For those of us who do not jump around from environment to environment often forget how lucky we are to know the details of our servers intimately. Over time you come to know what to expect and when something is just not right.
As many may already be aware, VMware announced the availability of the vSphere Beta Program open to all to test drive the new version of vSphere.
Home labs seem to be a hot topic recently so I thought I would share my setup and experience. Many people design their home labs in different ways. Some like to use server level equipment that resides on the HCL while others like myself prefer to keep a little change in the bank and go for more of a whitebox, desktop setup. The challenge with a whitebox setup is ensuring all of your components are going to work as expected with minimal fuss. Another difference in my setup is what I call the waterfall effect. In order to maximize the investment in multiple systems, I pass along the hardware down the chain. So what was my previous host, now becomes my desktop and my desktop moves down the line (whether it be used for a NAS, kids, etc). This allows me to refresh the host and cascade the hardware down the line.