Blog Archives

update Nov 7th 2015 For reference, this is the list of components that I ordered in 2011. Some of these parts are more difficult to come by however by checking the specs you get a good idea of what I … Continue reading →

(x-post from original to show off the goods) So finally the stuff has arrived, one big box filled with goodies.    And as the saying goes, all good things come in threes …       Well, enough fun with the … Continue reading →

(x-post from the original project, the hardware build has not changed) In this post I’ll document the steps of putting the hardware together for a cluster node. A story in pictures: I’ve unscrewed and removed the cover of the Antec case. … Continue reading →

The network design has changed to allow for a more fine-grained placement of VM’s and to incorporate a better segmented level of security. VM’s can now be placed into firewalled VLAN’s from vCenter itself. As each node has three physical … Continue reading →

The process of updating the BIOS and firmware remains the same therefore I have only changed the iSCSI part below and copied the first part from my earlier post. Now that the node is assembled and hardware ready, it’s time … Continue reading →

There are several ways of installing ESXi 6.0 on a node: burn the installer iso to a bootable disc create an installable USB stick (using unetbootin) As I have a lot of empty discs collecting dust, I opt for burning … Continue reading →

I’ve already talked a bit about LUN’s and storage. Let’s put everything together. I’m using a QNAP TVS-871 (28Tb raw storage) to be the iSCSI target and provide the mapped LUN’s. The QNAP is configured as 2-disk RAID1, 5-disk RAID5 … Continue reading →

As the basic network connectivity is finished, we can now leave the local configuration in the serverroom and continue from the comfort of a desk and iMac. For this I’ll use the VMWare fat client. (yes yes, I can use … Continue reading →

<rant> VMWare has been pushing away from a fat client towards their new webclient. The thing is that I remember from version 5 and 5.5 that, although the graphics and look’n’feel are cool, the software is sloooooooow. Unbearable slooooooow. Login … Continue reading →