Mike Tabor

Altaro VM Backup 7.6 in review

April 3, 2018April 3, 2018 Tools

Since it’s release date last month, I’ve been running Altaro VM Backup 7.6 in my home lab and one thing is for sure – Altaro VM Backup has certainly come a long way since the last time I did a Altaro VM Backup review.

Altaro is an easy to use, policy driven backup solution that is affordable for the small and medium sized businesses. VM Backup supports both Hyper-V and VMware environments and with the release of Altaro VM Backup 7.6 comes several new features that we’ll look at below.

Install a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on a Synology NAS

February 28, 2018September 10, 2018 Synology

23 Comments

A while ago I wrote an guide on how to install a SSL from Namecheap onto your Synology. Soon after Let’s Encrypt support was added to Synology, I started getting requests for a guide.

The benefits of Let’s Encrypt certificates are that they are automated, short lifetimes (90 days) and that they are completely FREE!

Below is a quick guide on how to install Let’s Encrypt SSL on a Synology NAS!

Defrag to improve Synology BTRFS performance

January 8, 2018August 12, 2019 Tools

8 Comments

My Synology NAS gets a lot of use at home. Not only is the Synology NAS a central point for my VMware home lab, but all my PCs are connected to it for document, photo, and ISO storage.

In order to keep things as optimized as possible I try to defrag the drives every once in a while. Depending on how fragmented the drives are, this could help improve performance in sequential read and random IOPS.

In this post I’ll show how it easy it is to kick off the task. Just keep in mind you will want to do this during low usage as the defrag task will certainly impact performance while it’s running.

How to install Centmin Mod with Let’s Encrypt and CloudFlare

December 1, 2017June 28, 2019 Tools

2 Comments

I run several web servers for the many sites I own, like MikeTabor.com or for the sites I help run, such as LexVMUG.com. In the past these servers have always ran a traditional LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP) either installed manually or through WHM/cPanel.

For my last couple projects I’ve been using Centmin Mod instead. Centmin Mod has several benefits, the first being it installs a LEMP stack (Linux, NGINX, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP), then optimizes the installs, and secures the server. Even on the smallest of servers the LEMP stack has been amazing and FAST!

Using PowerShell to Unblock multiple files

October 31, 2017March 13, 2018 Tools

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If you’ve ever downloaded a PowerShell script from the internet and tried running it you’ve probably seen the warning message “Run only scripts that you trust. While scripts from the internet can be useful, this script can potentially harm your computer.”

In my case I noticed the following tweet from Alan Renouf about the vCheck dev branch.

Dev branch on #vCheck has been updated to the new @VMwareClarity theme https://t.co/DBRCSm4jWI pic.twitter.com/6Nr4N4wwUJ

— Alan Renouf (@alanrenouf) October 7, 2017

Fixing, This host currently has no management network redundancy

October 26, 2017February 18, 2018 VMware

1 Comment

I recently redid my VMware home lab environment and after enabling HA the warning message “This host currently has no management network redundancy” started displaying on each of my ESXi hosts.

This warning happens because in a HA cluster there is a requirement for the management network to have redundant NICs, but in my case I’m using Intel NUCs which only have a single NIC and since this is only a lab I don’t care to see the warning so lets disable it.

Be social! How to start a blog

October 24, 2017June 20, 2019 Other

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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.

How to migrate a VMware virtual machine to AWS

October 9, 2017October 12, 2017 AWS

5 Comments

At work we’ve been toying with the idea of moving some of our VMware workload off to AWS and I’ve been tasked with migrating a couple VMware virtual machines to AWS as a proof of concept for the time being.

In this post I’ll show how I setup the AWS Connector and did the migration from VMware to AWS using the AWS Server Migration Service.

How to Add Login Banner to vSphere Web Client

September 4, 2017September 6, 2017 VMware

2 Comments

If you have the pleasure or meeting certain audits or security compliance then having a login banner message on your systems is a pretty common requirement. Sometime ago I detailed how to add a login banner message to ESXi hosts, below I’ll show how easy it is to do the same with your VMware vSphere web client or HTML5 client using vSphere 6.0 Update 2 or better.

How to install Backblaze on Synology NAS

August 24, 2017October 3, 2017 Synology

38 Comments

In case you’ve missed it, Crashplan announced yesterday that they are no longer offering a family backup plan but instead focusing on business plans. Immediately people started asking me on twitter for alternatives.

Well one option would be to upgrade to the more expensive Crashplan business plan or another option would be to check out Backblaze!

In this post I’ll be showing you just how easy it is to use Backblaze on your Synology Diskstation NAS – all with native Synology apps. No need to worry about upgrades breaking your backups or 3rd party solutions!