“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
— Ferris Bueller
I haven’t stopped and looked around for a while.
When last I left you, I had unboxed my shiny new (to me) mega-memory-laden computer with grand plans to install and learn ESXi. I am very happy to report that I have succeeded in those grand plans and, while I still have a lot more to learn, I have already learned a lot.
For example, I learned there are certain things you need to do in order to run nested ESXi setups, because ESXi doesn’t really expect to run on top of itself. Or is it below? Who knows.
I also learned about things like “datastores”; this came about when I went to spin up a nested ESXi system and couldn’t quickly figure out how to feed it the .ISO file. Solution? Datastores.
But it’s not just .ISOs. Everything goes in datastores. Learn it. Know it. Live it.
I learned that it’s a complete pain in the ass for a newbie such as me to get autorun to autorun. I cannot tell you how many times I ran through it all before it did exactly what I wanted it to.
I’m sure I learned more but those are the highlights, for now. In the future, I want to get a 4-port NIC and install it so I can do fancy things with vswitches. I also want to try to install vSphere and NSX. Some of this may require a substantial outlay of cash for a “lab license”, but we will do what we have to do.
I am seriously risking making this a complete propeller-head report, but I’m going to cover all the nerdery that’s happened in the past 3 or so months first. For starters, my main machine has been upgraded/renewed. I’m not really sure how I allowed it to happen or how it exactly transpired but, before I knew it, I had a new motherboard, new CPU, new 64GB of RAM, and new 3070ti GPU in my existing monster sized case. Yes, I had to keep something, so I kept the case and the hard drives. Oh, and the RGB strips. Required equipment for certain.
All the stuff that came out of my machine was still completely operational so where did it end up, you might ask. Well, we went back to the money pit that is MicroCenter and picked up a new case. Into said case went the old mobo, CPU, RAM and GPU from my workstation, plus a couple new SSDs I had previously picked up for other projects that ended up not happening. This shiny new unit (with built-in RGB, might I add!) is now a “media center” PC and attached to the 55″ TV we have in the living room by way of an HDMI connection.
Well, as I feared, this ended up being the nerd report because it’s getting late and I’m getting tired of typing. I will attempt to post about our non-nerdy adventures of the previous 3 or so months in the not too distant future! Cheers!!