My secondary DNS server died after four years of service. The DNS has 118 host records, and 45 of those records are for my VMware Cloud Foundation Server.

The Atomic PI – Intel PC was designed for a home robot that never made it to market. In 2019 I put it in service running Ubuntu Linux, providing BIND and NTP for my home. It was an experiment with a $35 PC, $4 plastic Walmart case, and a $9 power supply from Amazon which was an unheard-of price point in 2019.

Dell/Wyse 3040 Thin Client PC Replacement

I replaced the DNS server with a used $39 Dell Wyse 3040 thin client PC from eBay, which is typically used for VDI with a VMware Horizon client or Citrix Virtual Desktops. I’ve been pleased with the first Wyse 3040 I use as an amateur radio repeater/hotspot. The hardware specs are similar to the Atomic PI, and I splurged for twice as large 16GB flash storage model. It’s smaller and comes in a real case.

UEFI Challenge

The thin client PC requires UEFI, which requires an additional step to install the operating system. I used Ventroy to build the usb drive image with UEFI.

Ventroy is a 2-step process. First, Ventroy will prepare the USB drive and create an empty partition. The second step is to copy the Ubuntu image into the empty partition. I was able to take the USB drive I prepared with Ventroy and boot Ubuntu Linux and deploy it. After installing and configuring BIND, my secondary DNS server is up and automatically replicating entries from my primary DNS.

I started my VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) home lab journey three years ago on version 4.01 and shared my experience with a blog post. I’ve upgraded my server and deployed nested VCF 5.0 on ESXi 8.0 Update 1 this month. Currently, I have a 4-host standard management domain and a 3-host workload domain deployed in VCF.

Other upgrades included expanding my host RAM to 768GB from 512GB, replacing my primary storage with a 4TB SSD Samsung 870 QVO SDATA III, and fixing my 10GBase-T SFP shielded Cat 6a connection.

I discovered that one of my 24 DIMM memory sockets was bad during the memory upgrade. Luckily I found a new motherboard replacement on eBay for $105 shipped, which resolved the problem.

Stability and Performance Improvements

These changes have improved the stability and performance of VCF on a single host using the VMware VCF Holodeck Toolkit to deploy. The toolkit provides guidance and tools, including VCF Lab Constructor (VLC), to deploy nested VCF hands-on-lab environments on a standalone ESXi host. I have yet to experience the network connection dropping or the server hanging from losing local storage. The additional RAM and latest versions of VMware software have made VCF seem as performant as my primary home lab, a traditional vSphere cluster of 3 physical servers.

One more change…

I also changed the sizing and architecture in the Deploy Parameters in the VCF Deployment Parameter Workbook. The VMware Cloud Builder appliance uses this information to create the management domain. Circled below is where I increased the vCenter Server Appliance Size & NSX Virtual Appliance Size back to the default and chose a standard instead of consolidated VCF architecture. With the RAM upgrade, I was okay with utilizing the limited memory for the recommended defaults. I no longer have resource exhaustion errors in NSX Manager, SDDC Manager, or vCenter with all of these changes.

New VCF Adventures

With the more reliable and better performing VCF infrastructure, I’m ready to deploy the latest versions of NSX Edge Appliances, Tanzu, NSX Advanced Load Balancer, and Aria Enterprise Suite on top this fall.

How it started:

After starting 40 years ago I finally passed my FCC Amateur Radio technician exam. In my early teens my brother was going for his ticket and I borrowed his morse code practice cassettes. I gave up on learning morse code due to getting distracted from by my PC @ home. Many years ago the FCC eliminated the morse code requirement removing that hurdle. My brother has been an amateur radio operator for at least 40 years.

Recently I was out of cellular phone coverage at Mount Rainier National Park which provided motivation to take the exam. The exam preparation was far easier than I imagined. In the computer industry, certification test questions are secret and highly guarded. In contrast, all of the Amateur Radio exam questions pool are published which is over 400.

My Method for Passing the Exam

Following is the straightforward approach I followed which concentrated my effort in understanding the material and passing the exam. I’m planning on upgrading to a General license in the near future by going through the same approach. I recently found this content and I don’t receive any compensation from any of these folks.

1. Watched the Youtube recording of the Amateur Radio Technician material review class from the 2021 Trenton Computer Festival.
2. Bought and read the following book twice: Technician Class 2018-2022: Pass Your Amateur Radio Technician Class Test – The Easy Way
3. Took the sample exam through the following app approximately 15 times: HAM Test Prep: Technician
4. Booked and took the exam online once I was ready. Cost: $15. Auburn University Amateur Radio Club provides a great public service. They use Zoom to monitor the test taker. I missed only 1 question and received my license from the FCC the next day.

Whats Next?

In addition to using amateur radio to communicate from remote locations, I’ll be exploring all of the remote computer communication solutions available.

Over the summer I deployed a large enterprise SuperMicro Server with a half terabyte of RAM and 36 cores provided by 2 Intel Xeon E5-2683 v4’s. I deployed a nested VMware Cloud Foundation 4 with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on this system and I’m still learning. My last blog post links to a YouTube presentation on my experience

I learned through Twitter yesterday morning that VMware released an ESXi on Arm Fling free technology preview. I ordered a new Raspberry Pi 4B with 8GB of RAM from Amazon in the morning and had ESXi live on the system by the end of the day. The Raspberry Pi is close to the size of one of the Intel Xeon processors in the SuperMicro VMware Cloud Foundation Server I deployed over the summer. The electrical power requirements for the Raspberry Pi is insignificant compared to the SuperMicro enterprise server running VMware Cloud Foundation.

Kit Colbert published a blog last week describing use cases for this game changing technology. In addition, he presented on it in the “The Datacenter of the Future [HCP3004]” session last week during VMworld. VMworld session recordings are available through the vmworld.com site and registration is free. I was excited to gain hands on experience.

WOW – this technology is amazing. After deploying ESXi to a USB memory stick, I connected this host to my vCenter server. Next I created and connected an NFS datastore from my QNAP NAS to the host.

I pulled out my iPad mini and saw the new host in the vSphere Client fling.

I downloaded and deployed the ARM version of Ubuntu 20.04 and RHEL 8.2 as VM’s. I compiled VMware Tools on the Ubuntu VM and installed the GUI (graphical.target) to both Linux VM’s. I still have a little memory to spare on the Raspberry Pi for another VM. Both of the VM’s were responsive even with the GUI. It is hard to tell that ESXi and Linux is running on ARM since the Operating Systems are unchanged. The largest obstacle is the ARM requirement for software. I now understand through this experience why Apple is rumored to release a MacBook with an ARM processor.

Over the summer I learned about the reimagined VMware Cloud Foundation from the top down with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, NSX-T, vSAN, and SDDC Manager. Now with ESXi on ARM I am learning about the next chapter of VMware Cloud Foundation. If you always wanted a VMware vSphere home lab this is the most inexpensive path to get started.

I’ve continued contributing computing resources non-stop to science researchers since my March post. A byproduct is learning how my home lab operates at full throttle and the energy implications. My last blog discussed some of my original sustainability learnings.

VMware vRealize Operations Manager providing additional compute capacity

I drove CPU usage to approximately 95% when I started to donate all of my excess compute capacity. Shortly after operating at full throttle, an alert popped up in VMware vRealize Operations Manager 8.0 console. This alert provided proactive performance improvement recommendation – and an idea for this blog post.

I learned that the most energy efficient setting for my home lab servers was to turn off all of the processor energy savings features. This lesson was counter intuitive. Once my home lab was operating at full utilization the servers wasted processing power and energy by attempting to turn on power saving features. The default server configuration assumed that the current task was a momentary spike in demand. Once the sprint was over, the processor would start shutting down excess capacity. Due to the high utilization, another spike in demand quickly arrived and the processor would switch to maximum capacity. Now the processor would need to ramp up. This incorrect assumption led to a reduction in processing capacity and slowed the scientific research workload. The energy consumption didn’t decrease but the amount of work completed was reduced.

Who Should Sleep?

Sleep states and hibernation for bears and computers are necessary to save energy stores when nothing is happening. Both species go through a “waking-up” state which takes time and energy. Our Pacific Northwest bears benefit from powering off unnecessary functions in the winter but a server processor at full capacity does not. This only slows down the workload while wasting energy which isn’t a sustainable solution.

Turning Off Power Saving Features

The 3 SuperMicro SuperServer E300-8D’s in my home lab have rudimentary power management features. The p-state and c-state features allow processors to shutdown excess capacity. This feature is similar to an energy efficient pickup truck engine which turns off pistons that aren’t needed at highway cruising speed. Following are the default AMI BIOS p-state and c-state settings for these servers. I have disabled both settings that are highlighted.

Sustainable Configuration

The alerts stopped once I configured the servers for compute intensive workloads running non-stop. Enterprise servers are complex and default settings reduce the time and understanding required to stand-up infrastructure. VMware vRealize Operations Manager highlighted this mis-configuration which I wouldn’t have found otherwise. This is one example of many where this tool has pointed out hidden problems and taught me something new. I never expected that turning off all power management features is the most sustainable option.