Tanner's Tech

Installing Homer Dashboard with Docker

While I've had a fairly solid understanding of docker for a while now, I've been tinkering with it far more than usual over my extended weekend. One of the containers I've found to be interesting is Homer, a "dead simple static HOMepage for your servER to keep your services on

How to run any iOS/iPadOS app on your M1 Mac

With the recent transition to the new ARM-based SoC known as the M1, Apple's newest line of Macs are more closely related to their mobile devices than ever. Unlike previously, users are now able to download (some) iOS apps directly from the App Store. The problem that I ran into,

Generating and using new SSH keys

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you're wanting to switch out your current sent of public/private SSH keys for a new pair, this guide will run you through the process, step by step. To preface, this process could easily lock you out of servers if you

windows server

Upgrading Windows Server 2019 Evaluation to Standard

Over the last year or so, I've been running my limited number of Windows Server instances using Windows Server Evaluation, letting me run Windows Server 2019 free for 180 days at a time, with a simple rearm to extend the free license for another 180 days (up to 5 times)

windows server

Creating a Secondary Domain Controller on an Existing Domain

Over the weekend, I was performing some system maintenance which resulted in the ESXi host that houses my domain controller, svr-dc-01, going offline for an unexpectedly long period of time. This ended up causing frustrations on my end due to many of my devices relying upon my internally hosted DNS.

vmware

Creating a macOS VM in ESXi

Today's post will cover the simple process of creating a MacOS VM within VMWare ESXi. As you may or may not know, by default, ESXi will not let you run macOS virtual machines. This has to do with Apple's TOS requiring that macOS VMs only be run on Mac hardware.

Enabling the HTML5 iKVM in iDRAC

I don't commonly use the iKVM in iDRAC on my R720xd but when I do, it's typically a pretty unpleasant experience. In the year 2021, nobody should be forced to use a Java application to remotely manage their server. What I run into when trying to remotely connect to my

ansible

Creating an Ansible Playbook

IntroductionIn my previous post, I showed you how to prepare your Linux environment for the use of Ansible and the running of a basic test to ensure its functionality. Today's post will cover how to make use of this new setup with the introduction of Ansible playbooks, which you can

ansible

An Introduction to Ansible

While I've been doing the occasional quick write up on new hardware I've obtained or neat tricks I've learned in Linux, it's been quite a while since I've written about new technologies I've been familiarizing myself with. Today, I will be introducing you to Ansible – a really neat tool to

Transcoding Plex Streams in RAM on Ubuntu Server

You may or may not realize it but transcoding streams in Plex causes a lot of writes to occur on whatever disk the server is running on. If your Plex server is similar to mine, and running on an SSD, this can over time significantly shorten the lifespan of your

hardware

A Breakdown of my Hardware Setup

I've done a lot of referencing to some of my hardware in previous blog posts but I wanted to have a dedicated write up over some of the hardware that I'm running, after having a couple of y'all ask for details on my setup This is a picture of my

Updating Plex Media Server on Linux

This will be another quick write up but if you're like me, when you see it's time to update your Plex Media Server, you go out and manually download the file, make it executable, and then run it. Today, I found out Plex has a public repo you're able to

linux

Mounting Disks by UUID

In previous posts, I've mentioned a bit about my Plex media server. Up until now, I've just been running two Western Digital drives labeled as /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 in my /etc/fstab. This is generally not a great setup, as using device assignments such as /dev/sd*# or

hardware

Quieting an R720xd with ipmitool

I mentioned a bit in this post about my R720XD being louder in comparison to my other servers. This has proven to continue, with the fans spinning up easily as high as 60%. With the fans having a peak capacity, even 40% fan speed is LOUD. Luckily, there's an easy

hardware

The Newest Addition

I wanted to do a quick lunch break write up over the newest addition to my homelab environment: the Dell R720xd. I chose this model of server for several reasons. The most important of these was that my storage options are fairly limited on my 2xHP ML350ps, especially when looking

ghost

Updating Ghost

It's obviously important to keep things up to date for a plethora of reasons so I wanted to do a quick write up on how to update Ghost, a blogging platform that's running the site you're reading now. To start the update process of Ghost, we'll go ahead and backup

ghost

How I Made my Blog

The blog post that you are currently reading is hosted on my own infrastructure using Ghost, an open source and free to use blogging platform. If you visit their site, they'll really try to market some paid services, where they host the blog for you but, if you have your

vmware

Upgrading vCenter Appliance from 6.5 to 7.0

With the imminent deprecation of Adobe Flash, I thought this weekend would be a great time for me to look into upgrading my version 6.5 vCenter appliance, since it relies on Flash Player for the full functionality. The process was fairly straightforward but I figured I'd document it along

linux

Switching from Nouveau to Nvidia Drivers in a Linux Machine

My current Linux workstation doubles as a gaming machine when I choose to boot into Windows and, because of that, has an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super installed in it. While my graphical experience in Linux hasn't been poor while doing day to day internet browsing and such, I recently noticed

linux

Visualizing Storage Usage on a Headless Linux Installation

This will be another quick read but I wanted to share a neat tool I found recently. The other day, I was SSH'd into my Plex/game server and noticed that my disk usage was at a less than comfortable percentage of free space, which raised the question: What is

linux

Setting Primary and Secondary Nameservers in Linux

While we've covered setting up a domain controller and also how create A records to give our servers easy names to use, rather than relying on referencing them by IP address, I've been limited to enjoying this luxury on only my domain connected Windows machines that use my domain controller

vmware

How to Setup and Configure a vCenter Appliance

Not too long ago, I showed you how to set up a domain controller within ESXi. Other than that, unfortunately, I haven't blogged much about ESXi, or really virtualization in general. That doesn't mean I haven't been learning and making progress in the meantime, though. Today's blog post will cover

hardware

Dell XPS 13: First Impressions

A while back I had done a brief write up on the iPad Pro and using the Magic Keyboard paired with it as an on-the-go solution for managing your homelab remotely. After using it for a pretty extended period of time, the honeymoon period wore off and I saw the

ghost

The New Blog!

Welcome to the new blog! Our homelab blog has come a long way from the days of it being hosted on blogger.com. The site you're visiting right now is hosted on my own hardware, right in my living room using Ghost, a free and open source blogging platform. In

Future Projects

Setting up my homelab and getting more familiar with various technologies that have come along with the learning process has been like opening Pandora's box. Starting new projects always seems to open my eyes to other fun looking projects that I'd like to implement in my homelab. I thought I'd