Home Office Fix – HDMI Audio With Multiple PCs
Many people are working from home exclusively or a couple of days a week as part of a hybrid work environment. With a few tweaks, a home office can do double-duty nicely.
Posted on August 16th, 2022 in consulting | No Comments »
Proxmox helper scripts
I use Proxmox as the basis for my homelab. Proxmox is an open source bare-metal hypervisor with support for a wide array of hardware (if Linux runs on it, it’ll probably run Proxmox…)
Proxmox offers many enterprise-level features, like clustering, backup, advanced networking, certificate management, application support and support for ZFS, NFS and CIFS shares. Proxmox supports KVM virtulization for full emulation of Windows and Linux/BSD hosts, as well as LXC containers with broad support.
Proxmox also offers an open-standard email gateway and backup system.
I use Nutanix and VMWare vSphere at work. Configuring another hypervisor is a learning experience helped by many tutorials on YouTube and online resources. One resource I wanted to call out is a Github page created by user tteckster called Proxmox Helper Scripts. This page has many of the tweaks in one place that I searched for when setting up Proxmox the first time.
From this page, you can find scripts to perform post-installation steps, maintain the kernel list, choose dark mode, and install one of dozens of LXC containers – including running Docker in a container!
I’m running a KVM Ubuntu instance in my homelab running Docker to host many of my services. I’m planning to move the services to dedicated LXC containers, and these scripts will make it easy to do.
Posted on May 25th, 2022 in blog | 1 Comment »
Bring Your Own Device
Work/life separation is important to me, but being able to effectively manage responsibility in a fast-pace environment is a key to success. A key to that success is being able to be reached quickly and easily when I’m working. Over the years, the means to be reached has changed significantly.
At first, there was the Desk Phone. Customers called a telephone number that rang on your desk. You might have had a pager number in your greeting for people to page you if the issue was urgent.
Then, companies issued cell phones to employees. The implication that since the company paid for the phone, they could call any time took its toll on us on-call people, and the on-call rotation became important.
As employees started working remotely, some companies dabbled with soft-phones – VOIP telephone software that runs on your laptop and allows people to reach you on a single number regardless of location.
Many companies have given up on desk phones and switched to a “Bring Your Own Device” plan, where you use your personal cell phone for work business, and may or may not be reimbursed for business use of your personal phone.
One recommendation I can give is,
“DO NOT GIVE OUT YOUR PERSONAL CELL PHONE NUMBER.”
If you do, expect calls after hours, while you’re on vacation, and after you’ve left the company.
Skype, Google Voice and other services offer cheap VOIP calling services that work with your laptop or your cell phone, and allow you to give out a separate number for work business. You can tell it when to ring, when to forward to other numbers, and keep some separation between your personal cell phone number.
Some companies use a “PBX in the cloud”, from providers like 8×8 or Ring Central. If so, your company IT department might be able to get you a telephone number that would ring into their phone and PC apps.
Many companies use Microsoft Teams for collaboration, chat and video calls; Teams has phone systems features as an option. Phone systems features allow you to run a Teams meeting with a dial-in number for external callers, and to make and receive calls with a telephone number. Check with your local administrator if you use Teams.
With a little preparation, you can help keep your work life and home life separate, and enjoy and be more effective in both.
Posted on May 18th, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Logitech Zone wireless headsets
In an earlier post, I talked about how I built an effective home/work office by using Logitech’s MX Keys keyboard and MX Master mouse with 2 unifying receivers. I put one receiver in my home PC, one in my work laptop, and connect both systems into one monitor.
Switching between home and work environments is easy, and helps keep work and life separate. I can switch to my home PC when I’m done with work and not be tempted to log in and keep working in the evenings, when I’m rechgarging by spending time with family, relaxing and preparing for tomorrow’s tasks.
The one snag in my setup is headsets. I have a work headset and a home headset, both wired models. I end up havcing to switch between them when I switch from home to work and vice versa.
Logitech has come out with the Zone Wireless headset, a nice looking Bluetooth headset. What sets it apart is a new unifying receiver that can tie in the headset and Logitech MX keyboards and mice. It’ll also connect via Bluetooth to a cell phone.
With a Zone Wireless headset and a second audio unifying receiver, I could make a seamless work/home/phone environment and get rid of two more cables.
Posted on May 2nd, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Gary Numan
Gary Numan @ The Catalyst Club
Posted on April 3rd, 2022 in android, photo | No Comments »
Vacation, Hawaii
Princeville, HI, 2021
The view out of our living room window on vacation. That was about as clear as the sky got the week we were there.
Posted on March 31st, 2022 in android | No Comments »
The Worst Part of Working From Home Is Now Haunting Reopened Offices
slate.com has an excellent article entitled The Worst Part of Working From Home Is Now Haunting Reopened Offices that’s worth a read.
I’m concerned with “return to office” rhetoric that sounds too much like trying to go back to the way things were before the pandemic. The pandemic didn’t change the way we do things as much as accellerated existing trends – we skipped ahead 8-10 years, and adapted to working in a way that was new to us. The experience is bound to be difficult, as it’s changing a status quo in people management and company budgeting.
The challenge, instead, is how to make a hybrid office increase productivity and lower costs while maintaining the live/work benefits employees and companies have realized. Do that, and everybody wins.
I’ve thought about how to design a hybrid office that allows for in-place collaboration while keeping remote workers engaged in day-to-day workflow. Stand-up meeting areas need to be video-friendly, I’m trying to increase spacing in conference rooms, because no one’s going to want to sit elbow-to-elbow in a conference room an hour. I’ve thought about hotel seating, since the company could downsize the office in a truly hybrid environment – with a hybrid environment, though, you’d want to have everyone in the office for one or two days a week, and you’re back to 1:1 seating. So, if you want to save on real estate costs, you need to be remote-first.
These are all technology solutions to social issues, however.
I’m managing a mixture of physical and virtual servers that requires the occasional office visit, and an usually the only person in the office. I sorely miss the collaboration and camaraderie of a busy office; While we won’t go back to 2019, I hope we emphasize mixing remote collaboration and on-premise workflow when we return to the office en masse.
I’d love to hear from anyone working in a company that’s back in the office 5 days a week, let me know in the comments what your experience with in-office work is.
[ via slate.com ]
Posted on March 29th, 2022 in blog | 1 Comment »
Goodbye, Remote Desktop!
I’ve discussed my office updates In a previous post. I bought a Logitech MX Keys keyboard and Logitech MX Master 3 mouse, and am happy with the results. The keyboard feel provides just enough feedback without noise. The mouse has more buttons than I know what to do with; being able to horizontal scroll in Excel with my new ultra-widescreen monitor is great. The combination cost more than some computers I’ve purchased, but it’s a smart investment.
I’ve been trying various remote desktop tools including Remote Desktop to access my work laptop from my home system. What I hadn’t thought about was that the Logitech keyboard/mouse combination can talk to up to 3 different Unifying Receivers, and that my monitor supports 2 digital inputs.
My laptop is sitting in the corner with the display and keyboard inaccessible. I’ve plugged the laptop into the monitor with an HDMI cable, and now when I want to switch to work, I hit the <2> button on the keyboard, press a button on the mouse, switch inputs on the monitor, and I have my work laptop, in ultra-wide 34″ greatness, with no network lag.
With an ethernet cable into my laptop to eliminate any wireless lag, I’m working on a 13″ work laptop with an incredible monitor/keyboard combination.
Posted on March 6th, 2022 in blog | 3 Comments »
Remote execution exploit for DSM 7.0 and 6.2 reported by Synology
I’m a Synology NAS user, as are a lot of people running their home labs. There’s been a reported remote execution exploit announced by Synology. While a lot of people resonate with the idea of replacing cloud-based services with a system that they own, opening the system up to the internet is inherently risky. it might be a good time to reconsider opening your home lab to the outside world, without a VPN.
Better to set up a VPN server at your house and lock down your inbound ports. That way, you can securely access your home lab assets from the internet without exposing new security exploits to the world.
The update should be hitting your NAS in the next few days.
https://www.synology.com/en-global/security/advisory/Synology_SA_22_03
Posted on February 24th, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Lockbit Ransomware targets VMWare ESXi hosts
An article on duo.com describes a ransomware vector of great concern – exploit a vulnerability in an ESXi host, encrypt the data storage for dozens, possibly hundreds of hosts simultaneously.
The LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group has over the past year targeted various organizations globally, including ones in Chile, Italy and the UK. Researchers with Trend Micro in an analysis this week said they uncovered an announcement for LockBit Linux-ESXi Locker version 1.0 in October, made on the underground forum RAMP for potential affiliates. Since then, they have seen numerous samples in the wild – though they have not yet seen any organizations actually targeted by the variant yet.
Several other ransomware groups – including ones behind the BlackMatter, AvosLocker and HelloKitty ransomware groups – have shifted their efforts to target the ESXi platform, which is a hypervisor developed by VMware that is used by enterprise organizations to deploy and manage virtual machines.
As more organizations transition to ESXi, researchers said attackers increasingly view this platform as lucrative for ransomware attacks. Because the ESXi hypervisor allows multiple VMs to share the same hard drive storage, this creates an opportunity for attackers to target these centralized virtual hard drives used to store data from across VMs – creating a larger potential for disruption for companies.
Eyewitness accounts from the field claim their estate was exploited through an Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) misconfiguration, and that encryption across the cluster took seconds. Time to enable MFA if you haven’t, check your user lists, and disable AD integration, if you can manage it.
[ via duo.com ]
Posted on February 21st, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Installing OpenWRT and Wireguard VPN
Most home routers sold today are running Linux under the hood with a proprietary web GUI intended for home users. There’s been a movement over the past several years to create a more featureful environment for these routers by creating third-party firmware.
I installed OpenWRT on a Linksys WRT1900ACS router acting as my internet gateway. OpenWRT is a fully writeable Linux filesystem, and unlike factory images, allows you to extend the router’s capabilities through add-on packages. OpenWRT can serve files visa NFS, act as a web server or reverse proxy for your homelab, filter web ads for your network, and more. It’s as close to a full router experience as you can get on a piece of commodity home hardware. As a router/firewall, OpenWRT features zone-based firewall rules, NAT, Port forwarding, VLANs and advanced wireless security and support for Wireguard and OpenVPN virtual private networks.
The installation took about 15 minutes – going to the OpenWRT site, finding the correct firmware version, and flashing my router from the OEM web interface with the web-upgrade version of OpenWRT. Many Linksys routers feature a dual-flash design, so if you brick the router during the process you can boot over to the working partition and start over again.
As a side-benefit, my WAN speeds increased by roughly 30% by running OpenWRT on the same hardware versus the OEM firmware.
Once I had my router working, I added Wireguard VPN support. Wireguard is an efficient, key-based VPN that claims to be simpler than IPSec or OpenVPN. Torguard, my VPN provider supports Wireguard, so I downloaded my Wireguard configuration from their web site, entered it into the OpenWRT GUI, and enabled Wireguard.
VPNs are great at hiding your traffic from your ISP and local traffic, but many streaming media sites block VPN traffic. That’s where the vpn-policy-routing package comes in. Install it, enter the names of sites that should bypass the VPN and you’re done.
Now, I have all of my traffic routed through a VPN with the exception of streaming services, and can add any new services that need to route over my WAN with a web administration page.
Posted on February 21st, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
State of the Home Office, 2022
I upgraded my workspace for 2022.
I used to have a dual monitor setup with a 23″ 16:9 monitor and a 19″ 4:3 monitor. This worked adequately for several years, but the mixed geometry made moving windows from one screen to another difficult.
I replaced two monitors with a single LG 34″ ultrawide flat screen monitor, and I couldn’t be happier. I had thought about buying a curved monitor, but this monitor was relatively inexpensive and I don’t have the focus issues I thought I’d have with such a wide monitor. An ultrawide monitor greatly improves working on spreadsheets – I can get so much more of the spreadsheet in one screen without side-scrolling.
With 2560 x 1440 resolution, I have a lot of real estate to work with. LG includes software that allows you to tile windows based on several layouts, making multi-screen use easy. Whereas I used to use 2 full screen sessions with my multi-monitor setup, with one ultrawide monitor I default to 3 or more tiled regions with 1 or 2 windows on top of each other.It didn’t take long to get comfortable with this layout; I went into my office with a single laptop screen and 27″ monitor and it felt cramped!
One feature I wanted was an articulating monitor arm to replace the stock monitor stand. A Vivo single monitor arm made for an inexpensive upgrade to my desktop. My monitor has a built-in VESA mount, so installing the arm took 10 minutes. I now have more tilt/swivel range, and can raise/lower the monitor father than the stock stand – and I cleared out usable space under the monitor. And, I have to admit, it looks cooler than a center-mount stand.
I’ve scrimped on keyboards for years, using a low-end wireless keyboard/mouse combo. I wanted to upgrade to a mechanical tenkey-less keyboard, but my home office is an “open seating plan”, it’s off of our living room and the clicking noise of a mechanical keyboard would be distracting. My 1991 IBM Model M keyboard will need to stay in storage for the foreseeable future.
I read glowing reviews of the Logitech MX Keys keyboard. At $120, it’s the priciest keyboard I’ve ever bought. Seeing as it’s my main interface with my computer, it makes perfect sense to get the right keyboard. It’s a membrane keyboard, but has a scissor switch and positive feel. The keys are sculpted, with a round indent where your fingers land, and in initial use the indents seem to help you center your fingertips on the keys.
I bought a Logitech MX Anywhere mouse, and can connect both mouse and monitor with one receiver.Both keyboard and mouse can connect to 3 hosts using a USB receiver or Bluetooth, so I can put one receiver in my desktop, one in my work laptop, and share peripherals. I can use the keyboard with my phone via Bluetooth as t
Logitech has an application called Logitech Flow that is the kicker. With Flow and two devices with unified receivers, you can seamlessly switch peripherals between computers. With my laptop alongside my desktop monitor, when I move the mouse off of the desktop screen, the mouse appears on my laptop.I have some tools that only run on my work laptop, so I can focus those tools on the laptop screen and do the rest of the work in a web browser on my main screen.
I upgraded my desktop in 2021 – a used Dell desktop with 16 GB of RAM and a 3.2 Ghz i7 CPU. I installed Windows 10 on a new SSD and used the SATA drive for storage and backup. While it’s a 3 year-old desktop, with 4 cores and a decently fast clock speed, it runs well enough to keep multiple windows running.
These changes will make it easier to work (and multitask!) from home.
Posted on February 20th, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Kasm – Docker containers in your browser!
I just discovered Kasm, an amazing little tool that lets you run Docker containers on a remote server in a client browser. From their web site:
Streaming containerized apps and desktops to end-users. The Workspaces platform provides enterprise-class orchestration, data loss prevention, and web streaming technology to enable the delivery of containerized workloads to your browser.
Want to load a suspicious web site in a sandboxed browser? Fire up a Chromium, Edge or Brave window in your desktop browser. Need a desktrop environment? Centos and Ubuntu come loaded out of the box. Want to run The Gimp, Teams, Zoom or other apps in an isolated container? Done.
Kasm Workspaces environment is available in a community edition with limitations (perfectly usable in a home lab environment) or in professional/enterprise editions that include support and additional features for $5 per user per month and $10 per user per month, respectively.
Installation was simple. SSH into my docker app host, a virtual machine in my home lab running in a Proxmox VE host.
I needed to create a swap file, since I didn’t have one in place.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1024 of=/mnt/1GiB.swap
sudo chmod 600 /mnt/1GiB.swap
sudo mkswap /mnt/1GiB.swap
sudo swapon /mnt/1GiB.swap
cat /proc/swaps
echo '/mnt/1GiB.swap swap swap defaults 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
cd /tmp
wget https://kasm-static-content.s3.amazonaws.com/kasm_release_1.10.0.238225.tar.gz
tar -xf kasm_release*.tar.gz
sudo bash kasm_release/install.sh -L <Port Number>
You'll want to capture the page of usernames/passwords, then go to a browser and load
https://<your ip address>:<your port>
This loads the admin page by default. Go to the Workspaces” tab to see the available environments. More are available from their GitHub page.
I’m looking forward to playing with Kasm and using it for creating sandbox environments in a browser without a lot of effort.
Posted on January 21st, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Why I went back to using a 2012 ThinkPad
I’ve sworn by IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads for their reliability, build quality – and my users loved them.
My daily-use laptop is a 12 year-old Thinkpad T410. While it’s heavier than a modern ultrabook, it’s got a traditional keyboard remimiscent of older desktop keyboards, and both a trackpoint and trackpad.
With a simple set of tools, I’ve been able to replace the fan, expand memory and replace the spinning hard drive with an SSD. Batteries are inexpensive, and spare parts are readily available.
This post is inspired by this article from the Low-tech Magazine. I highly recommend giving that a read as well!
Over my lifetime, I’ve used a bunch of different computers, mainly due to new ideas and requirements popping into my mind every time I’m content with my current setup. One of my last changes might be a bit of a headscratcher for some.
Background
At my current place of employment, I’ve had the opportunity to try out recently released laptops from Lenovo and Dell, with the goal of evaluating them for software development workloads and pick a default option for new hires. My work laptop at the time was the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 with some decent specs and an NVIDIA GeForce MX 150 GPU that was weak and throttled itself whenever it hit 70 degrees Celsius in Windows 10, making it absolutely useless.
I tried out a fair number of makes and models: Lenovo ThinkPad P14/T14 (gen 1 and 2) in both Intel 11th gen and AMD Ryzen 4000/5000 series configurations, plus some Dell Latitudes with Intel 11th gen CPU-s as well. And the result? A lot of disappointment.
The non-exhaustive list of issues I ran into with these machines on Fedora Linux 34:
- The touchpad would sometimes randomly not work on one of the ThinkPads.
- On AMD models, performance was less than stellar for my workloads and not a significant jump over a laptop from 2018.
- The Intel CPU-s had throttling issues that made them unusable for basic things like calls over Google Meet as they would throttle to 400 MHz.
- On one of the Dell machines, it was very easy to overheat the SSD, which lead to the CPU throttling to 400 MHz. Yes, the SSD caused the CPU to throttle.
- Wi-Fi/Bluetooth would not work on one of the laptops, even when I was using an up-to-date Linux distro. Likely related to the type of adapter used (not Intel).
Once that experiment was done, we settled on the least crappy version of the ThinkPads that had an AMD Ryzen CPU, at least those didn’t sound like jet engines under load and didn’t have insane throttling issues.
It’s not all that bad, though. I was now committed to using my current ThinkPad T480 for as long as possible. It, too, had a rough start, but at least all the issues it came with have been ironed out over time.
[ via ounapuu.ee ]
Posted on January 18th, 2022 in blog | No Comments »
Staying Productive
We’re living in interesting times, with those who are lucky able to perform some semblance of their work responsibilities from home. Working from home presents its own challenges, many of which I faced when working as a freelance consultant earlier in my career.
I thought I’d summarize some of the things I’d learned here:
1. Get your work space organized, even if it’s a portable space.
Having a space that’s focused on work is important when you’re trying to keep work and home separate. I violate this rule by using my home computer to access work systems via the cloud, but that’s more of an ergonomic need. If you can use a computer armoire and close it up at the end of the day, even better!
Having a space free of clutter and free of non-work distractions may help you keep focused when you’re working. I use a tried-and-true method of breaking my workspace into A space, B space, and C space.
A space is space in my vision when I’m working, and if I use an item daily, it’s in my A space.
B space is for things I use occasionally. I keep those handy, but not in my workspace. I have an armoire top behind me that I use for those things.
C space is for things that I rarely use. They’re in a cabinet or in my storage space.
2. Get the best chair you can afford.
Bruce Sterling said that you most likely spend a third of your life sitting in an office chair, and a third of your time sleeping. Spending up on your desk chair (and mattress) are some of the best investments you could make when you amortize the costs.
3. Wake up, dress for the part, shave/shower as if you’re going into an office.
I’ve always been lucky to have a partner who went into an office, so I was aligned to a “business hours” schedule. Waking up at your usual time, showering, and dressing for “your” office always helps me remain focused – having video calls helps with keeping up appearances, too.
4. Set a schedule – take set breaks for getting up, lunch, coffee, etc.
We’re all missing elements of structure that commuting, working in an office, lunching with co-workers, and leaving to go home provide. In addition to maintaining my job responsibilities, I’m also managing two kids who are remote-schooling for the rest of the year.
It’s important to me to keep the kids with some element of structure as well. They get up at the same time, shower, clean their rooms, and we all eat breakfast at the same time. That’s time to go over daily plans and spend some time as a family before going our separate ways with work and school. We get back together for lunch together at the same time, and usually eat outside to get a break from computer screens.
5. Don’t eat at your desk!
Your keyboard will love you for it.
6. When you stop working, leave work alone. Make some mental separation between home/work, even if there’s no physical space.
Work/Life balance is important, and harder to maintain when you do both in the same physical space. Some tips that have worked for me:
- There are a multitude of ideas online for ways to hide a laptop/office workstation for people living in small spaces, ranging from screens, to repurposing closet space as a portable work area, and computer armoires. Those are great ways to make work “go away” at the end of the day.
- Setting your out of office reminders on email and out of office statuses on chat/collaboration tools will take some of the immediacy in off-hours requests and notifications.
7. Make the most of your time.
I normally spend 3 hours a day in round-trip commute time. I accept this as the price of doing business where I live, but I used the time to listen to podcasts to make productive use of the time.
Now that I’m not commuting, I wake up at the same time, but spend that distraction-free time in the morning on an online training certification I could never make time for when commuting to work.
8. Not being OK is OK.
You’re not working from home, you’re trying to do your best while working through a global pandemic. It’s OK to be stressed, sleepless or otherwise not feeling your best.
Take time out to recharge. Take a walk. Get some sun, Talk to friends of yours over a video conference. Call your family. Meditate – there are many meditation apps that can help start you on a mission. Here is a good list to start from. I started with Headspace.com and bounce between it, Welzen and Buddhify.
Posted on November 27th, 2021 in blog | No Comments »
Dark Hallways
Posted on October 23rd, 2021 in android, art | No Comments »
Museum Still Life
Posted on October 19th, 2021 in android, art | No Comments »
Back to Outlook
One the benefits of working for a company with a volume license agreement with Microsoft is Microsoft’s Home Use Program. My current employer is a rather large Microsoft 365 customer, and Microsoft offers a generous package – $69.99/year for up to 5 users with Microsoft 365 apps and 6 TB of OneDrive cloud storage. It’s the family package for the price of a single user.
Looking at the offering from Microsoft, I noticed that outlook.com now supports all of the functionality of Outlook, including Notes, Tasks and calendaring. I’ve hosted my email on Gmail for some time and missed the productivity features of Outlook that, until recently, required an Exchange server.
I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done, and the creators of the system wrote a guide to tailor Outlook to GTD workflow. The tasks folder is well suited for getting things out of your head and filing them in a system sorted by context – you want all of your work tasks in one place, personal professional in another and any other “buckets” you can think of – Outlook support that.
I like being able to sync data between multiple systems without issues; Outlook synchronizes well with Nine, a non-free Android email client that supports Notes, Calendars, Tasks, and other Outlook data. Surprisingly, Microsoft’s Android Outlook client is missing notes and tasks.
Having a “real” email client instead of a web browser is a refreshing change. The toolbar UI is handy, the search feature of Outlook is a time-saver for obscure commands and options, and editing is easier.
Outlook.com is a full-featured email client now, and I can use Microsoft’s web apps along with outlook on the web on my Linux laptop with Chrome or Firefox. They’ve come a long way from Outlook Web Access and Internet Explorer in the early 2000s.
I’ve used Outlook for almost as long as I’ve supported email systems in my career, so I know the features and limitations well. We’ll see how this experiment goes.
Posted on September 14th, 2021 in blog | No Comments »
Lights
Posted on July 31st, 2021 in coolpix995 | No Comments »
In the beginning, there was Bare Metal
As a technology consultant, I need a network environment to evaluate, test and deploy a myriad of applications.
In the Beginning, there was Bare Metal. I ran a stable of obsolete desktop PCs in a garage lab, each running an operating system I was working on. That meant running enterprise applications on marginal hardware and inflated utility bills paying to power several inefficient desktop PCs.
Then came desktop virtualization, or what they refer to as a “type 2” hypervisor. With VMWare and VirtualBox, I could run one virtual Linux environment on my Windows desktop, but would need to shut it down when I wasn’t using it. Once desktop virtualization worked, the garage lab went into e-waste.
I needed was a “type 1” hypervisor that runs virtual machines directly on dedicated hardware to support multiple machines running 24/7. At work, I run VMWare’s vSphere platform, a robust environment that provides virtualization, high availability, hybrid cloud/on-premise computing, desktop virtualization and more. It’s a little more than what I’d need to set up a home lab environment and vSphere is picky about what hardware it’ll run on.
I discovered Proxmox – a hypervisor similar to vSphere. Proxmox is open source, and supports any hardware that will run Debian linux and Qemu.
Proxmox does everything I’d need, including network bridges, clustering, support for network storage using NFS, CIFS and Ceph, built-in storage and backup tools. Since the back-end is Debian Linux, I can use tools like Rclone to mirror my VMs to the cloud.
While I could virtualize entire systems with Proxmox, I was more interested in containers. Proxmox supports LXC (Linux Containers), but I was more interested in Docker containers. Proxmox doesn’t support Docker directly, but can run a guest OS that *does*. With a VM running Ubuntu Server 20.04, I had my docker host.
Within my Docker host, I’m running Nginx Proxy Manager to allow me to expose my home lab systems safely to the outside world using SSL encryption. I’m running Pi-Hole as a DNS/DHCP server and blocking ads from all of my PCs, phones and internet-enabled devices. Grafana is monitoring my internet speed, and I have a menu system managing it all – running in its own Docker container.
This solution gives me access to the container ecosystem, lets me spin up and take down containers quickly for testing, and allows me to run home services efficiently while saving a ton on my power bill.
Posted on April 26th, 2021 in blog | No Comments »
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