I’ve been planning to do some network testing and deploy some new storage for VMware vSphere in the home lab. My Synology NAS boxes (DS1513+ and DS1813+) have good performance but are limited to four 1GbE ports each, and my budget won’t allow a 10GbE-capable Synology this spring. [See below for a note on those $499 Synology systems on Amazon.] Continue reading
For those of you not of a certain age… a bit of a soundtrack for this post.
I wrote last month about the “antsle” “personal cloud server,” and a few people on Minds had a brisk but respectful debate over whether it was cloud, and whether there was more to cloud than cloud storage (i.e. Dropbox, Box, Owncloud, OneDrive, Sugarsync, etc).
It got me to thinking about how I’d define “cloud” and why others feel differently. So here’s a bit of a soft-topic consideration for you along the way.
I was first exposed to the buzzword around 2009, when a major PC and IT gear reseller from the midwest was trying to convince me on every call and email thread that I should buy The Cloud(tm). My rep never could tell me why, or what problem it would solve, a common shortcoming of quota-bound sales reps. I think the closest to a justification I ever got was “Just give a try, you’ll be able to tell where you can use it.” And I didn’t.
As the current decade rolled along, anyone running the server side of a client/server model called themselves The Cloud(tm). And of course, Amazon Web Services and other players came along to give their own definitions and market shares to the matter.
Today, at its extreme interpretation, anything not running in focus on your current personal device is probably considered “cloud” by someone. And to be fair to antsle, that’s where they fit in a way. Continue reading
Most of you know I don’t shy away from building (or refurbishing) my own computers. I used to draw the line at laptops, but in the last couple of years I’ve even rebuilt a few stripped-for-parts Dell and Toshiba laptops for the fun of it. Warped definition of “fun,” I’ll admit.
So when I saw a Facebook ad for a “cloud server” called “antsle,” I was curious but unconvinced. It was something like this:
The idea is you’re buying a compact, fanless, silent microserver that, in addition to some fault-tolerant hardware (mirrored SSD, ECC RAM), includes a proprietary user interface for managing and monitoring containers and virtual machines. You can cram up to 64GB of RAM in there, and while it only holds two internal drives, you can add more via USB 2.0 or USB 3.0, for up to 16TB of officially supported capacity. Not too bad, but I’ve been known to be cheap and/or resourceful, so I priced out a similar configuration assuming I’d build it myself. Continue reading
After being chosen as a VMware vExpert for 2017 this month, I was inspired to get working on refreshing my vSphere “homelab” environment despite a busy travel month in late February/early March. This won’t be a deep technical dive into lab building; rather, I just wanted to share some ideas and adventures from my lab gear accumulation over the past year.
As a disclosure, while I do work for Cisco, my vExpert status and homelab building are at most peripherally-connected (the homelab at home connects to a Meraki switch whose license I get an employee discount on, for example). And even though I’m occasionally surprised when I use older higher end Dell or HP gear, it’s not a conflict of interest or an out-of-bounds effort. It’s just what I get a great deal on at local used hardware shops from time to time.
Also read: New Hardware thoughts for home labs (Winter 2013)
Stock Photo of a Dell C6100 chassis
My friend John Obeto pointed out some pre-release coverage of Satechi’s new USB-C power meter a week or so ago. I’ve had a number of different USB-A (standard port) testers and meters for a while, but with more devices coming into rsts11 headquarters with Type C connections (including the XPS 13 9350 and XPS 15 9550, Apple’s 12″ Macbook, the ASUS Zenpad Z10 from Verizon, and the Nexus 6P by Huawei and Google), I’ve wanted to look at power consumption beyond what an A-to-C adapter could reveal.
For those of you new to USB-C, it’s designed (in part) to be a universal connector for power and data, incorporating high speed data in a connector shared with Thunderbolt 3 (40gbit capability), a reversible connector like Apple Lightning, and some daisy-chaining capabilities like Thunderbolt 2. The standard allows for up to 100W of power, although the highest powered adapters I’ve found are 60W. The Dell Thunderbolt 3 docking station has a non-standard option beyond this; when you’re connected to a recognized Dell device it will bump the power up to 130W just like the stock XPS 15 adapter.
But the catch is that USB-A power supplies are generally limited to 2.4A at 5V, with some exceptions for Qualcomm Quickcharge and Samsung Adaptive Fast Charging and the like (which can go to 9V or 12V on compatible devices). So most USB-A power meters will only show/handle 2.4A at 5V, or 12 watts. My smaller USB-C devices easily pull 15W whereas the XPS 15 should pull a lot more than that. Continue reading
