Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between
My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together
Category Archives: vTARDIS
HP ML115 G5 fans noisy following firmware upgrade
Posted by on October 4, 2011
As part of my UK VMUG tour preparation I am rebuilding the vTARDIS to the GA build of vSphere, part of this required updating the firmware of my ML115 G5 server. You can download the latest BIOS upgrade here (I had to use the USB key method) as I don’t have a compatible OS [...]
vTARDIS 5 at a VMUG near you…
Posted by on October 3, 2011
I am pleased to announce that I will be giving a session on my updated vTARDIS 5 home lab environment at two upcoming VMUGs in the UK (for more background vTARDIS 5 page here) Dates and links for registration as follows if you want to come an see it in action, I’ll be doing plenty [...]
vTARDIS.next runs on vSphere 5.0
Posted by on May 27, 2011
I have been working furiously on an updated version of the vTARDIS based around vSphere 5, and now it’s in the open (I was on the heavily NDA’d beta programme) the goal is the same: lowest cost possible physical hardware, but the ability to build complex production like ESX environments and run large amounts [...]
vSphere Host cannot enter Standby mode using DPM and WoL
Posted by on February 10, 2011
I encountered this error in my lab recently, I previously wrote about how I was able to use DPM in my home lab, I’ve recently re-built it into a different configuration but found that I was no longer able to use just Wake on LAN (WoL) to put idle cluster hosts into standby. I [...]
Home Labbers beware of using Western Digital SATA HDDs with a RAID Controller
Posted by on January 31, 2011
I recently came across a post on my favourite car forum (pistonheads.com) asking about the best home NAS solution – original link here. What I found interesting was a link to a page on the Western Digital support site stating that desktop versions of their hard drives should not be used in a RAID configuration [...]
How to Configure a Port Based VLAN on an HP Procurve 1810G Switch
Posted by on January 27, 2011
I have a new switch for my home lab as I was struggling with port count and I managed to get a good deal on eBay for a 24-port version – it’s also fan-less so totally silent which is nice as it lives in my home office. I am re-building my home lab again (I’m [...]
Nexentastor CE performance not as good as expected with SSD Cache check it is actually working
Posted by on January 19, 2011
I encountered this problem in my lab – I have the following configuration physically installed on an HP Microserver for testing (I will probably put it into a VM later on however) 1 x 8Gb USB flash drive holding the boot OS And the following configured into a single volume, accessed over NFSv3 (see this [...]
Nexentastor, When 1Gb just isn’t enough
Posted by on January 18, 2011
I have been trying to get my Nexentastor SSD/SATA hybrid NAS working this last week and I’ve found that the web UI grinds to a halt sometimes for me, I couldn’t find a UNIX ‘top’ equivalent quickly but the diagnostic reports that you can generate from the setup menu command line did indicate that [...]
Building a Fast and Cheap NAS for your vSphere Home Lab with Nexentastor
Posted by on January 11, 2011
My home lab is always expanding and evolving – no sooner have I started writing up the vTARDIS.cloud configuration than something shiny and new catches my eye! fear not I will be publishing the vTARDIS configuration notes over the next 2 months, however in the meantime I have noticed that my IX4-200d NAS has [...]
vTARDIS Cloud
Posted by on November 4, 2010
Following on from my recent VMworld Europe user award I have mentioned that I’ve been working on a scaled out version of the vTARDIS, this post will act as the index for this project, there is a lot of ground to cover in terms of it’s configuration. Disclosure/Disclaimer – I am a VMware employee, this [...]
