• DIY voice assistant part 1: Software options and installation

    calendar Apr 24, 2020 · 8 min read · node-red raspberry-pi raspbian rhasspy  ·
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    Voice assistants are omnipresent gadgets loved by technophile geeks. They support ad-hoc tasks (set tee timer, announce outdoor temperature) and integrate flawlessly into home automation and other third-party systems. Unfortunately, data privacy is often subordinated with these kind of gadgetry. Using various …
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  • D-Link DGS-1510-28X - cheap 10G switch

    calendar Jun 27, 2016 · 7 min read  ·
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    Some months ago, I built a small VSAN home lab. Gradualy I expanded the setup - e.g. I moved from a hybrid setup (HDDs and SSDs) to all-flash (SSDs only) to utilize deduplication. Because errors might occur during testing, my NAS is still used as shared storage for the cluster.

    The HDDs of my NAS were unable to meet …


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  • Spoiled for choice: new HDDs for my NAS

    calendar Jun 26, 2016 · 7 min read · nas  ·
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    2016 seems to be the year of big hardware renewals for me - after completely overhauling my virtual infrastructure, I also needed new hard drives for my NAS after nearly 4 years.

    NAS, DAS, what?

    For many years, I have been using D.I.Y. NAS servers for collecting my data and media library on a single host. After I was …


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  • ASUS P9D-M, ASMB7-IKVM and false vCenter alarms

    calendar Apr 20, 2016 · 3 min read  ·
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    I was puzzled when I saw that the ESXi hosts of my new lab are generating critical CPU fan errors. Strange, I'm sure I mounted the fan correctly - otherwise the system would have been shutdown automatically to prevent serious damage. 🙂

    I had a look at the IPMI web interface and saw that a fan is detected - but why is …


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  • New VSAN 6.2 home lab

    calendar Apr 20, 2016 · 7 min read · vsan  ·
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    In 2008 I started working as VMware administrator and thus also began using vSphere at home. You might know this - as an IT person you want to have a lab at home that can be compared with the infrastructure at work. 🙂

    The hardware half-life is quite short and especially when virtualizing workloads you can reach memory …


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  • IPFire hardware upgrade

    calendar Mar 20, 2016 · 5 min read · ipfire  ·
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    2016 seems to be the year of hardware upgrades for me. After replacing my ESXi host with a VSAN cluster recently, I also had to replace the D.I.Y. router after upgrading my internet connection. At maximum data throughput, CPU load and temperatur are increasing so heavily that other network traffic is slowing down …
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  • Short tip: Configure HP Smart Array Controller using EFI Shell

    calendar Nov 10, 2015 · 1 min read · hp hp-ux itanium kurztipp  ·
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    New HP Smart Array controllers built into a  HP Integrity machine are basically unconfigured. When running the EFI Shell, you will probably see the following message:

    1HP Smart Array P800 Controller     (version 7.22)  0 Logical Drives
21785-Drive Array Not Configured
3     Run Smart Array Configuration Utility
4...
5 …

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  • A new ESXi home server

    calendar Jun 14, 2014 · 7 min read  ·
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    At about two years ago I replaced a lot of my hardware with more power-saving alternatives. My self-made NAS and hypervisor wer replaces by two HP ProLiant MicroServer G7 servers (N36L and N40L) - for a long time I was very happy with them.

    In the last months the amount of VMs increased and now the CPU and memory …


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  • There's life in the old dog yet - HP Integrity RX2600 EFI Unexpected TRAP

    calendar Sep 17, 2013 · 3 min read · hp hp-ux  ·
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    A couple of months ago I installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a dedicated hard drive of my HP Integrity RX2600 servers. Because the installation programm doesn't support the native Management Processor console I had to connect a screen, keyboard and mouse to the device. The installation worked like a charm and after a …
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  • Nokia IP130 - a different kind of IPCop

    calendar Mar 4, 2013 · 3 min read · ipcop  ·
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    Currently I'm implementing a IPSec tunnel between my and another flat. After my first plan, using an already existing Raspberry Pi as IPSec gateway, fizzled after plently of failed tries I decided to implement a router-to-router solution.

    The center of my network is a ALIX.2D13 which is used as IPCop to offer DNS, NTP …


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