Plane Tales - why my iPhone 7 Plus was delivered to the airport At 3am on Friday, September 9th, one of my sons and I awoke to place orders for my extended family's iPhone 7 Plus upgrades from our iPhone 6 Plus. Despite getting all the orders completed from 3:18am to 3:43am, the estimated wait…
Josh @jcefidel, about your tweet, pictured at right, I'm honored! Loaner status (not Loner status ;-) Unfortunately, despite my attempts to reach Samsung PR, and my visits to their booth at VMworld 2015 and VMworld 2016, I have failed to secure any test samples. In a perfect world, I'd be…
I'm honored to know Ariel Sanchez (@arielsanchezmor) for some years now, and even captured a bit of his signature happiness on camera at last year's VMworld here. Well this year, with the help of friend Jonathan Frappier (@jfrappier) and new friend Matt Crape (@MattThatITGuy), Ariel made this…
I've had couple of folks alert me to potential issues that result from having both power connectors simultaneously connected. One guy reporting SATA ports gone bad, perhaps caused by an EU reseller that had attached both connectors simultaneously. I've had one report of a non-bundle bare-bones…
Jun 29 2016 - First Xeon E PSOD report Xeon E5 2650v4 owner's ESXi 6.0 Build 3620759 PSOD, June 29, 2016. That's the day I received my first email about this intermittent PSODs (Purple Screen Of Death) on a Supermicro SuperServer with two Xeon E5-2650v4 processors inside. This email referral came…
In case you hadn't spotted this yet, Ring made an announcement on their blog: #AlwaysHome, Even from Your Desktops May 02 2016 by Yul at Ring featuring a nice functionality overview of the free apps, and download links for the Windows and Mac App stores. I've been using the Windows version on…
It was great running into Eric Siebert at the vExpert event last week at VMworld 2016 US. He's really been on a roll with his VMworld 2016 coverage, and this particular article seems to be of most interest to folks who visit my site, but couldn't make it to VMworld. Yes, that's most people! Let's…
VMworld 2016 US held a nice event again this year for vExperts like myself, who have spent a lot of their personal time sharing their VMware-related knowledge and experience with others through user groups, presentations, training videos, and blogs. The perk was an evening at the The Mob Museum in…
Again this year, I had a lot of fun roaming around VMworld 2016 US with my iRig Mic, which does a solid job at keeping out the ambient noise that is typical at such conferences. iRig Mic on Amazon. You'll see me visit unprepared folks, who I asked for permission to record moments before the camera…
Anandtech has published an in-depth article that details not only VDI test results, but also new server testing tools from Futuremark. Given the hundreds of VMworld 2016 attendees who visited my Supermicro Xeon D VMware vSphere 6.0U2 cluster of 5 SuperServers yesterday, I won't argue with the…
Sep 15 2016 Update - pre-orders of this new 12 core Bundle now available, with shipments expected to start in early October. This past winter, you may recall my observation that Supermicro's announcements of new Xeon D systems was conspicuously missing any new mini-tower form factor systems.…
You will find this article updated, please come back and refresh! Community. That's why I'm here. I've spent a lot of time this past year refining the process of installing and running tiny clusters of Xeon D, and I'm pleased that I finished preparing my Supermicro & Intel NUC demonstration on…
I've been using Veeam Endpoint Backup to protect physical laptops and desktops for my extended family since its release nearly 2 years ago, and recommend it to friends who are often former Windows Home Server fans. Yeah, VEB doesn't have central management, but it can email daily backup reports,…
The eero 3 Pack is available at Amazon, Best Buy, or eero for ~$500 USD. The Luma 3 pack is available at Amazon, Best Buy, or Luma for ~$400 USD. Backstory It's been 3 years since my family moved up to 802.11ac with the careful decision to go with the Linksys EA6900 AC1900 Dual-Band Wi-Fi router.…
Ever wonder if there's an affordable power strip that you could add to your home network that would give you insight into the power usage of up to 8 devices, and allow remote power on/off operations? If you're willing to tolerate a bit of initial setup pain that requires a back-level Java and a…
SYS-E300-8D and SYS-5018D-FN4T networking compared. ESXi 6.0U2, fully loaded! I used to do high jump and 400 meter hurtles back in high school. This Olympic month, it feels a little like that again. Numerous obstacles tripped me up on my way to the finish line. First, an NVMe storage vendor that…
There's this TinkerTry visitor who has been dropping a lot of insightful comments below various SuperServer articles lately. Like another VMware guy who reached out to me recently, it would seem that Askar Kopbayev is rather keen on getting just the right fit for his home lab needs. I'm hoping to…
The contents of this article are a work-in-progress and subject to change, testing and data collection (dB, watts, basic benchmarks) are still underway. Below, you'll find that I've pulled technical information from a variety of product pages and spec sheets, then created a nicely detailed table…
AUG 15 2016 I'm all set now, networking is fine on the SYS-E200-8D when using BIOS 1.1b and IPMI 3.26. Had to turn off the system for longer after both upgrades were complete for it to suddenly work just fine. Testing of Intel/VMware's suspect 4.4.1 10GbE VIBs is now starting, now that I have a…
With the initial release of Windows 10 a year ago, first, there's was the Media Creation Tool that can either upgrade the Windows 7/8.1 system you're working on to Windows 10, or download Windows.ISO for installation on another PC. With yesterday's release of Windows 10 Summer Update, the official…
You may recall I announced the NAKIVO v6.1 beta back in early July. Turns out I was able to participate myself, do several backups and restores, and provided some constructive UI and functionality feedback to the developers. I actually enjoy doing beta testing for about two decades now, and it's…
Fun new time-lapse video now available, in the updates section below the original article. The idea here is not what you should do in a home lab, it's really just determining what's become possible. Let's hold-off on concluding much of anything until I get this All-Flash VSAN rig fully…
I recently figured out an easy way to clear out that sometimes long VMware vSphere Client history, as I was cleaning up my home lab and starting fresh. I believe you'll find this simple technique quite handy as well, especially if you're a busy and meticulous VMware sysadmin wishing your list…
What do you look for when you're trying to build a 3 node test/demo cluster, with each Xeon D system blessed with two copper 10GbE ports each? Product Page - XS708T – ProSAFE® 10 Gigabit Smart Managed Switch, Model / Version: XS708T How about a relatively quiet switch that doesn't burn…
