For my storage needs, my first NAS was a Synology DS415+. This was my primary NAS until I purchased a DS1618+, at which time it became my backup unit. When I filled up the DS1618+, I had a few options: buy a small NAS and use some 4TB disks I …Continue reading

I have recently switched most of my offsite network connections to WireGuard, away from ZeroTier. This is great for all of my systems except for one: the NAS (a Synology DS118) I have at a friend's house for offsite backup. That NAS can run ZeroTier and WireGuard, but I don't …Continue reading

A quick update on my OSPF cutover. With one exception, everything has worked great. The one exception is that OSPF would not work over the WireGuard link between my USG and my primary DigitalOcean VM that runs FreeBSD 12 and FRR7. I thought that was odd, since OSPF worked fine …Continue reading

I have been hard at work these last few weeks in my home lab, and have done quite a bit. Here are a few of the things I have done:

• Installed sshwifty, a really cool, useful package that a friend pointed me to.
• Built a T1 crossover cable to connect …
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Soon after I learned about Anycast, I employed it on my home network, so that I can have multiple instances of Pi-Hole, mostly so that I can take down my Raspberry Pi without hearing from the family about how the Internet is down.

Until last night, I was using BGP …Continue reading

My work laptop, a 2018 MacBook Pro, needs a new battery and so I will be shipping it off to have that serviced. Prior to getting that serviced, I need a temporary system, so I went to the office to grab one of the spares we have, another 2018 MBP …Continue reading

I've been meaning to upgrade my Synology NASes to DSM7. I upgraded my DS415+ last week, and it went smoothly, so today I researched all the packages I have installed on my primary unit, a DS1618+. I found that all but two would upgrade seamlessly; the two trouble packages were …Continue reading

Ever since a friend gave me a Dell R610, I have used that as my primary home lab server. Due to its age, I find that I am unable to run the most recent versions of some software packages, including the latest iterations of VMware ESXi and vCenter. Also, my …Continue reading

Since I bought my Cisco equipment, I have had it racked in the cheap, two-post desktop rack that came with the equipment when I bought it. It was pretty bad, but it worked:

I really wanted something better than this, so I started doing some web searches to get ideas …Continue reading

Recently, a friend introduced me to healthchecks.io, a service for monitoring cron jobs.
A week or so ago, I configured several of my cron jobs to be monitored through this system, and it has already helped me: yesterday I received a notification that an rsync job did not run …Continue reading