January 29, 2019
by dhoytt
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Switching to XCP-ng Hypervisor

I had started testing and working stoppng and going with oVirt for the past month or so as my new hardware has started coming in but I’ve now switched my attention to XCP-ng. I have gotten so much further in one late evening with XCP-ng than a month plus with oVirt. I’m now ready to move my NAS running FreeNAS in place once I get another drive as someone sent an 8TB SAS drive without any shock padding so I have to return that back and get from another source.

Testing with oVirt I had issues just getting the management Host Engine VM to stay up or even install. With XCP-ng install went fine to my new server, NICS came up (I had to login and manually start the NIC’s for Ovirt via CLI).

Yes I’m familar with XCP-ng as I had been working with Xen, XCP and Xenserver. XCP-ng is the latest commnity version restart its seems of XCP since Citrix removed so many features suddenly from the community version last year.

Its great so far in a few hours I have already setup the hypervisor shared out iSCSI paths from FreeNAS, started using Xen Orchestra wed UI and then discovered XCP-ng Center for windows that mirrors Xen Center. Looked around quite a bit on the CLI mostly looking at NFS options. Created VM’s and they are installing very fast using my NFS library OS ISO’s going to my iSCSI SR’s.

I also discovered that I could import my current XenServer enviornment into this XCP-ng community Center as well as use the Xen Orchestra premium web UI for a brief time that seems to have some cool VM ipmort features I may be able to use to import my VM’s from my old enviornment I hope.

I really had no idea they had been doing so much with this XCP-ng and it looks like they have a very active community!

Wow its really late and I need to go to bed I have a ton of projects and things I need to do other than this but this is huge as well.

More later on this XCP-ng!

January 27, 2019
by dhoytt
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UPS Battery Update

Updated one of my Liebert GTX UPS and the extension cabinet. Did this earlier than I wanted since the UPS went into total failure as it seems all the batteries have reached end of life obviously as evidenced by the visual swelling this is not one of the UPS that I had replaced the batteries on after buying from someone who had bought out a decommissioned data center.

I’m still updating other aspects of my infrastructure like NAS that’s running FreeNAS, hypervisors (testing Ovirt), rebuilding Zoneminder server, installing additional cameras for security, updating my network backbone, and building a smart environment the Open Source way. So this UPS going out was not in the plans until later. The effectiveness of the UPS wasn’t at peak so the batteries conditions explain the bad uptime for small outages it should withstand.

Here’s some after and before pictures of the UPS batteries and systems I have in place currently.

January 27, 2019
by dhoytt
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Pics From L.A.Rams 2019 Playoff Game Against the Cowboys

Some pictures from the L.A. Rams 2019 playoff win against the Dallas Cowboys! Been a Rams fan for a very long time and it’s great to have them back in California!

I also have some pics from the hotel I stayed in the Millennium Biltmore in downtown L.A.

GO RAMS beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl! I have a lot to do so it seems I will not make the Super Bowl but will be watching and yelling!

December 20, 2018
by dhoytt
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Getting Set for New FreeNAS Hardware Build

Getting set for new first major rebuild of my NAS system in several years. I have updated drives, replaced motherboards with same generation motherboards, up-sized drives switched chassis even but always with similar hardware.  I will be swapping to a new chassis, motherboard, RAM, hard drives, CPU, SAS hard drive controller, backplane, cables, FreeNAS version and layout of storage usage. This will help as my build and organization became difficult to fully utilize my full capacity for virtualization iSCSI targets and what I was using for storage of multimedia, files and backups. I will also with the larger capacity drives have less spindles spinning, more efficient power supplies and less rack space taken.

Here’s what I have so far:

Chassis: Supermicro sc825 (hot swap backplane)

Motherboard: Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F

CPU’s: matched pair INTEL Xeon E5-2690 2.90Ghz

Memory: 4 X 8GB DDR3 PC3L-10600R 1333MHz 240pin 

Controller: LSI SAS 9341-8I 12GB 8PORT PC-E 3.0 SAS SATA RAID CONTROLLER

Drive controller cables: Silverstone CPS06 600mm SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 w/ Sideband Thick Cable (SGPIO)

Hard Drives:  HGST Ultrastar He8 | HUH728080AL5200 | 0F23268 | 8TB SAS 12Gb/s 7200 RPM 128MB Cache 3.5″

Second power supply: SuperMicro 1U 1280W Power Supply PWS-1K28P-SQ

This is the chassis I picked up locally from a posting on Craigslist which had a pretty decent Supermicro x8dte-f motherboard , LSI SAS 9211-8i, a D33025 dual GB NIC, plus a Supermicro Mini-SAS pass thru cable (CBL-0167L). 

This is the front of the chassis with hot swap bays

This is what it looked like before on boot up.

This is the chassis stripped down ready for the new parts that are surrounding it

Normally it wouldn’t take very long to build this but my house is a mess as well as my work area and computer room so I will do some tidying up before starting my build. This is a build I have been putting off for a few years mainly trying to do this with my old chassis’s and trying to rebuild a more efficient room cooling component and switching those ideas around which is still on my radar along with switching away from old (Xenserver) to new virtualization (oVirt) Hypervisors and platform so stay tuned for that as well as I have those systems in house ready to build as well!

That’s it for now New build coming up plus transfer of data which is the real reason I needed to hurry with the NAS/FreeNAS build as a priority over other parts of the project.

June 18, 2018
by dhoytt
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Turning Over Garden

Getting set for garden turnover after early plants of mustard and lettuce bolted and went to seed. Now will try to plant the same but with a garden shade to protect from the Sacramento summer heat. Did some intense gardening over the weekend and Monday evening to remove the plants that went to seed plus some weeds now I’m ready to get some new plants in place.

May 20, 2018
by dhoytt
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Garden to Table Dinner

This is how I do my spring and summer dinners grabbing vegetables/herbs from the garden to the oven then the plate.

Today I have a mixture of different types of Swiss chard, mustard greens, collards, sweet basil, Thai basil, rosemary, mint,sweet purple onions and I’ll add salt, pepper and a dash of cayenne as my peppers aren’t ready yet.

Will throw the mix in a wok once I’m close to having my wood fired whole chicken ready.

I’ll be able to have leftovers off of this meal for a few days this week.

Swiss chard, mustard greens, collards, basil, onion, rosemary, mint getting prepped.

Swiss chard, mustard greens, collards, basil, onion, rosemary, mint chopped up.

Swiss Chard and Mints growing in garden.

Bush Beans in garden.

Cucumbers ready o be picked.

Big Boy Tomatoes, mints, sweet basil, Thai basil.

Bell Peppers, tomatoes and a need to weed.

More Swiss Chard, mustard greens, more mints, plus tops of purple onions to the left.

Collard greens. young basil plant in foreground, and young asparagus plan to the upper right.

Roma tomatoes with some immature chives.

Dozens of green cherry omatoes about to get ripe, more of my mint nemesis and another chives bunch.

Swiss chard, mustard greens, collards, basil, onion, rosemary, mint washed.Whole Chicken ready to go on my Traeger Grill.

May 13, 2018
by dhoytt
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Replacing Last Years Collard Greens and Barefooted in the Dirt

Removed last years stalks of collard greens earlier this week since they were going to seed and this years collard greens are growing rapidly. The collards from last year I let go a bit longer than normal and the stalks were long twisted and tough! I needed an axe to chop through the stalks! I then took the leaves off washed and will cut up later.

Earlier today I used the small tiller to prep the area last years collard greens were and planted yellow bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, summer squash, yellow crooked neck squash and another eggplant.

While tilling the soil and raking it I kicked off my flip flops and went barefoot in the cool rich soil, it felt great! I forgot how nice it feels to go barefooted with cool dirt beneath your feet.That’s the thing about gardens they give a nice return in lots of areas you can’t perceive along with the obvious until you do it!

Last years collard greens gone to seed with peppers I will rotate into their spot.

Roots of last years collard greens.

Roots of last years collard greens size made apparent when shown next to y size 10 foot.

Collard greens wild twisted stalk cut with my ax.

Soil prepped tilled and planted along edges with new plants to flow into.

Going barefoot in the tilled soil.

Still barefoot in the garden feeling good.

This years collard greens looking good in east part of the garden.

Another shot of this years collards with some basil on the side along with romaine lettuce.

May 11, 2018
by dhoytt
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First Tomatoes of the Year

My first tomatoes of the season were some delicious cherry tomatoes I put in a salad with Swiss chard, basil,romaine lettuce, sweet purple onions and mustard greens all from my garden. Together with a baked potato and ribeye steak cooked to medium with my homemade dipping sauce for the steak was a great meal including 805 beer and Crown whisky as beverages.