So there has been a lot of changes recently. At some point, I started looking into alternative virtualization software as VMware felt more and more of a handicap for my setup. As I didn’t want to pay a license fee, I ended up using the free ESXi hypervisor which is difficult to monitor and hardware support is limited. Ultimately, I decided to switch to Proxmox as it seemed to fit my needs far, far better than VMware.
My main issue with VMware was that I could not easily monitor the status of my storage arrays. I typically have two of them. One for high IOPS that is used for desktops and another one with… well, whatever IOPS that runs services. VMware does not have any software raid solutions so you are limited in using hardware raid. In my case, I was using an old, depreciated LSI MegaRaid card as it was the only thing that was affordable. The most I got it to work with VMware was the ability to see the array and it’s status but no notifications via email. This only worked in 6.5 or 6.7 too. Required a ton of mods just to see it and use CLI. In the end, it just wasn’t worth the risk anymore. If a disk fails, I wouldn’t know unless I checked. If the raid card failed, it would be a pain to get a replacement card due to costs and hoping it can import the array. Backups were also an issue and had to be done manually. So… while I had heard of Proxmox. I never tested it till now and after doing some tests, the choice was easy.
I could have imported all the VMs into Proxmox one way or another but ultimately, I decided to rebuild everything to start fresh. New OS, better organization and more consistency. Database, websites, server data was migrated over after the OS and applications were installed but I decided to start fresh with the blog. I tend to post way too personal things on here and ultimately it seemed best to start fresh again and try to keep my thoughts and emotions in check and to myself.
VMware is great, I’m sure, for some scenarios such as enterprise environments that run a significant more amount of machines but unless you pay the license fee and get supported hardware, it’s just too much for a small home lab. My custom build servers weren’t completely supported so required tweaks and data protection was always a concern. Common excuse some communities would use to suggest VMware was that the experience you get with it could be applied to a job but it felt like I was purposely handicapping myself and getting a lower quality experience just for some limited hypothetical situation. I use VMware and Citrix at work and those aren’t that super complicated I need a test lab to learn it. Promox just offer me more and does it better for my usage. Besides being free, it has ZFS so no more hardware raid. Much better hardware support. I can backup VMs easier and just overall better monitoring.
I will probably post a little bit here and there but hopefully this one will stick. I have probably said that a dozen times already but we’ll see. I want to continuing tweaking the look of this, the wiki and project spaces. Posts may be edited overtime to finalize functionality, visual presentation and organization. Just a place for me to talk to myself and build my own stuff. I still need to update my Instagram with a few hundred pictures and maybe think about adding a Twitter feed but who knows how long that website has now… Also links and work to other social media and game related services.
Anyway,
In case it hasn’t been mentioned yet or the about page is never made. My name is Jon. I usually go by Orin or Zero online. And this is just a random place for random stuff that doesn’t really matter but it’s fun anyway.
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