My home lab is a beasty Xeon D-based server with 128GB of RAM, chock-full of storage (fast NVMe and SSD as well as four 3.5″ 3 TiB disks), a quad-core Xeon D-1521 and two 10-gig ethernet interfaces. More than adequate as a server, and it comes in a small and silent package. The goal was to have just a single machine in the house to fulfil all the different scenarios: A home lab server, running ESXi and …
Running a virtual gaming rig using a Xeon D server, a GFX 750Ti, PCI passthrough and a Windows 10 VM
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Nutanix Acropolis Microsegmentation Services goes head-to-head with VMware’s NSX
During this week’s .NEXT event in Vienna, Nutanix announced a networking & security product line-up called Acropolis Microsegmentation Services. And you’ve guessed it, it’s a direct competitor of VMware’s NSX. I bet this is going to piss off a lot of folks at VMware, especially given NSX’s awful track record (regarding stability and number of critical bugs) lately. I mean, look at this quote from the press release: Microsegmentation technologies have been available for some time to …
The end of the OS as we know it: the Rise of the Unikernel
Gareth Rushgrove posted an article recently, called The End of the General Purpose Operating System, in which he explained how he sees the operating system becoming an implementation detail of the higher level software. By general purpose OS I’m referring to what most people use for server workloads today – be it RHEL or variants like CentOS or Fedora, or Debian and derivatives like Ubuntu. By end I don’t literally mean they go away or stop being …
Cisco MetaPod: Managed OpenStack for enterprisy enterprises
About a month ago, I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation discussing Cisco’s MetaPod product. As a fan of Platform9’s OpenStack-as-a-Service approach, I was curious to see Cisco’s approach. Stuff-as-a-Service I like stuff as a service, especially when the stuff is hard to do yourself. The value add for a company to do Stuff-as-a-Service is their extensive knowledge about the stuff. They can automate it, make it self-healing (from at least a service perspective, but …
The best way to update Supermicro BIOS is via Supermicro Update Manager
I recently found a very easy way to upgrade a Supermicro BIOS. It entails getting an out-of-band license key for the Supermicro BMC IPMI interface. This allows you to use the BMC IPMI to upgrade BIOS versions. Best thing: no more need to roll your own (usually ill-working) DOS-based boot media. Read up on this method in my previous post The better way to update Supermicro BIOS is via IPMI. Part of getting the license key to unlock BIOS …
The better way to update Supermicro BIOS is via IPMI
I’ve been enjoying my new home lab tremendously in the last couple of months. Enough oomph to run Azure Stack, DC/OS, Docker 1.12 in Swarm Mode, all kinds of unikernels; all at the same time. The Supermicro in my lab I’ve written about this awesome form factor on the Open Home Lab website, and have evangelized the Xeon-D and Supermicro form factors to friends and co-workers. I thoroughly enjoy my Xeon D based system, which is …
Fighting ransomware with… Netwrix Auditor?
I recently tweeted about O365Undo, a script that leverages auditing capabilities in Office 365 to resolve issues with ransomware. . @[email protected]_ict created a script to aid restores when your @Office365 env is infected with a crypto locker http://www.lieben.nu/liebensraum/o365undo/ — Joep Piscaer (@jpiscaer) July 7, 2016 From O365Undo to Netwrix Auditor The script is created by one of my coworkers, Jos Lieben. He describes O365Undo as a great way to roll back the havoc of cryptolocker or …
Docker for proprietary enterprise software, really?
With three weeks since DockerCon and well into my summer vacation, I’ve had some time to digest DockerCon, and I want touch on the disconnect between traditional applications, running them inside containers, and how Docker is addressing this. From this perspective, I’ll highlight some of the announcements made during the show. Docker is for Developers Docker is generally aimed towards at the software development cycle and minimizing the gap between development and operations by offering a simplified and unified workflow and …
The Power of Platform9: Managed Kubernetes
As hinted at in my previous post on Platform9 (Can Platform9 solve fundamental OpenStack challenges?), they have entered the Container-as-a-Service space today during #DockerCon. I talked about Platform9’s ability to enter new SaaS-realms easily: their core business is delivering difficult-to-implement/operate infrastructure software like OpenStack as a service, making it easy for customers to deploy in production. Today, they’re coming out with a managed Kubernetes Container-as-a-Service platform with support for the Docker container runtime engine . Not only do they take …
Build a Xeon D-1500 (Open) Home Lab with me?
I recently bought a new Home Lab so I can tinker around with new, cool technology like Docker, DC/OS, Azure Stack and unikernel stuff. The lab server I bought really is cool: it’s a Xeon D-1500 series based home lab. The Xeon D-1500 processor family is a low-power, high-performance System-on-Chip processor based on the 14nm Broadwell architecture. It has all the processor features any home lab needs, like hyperthreading, VT-x and VT-d, EPT, AES-NI, NSX-NI, Trusted Execution, …