Jan - 30th

Thinkpad Homelab Upgrades

Posted at 6:46 am | Filed Under blog

You can spend a lot of money building a homelab that competes with small office networks. Or, you can do what I did and build a network of cast-off, unwanted hardware. A thrift-store Synology NAS, “parts-only” Thinkpad laptop with a cracked screen and broken keyboard, and a $5 goodwill router, flashed with OpenWRT forms the […]

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Dec - 23rd

Proxmox Datacenter Manager: Centralized Management for Proxmox VE

Posted at 12:24 am | Filed Under blog

Proxmox Server Solutions  announced the first Alpha release of Proxmox Datacenter Manager, an open-source server management software designed to provide a unified overview of all nodes and clusters in Proxmox VE environments. This new tool aims to simplify the management of virtualized environments by offering a modern user interface and centralized control. Key Features of […]

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Nov - 24th

RIP tteck, creator of Proxmox Helper Scripts

Posted at 4:31 pm | Filed Under blog

tteck’s Proxmox Helper Scripts are what helped me dig more deeply into Proxmox; they automate upgrades and made it simple to try out homelab apps from a shell scripts. Sorry to hear that he was in failing health, but the time I read the post below, he had already passed away. It looks like there’s […]

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Nov - 24th

Proxmox VE 8.3 released

Posted at 4:27 pm | Filed Under blog

Proxmox VE 8.3 has been released, and it was a painless upgrade from version 8.2. The new version includes: Support for Ceph Reef and Ceph Squid Tighter integration of the SDN stack with the firewall New webhook notification target New view type “Tag View” for the resource tree New change detection modes for speeding up […]

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Aug - 3rd

New Outlook – not ready for Prime Time?

Posted at 3:17 am | Filed Under blog

I’ve been fighting with and against the “New” Microsoft Outlook, as I’ve written about. My biggest issue revolves around the replacement of Outlook’s Tasks functionality with Microsoft ToDo. I use Tasks heavily, sorting by category and using dates to prioritize daily lists. My email and meeting workflow ties closely to OneNote and Outlook – and […]

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Jun - 20th

State of the Home Office, 2024

Posted at 9:31 pm | Filed Under blog

I’ve worked out of my home since 2020. My home office has evolved and has become a place where I enjoy working. With a little effort, you can improve any home office environment with some of the tips I’ve discovered.

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May - 11th

Homelab Maintenance

Posted at 4:27 pm | Filed Under blog

I work out of my home office full-time. I spend a lot of time here, and so I’m used to the way things look – and sound. I was on a video call this week when something felt off. I took off my headphones and heard it. clunk. clunk. One of the drives in my […]

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May - 3rd

Old Iron

Posted at 5:26 pm | Filed Under android, blog

IBM 360 Mainframe at the Computer History Museum.

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Apr - 24th

Proxmox VE 8.2 released!

Posted at 8:27 pm | Filed Under blog

With all of the changes at Broadcom affecting smaller customers, it’s great to see Proxmox adding the ability to migrate directly from VMWare. While VMWare is a best-of-breed hypervisor, many customers use a fraction of VMWare features – and tools like Proxmox VE can provide an effective hypervisor with commercial support and a great feature […]

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Apr - 15th

25 Years…

Posted at 7:55 am | Filed Under blog

  I realized that my blog and this domain (kataan.org) are 25 years old today! I started a project to move the older items from a text archive (downloaded from blogger, remember them?) into my WordPress database. I hadn’t realized that with blogger, I used it like Twitter as a microblog – there are some […]

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Nov - 10th

List of new and missing features in the “New” Outlook

Posted at 7:32 am | Filed Under blog

I found a good list of of new and missing features in the “New” Outlook; I’ve been swapping back and forth between the two at work and have been concerned about the features and workflows that have been part of Outlook from the beginning are being dropped. One example is Microsoft ToDo replacing the Tasks […]

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Nov - 1st

Windows 11 to support RAR, tar, gz and other compression formats

Posted at 1:50 pm | Filed Under blog

Windows support for compression standards like RAR, tar and gz has been lacking. RAR, for example, was released in 1993, for example, while we ran Windows 3.1 with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows. Buried in a blog post by Windows chief Panos Panay discussing AI and cloud-based improvements to Windows in a blog post […]

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Oct - 30th

Implementing VLANs in OpenWRT: Enhancing Network Security and Efficiency

Posted at 1:56 pm | Filed Under blog

OpenWRT is a powerful open-source firmware replacement for many home “appliance” routers that gives you enterprise router features out of home network appliances. One key feature it offers is the ability to implement Virtual LANs (VLANs), which allow you to segment your network into distinct virtual networks. I will guide you through the process of […]

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Oct - 30th

WRT54G to WRT1900ACS: Empowering Networks with OpenWRT

Posted at 3:42 am | Filed Under blog

What’s a WRT1900ACS? The WRT1900ACS is a capable router from several years ago that are dirt cheap on the used market and have a ton of features that I like. With an alternative OS like OpenWRT or DD-WRT, you unlock new features that compare to a proper router. I started running home networks on a […]

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Jul - 3rd

A great tiny homelab server – with multiple expansion options!

Posted at 4:23 pm | Filed Under blog

I’ve been looking for low-power, small footprint homelab servers; servethehome.com’s YouTube channel has a great comparison of “tinyminimicro” servers – ultra-small form factor (USFF) desktops that make great mini servers. I’ve run into problems with USFF servers only supporting 16GB of memory – it’s why I paid less for a desktop form factor server that […]

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Jun - 27th

Outlook opens emails next to weblinks in Microsoft Edge

Posted at 4:43 pm | Filed Under blog

I noticed this support article; first, Microsoft put up ads in the Start Menu, then offer to change your default browser. If you run Microsoft Edge as your default and change the browser, you get a “Are you sure” prompt you don’t get with any other browser. Now, for your convenience, Outlook defaults to Edge. […]

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Jun - 26th

Microsoft 365, Outlook and Tasks

Posted at 8:54 pm | Filed Under blog

Microsoft is changing the interface of Outlook in a way that will affect people who follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, or people who rely heavily on tracking tasks in Outlook. Getting Things Done is a system that lets you capture information and tasks, take action by completing quick tasks, capturing the next actions […]

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Jun - 25th

Upgrading to Proxmox VE 8

Posted at 5:51 pm | Filed Under blog

I’ve used Proxmox for two years in a homelab that serves as a sandbox for work projects, a testbed Active Directory network, and running home automation tools. It combines the familiarity of F/OSS tools like Debian Linux, QEMU, and KVM, with a graphical interface that makes managing virtual servers easy – with a community supported, free […]

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May - 4th

Creating a Proxmox 3-node cluster using Zima board computers – 10 watts!

Posted at 5:09 am | Filed Under blog

As I posted about wanting to make a 3-node high-availability cluster out of commodity USFF desktop PCs, I found this video outlining a 3-node Intel CPU cluster that runs on 10 watts of power! The cluster uses a SBC called a Zima Board that looks interesting – it’s got SATA, a PCI slot, and having […]

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May - 4th

CEPH and Proxmox VE

Posted at 4:58 am | Filed Under blog

I’ve wanted to add high-availability to my Proxmox cluster, but I’ve got some work to do first. CEPH is a distributed storage system that can be used as a storage backend in Proxmox VE. CEPH provides highly available and fault-tolerant storage by distributing data across multiple storage nodes in a cluster. In Proxmox VE, CEPH […]

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