<![CDATA[h0m3lab]]>https://h0m3lab.com/https://h0m3lab.com/favicon.pngh0m3labhttps://h0m3lab.com/Ghost 4.36Thu, 02 Apr 2026 22:35:13 GMT60<![CDATA[Installing/Upgrading Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS]]>When writing this, Ubuntu's default python package is 3.8, I like running the latest version of everything so this is how I do it.

My preference is to have the latest version of python run via the python command. In order to achieve this on a fresh

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/installing-upgrading-python-3-9-on-ubuntu-20-04/610c15ec6b630a7c8eb58444Thu, 05 Aug 2021 17:31:36 GMT

When writing this, Ubuntu's default python package is 3.8, I like running the latest version of everything so this is how I do it.

My preference is to have the latest version of python run via the python command. In order to achieve this on a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS follow these simple steps.

To install the latest version of Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04:

Firstly we'll need to add the deadsnakes ppa to our repo list:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3.9

Once that is completed python 3.9 should be installed & you should be able to run python3.9 -V to verify:

Scotty$ python3.9 -V
Python 3.9.6

Now let's install pip for 3.9

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python3.9 get-pip.py

Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting pip
  Using cached pip-21.2.2-py3-none-any.whl (1.6 MB)
Installing collected packages: pip
  Attempting uninstall: pip
    Found existing installation: pip 21.2.2
    Uninstalling pip-21.2.2:
      Successfully uninstalled pip-21.2.2
  WARNING: The scripts pip, pip3 and pip3.9 are installed in '/home/scotty/.local/bin' which is not on PATH.
  Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.
Successfully installed pip-21.2.2

For now we can ignore the PATH warning as we're going to fix it by adding the alias to the .bashrc file.

Now to create an alias in ~/.bashrc

Let's edit the .bashrc file and add some alias lines

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

I added the following code below # some more ls aliases in the file:

# Python / pip Alias
alias python='/usr/bin/python3.9'
alias pip='~/.local/bin/pip3.9'

This will point the command python to our installed 3.9 version and same with pip.

Save that and then run the following to reload bashrc:

source ~/.bashrc

That's it!

We should now get the following when we run python -V & pip -V

Scotty$ python -V
Python 3.9.6
Scotty$ pip -V
pip 21.2.2 from /home/scotty/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pip (python 3.9)

Post Install Notes

If after you've done this, you run sudo apt update and you get an error with apt-pkg. You may have an issue with how it's handling python3 commands. Check your alternatives:

scotty$ update-alternatives --config python3
There is only one alternative in link group python3 (providing /usr/bin/python3): /usr/bin/python3.9
Nothing to configure.

Just fix it by adding python3.8 back into the alternatives:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.8 1

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.9 2

Now configure by choosing python3.8, in my case below it was number 1:

scotty$ sudo update-alternatives --config python3

There are 2 choices for the alternative python3 (providing /usr/bin/python3).

  Selection    Path                Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/python3.9   2         auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/python3.8   1         manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/python3.9   2         manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/python3.8 to provide /usr/bin/python3 (python3) in manual mode
]]><![CDATA[OpenVPN Virtual Appliance (OVA)]]>What created the situation to need to explore another VPN solution

For the past 3 years I've been using the VPN solution built in to Synology and for the most part it has worked great! I use it to connect to my local network while away from home

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/openvpn-via-ova/5d442713a892b702b61fef6bMon, 03 Feb 2020 16:41:36 GMTWhat created the situation to need to explore another VPN solutionOpenVPN Virtual Appliance (OVA)

For the past 3 years I've been using the VPN solution built in to Synology and for the most part it has worked great! I use it to connect to my local network while away from home via multiple devices(Android Phone, Android Tablet, iPhone). The benefit of this is I don't need to open up so many locally hosted services to the world wide web. I'm very lucky where I live that power outages are very very rare - so rare that I had a little issue with my UPS 2 winters ago and never implemented it back into production.

Last week we had some crazy thunderstorms here and we lost power resulting in the lab going down in one giant swoop. No big deal - everything will be fine, just need to do some work when the power comes back like make sure my NAS is up and running before VM's launch so the NFS shares are available to mount etc. The power came back on at around 11:30 at which time I was asleep, everything turned back on except my NAS while I was asleep and ran all night never mounting the NFS shares - this is a pain in the ass!  When /etc/fstab fails to mount a drive because it's not accessible the folder on the machine is still there, if data get's written to that folder while the NFS share isn't mounted then mounting will continue to fail until that directory has zero contents. All of my backup processes run at night and write the backups to mounted NFS share directories. So that actually broke a bunch of things and for some reason the Synology VPN was hit and miss for the past week and started driving me crazy cause I couldn't figure it out - thus there must be a better way!

Lets get to actually talking about the OpenVPN OVA

I recently used Pritunl which is based on OpenVPN in a project that used several Raspberry Pi Zero's to send audio to a Mumble server and I was very happy with how easy it was and how well it worked.  So I decided to take a look at OpenVPN and I stumbled upon the OpenVPN Virtual Appliance and boy was I delighted! I just followed the documentation...

To be continued.....

Note: If your IP changes, it needs to be updated in the admin panel under Configuration > Network Settings > Hostname or IP Address & devices(Android/ChromeOS for sure) need to be setup with new profiles.
Using a FQDN is the solution for this annoyance & I've been too lazy to do it up to this point as my IP only changes a few times per year.

References

Documentation: https://openvpn.net/vpn-server-resources/deploying-the-access-server-appliance-on-vmware-esxi/
]]><![CDATA[Backup using Timeshift + B2]]>I needed a way to take snapshots of my VPS this site is running on as it's not something they offer. So i decided to use Timeshift and then do a remote backup to my Backblaze B2 account.

Step 1 is to add the timeshift repository to Ubuntu

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/backup-using-time/5d260066a892b702b61fef4eSat, 20 Jul 2019 15:21:00 GMTI needed a way to take snapshots of my VPS this site is running on as it's not something they offer. So i decided to use Timeshift and then do a remote backup to my Backblaze B2 account.

Step 1 is to add the timeshift repository to Ubuntu

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install timeshift
]]><![CDATA[Jellyfin]]>

Jellyfin https://jellyfin.github.io/ is a self-hosted media system that was forked from Emby prior to it(Emby) going closed source. I was a long time premium supporter of Emby, even continued to pay for over a year whilst we used Plex due to my laziness to fix the

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/jellyfin/5ceeeeb142bc78509cb2509cTue, 09 Jul 2019 16:36:56 GMTJellyfinJellyfin

Jellyfin https://jellyfin.github.io/ is a self-hosted media system that was forked from Emby prior to it(Emby) going closed source. I was a long time premium supporter of Emby, even continued to pay for over a year whilst we used Plex due to my laziness to fix the Emby instance my wife nuked somehow.

Client

For the primary client that does 90% of the watching, I'm using the Amazon Fire TV Stick(not the 4k one) and the BETA Jellyfin Client that needs to be side loaded. I did this via my Chromebook and ADB and it worked flawlessly. I'll happily be able to ditch the AppleTV now!

I'm also using the Kodi plugin for the media center downstairs, as the audio passthrough is needed for the encoded Dolby/DTS stream to be properly pushed to my amp. The android app via my smartphone & tablet work flawlessly.

Server

The server is temporarily running on my over-powered Media Center PC that is running Windows 10.  There isn't really any setup aside from running jellyfin.exe. I'll do a write-up on migrating the data when I decide to commit to learning Docker but what will probably happen is I'll end up moving it to it's own Ubuntu Server VM.

]]><![CDATA[Emby vs Plex]]>

I have a very large media collection, and making that available is one of the primary uses of my homelab. Below is a table I've been working on to compare Emby to Plex.

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/emby/5cee80f6d112b63331573b5fMon, 15 Jan 2018 19:12:08 GMT

I have a very large media collection, and making that available is one of the primary uses of my homelab. Below is a table I've been working on to compare Emby to Plex.

]]><![CDATA[Past Due Update!]]>
General Update:

I know it's been a while since I last posted! I haven't disappeared and my h0m3lab is still in full force.. The summers are brutal for me to give any serious attention to my lab due to in being in my garage with no

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/past-due-update/5cee80f6d112b63331573b5eWed, 23 Nov 2016 18:54:14 GMT
General Update:

I know it's been a while since I last posted! I haven't disappeared and my h0m3lab is still in full force.. The summers are brutal for me to give any serious attention to my lab due to in being in my garage with no AC.. Get's in the mid 30's Celsius in there during the summer and no one wants to hang out in that!

Now that the temperature outside is getting down to single digits it's enjoyable to be hanging out in my garage again. Over the past month I've been doing a serious cleanse and re-organization of the space & preparing to stream live on Twitch and/or YouTube on stuff I'm doing in there.

The H0m3Lab:

has been going strong since my last post! Not a huge amount has changed as stuff has just worked which has been a surprise but probably cause I havent been... I've added a few TB's or storage and that's about it really.

3D Printing:

My printer was working OK, but in order to put in the time to get it working better I knew I had to move it to a more permanent dedicated space - which I have done. I'll be back full fledged printing/screwing up stuff and modifying my Delta on live streams very soon!

RC Stuff:

This is probably what has had the most of my time over the past 6 months. I've been dipping my toes into the water of flying RC stuff for a few years but I didn't really let it consume my life until this past summer when I was in PEI and I took my little Sport Cub S. I ended up taking a pop into Great Hobbies and walked out with a Inverza 280 which sparked a flame that has blown into a huge hobby of mine. Not only flying planes but a little bit of everything including building a few FliteTest scratch builds out of Dollorama foam board. I have a few fixed wing planes, versa winged planes, quads ranging from nanoQX to 250 race quad and a mCP X helicopter. I enjoy the DIY stuff most so the ARF stuff excites me! I'm currently working on getting a new Revo F4 flight controller all configured with BetaFlight for my 250 race quad with telemetry & FPV setup. I have all the equipment it's just learning and building which hopefully will happen mostly via the live stream so we can learn together.

]]><![CDATA[Backing up my Backups to B2 - Teaser]]>

Just a teaser of a walkthrough post I'm working on using HashBackup with BackBlaze B2 cloud storage.

The following is a email I wake up to every morning of the cron results of the backup job.

Backup directory: /home/scotty/hashbackup
Using destinations in dest.conf
This is
]]>https://h0m3lab.com/backing-up-my-backups-to-b2-teaser/5cee80f6d112b63331573b5cThu, 21 Jan 2016 14:54:19 GMT

Just a teaser of a walkthrough post I'm working on using HashBackup with BackBlaze B2 cloud storage.

The following is a email I wake up to every morning of the cron results of the backup job.

Backup directory: /home/scotty/hashbackup
Using destinations in dest.conf
This is backup version: 23
Dedup enabled, 60% of current, 0% of max
/media/red2/veeam/desktop/Backup Job MEDIAPC
/media/red2/veeam/desktop/Backup Job MEDIAPC/Backup Job MEDIAPC.vbm
/media/red2/veeam/desktop/Backup Job MEDIAPC/Backup Job MEDIAPC2016-01-21T003016.vib
/media/red2/veeam/laptop/Backup Job DESKTOP-EG91JMN
/media/red2/veeam/laptop/Backup Job DESKTOP-EG91JMN/Backup Job DESKTOP-EG91JMN.vbm
/media/red2/veeam/laptop/Backup Job DESKTOP-EG91JMN/Backup Job DESKTOP-EG91JMN2016-01-21T003053.vib
Copied arc.23.1 to b2 (104 MB 1m 58s 881 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.0 to b2 (104 MB 2m 35s 673 KB/s)
Waiting for destinations: b2
Copied arc.23.2 to b2 (104 MB 1m 49s 957 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.3 to b2 (104 MB 2m 41s 650 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.4 to b2 (104 MB 1m 44s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.6 to b2 (104 MB 1m 46s 988 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.5 to b2 (104 MB 2m 37s 665 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.7 to b2 (104 MB 1m 39s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.8 to b2 (104 MB 2m 40s 654 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.9 to b2 (104 MB 1m 54s 917 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.11 to b2 (104 MB 1m 46s 985 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.10 to b2 (104 MB 2m 37s 664 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.12 to b2 (104 MB 1m 40s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.13 to b2 (104 MB 2m 37s 667 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.14 to b2 (104 MB 1m 42s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.16 to b2 (104 MB 1m 38s 1.1 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.15 to b2 (104 MB 2m 33s 681 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.17 to b2 (104 MB 1m 44s 998 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.18 to b2 (104 MB 2m 29s 700 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.19 to b2 (104 MB 1m 29s 1.2 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.21 to b2 (104 MB 1m 42s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.20 to b2 (104 MB 2m 28s 708 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.22 to b2 (104 MB 1m 35s 1.1 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.23 to b2 (104 MB 2m 25s 721 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.24 to b2 (104 MB 1m 33s 1.1 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.26 to b2 (104 MB 1m 48s 967 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.25 to b2 (104 MB 2m 31s 690 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.27 to b2 (104 MB 1m 41s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.29 to b2 (104 MB 1m 42s 1.0 MB/s)
Copied arc.23.28 to b2 (104 MB 2m 45s 635 KB/s)
Copied arc.23.30 to b2 (80 MB 59s 1.3 MB/s)
Writing hb.db.13
Waiting for destinations: b2
Copied hb.db.13 to b2 (32 MB 50s 630 KB/s)
Copied dest.db to b2 (144 KB 5s 25 KB/s)

Time: 179.0s, 2m 59s
Wait: 1812.0s, 30m 12s
Checked: 22 paths, 81833377218 bytes, 81 GB
Saved: 12 paths, 9230008770 bytes, 9.1 GB
Excluded: 0
Dupbytes: 5585119690, 5.5 GB, 60%
Compression: 64%, 2.8:1
Space: 3.2 GB, 51 GB total
No errors
]]><![CDATA[Rockstor NAS Build - Part 2 - UPDATE]]>

Some updates to the Rockstor NAS since my last post.

The Rig

Updated (Nov 30, 2015)

Hardware:

  • CPU - AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini Quad-Core 2.05 GHz
  • Motherboard - ASRock AM1B-M AM1[^1]
  • RAM - HyperX Fury Series 2x 4GB
  • Case - Supermicro SuperChassis 846E1-R900B
  • Power Supply - Rosewill ARC-M650,
]]>https://h0m3lab.com/rockstor-nas-build-part-2/5cee80f6d112b63331573b5bMon, 30 Nov 2015 15:58:02 GMT

Some updates to the Rockstor NAS since my last post.

The Rig

Updated (Nov 30, 2015)

Hardware:

  • CPU - AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini Quad-Core 2.05 GHz
  • Motherboard - ASRock AM1B-M AM1[^1]
  • RAM - HyperX Fury Series 2x 4GB
  • Case - Supermicro SuperChassis 846E1-R900B
  • Power Supply - Rosewill ARC-M650, 650W Modular Power Supply
  • Fan Controller - EverCool SCP-A 3 Channel Fan Controller
  • RAID Card - IBM ServeRaid M1015 flashed to IT mode
  • Storage Arrays:
  • 21TB RAID6
  • 4TB RAID5
  • Hard Disks -
  • 4x 3TB HGST Deskstar NAS
  • 5x 3TB WD Red
  • 3x 2TB Seagate LP

Software:

  • Rockstor - Linux & BTRFS powered NAS

Rockstor NAS 1


So I moved from my NAS from the CoolMaster Tower I was using temporarily to it's permanent home inside a SuperMicro 24-bay SuperChassis 846E1-R900B. Some modifications I have done include:

Switching out the backplane from the old SAS1 backplane with a SAS2-847EL1 which is another temp solution as it's technically not a compatible backplane with this case. It also only has 21 SAS2 ports and due to it being for another case there is a slightly larger gap in the middle row which puts off 1/2 of the backplane spacing. I obviously matched the alignment of the bottom 12 ports.

I also switched out the Power Supply which was 900W (1+1) Redundant Power Supplies with a single Rosewill ARC-M650 650W PSU. The 900W redundant PSU was extremely noisy and not very power efficient. With the NAS powered off and just plugged in they were drawing 70W and 250W when powered on, now with the 650W Rosewill it pulls 0W when it's off and +/- 120W when powered on.

Noise isn't a big issue for me as this rack is in my garage, but this thing was LOUD! Even after removing the redundant PSU the five 5,000 RPM fans move some air which creates a lot of noise. This only has a small low power 25W TDP CPU in it so the standard fan setup is very much overkill. I put in a fan regulator for the 3 backplane fans and tuned them to about 60% which probably cut the noise by 70% and still offers ample cooling for my current setup. I'm going to swap out the rear case fan with a quieter 80mm Noctua fan in the future.

Rockstor NAS 2

Current Issues:

  • [^1]Possible compatibility issues with the onboard Realtek LAN with the AM1B-M motherboard, speeds are erratic and not constant. Resolved with Kernel update
]]><![CDATA[Lab Breakdown - Sept 23, 2015]]>

So I'll try to give a summary from beginning where my FTTH services comes into my house to the end where my Media Room PC sits quietly at the end. This is just a basic summary for now as i've kind of wiped the slate clean

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/lab-breakdown/5cee80f6d112b63331573b59Wed, 23 Sep 2015 13:24:55 GMT

So I'll try to give a summary from beginning where my FTTH services comes into my house to the end where my Media Room PC sits quietly at the end. This is just a basic summary for now as i've kind of wiped the slate clean as it was an absolute mess. My NAS was in the ML350 G6 which was causing issues to the P400i embedded RAID card from all the heat of 8x 3.5

So living in Nova Scotia Canada has it's perks, one is that we're lucky to have one of the best Fiber to the Home ISP's in North America! I get about 300MB/s down and 150MB/s upload all with super low pings for a very reasonable monthly price.

The ISP's modem is some Actiontec thing, but I replaced it with the Asus RT-N66U which works great! This also allows me to have a guest wifi for people to connect to without having access to everything behind my firewall. This actually saves me tons of time from dealing with a lot of port issues since Sophos UTM is so tight.

CAT5e comes into the Sophos UTM (OEM 2550L2D-MxPC) and departs to my Netgear GSM7224 24-port switch (which I managed to pickup for $50 #WIN!) which is the main center for all my network traffic routing.

ESXi 6 Servers

  • ML350 G6
  • 1x Xeon X5560
  • 32GB ECC Ram

Will replace the X5560 with 2x L5640's eventually and add another 32GB of ram. This currently has primarily most of the engine to drive my Kodi library and some stuff I'm currently testing. Since moving from the basic Kodi MySQL Library Sync to Emby I've been happy. I'll talk more about that in my planned Home Theatre PC Post.

  • Sun Fire X2270 M2
  • 2x Xeon X5620
  • 32GB Ram

Nice small 1U with plenty of power to play around with. Just hosts some homelab specific stuff like vCenter and Veeam backup server. Lots of room & power for future projects.

Rockstor NAS

  • Custom Built Low Power AMD Machine
  • AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini Quad-Core 2.05 GHz
  • ASRock AM1B-M AM1 Motherboard
  • 8GB Ram
  • M1015 RAID Card
  • 4x 3TB WD Red
  • 2x 3TB HGST Deskstar NAS
    • 15TB BRTFS RAID5 Array

Benefits of having a standalone machine for my NAS allow me to have complete control and no reliance on other systems. This is important to be because if a good deal were to come up on a newer 4U server the ML350 will be for sale. This NAS will be my long term(planned 5-10 years) storage solution for my network. Arrays will most likely be added and I'm sure a Motherboard swap will be necessary in the future due to the limited PCIe slots (1-16x & 1-1x) SAS Expander only uses PCIe for power, not for data connection so there are ways for me to expand my drive options but the basis of this machine is planned for long term service.

You can read more about why I choose Rockstor in my upcoming/developing Rockstor NAS Build posts.

NAS Currently sits in some CoolMaster Elite case, will move to a proper rack mount hotswap chassis shortly.

Security System

  • Xpenology - Surveillance Station
  • 2x Foscam FI9803P
  • 1x Xiaomi Xiaoyi Wireless IP Camera - Testing for indoor use
  • Custom RaspberryPi Camera

This is a project i've been working on for years, long before I ever got into having a real homelab back when I ran Linux VM's via VirtualBox on my OC'd Q8200 that didn't even support VT-x. I've played around with BlueIris, WebCamXP/Netcam Studio, Motion and several others and Synology's Surveillance Station is the one that tickles my fancy and is worth my $$. I would spend the money on an actual Synology box but they're rather expensive and do so much more than I want but not enough to replace a server, so unfortunately I'm stuck going the route of Xpenology which works just fine for me.

The purpose is mostly for personal interest and stuff like my curiosity of when the fedex guys delivered my package, what my cats are doing via live feed during the day while I'm at work. I mostly was interested in testing & developing my own IP Camera's using RaspberryPi's until my car was broken into last year overnight in my driveway and that's when I decided to buy the Foscam's with IR and start taking it more seriously. Unfortunately nothing was running during that night but fortunately only my fiance's make-up bag was stolen which seemed to be a really big deal to her, apparently it was like a limited edition kate spade bag or something of the sorts and had $600+ worth of make-up in it....

Media Room HTPC

The reason I'm where I am with all these computers and network cables.

  • My Main Machine
  • AMD FX-8320 Black Edition
  • BIOSTAR TA970 v.5.3 AM3+ Motherboard
  • Radeon R7 370
  • 32GB Ram
  • Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD + 2x 1TB WD Greens
  • Windows 10 Enterprise
  • TV
  • Panasonic ZT60 - Last of the best plasma's ever made
  • Sound
  • Sony STRDN1060 7.2 AV Receiver
  • Paradigm Reference Center Channel Speaker
  • Paradigm Monitors for rear surround & Old Fisher's w/ 12-inch bottoms for Main L & R
  • No sub currently due to noise from Fishers and lack of soundproofing of my media room

This room is my favorite place to be, relax and surf the web, watch YouTube or TV, sleep and eat. We've been in the market for new seating since we moved into our house 2 years ago but still have the old couch I bought when my fiance and I moved in together back when we were 19 and in university.

When we moved into the house, I had planned on a 110" projection system for the room but decided to wait it out for 4K and just buy a large TV. I started doing research and discovered how incredible these Panasonic Plasma's were, the room is in the basement and it's dark due to the blackout blind being broken and no longer rolling up so a plasma was the perfect fit. I finally found someone that still had one in their inventory and paid full price for a TV almost 2 years old - and was it ever worth it! The amazing TV paired with incredible sound, it's a beautiful experience and one that has led me down a road of my relatively expensive high powered homelab and a shit ton of opportunity to break stuff and figure out how to fix it.

Updates to come.....

]]><![CDATA[Rockstor NAS Build - Part 1]]>

My existing setup consists of a Windows Server 2012 R2 ESXi virtual machine running on my Proliant ML350 G6 with DriveBender pooling. The reason for the conversion is to get a dedicated standalone low power box so any future plans / changes don't keep me tied to the ML350.

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/rockstor-nas-build/5cee80f6d112b63331573b57Fri, 18 Sep 2015 18:28:09 GMT

My existing setup consists of a Windows Server 2012 R2 ESXi virtual machine running on my Proliant ML350 G6 with DriveBender pooling. The reason for the conversion is to get a dedicated standalone low power box so any future plans / changes don't keep me tied to the ML350.

The New Rig

Hardware:

  • CPU - AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini Quad-Core 2.05 GHz
  • Motherboard - ASRock AM1B-M AM1[^1]
  • RAM - HyperX Fury Series 2x 4GB
  • RAID Card: IBM ServeRaid M1015
  • Hard Disks -
  • 2x 3TB HGST Deskstar NAS
  • 4x 3TB WD Red

Software:

  • Rockstor - Linux & BTRFS powered NAS

Some of the reasons why I went with the above hardware are there was a Newegg.ca shellshocker for the CPU + Mobo + 4GB RAM for $138.26CDN. The Athlon 5350 has a TDP of just 25W so it was low power enough for me.

I was really debating between FreeNAS & Rockstor and decided not to proceed with DriveBender due to the inherit system requirements for a Windows box. I settled to go with Rockstor due to the flexibility of BTRFS and the inflexibility of ZFS. My storage requirements grow every month and with 4k around the corner that growth could quadruple within the next 2 years and I'm looking for a long term solution. I don't want to invest upfront on the unknown of future storage needs so growing my storage as needed is much more appealing, BTRFS gives me the ability to add disks to the array as needed.

To be continued....

Current Issues:

  • [^1]Possible compatibility issues with the onboard Realtek LAN with the AM1B-M motherboard, speeds are erratic and not constant.
]]><![CDATA[To Come... Under Construction]]>

Currently a work in progress - Look for updates in a few days!

I'm working on a Introduction video along with the beginning of the foundation of my homelab - Storage Solution. I'll review some of the options I considered and follow with documentation of my

]]>https://h0m3lab.com/under-construction/5cee80f6d112b63331573b56Mon, 14 Sep 2015 18:35:50 GMT

Currently a work in progress - Look for updates in a few days!

I'm working on a Introduction video along with the beginning of the foundation of my homelab - Storage Solution. I'll review some of the options I considered and follow with documentation of my setup of Rockstor.

Some of the topics I'll be covering in the immediate future are:

  • Current Lab Tour + Future Plans
  • Rockstor Linux & BTRFS powered Opensource NAS solution
  • ESXi Setup
  • Firewalls - Sophos UTM v.s. pfSense
  • homelab networking basics
  • Tons more as I work through getting my homelab working!

Thanks,
Scotty

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