Late last month, VMware made ESXi 5.5 available for general download. This is great timing as I was thinking about patching my generic ESXi 5.1 whitebox server with the latest 5.1 updates and I still needed to test SATA pass-through on the ASRock Z87M Pro4.… Read More »Upgrading ESXi from 5.1 to 5.5 on ASRock Z87M-Pro4 Whitebox
A little while ago I put together a basic LEGO table for my kids. It was a fairly rough job but served its purpose. I’m now into planning the MKII table which I hope will close out any gaps with my old design. Using Google… Read More »Building a Lego Table MKII
With the proliferation of mobile devices into our homes and businesses, we consumers hunger for technology that can interoperate seamlessly.The easy option would be to buy the same branded phone, tablet and PC (e.g. iPhone/ iPad/ iMac or WP8/Surface/Windows 8 or Android/Chromebook). Whilst this makes… Read More »Staying Platform Agnostic in Today’s Integrated World
It seems like an eternity ago now when the HP MicroServer N36L was thrust into the spotlight in what could be considered by accident or pure marketing genius. Either way, what it offered for AUD$169-$299 (at the time) could not be beaten by any whitebox… Read More »HP Proliant Gen8 MicroServer
Microsoft have had the Windows 8.1 Preview available for a little while now so I decided to do a quick write up on how to install this onto your Surface RT tablet. The first thing you will want to do is head over to the… Read More »Installing Windows RT 8.1 Preview on Surface RT
I can confirm that VT-d pass-through appears to be working just fine with the new ASRock Z87M Pro motherboard. I don’t have a need for it just yet but all the options appear to be available and it’s showing as enabled in the BIOS. The… Read More »VT-d Pass-through with ASRock Z87M Pro4
When I installed ESXi 5.1, I discovered that the onboard NIC was not supported. My interim solution was to use an Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter which is based on the Intel 82574 Gigabit Controller. ESXi booted up with no problems at all. ESXi running again, next… Read More »ASRock Z87M Pro4 Onboard NIC Not Supported by ESXi
Here is my consumer grade Haswell ESXi server. It’s consumer grade as I am not using traditional server components such as ECC RAM, Intel Xeon processor or a server motherboard. Let me break down the components and why I chose them. Case + PSU I… Read More »Building a Consumer Grade ESXi Server with ASRock Z87M Pro4, Intel i7, Corsair Non-ECC RAM
With Solar being so popular these days, I thought I would write a quick post about how I have mine set up for monitoring solar power panel generation. There are a million ways in which people can achieve this from using Raspberry Pi’s through to… Read More »Monitoring SMA SB5000TL Solar Inverter with a Virtual Machine