Long-time readers of my blog know of my love for Drobo, but the time has come to say goodbye. My old Drobos (and Iomega ix-4) are showing their age and I decided to go in a different direction: I'm building a FreeNAS server. In this article I'll talk about my thinking behind this move; later posts will talk in more detail about the hardware and software setup. Bulk Home … [Read more...] about Hello FreeNAS! Goodbye Drobo and Iomega…
pfSense
The Ideal pfSense Platform: Netgate RCC-VE 2440
After some frustration with stability and latency connecting my virtual pfSense router to my cable and DSL modems, I decided to switch to a physical box. I selected the Netgate RCC-VE 2440 as my hardware platform, since it's the same box that pfSense themselves use as their OEM bundle. It also checks all the boxes with a dual-core Atom CPU, four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and … [Read more...] about The Ideal pfSense Platform: Netgate RCC-VE 2440
Automated UPS Monitoring for vSphere with NUT and Raspberry Pi (Cheap!)
As many folks following me on Twitter have noted, I've been building quite a nice vSphere "datacenter" lately. Part of this build was integrating UPS monitoring and automatic shutdown, and I'm pleased with the result. I'm using a Raspberry Pi connected to two UPSes via USB as a NUT server and have installed a native ESX version of upsmon to monitor and react as UPS events … [Read more...] about Automated UPS Monitoring for vSphere with NUT and Raspberry Pi (Cheap!)