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I need a catchy name for this… Ok, we have progressed our home lab hardware to end game status and it is time to document this stage before we get into the layers above. How it started… We started with the above hardware which was detailed in this https://vzilla.co.uk/vzilla-blog/getting-back-into-the-homelab-game-for-2024 also in this post it highlights some existing bits of kit that I had already. Also in that post there were two goals I had and that was to add a further two nodes and upgrade 4 of the nodes to 32GB (1 was already at 32GB) So we did just that. How it’s going… YouRead More →

I have been a huge fan of minikube for a number of years now, it has given me a local lightweight Kubernetes cluster to play around with and demonstrate Kasten K10 and Kanister amongst other learning possibilities without the need for remote and costly cloud clusters. But things have broken for me, one of the main advantages of minikube was the addons available when you deploy your cluster. My simple command to deploy a quick cluster using docker (You can use other options here but for ease docker is super simple) minikube start –addons volumesnapshots,csi-hostpath-driver –apiserver-port=6443 –container-runtime=containerd -p mc-demo –kubernetes-version=1.27.7 To break this command downRead More →

It is Friday morning and we had a power outage during the night in the homelab, everything hardware wise is back up but not my VMware virtual center. Of course that would be the one thing to not come up! This is hosted on one of my two ESXi hosts. When I got to the console after logging into the ESXi host directly we see the “Failed” error message. It was pretty clear that because of the power outage something was not quiesced correctly, makes sense. I first went and got into the shell by providing my root password twice to access another prompt andRead More →

I am getting back into the home lab race, what seems like many years ago I once had a half height rack and some servers for my home lab, the pandemic hit and I decided I was all in on cloud, we hav a good commercial, enterprise lab in Columbus, OH I don’t need this power hungry, noisy situation any longer. The original vzilla homelab My need for a Home Lab? Many of you may be wondering, “Sounds like you have more than enough options to run some workloads for testing and learning” and you would be right I do have access to public cloudRead More →

Having recently read Thomas’s blog on his “Ultimate Home Office Setup” – https://thomasthornton.cloud/2023/08/01/my-ultimate-home-office-setup-a-journey-of-productivity/ I wanted to do something similar documenting my new set up, which has been evolving over the past few years through different houses and setups and equipment, but I think we have finally made it to where we need to be. I for one, during the pandemic was glued almost addicted to YouTube and in particular Office Setups, as a worker based at home or on the road it is important that I have a space to be creative and be able to get productive. I created a similar blog post backRead More →

When using Kubernetes as a platform, there are several data considerations and concerns to keep in mind: Data management is an important consideration when using Kubernetes as a platform, and it is important to have a clear understanding of the data considerations and concerns that apply to your organization. By taking these considerations into account, you can ensure that your data is secure, managed effectively, and in compliance with industry regulations. More on Backup & Recovery Data Backup and Recovery is an essential aspect of data management, especially when using Kubernetes. In Kubernetes, containers and persistent volumes can be recreated in the event of aRead More →

Kubernetes has become one of the most popular open-source platforms for managing containers, allowing organisations to deploy, scale, and manage their applications with ease. In this post, we will explore the concept of Kubernetes as a platform and make comparisons to virtualisation and virtual machines (VMs). Virtualisation has been a game-changer for IT, allowing organisations to run multiple operating systems and applications on a single physical machine, leading to improved utilisation and cost savings. Virtualisation provides a virtualised layer between the physical hardware and the operating system, enabling multiple VMs to run on a single physical host. Kubernetes operates on a similar principle but withRead More →

This has been a long time coming, I have been in the cloud-native world for around 2 years since having more of a focus on cloud-native technologies and Kasten by Veeam which was acquired by Veeam in October 2020. At that time my first KubeCon was virtual for everyone, this was in early 2021 when we had virtual booths, sessions and activities. Then things finally got back to in-person and this was out in LA later in 2021 when there were still restrictions on some countries entering the US so I could not make this one either. Fast forward to May 2022 when KubeCon EURead More →

I have not blogged here for a while, I think I have a pretty good excuse and some of that I am going to cover later on in this post. Roughly around a year ago, I started this journey into the cloud-native and open-source world with an amazing opportunity to raise awareness and drive the adoption of Kasten technologies. My initial reaction was that this was going to be a big mountain to climb and don’t get me wrong it is as there is an endless amount of content and things to learn however the biggest takeaway I can give you is that you justRead More →

My goal here was to make a super easy way to deploy Kasten K10 and be able to demonstrate the value of K10 in a simple and easy way without having to deploy public cloud managed Kubernetes environments, or having to rely on virtual environments. Most people have access to your own laptop or desktop machine be it Windows, MacOS or Linux. I wanted to make something that would be easy to spin up and down but give us the capability of showing the benefits that K10 brings to your Kubernetes Data Management in the real world. But then I got thinking a lot ofRead More →