I’ve used a lot of different small form factor machines over the years, from the Raspberry Pi to used ebay thin clients. All of them are good at some things. But when Icewhale sent over their x86-based Zimaboard for me to take a look at, I’ve been impressed with the flexibility it has for me to test new software and hardware in a relatively cheap way. It’s not spectacular at any one thing, but it’s versatile enough that it’s a great foundation for so many of my projects.

I’ve gone from “no backups” to “raid is a backup” to “two zfs pools in one box”, and decided it’s finally time for a proper backup solution. So, I settled on Proxmox Backup Server! And today, I rebuild my HP Microserver Gen8 with 4x10T refurbished SAS drives, a new SAS controller card, and more! With this backup solution, I’m feeling a lot better about my data migration to Ceph. Contents Video SAS Drive Formatting ZFS Pool Setup Next Steps Video SAS Drive Formatting Since these drives were refurbished they were formerly formatted for a hardware RAID controller and were giving me lots of protection errors in dmesg - specifically blk_update_request: protection error (and failing to read, but not write).

I have a rack-mounted KVM now, and it’s great, but I’m working on building out a new Proxmox cluster which might not have a graphics output at all on some of the nodes. So, I need a new remote access solution for them. The new nodes I’m planning on building will all be based on used consumer hardware, so I’m limited by what would be available on normal mATX boards. This doesn’t include IPMI, and if I go with AMD-based CPUs, doesn’t include an iGPU either.

Since I use a lot of repurposed computers as servers, I don’t have many with IPMI / remote access built in. Usually I can configure them remotely through SSH or their web UI, but sometimes things go wrong and it’s nice to have remote console access. Enter, PiKVM, a project to build a networked KVM switch with a Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately, I have a more than one server, and building a PiKVM for every one gets expensive, so I’m combining it with an 8 port rack mount KVM switch so I can remotely view and control all of the servers in my rack.

Are you playing with Proxmox clustering, but want faster networking without paying for multi-gig switches? For small clusters, sometimes it can make sense to use fast point to point links between nodes. This could be in a small 2 or 3 node cluster, where you can use dual port 10 gig cards and direct attach cables without a switch. Maybe you’ve got a wacky 5 node cluster with quad port gigabit cards on each node, and don’t want to buy a 20 port switch and do link aggregation.

Do you love segmenting your network into as many subnets and VLANs as possible? Do you have too many Wifi networks for all of your special flower IoT devices that can barely speak IP, let alone fend for themselves on the wild internet? You could use WPA EAP Enterprise Authentication, but good luck getting your smart toaster to log in. The solution I’m playing with is called Private Pre-Shared Keys, where each client can potentially have their own passphrase and VLAN assignment for the same SSID, and the client just has to support normal passphrase authentication.

The time has come to talk about something uncomfortable to a lot of you. You’ve been using legacy methods for far too long. It’s time to move to IPv6. But, of course, there’s a lot more to IPv6 than ‘just’ switching everything over. A lot of systems in the world still haven’t adopted it after nearly 25 years, and although software support is virtually a requirement these days, that doesn’t mean it’s widely enabled.

Do you have a USB3 2.5Gbe network adapter that doesn’t work well in Linux? Well, the kernel has included the upgraded Realtek drivers for awhile now, but for some reason it needs additional udev rules to load correctly. It’s a pretty simple fix and results in dramatically improved bandwidth (full duplex ~1.5Gbps and half duplex ~1.9Gbps), and functions properly with the correct driver. tl;dr if you’re on a Debian-based system (including Proxmox) create the udev file below and reboot, and it should work fine.

I get asked a lot about what hardware I recommend for homelabs and home servers. It’s a very difficult question since it depends on what exactly you want to get out of your setup. But, whatever you choose, I’m starting a new series where I’ll setup all of the commonly requested home server software in a single box. Since I want to try this on both used and new hardware, here’s a low cost NAS you can buy brand-new and run your own software on it!

So, you want to send HDMI video around your house? Maybe you want to use your office computer on your living room TV without a proprietary streaming solution like AirPlay or Chromecast? Share a cable or satellite box between your living room and bedroom? Or you’re crazy like me and you want to put all of your computers into the basement, and connect to any of them from any desk in the house?