Getting the squash from the garden preserved and bacon made at home, ready for the upcoming months. Making my 5th loaf of squash bread as well.
The bacon I wet brined in a vacuum sealed bag for 10 days in my custom brine. I tasted a piece and may be my best bacon so far!
Next my latest loaf of squash bread it this time I used granulated sugar instead of brown sugar. Tastes good but I prefer it with brown sugar.
Next I cut up some squash from the garden flash freezing it for a couple of hours, then vacuum sealed.
The various steps showing how I brined, smoked, then vacuum sealed the bacon.My latest loaf of squash bread.Steps preserving some squash, flash freeze, then vacuum sealed.
August 1, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Now On Att 5gb Fiber Connection
As of Wednesday of this week I was switched over to the 5gb fiber ISP service from ATT. Friday July 31 2026 I received and setup my new TpLink BE19000 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Router with 10gbe LAN and WAN connections to be able to access that full bandwidth of 5gb. Everything setup fine I forwarded the ports needed for my servers to work mirroring what I have with my TpLink ArcherAX11000. I have my entire server operation at 10gbe withing my lab and house now except some camera subnets.
Was looking at ways to measure my speeds but there aren’t any sites I see that can measure speeds up to 5-10gbps. Everything seems 1gbps max for internet speed tests. I’ll try to find some server with iperf or something to test with possibly. Interestingly enough the ATT modem shows it’s at 10gb.
Things do seem to be moving faster even for my wireless. We will see. for now due to the finicky behavior of switching over some of my IOT devices I kept my TpLink ArcherAX11000 connected to them as an access point.
More testing and usage to come!
July 25, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Passed Through USB Sound Device XCP-ng
I passed through a USB sound device via the XCP-ng UI on version 8.3. Went fairly well but sounded a bit scratchy when I used the device in VM in my Broadcasting application Sam Broadcaster. I’ll try using it again but so far having to go with my silent output for my sound pipeline in the SAM application.
This is how it looked in the CLI before and after
~]# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0624:0249 Avocent Corp. Virtual Keyboard/Mouse
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0624:0248 Avocent Corp. Virtual Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
[22:15 ~]# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0624:0249 Avocent Corp. Virtual Keyboard/Mouse
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0624:0248 Avocent Corp. Virtual Hub
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 041e:3042 Creative Technology, Ltd
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
[22:31 ~]# xe pusb-list
uuid ( RO) : 009f7ec1-d49b-11da-8f34-1de8d6128031
path ( RO): 1-2
vendor-id ( RO): 041e
vendor-desc ( RO): Creative Technology, Ltd
product-id ( RO): 3042
product-desc ( RO):
serial ( RO): <blank>
version ( RO): 1.10
description ( RO): Creative Technology, Ltd_<blank>
speed ( RO): 12.000
Sound Blaster audio USB passed through to XCP-ng host. Sound Blaster audio USB passed through to XCP-ng host. W2025 Data Center VM
July 23, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Both XCP-ng 8.3 Servers in Rack
Doesn’t look pretty but I now have both!of the XCP-ng servers I built, fine tuned and stress tested in my rack. I’ll post specs later. Now my C7000 is retired I just have to clean it up and find it a new home!
I had to enlarge one hole in one of my rails attached to my 4U server case and move my rails down an inch. Physically besides connecting the networking that was the only hiccup. Now my hallway is empty and its time for cleanup. This will now give me back my work space for testing and building new equipment.
The servers are still a bit noisy as I went with the high end 8k rpm fans even though I have active heat sinks with fans. I’ll explore more liquid cooling but its a lot more work with server class CPUs. A bit more work than I set out to do with all of the updates but saves me time and gives my weekends more time for other things I’m hoping. Would have completed this earlier this week but I was really ill, still feel something and have to visit the doctor tomorrow so will see.
I officially removed my Bl460 HP Gen 8 Blades from being XCP-ng servers in my pool as well. They did a great job but I can already tell these new servers are much faster!
Made sure my Xcp-ng were at the latest patch revisions for XCP-ng 8.3 plus updated my community XO version via git. Then updated my web server, music relay server for IceCast and ShoutCast and music server. Had to swap my VMs between virtual servers as some patches required a reboot. Reminded me why I wanted more memory before this AI trend of gobbling up the computer chips.
I obviously need do cable management, I will rack my switches in a new manner plus a host of other things like a custom built open source router rebuild. I needed to reboot my router I was using for NAT forwarding.
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on One XCP-ng Virtualization Server in Rack
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on One XCP-ng Virtualization Server in Rack
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on One XCP-ng Virtualization Server in Rack
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Updated my CMS WordPress
I updated my W2025 Data Center music server and IceCast and ShoutCast music relay servers. I had already setup some upbeat music and then I’ll wind down to something a bit mellower and then let the algorithm take over with my database about 4am PST.
July 16, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Put UPS Equipment Back In Rack
The UPS equipment (Leibert UPStation GTXs) is back in the rack tonight. I placed each UPS battery cluster on separate racks this time so that battery replacement is easier for the extra battery pack on top of the main assembly.
Finding my racking hardware screws, bolts etc has been most of my time. I found the rails I will use for the virtualization servers as well but will not rack those tonight.
Front viewSide view of racking shelves and UPS equipment.Back side view of UPS equipment.
