When I was at VMware as a vSAN SE, I often got asked about what home lab equipment to buy. The answer was usually along the lines of "it depends." In other words, you need to know what the goals of the buyer are, and I always spent time asking a lot of questions before proposing anything,…
This article has been replaced by this newer article: Supermicro Xeon D SuperServer BIOS 2.3 / IPMI 3.88 released, how to upgrade with ease! Article as it originally appeared below. Step-by-step walk through video is now available! The only information I have about this 2.1 BIOS release is…
White Canyon Software has been in the business of certified drive wipes for over 21 years! It's about time I had a look for myself, here's their WipeDrive 9 Product Page. Disclosure: This unpaid article and video demonstrates WipeDrive by WhiteCanyon. WhiteCanyon has run an occasional ad through…
Backstory Last week, this timely twitter exchange occurred, seen at right. JD Wallace noticed that the code at VMUG Advantage isn't always quite at the very latest patch level. The kind volunteer who updates the VMUG Advantage EVALExperience growing library of huge files does so on a quarterly…
This vSphere update was officially announced 6.7 Update 3 last week, and yesterday, it became available to download. For folks with only VMUG Advantage EVALExperience with its (currently) older 6.7 Update 2 VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0.update02-13006603.x86_64.iso they can instead use ESXCLI to…
This vSphere update was officially announced last week: VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Announced Today, vSphere 6.7 Update 3 became generally available, and anybody can download and install or upgrade, or just use VUM to upgrade. If you only have VMUG Advantage EVALExperience with its (currently)…
This vSphere update was officially announced one week ago: Announcing vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Aug 13 2019 by Niels Hagoort at VMware vSphere Blog We are excited to announce the future release of VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3. This new vSphere release comes with enhancements that will continue to…
If you're just here for the nostalgia, no problem, check out the Photos, Videos below, or have a look back at all my VTUG tweets. Don't get misty on me, not yet, I got more for you, read on... Magic moment #1 One of the most touching moments in my IT career ever was thanks to Matt Broberg…
Turn Your QNAP, Synology, ASUSTOR, WD, or Netgear NAS into a VM Backup Appliance, claiming to improve backup performance by up to 2X and offload your IT infrastructure I recently wrote about NAKIVO v8.5.2 with detailed walk-thru install and configure videos, see that detailed article here: NAKIVO…
Turn Your QNAP, Synology, ASUSTOR, WD, or Netgear NAS into a VM Backup Appliance, claiming to improve backup performance by up to 2X and offload your IT infrastructure It's no secret that I appreciate the simplicity of installing the NAKIVO Backup & Replication appliance in my home's personal…
May 28 2019 update, official 1903 support doesn't arrive until 3.0.2 next month (June), details from Anton Gostev below. Jul 22 2019 update, Official 1903 support arrived with 3.0.2 on July 16 2019, see release notes, download, and more details below, featuring a manual 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 simple…
This vSphere update was officially announced last week, see: Announcing vSphere 6.7 Update 2, vSphere Platinum updates, and vSphere ROBO Enterprise Apr 02 2019 by Himanshu Singh at VMware vSphere Blog I am excited to share that today we are announcing the VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2 release,…
This vSphere update was officially announced earlier today: Announcing vSphere 6.7 Update 2, vSphere Platinum updates, and vSphere ROBO Enterprise Apr 02 2019 by Himanshu Singh at VMware vSphere Blog I am excited to share that today we are announcing the VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2 release, with…
Dear Home Lab Enthusiast with data to protect: Today's Veeam announcement was big. A way to run enterprise level software with all the features you need for a lab environment, with none of the guilt. That's right, up to 10 VMs, and physical systems too! Got your attention? Read on! I started using…
Notice the 900P U.2 NVMe SSD above the motherboard There was a little-discussed and finally mature capability that arrived with VMware ESXi 6.5, back in November of 2016. See Amazon for the Intel Optane SSD 900P Series, but this consumer drive might not be ideal for most home virtualization lab…
Eric Siebert is clearly a very hard working guy, writing, collecting, collating. Just look what he goes through to get this voting process ready, see also The history of the top blog voting over the years. So if you feel his work to motivate and strengthen the ever-growing virtualization community…
Once in a long while, I get an opportunity to get my hands on some amazing hardware, packed with top-flight components. This is one of those times! With permission granted to publish, I'm now able to give you a glimpse into what a fully supported vSAN ReadyNode really looks like, up close and…
Introduction Fun discussion about Mac mini, Intel NUC, and tiny Supermicro 1U E200/E300 systems. I'm aware of the interest in these 2 newer SYS-E300-9D variants that quietly arrived without a press release. The product pages seem to first be noticed on October 30. The 8 core version is said to…
Specification Differentiations These features: From the Oct 30 2018 Apple Event. Standard: Desktop 8th-generation 3.2GHz Intel Core Processor Thunderbolt 3 / USB C expansion (4 ports) NVMe based SSD storage running at full speeds Optional: up to 6 cores up to 64GB of RAM (SODIMMs) up to 10GbE…
On Aug 27 2018, VMware announced many improvements coming in vSphere 6.7 Update 1 / vSAN 6.7 Update 1, which I wrote about here. On Oct 16 2018, the VCSA and ESXi ISO bits became available for download, seen on Virtually Ghetto here including release notes and download links. As usual, you'll want…
*Oct 06 2018 09:19am ET - You may want to hold off working with the bits that you may have already downloaded earlier this week, as it appears Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 have been pulled from downloads for now, details appended below. Nov 20 2018 - Fixed Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019…
At TinkerTry, I've admittedly mostly focused on nearly turn-key tiny home lab solutions that anybody can buy, including a variety of OEM's turn-key options. There's also quite the community of home-built tiny clusters of powerful system that are surprisingly compact. It's all thanks in large part…
Back at VMworld 2018 US, I was a bit bummed when I heard that there was a home lab panel featuring @sirgeekness @homelaber @DemitasseNZ @virtualhobbit and @importcarguy, at the very same time as I was scheduled to present on another stage. Well, I wasn't bummed for long, since the ever effervescent…
Mar 4 2024 - My ESXi 8.0U2b testing is now underway on my Xeon D-1541 system, with the release finally indicated officially at VMware by Broadcom here. Ad Advertising Disclosure - This VMware ad earns the vExpert author a commission when used for purchases at vmware.com, a free way to demonstrate…