Tanner's Tech

Migrating of Linux VMs from ESXi to Proxmox: A Comprehensive Guide

In light of recent developments at VMware following their acquisition, many in the tech community are exploring alternatives for their hypervisor needs. If you're among those searching for a reliable and versatile option, you might want to consider Proxmox. Having run a combination of ESXi and Proxmox in

Monitoring VMWare with InfluxDB and Grafana

Grafana dashboards offer a visually appealing and efficient way to track server metrics. In this guide, we’ll walk through the process of setting up Grafana with VMWare to monitor various metrics on your servers effectively. Last year, I shared a guide on setting up Grafana for Proxmox. Having transitioned

Enabling Command Autocompletion in ZSH

This guide will help you enable command autocomplete in Zsh using the zsh-autosuggestions plugin. Follow the steps below to get started, and if any issues arise, refer to the troubleshooting tips to help resolve common problems. Prerequisites * Ensure you have Oh My Zsh installed. This helps manage plugins and customize

Setting Up a Jenkins Pipeline with Gitea for Packer Image Builds: A Step-by-Step Guide

A few months ago, I transitioned from Proxmox back to VMWare. My shift was mostly motivated by a discovery that the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools associated with VMWare are much more robust. Currently, I'm leveraging Hashicorp Packer and Terraform to shape my infrastructure within VMWare. Here'

Setting Up Per-Room Cleaning with Roomba and Home Assistant

I have recently started making use of Home Assistant to not only set up automation in the IoT devices within my home, but to also take control of said devices and not have to rely upon poorly made, buggy apps from the manufacturers of my devices. In my search to

Enabling HTTPS for Your Internal Sites with Cloudflare + Let's Encrypt

Introduction In a previous post, I covered the process of creating an instance of Nginx to help you more conveniently access your internally hosted apps and services.  Assuming you followed that guide, you might have encountered something like this when trying to access an internal site: This is your browser

Migrating Plex to Docker

Introduction Plex has been a staple of my homelab from the beginning.  The appeal of having my own media server is what initially pushed me to build my very first home server utilizing spare gaming PC parts that I had lying around. Since then, my lab has changed dramatically and

Grafana Featured

Monitoring Proxmox with InfluxDB and Grafana

As I have continued to learn and build up my Proxmox lab environment, I have been looking at different options for me to be able to more closely keep track of various metrics within my lab. Ultimately, I decided that I was intent on getting Grafana up and running. Even

Using Terraform with Proxmox

As a promised follow-up to my previous post, today I will outline the process necessary to set up and utilize HashiCorp Terraform within Proxmox. To preface, Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool, letting you spin up, modify, and destroy infrastructure.  Terraform is extremely versatile, utilizing Terraform Providers to interface

Creating a VM Template in Proxmox

Introduction Proxmox has been my go-to choice as a hypervisor for the last several months, after migrating off of VMWare, my previous choice in hypervisor.  It offers a plethora of features and functionality, including the ability to create VM templates. While it is easy to click through all of the

Converting a Proxmox VM for use in Hyper-V

Introduction: While Proxmox has been my hypervisor of choice for the last year or so, I recently realized that I have an abundance of unused hardware within my workstation/gaming rig.  Currently running Windows 10, the machine is capable of running virtual machines by making use of Hyper-V.  With a

Rclone

Setting up Rclone's Web GUI

Introduction Almost one year ago, I wrote this post detailing how to install and configure Rclone for use with Google Drive.  I have been running that setup for over two years now with no issue but have found that I would occasionally wish Rclone had a web GUI for monitoring

Linux

Hosting Internal Sites with Nginx

Intro Assuming you have been homelabbing for a while now, you likely have a plethora of services and applications operating on various IP and port combinations. Some of you may also expose many of these services to the open internet using a reverse proxy, such as Nginx. I have been

Ubuntu

How to Set Up Cloudflare Tunnels on Ubuntu

Over the past couple of years that I've been running this site, I have changed several  aspects of my hosting setup with Ghost – the application that runs my blog.  One example of this is my migration away from the traditional installation route and embracing the containerized version of

Storage Overhaul (Now with ZFS!)

I figured it's time to join the current decade and explore software defined storage options, particularly ZFS.  Until now, my storage stack has consisted entirely of hardware raid arrays, or, better yet, no array or redundancy at all in the case of my Plex media server. ZFS, in

How to Update vCenter

From time to time, you may be greeted with the following message when logging into your vCenter appliance, letting you know that your appliance needs updating:‌ Today's post will walk you through the simple process of updating your vCenter appliance to the latest version. Prerequisites As always, I

Installing the Veeam Agent for Linux

A while back, I showed you how to back up your VMWare virtual machines with Veeam.  While the vast majority of my lab operates within VMWare's vSphere, I do have one bare metal Linux installation – my Plex server. For those who are unfamiliar with the term "bare

vCenter Received Disconnect - Too Many Authentication Failures

After recently trying to SSH into my vCenter appliance for the first time in months, I was surprised to find that I was presented with the following message: ➜ ~ ssh [email protected] VMware vCenter Server 7.0.2.00500 Type: vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller

Configuring Homer Dashboard

In a previous post, I showed you how to get Homer up and running as a self-hosted dashboard in Docker to easily manage and see all of your self hosted services at a glance.  I did not, however, go into depth on how to configure Homer. This guide will cover

How to Set Up vMotion in ESXi

VMware's vSphere as a whole has been an awesome addition to my homelab but vMotion, in particular, is one of my favorite features that it has to offer. In short, vMotion allows a user to easily transfer a virtual machine between two different ESXi hosts without the virtual

Setting up Rclone with Google Drive

Introduction – What is Rclone? Rclone is a fantastic and free command-line tool to manage files in cloud storage.  It has the capability to work with over 40 cloud storage products and is much more feature rich and and powerful than the traditional web interfaces that most cloud storage providers offer.

How to patch ESXi

Intro: In the past, I've covered many different topics pertaining to vSphere and other VMWare products but I recently realized that I haven't ever covered how to patch an ESXi server.  Patching ESXi, just like any other system, is important to fix bugs and security vulnerabilities

Launching VSCode from the Command Line in MacOS

While getting hands on with Terraform and doing a bit of learning about it (blog posts to come!), I found a neat trick to opening a specified file with VSCode using the MacOS command line. While it initially didn't seem very helpful to me, I've found

Career Update

While this post is long overdue, I wanted to make a quick update covering some exciting developments that have been unfolding behind the scenes in my career. Back in May, I was fortunate enough to secure a string of interviews with a financial technology company that led to my new

Docker

Updating a Container with Docker Compose

💡Last updated: 10/20/23 Introduction Leveraging Docker Compose simplifies the process of managing Docker containers, including their updates. If you've already acquainted yourself with downloading and using Docker containers, updating them will be a breeze. Prerequisites * Data Persistence: One crucial aspect to remember is the potential data