My current workstation setup consists of a 16" M1 Pro MacBook Pro.  I have thoroughly enjoyed it but have found that iTerm2 [https://iterm2.com/] and OhMyZSH [https://ohmyz.sh/] have made for excellent additions to my workflow. iTerm 2 acts as a no-frills, yet feature rich, terminal for MacOS

I figured it's time to join the current decade and explore software defined storage [https://www.netapp.com/data-management/workflow-automation/what-is-software-defined-storage/#:~:text=Software%2Ddefined%20storage%20is%20an,automatically%20adapts%20to%20new%20demands.] options, particularly ZFS [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS].  Until now, my storage stack has consisted entirely of

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 would strongly

A while back, I showed you how to back up your VMWare virtual machines [https://tcude.net/backing-up-your-homelab-with-veeam/] 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

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

In a previous [https://tcude.net/installing-homer-dashboard-with-docker/] 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.

VMware's vSphere as a whole has been an awesome addition to my homelab but vMotion [https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/vmotion.html], 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

Introduction – What is Rclone? Rclone [https://rclone.org/] 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 [https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7722632782044867636/6005067545072931672?hl=en#] and is much more feature rich

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 as they are discovered.

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 this new method of

Introduction Downloading and using docker containers with docker compose is a very easy process and, continuing in that trend, the same can be said for updating your docker container with it. Prerequisites It is important to note that during the container update process, unless you specifically have persistent volumes [https:

Introduction This document covers the installation process of Magento 2.4.2 on an EC2 instance of Ubuntu 20.04 Prerequisites Before beginning the installation process, you must create an account at https://magento.com/ After creating an account, acquire your public and private keys, needed for a later step,

While RAID, ZFS, and other storage technologies do an excellent job of providing redundancy in the case of a drive failure, it is important to remember that redundancy is not a replacement for backups. Instead, it is more of a means to maintain uptime.  Because of this, it is important

Introduction If you're anything like me, you might have a handful of PCs or VMs with local accounts on them from an era prior to you having an Active Directory domain.  Until now, it seemed to me that there was no reasonable way to get the contents of these local

As I've begun hosting more services that close friends and family have found useful, I decided it would be handy for them to be able to easily check on the status of my services at a glance. Uptime Robot [https://uptimerobot.com/] has filled that role perfectly, letting me create

Self-hosted VPNs are an extremely helpful tool when it comes to having a homelab. Whether you're at a coffee shop and on public wifi, like I am right now, wanting to securely tunnel back to your own network before accessing a more sensitive site, or even just wanting to be

A while back, I wrote up a post [https://tcude.net/creating-an-ansible-playbook/] showing how you can easily and automatically update your servers using Ansible.  More recently, I've started to familiarize myself with AWS and have been tinkering with EC2 instances. Having become accustomed to easily updating all of my server

This evening, I decided that I'd like to start utilizing source control on some of my projects. I figure that this will have the additional benefit of letting y'all easily view some of my projects and emulate them in your own labs, since I'll be using public repos on Github.

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 [https://github.com/bastienwirtz/homer], a "dead simple static HOMepage for your servER

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

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,