Home Lab – Part Two

After a bit of mucking around I’ve managed to get VMware installed on my two home-brew servers.  The first server was completely straightforward and installed the latest version of ESXi6.5.  The second took the image, but on boot failed due to a lack of a network driver, with an error talking about nfs41client.  After a bit of googling I found an article showing how to resolve this by adding a network driver to ESXi6.5.  I followed the steps in the article and the host booted.  If anyone else has this problem please take a look at the great blog available here – http://www.computertechblog.com/adding-realtek-r8168-driver-to-an-esxi-6-0-iso/

Unfortunately my NAS, problematic little beast that it is, has decided that the HDDs in it are no longer useful, and has failed them.  I’m looking into this at the moment, however I think it is time to admit that the iomega needs to go the way of the Dodo.  I’m going to attempt to fix it this week.  One last chance…

IT Home Lab – Back to Physical

I live in Perth WA (Western Australia), and work in IT.  Perth is a beautiful place and as per the posts about my trip to the far North West of the state, it is pretty vast area, and largely untouched.  This is one of the reasons I love living here, however it brings me to the tyranny of distance.  My work lab is in Sydney, and due to the sometimes flaky internet connection I have at home, this can cause me problems in access and working in the lab.  So I’ve decided to build my home lab from the odd bits and pieces that I have picked up over the years.  The point of the lab is to run an environment that will allow me to deploy new software and see how it goes.  The first step though is to build it from scratch.

Back to Physical

The physical components of the lab are essentially old bits of kit that I’ve had lying around for years, cobbled together on a shoestring budget.

Every IT environment is made up the same core components, Storage, Compute, and Network, with additional components such as the rack it is all in, UPS, physical security and so on.  As this is a home lab I’ll be focussing on the core components, and will outline the future growth plans in a later article. Continue reading “IT Home Lab – Back to Physical”

Mitchell Falls

Mitchell Falls is one of the iconic images of the Kimberley, and really inspired the entire trip.  The amazing pictures of the rest of the area and comments from people who had been firmed up the desire.  Official information can be found at https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/mitchell-river

After a fuel stop at Drysdale River Station and a quick call home before no contact with the outside world for a few days it was onto an ungraded section of road for a few hours, before driving through lush rainforest into Mitchell Falls National Park and onto the campground.  The drive in was the worst so far, lots of wash outs, sun setting directly ahead blinding us on the drive in and hills that made seeing oncoming vehicles impossible.

As had become the norm we arrived just before sunset, set up the camp for a few days and kicked back with a couple of ice cold beverages, and started a fire and bbq. On the drive in we had stopped outside the National Park to get some firewood.

We woke early the next day and headed straight to the helicopter booking office to organise a one way trip from the top back to camp. At $150 each this took a bit of thought however I can say that it was honestly the best money spent on the trip. Flights organised we grabbed our day packs and started walking through the bush. Continue reading “Mitchell Falls”

Dual Battery Setup – Part Two

Disclaimer: this is how I put this together, it is not intended as a guide, and is based on my limited personal experience. I am not an electrician, nor do I accept any personal liability for any accidents that may occur after reading this post. Always speak to a professional and be aware that electricity kills.

Well the second battery has been a constant source of pain throughout the trip.  It seems to finally be resolved, however it’s been a long and exquisitely painful journey.

After arriving in Karijini I had some help from a friendly camper next to me with the cabling.  It turned out he was a sparky, so I let him loose and didn’t check his work, after all I’m just a tinkerer.  Turns out i should have watched this a bit more.

The Gibb River Road is pretty much non stop corrugations, which work electrical connections loose.  Cue one dead battery.  Pretty much every night I was having to borrow power from Brienne in order to keep my battery going.  At the end of the road we stopped in Kununurra and I bought an Optima Yellow Top.  I should have done this in the first place as you can run these until they have no charge, and then recharge them.  The one I ended up going with wasn’t like this and ended up in the scrap heap after a week.  A swap of the battery, check the solar works, and off again to Lake Argyle.  Where the battery was dead once more. Continue reading “Dual Battery Setup – Part Two”

Windjana to Bell, A Tale of Two Gorges

The plan for today was quite simple, spend some time at two gorges.  I spent the morning doing some mechanical checks on the truck, specifically looking at the suspension to see if any of the nuts had come loose on the gravel roads that we’ve silent a lot of time on recently.  As the suspension has been upgraded this was a basic check, with the left front shock needing a bit of tightening. I also managed to get some photographs of the Wedgetail eagles that make WA home, and are up here in huge numbers. I must admit I had thought these beasts were up there with Yowies and Dropbears as I’d never seen one until now.

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Continue reading “Windjana to Bell, A Tale of Two Gorges”