I have purchased or otherwise acquired some Gen10 and Gen11 Dell PowerEdge Servers throughout my years in IT. I enjoy having a Home Lab to work in and learn new things without repercussions of really messing something up. In my environment, nuke and pave is not frowned upon at all. I do my best to say up-to-date and using the latest and greatest trial software, but due to the hardware I am running, that goal comes with some limitations.For instance, my C2100 servers simply cannot be upgraded beyond esxi 6.5. The processors are not compatible with esxi 6.7. However, I was able to upgrade my vCenter Server to 6.7 and still have it manage my 6.5 hosts.

Most of my servers are running Windows Server 2019, but some are still running 2016 as I havent had the time or need to update them. (Such as DC’s and DB’s)

My Storage devices are all PowerEdge Servers running FreeNAS. I set them up with FreeNAS and configure the iSCSI service for MPIO to my esxi hosts. I find it is a set-it and forget-it type of thing. I am subscribed to some FreeNAS emails and RSS feeds, so I look out for OS updates and install them accordingly.

For most of my networking equipment, I run Ubiquiti Unifi equipment. This is marketed as “Enterprise” networking equipment, but imho, it is far from “Enterprise”. I would place it solidly in the “prosumer” line of networking equipment. Dont get me wrong, their WAP’s are pretty awesome. But their switching and routing devices leave much to be desired. Their GUI is quite pretty and you can do enough to get by through it, but for really advanced setups, you are required to edit a json file. Often the editing of the json file is unsupported and a PITA the figure out.

For the rest of my networking equipment, I run some classic Dell PowerConnect switches. I run the 7048P’s. For the most part, I dont need the PoE feature, but for under $150 per switch, I couldnt not get the PoE feature. I just disable it on the ports where it is not needed. The language is pretty similar to Cisco so getting by in command line is my preferred way to manage these.

Oh, and I have a Netgear managed 8-port switch. This little guy has kept up with the other two brands of switches afaic. I like the little guy and it works great as an under the desk switch.

For all my Wireless, I trust in the Ubiquiti Unifi line. They are a great “prosumer” product at a price that I can afford. And they definitely do their job for my home needs. I have even installed these at a few businesses with very solid results.

When I first got into the surveillance game, I was purchasing Hikvision IP Cameras from a specific re-seller in my area. Since then, Reolink has become quite a mainstream prosumer product and I can get them from Amazon. So as of late, all of my Reolink cams have been purchased from random amazon sales.

Overall I enjoy both cams, but prefer the Reolink branded cams over Hikvision.

As for the Ring Pro Doorbell. I got it because it’s easy for the wife to use and not answer the door if she doesn’t want to. I have it on a “security device” vlan, so it is segmented off. I actually do enjoy the device. It is nice having something in the cloud separate from Blue Iris.

Wiring your house is a process. If you have unlimited amounts of money, then hire a company to do it and they will charge you a few grand to go in there and get it done. They will most likely run the cables in a manner that works, but is not tech approved bc they are dudes who just know how to run cables, not why they are run or consequences of how they are run. If you are like me where money is not an endless pit of fun and you like having control over things, then you will want to take on wiring yourself. Overall you can do this for a fraction of the cost compared to contracting it out, but it will be a lot of work and sometimes, a complete, PITA. If you live in Texas like me, only plan on doing this kind of work from late October through late April… It gets hot in there.

Overall, I have found wiring my house to be quite rewarding, both financially and emotionally. I am able to “put a stamp” on my work and be proud of what I have done.

This past week, I had a failed port one one of my C2100’s. The specific part was a Intel PRO/1000 VT Quad Port Gigabit PCI-E Ethernet Network Adapter (HM9JY). Now just one single port failed and I was using all 4 ports for iSCSI from my FreeNAS C2100 to my esxi cluster. Luckily I have 4 ports so naturally MPIO is configured and I didnt notice the failure immediately. I first noticed this in my cluster and also saw the port was failed in FreeNAS. Since there is no OMSA for BSD, I was unable to gather more information about the status of the port.

The first things I am going to do is power off my server and then remove all the cabling from it. Some people choose to not remove networking when doing this, but I am running PoE switches, and even though PoE has been disable on the ports, I dont trust it. I remove all potential of electricity running through the system other than the CMOS and RAID batteries.

So, Power off your server, remove all the cabling, pull it out of the rack and remove the cover.

The new part looks like this. It will just slide right into a PCIe slot and I will screw it in.

Here we are with the top open.

I am going to pull out that part in the upper left hand corner to replace.

Here is the empty slot that we will plug back into.

The top device  is the one I pulled out and replace.

It is the top device due to the photo orientation and the fact that I pulled it out of the server. When I put it back in the server, it will “on the bottom”. I find placing NIC card below RAID card make it easier to unplug booted cables from the server.

Now that the NIC has been replaced, all iSCSI paths are available!