008
I thought I’d post some performance graphs from my cheap HP D530 ESX server using the Virtual Centre console (which incidentally, is good for getting this info quickly and simply). Screenshot of the UI for querying performance stats. View of currently running VMs – a mix of Windows 2003/2008 VMs Current Overall ESX Host [...]
Update on the Cheap ESX Home Server
Posted by on January 31, 2008
All running well, we had a power cut the other day but the PC didn’t automatically power back on when power was restored; I wonder if there is a BIOS setting for that – PC’s always used to have something along those lines. Bit of manual intervention to switch it on and it was [...]
