Homelab - Dave Jansen

Quick: Use badblocks to check larger hard drives (8TB+)

Checking newly purchased hard drives can be a smart move, especially before adding them to a pool. While this does not guarantee there won't be any issues, it might help catch some before they could potentially cause for a headache day. I recently purchased two additional drives in preparation for

Homelab

Homelab re-organization project conclusions

Several months ago I began a rather extensive homelab re-organization project, which I started documenting here on my blog as-well. Since it has been a while since I last posted an update, I wanted to gather more recent progress updates into one update post. Let's get to it. What started

Homelab

Installing Noctua 40mm fans in my router

To help reduce noise I've been wanting to replace the stock fans (Yate Loon D40SM-12C) that come with the HCiPC Router with something more quiet. I had to wait until I was able to move some services I was running on my dev server before I could do so. Fortunately,

Homelab

Installing two PERC H200s

Ever since acquiring the Dell R510 —which came with a PERC H700— it was my intention to replace it with an often-recommended H200. This particular card is popular because it can be found relatively affordably, and it can be flashed to so-called IT mode, which means the card passes all

Homelab

My basic OPNsense configuration

Ever since first setting up my home's network I wanted to try using OPNsense. Since I was very new to both this and pfSense I was struggling to figure things out in a timely fashion, and ended up going with a basic pfSense setup for my homelab and office side

Homelab

Homelab re-organization project

Over the next few posts I will be going in more detail into what I have been doing lately to re-organize my homelab. My purpose for the re-organization is to set the software up the "right" way, reduce clutter, and equally importantly, to reduce power consumption. Posts in this seriesMy

Homelab

Recommended settings for Windows 10 and 2019 Server on Proxmox

Installing most operating systems in a virtual machine is pretty straight-forward these days, but for Windows specifically there are a few recommended settings and steps to get the best out of your virtual machine. And as I keep forgetting these steps myself too, I'm jotting them down here for future

Learn With Me

Redistributing Memory — Learn With Me Ep.4

A short while ago I set out to more properly distribute and balance the RAM I have available between my servers. I originally had 24GB of unregistered RAM in the Dell R510, which I have running 24/7. In another —since sold— spare server I had 32GB of registered memory,

Learn With Me

Configuring VLANs and spinning up pfSense — Learn With Me Ep.3

As it turns out, preparing to emigrate (back?), leaving the company I co-founded, and starting the search for my next work opportunity takes up quite a bit of time. So episode three ended up taking quite a bit longer to complete than I anticipated. Whoops. Sorry about that. But, fortunately,

Homelab

D-Link DGS-1210-28 Smart Managed Switch Brief Hardware Overview

For anyone in the market of a managed switch for home(lab) or small office use, the DGS-1210 is likely to pop up as a possible consideration. While it is not the latest and greatest, it certainly checks off a few potentially important checkbox items. For my use case

Homelab

Dell R510 2U Server Hardware Overview

As you may have seen in some of my previous posts, I have a few servers at home. These serve several purposes, most of which are directly or indirectly related to me bettering myself, learning more about server soft- and hardware, and for use in project development. The Dell R510

Learn With Me

Fiddling with the network cables — Learn With Me Ep.2

A shorter, kind of half-an-episode in the process of complicating my home network for the sake of learning things. Today we’re taking a short look at and moving some cables around, so that I can properly set up the VLANs I want, and also set up pfSense for my

Learn With Me

Introduction, VLANs & pfSense — Learn With Me Ep.1

A little something else. I have been exploring and learning about networks, servers and everything related in my free time to broaden my skillset and because it's an interesting topic to me. For many of these things I start off having no clue where to begin or what to do.

Homelab

Proxmox VE 5.3

The new version of Proxmox was released a few days ago, and brings several very nice new features with it. For me the most interesting is that they've added PCI passthrough support in the Web UI (you'd have to manually edit your VM configuration files previously), but there's several other

Homelab

Server Padding

Due to part luck and part perseverance from a colleague I somewhat quickly ended up with several servers. My original plan was to purchase just the one, but these things have a way of going in different routes, so four(-ish) servers later, I now have a small stack of

Homelab

HCiPC B203-1 HCL-SD525-6LA Router/PC Hardware Overview

For my increasingly complicated interesting home setup I wanted to explore setting up a more robust router. One that I could use for both my home network —meaning the usual home-type devices; Apple TV, PS4, mobile phones, et cetera– as-well as my servers. I also wanted to combine several tasks

Homelab

Video: Storage Server CPU And Memory Upgrades & New Network Cables

When I got the Dell R510 it came with two Intel Xeon L5520s. I wanted to go even more lower powered (the plan is to have it running 24/7), so I got two L5630s. While the L5520 has a TDP of 60 Watts, the L5630 is 40 Watts, so