Fixing a Synology DS1515+ not powering on

A few days ago my old Synology DS1515+ that I gave a friend wouldn’t power up. Press the power button and not a single thing would happen, no fans or lights would come on – not even for a second.

I started looking around and found there to be three common issues with several of the DSxx15 units:

  1. Dead motherboard battery
  2. Intel Atom C2000 bug
  3. Dead B847B transistor

Good stuff right?! Well luckily it’s not nearly as bad as it might sound at first and all three are pretty easy to fix.

Read More “Fixing a Synology DS1515+ not powering on”
Let;s Encrypt on Microsoft IIS

How to install a Let’s Encrypt SSL cert on Microsoft IIS

If you’ve ever wondered how to install a Let’s Encrypt certificate on a Microsoft IIS server than this post is just for you.

Let’s Encrypt has always been pretty easy to setup on a Linux box and not so much on the Windows side. Thankfully, there are now nearly a dozen different tools that make adding a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to a Microsoft IIS server just as easy.

In this post we’ll be focusing in on, and using the Windows ACME Simple (WACS) solution. Mostly because it’s so easy to use, how easy? Well lets take a look!

Read More “How to install a Let’s Encrypt SSL cert on Microsoft IIS”

Be social! How to start a blog

This year marked my first year of going to VMworld and before I left I asked several people and the Twitter’s on advice and overwhelmingly the advice was wear comfortable shoes and to be social and talk with as many people as you can. I can’t tell you just how much those two pieces of advice are really worth.

While I was at VMworld several people told me being social has helped them immensely. From getting help when problems arise to landing their new dream job and everything in between. I even talked to a few people that was there but wasn’t really involved in the community and wanted to know how to get started.

For me blogging has been one of the better things I’ve done as it’s not only helped me learn new things, but also help teach others. It’s something I enjoy, thought don’t do as often as I like, and figured I’d start there – how to start a blog.

Read More “Be social! How to start a blog”

Who wants to win a sweet home lab?

Turbonomic TurboStack homelab

I’m pretty darn happy with my current home lab, but certainly wouldn’t mind winning the sweet home lab Turbonomic is giving away for FREE!

The Turbonomic TurboStack home lab giveaway consists of an Intel NUC6i5SYK NUC with an Intel Core i5-6260U, 16GB total RAM using HyperX DDR4 memory. For storage the TurboStack home lab includes a Synology DS916+ NAS along with a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD and two WD 1TB 7200 RPM SATA drives. In addition, a Cisco SG300 10-Port Gigabit Managed Switch – they even give you three Ethernet cables!

Read More “Who wants to win a sweet home lab?”

Welcome new site sponsor, SolarWinds!

solarwinds

I would like to welcome my new site sponsor, SolarWinds. SolarWinds offers a large variety of tools, management, monitoring, and analyizers for various systems.

The one tool many readers of this blog might find more interesting is their Virtualization Manager which offers capacity planning, VM Right-Sizing, various management reports and system monitoring and works with both VMware and Hyper-V.

Be sure to check out the video demo below, they are also offering a 30 day free trial!

Read More “Welcome new site sponsor, SolarWinds!”

Installing Windows 10 without using a Microsoft account

If you’ve installed Windows 8 or later you’ve probably noticed that Microsoft has been trying to push users to setup a Microsoft account and use it during the install process. Doing so gives users the ability to use OneDrive and sync various configurations and Internet Explorer (people still use IE?) favorites, settings, and history.

Since I use CloudStation on my Synology NAS and don’t care to use OneDrive nor did I want the Windows 10 test machines configurations sync’ed between them either.

Read More “Installing Windows 10 without using a Microsoft account”