So I just rebuilt my little home server RAID from LVM+Ext4 to ZFS, changing the layout from RAID5 to RAID1+0, consisting of a pool of two mirrored disk sets. Since I’m a cheap bugger frugal, I still run a small HP MicroServer Gen7 (N54L) with only 2 GB of RAM, which I’ve filled up with 4 x… Continue reading Playing around with benchmarks
Category: HowTo
Monitoring Keepalived with SNMP on Ubuntu 14.04
Introduction Using keepalived in combination with a couple of HAProxy instances is a convenient yet powerful way of ensuring high availability of services. Up until now, I’ve considered it enough to monitor the VMs where the services run, and the general availability of a HAProxy listener on the common address. The drawback is that it’s hard to see if… Continue reading Monitoring Keepalived with SNMP on Ubuntu 14.04
Setting up my gaming computer in Ubuntu 16.04
This is really a how-to for my personal hardware setup in case I want to try other distributions or operating systems on my gaming computer down the line. However it may be helpful to anyone who would like to play games or run flight sims in a Linux environment. What? Stranger things have happened!
SSL load balancing with HAProxy in VMWare
So this is a new project I’ve recently finished. Objective Create a secure high availability (HA) load balancing service spreading user load across two pairs of two servers, providing two different sets of services: One service requires SSL passthrough, while the other is a websockets connection over SSL, where the use of a proxy demands SSL termination. Securing communications with the web… Continue reading SSL load balancing with HAProxy in VMWare
OpenVPN 2.x and Windows Firewall
The documentation for OpenVPN is pretty good, but I found a detail that may cause some confusion in a Windows environment, so I thought I’d address it here: What do you do if you need to run OpenVPN but still want the Windows Firewall to work on your Windows server? The background for this issue is how Windows decides what… Continue reading OpenVPN 2.x and Windows Firewall
Running Tomb Raider 1 on modern hardware
I found this old CD with Tomb Raider on it – you know, the old 3D puzzle/maze/action game from 1996 or something? I don’t know how many hours I spent on it, and when I bought myself a 3Dfx Voodoo graphics accelerator, there was actually a patch to make this game use that lovely piece… Continue reading Running Tomb Raider 1 on modern hardware
Fixing a BMW E39 lazy eye
My mid-nineties BMW 525 TDS is a lovely car, but it came with a classic E39 problem: The left headlight reflector was loose and just pointed downwards and rattled when I bought it. I googled around to check the procedure and found a couple of good descriptions of the work needed, but I’d like to… Continue reading Fixing a BMW E39 lazy eye