I've done such "what's ahead" pieces before, but it's been a while. Why not kick off this fresh new year by giving TinkerTry fans a glimpse at the sorts of topics they can expect to see coming up soon?

Things change constantly in any successful home lab. Surprises, discoveries, and life invariably alter the best-laid plans. That part of the fun, and sure keeps things interesting.

For this particular short article, I'll just stick with teasers for the most likely topics.

to weekly article summaries)

• Getting Started with Nutanix Consumer Edition, including simplified USB imaging, and a potential gotcha to watch out for, with a comprehensive step-by-step video of the entire preparation process

• Simpler, more refined build-from-scratch process, for your home virtualization lab featuring ESXi 6.0 Update 1a and VCSA (see also hints at a new DNS Server/WiFi router-independent method)

• Step-by-step how to convert your Bundle 2 to a Bundle 1, and (hopefully) avoid some of the intermittent gotchas

• How to use bulk nuke the data on 3.5" and 2.5" drives using your Superserver and Parted Magic, drive caddies optional (with video)

• Home lab backup solutions, revisited

• Supermicro iKVM / Java tips, for a better, smoother, more productive experience

• Why it doesn't matter if you have 2 32GB DIMMs or 4 32GB DIMMs in your Xeon D-1540 platform, since both configurations run the memory at the same speeds

• Revisit my Samsung 840 EVO mSATA drive performance after the (year) long-awaited EXT43B6Q firmware fix

You can also get some sense of what I'm cooking up with my public bookmarks of valuable articles:

• Paul Braren's Google +1s

Taking more than 4 years to build up this site with 684 technical articles and hundreds of videos, I've finally been able to refresh and consolidate my home lab server and storage configuration. Naturally, most of these videos will feature my own Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T Bundle 1, which is also easily convertible to a Bundle 2 by simply removing the video card. That said, most of the concepts and techniques can be carried over to similar configurations that folks may already have in their home labs. In other words, worry not, my articles will continue to be generic enough to be broadly applicable. Following along with these various projects will generally be sure-fire and faster if using identical hardware.

That's just how PCs are, with conjecture about what might work and might not work in other's systems that I've never tried always a challenge. No better example of this is the world's fastest (and popular) Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 drive that's gathered a lot of interest from folks wondering aloud whether they can boot from NVMe on their own systems, evident in the comments under the NVMe articles and videos.

Hope you'll continue to enjoy my one-of-a-kind how to articles and videos throughout 2016, with plans to enhance organization and discoverability well underway.

See also at TinkerTry

• Superguide: SuperServer home virtualization lab storage tiers, platinum through bronze, how many efficient drives fit inside this tiny chassis?
  Here's where I talk about my plans to use the 950 PRO for both VMware ESXi 6 read cache and VMFS datastore duties, for my favorite VMs.

• World's Fastest Consumer SSD - Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD 256GB/512GB available for pre-order now, arriving Oct. 30
  Oct 22 2015

• Official TinkerTry polo shirts and stickers now available.