- Homelab
My Homelab Is Not A Mess Anymore
A little over a year ago, I made a bit of a long-winded rant regarding on how my homelab is a mess. I haven't been too active on social media besides my presence on X, however, I have been extremely busy in the background working with my sponsor mandolinsara to build out a usable, secure, and scalable platform to place my thoughts and host my future works. I figured now would be the perfect time to write a long-winded article on my journey starting from the beginning and concluding with the state of current affairs and what I'd like to accomplish going forward.
Read More » - Personal News
Crash and Burn and What We Learned: A SAN Post Mortem
Crash and Burn and What We Learned: A SAN Post Mortem regarding a storage area network misconfiguration that occurred on January 24, 2024. This incident took down our entire virtual infrastructure and resulted in 24 hours of down time.
Read More » - Web Development
How To Upgrade PHP On Enterprise Linux
Like all software, PHP has a steady development cycle that enables new features, bugs, and security issues to be resolved. On November 26, 2023, PHP version 8.0 will become end of life. This means newer software can potentially break and security issues will no longer be patched. Let's fix that by upgrading to the latest version!
Read More » - Travel
GrrCon 2023: Stories from Grand Rapids
GrrCon is an information security and hacking conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan that I and Sara attended at the end of September. I had a wonderful time at GrrCon 2023 and it is my goal to be there every year here in after. I didn't realize I was so geographically close to such an amazing convention where I could meet people I know from around the internet and listen to others present their studies and experiences. It was great to finally meet mandolinsara in real life and hang out with her along with everyone I have listed above. I will make an effort to attend DEFCON 2024 and meet even more people there.
Read More » - Personal News
Software Patches: October 5, 2023
Software patches are an essential part of information technology and ensures servers and applications continue to run smoothly by resolving bugs, adding new features, and patching security issues. Software patches have been deployed for October 2023. The next patch window will be November 2023.
Read More » - Personal News
Rebirth: Website 2.0
Welcome to sysadminafterdark.com! Today, I am happy to announce the second iteration of this website. This site, and its backend, are hosted locally in my on-prem homelab, spanning two hosts and a SAN across twenty-one virtual machines and utilizing eighty-two gigabytes of memory, thirteen terabytes of storage, and many CPU cores combined. I’m not even finished deploying servers. Let’s take a look at what’s new and where this project is headed.
Read More » - Microsoft Windows
How To Use KMS To Activate Windows
Tonight, I will be setting up a KMS server to activate Windows Server 2022 using Microsoft provided volume activation keys. I will be utilizing a hardened Alma Linux VM and Vlmcsd to accomplish this. Let’s begin!
Read More » - VMware
How To Move VCSA To A Different VLAN
Tonight I will be moving my VCSA server to my Administration VLAN from my general internal server VLAN.I will also be changing the hostname to be more consistent with my scheme and IP address of the server so it can route on my Administration VLAN. There’s plenty of guides out there about doing this, but some flat out don’t work or are overtly complex. Let’s get started!
Read More » - Veeam
Veeam: Deploy an Immutable Repository
Released in 2008, Veeam Backup and Recovery enables systems administrators to backup virtual and physical machines to disks, tape, the cloud and immutable repositories which don't allow data to be overwritten. In this guide, I will walk through basic configuration of a Veeam Server and an immutable backup repository.
Read More » - Homelab
Preparing for Colocation At The Datacenter
It certainly felt like a typical Monday today as I spent a significant portion of my day bashing automated notification robots back into place. I wanted to get my homelab duties out of the way so I could relax and get to bed early. I figured now would be a good time to start prepping some of my old equipment for colocation (colo) at the datacenter.
Read More » - Networking
Management VLAN And VMware Templates
As a systems administrator, there are times when you may find yourself faced with tasks that are tedious and repetitive. Whether it’s updating software, managing backups, or configuring new servers, these tasks are essential but can quickly become boring and time-consuming. While it may be tempting to procrastinate or rush through these tasks, doing so can lead to mistakes and ultimately cause more work in the long run.
Read More » - Homelab
vCenter Fixes and Website Improvements
Regarding homelabbing, tonight proved to be quite an interesting struggle with vCenter. Originally, I had planned to write an article outlining the creation of a new distributed port group, ensuring proper tagging on my ESXI host, and deploying a Veeam and immutable repository server. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, this will need to be postponed for another day.
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