Network Upgrades 2025

It’s been just over a year since I last posted my 2024 Network Upgrade post. In that time, my network has undergone several changes. Here are the major updates:

  • Swapped from a UDM Pro to a UCG Fiber.

  • Upgraded my FTTH link from 2Gb to 5Gb! (Hence the upgrade from the UDM Pro)

  • Added a UNAS Pro to the network for extra storage. It has 7x8TB drives in RAID 6, providing roughly 40TB of usable space (excluding the usual overhead).

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Some Random links for Prime Day 2023

Well, it’s Prime Day 2023, so I have been busy ordering some stuff, and, well, given everyone and their mother is doing posts on Prime Day stuff, I thought I would add my list of interesting things, including some of the things I bought. PS: all links are affiliate links and were found in the UK Store, but links are using GeniusLink to redirect you to the best store for you… Some items in the UK store might not be found in the US or other stores…

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Day 53 of #100daysofhomelab

Day 53 of #100daysofhomelab and It’s been a busy week… ish… I’ve been battling with Vertigo on and off this week, so haven’t don’t a lot. I did, however, fix some issues with the network, set up a proper failover WAN connection using SmoothWAN and my Quad 2.5Gb Box, and have started making major changes to GodBoxV3.

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Day 50 of #100daysofhomelab

Day 50 of #100daysofhomelab (this was stuck in a draft folder, so this is a couple of weeks old… I decided to recycle this as day 50, but it was originally day 37 or something…).

Just about 13 days ago: After running ZFS on my Mac for a few hours, I removed it and installed a trial of the SoftRAID software. I am not sure what was going on, but with ZFS installed, my machine just kept crashing. less than an hour and bang. So, I installed SoftRAID, and the speed ok. Not massive speeds, but not 100% sure I am using the right cables. More testing with cables soon.But in reality, this is software RAID 5 over 5 spinning disks. 270Mb/s read ain’t bad. 115Mb/s write ain’t great, but it’s RAID 5.

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day 44 of #100daysofhomelab

Day 44 of #100daysofhomelab and still quite busy with $DayJob. so some links below.

  • Intel Launches Xeon W-3400 and W-2400 Processors For Workstations: Up to 56 Cores and 112 PCIe 5.0 Lanes (anandtech.com)
  • Tiernan on Twitter: “RT @ZeroTier: ZeroTier 1.10.3 is now available. This release includes low bandwidth mode, a duplicate path bug fix, and OIDC improvements..” / Twitter
  • swarmlet/swarmlet: A self-hosted, open-source Platform as a Service that enables easy swarm deployments, load balancing, automatic SSL, metrics, analytics and more. (github.com

Also, I have been fiddling with some JQ and Zerotier-CLI commands. Not finished, but working on trying to get some data out of the CLI. I have a GitHub Gist with some details. I plan on adding to it over time.

Day 35 of #100daysofhomelab

Day 35 of #100daysofhomelab and I have been trying to clean up some stuff for my Mac Book Pro. I have an external enclosure from Yottamaster that has 5 3.5" bays and connects via USB C (USB 3.1). I got 5 8TB Seagate IronWolf drives in there. Currently, I have it set up as RAID 10 with 16Tb usable, which is named Archive, with 1 extra drive non-protected 8Tb drive. The details on setting up RAID 10 on MacOS is in the links section. I was looking at using RAID 5 for the archive pool, but the only option that seems to be available is SoftRAID but it’s USD250 for a license unless you have an OWC enclosure. Given the enclosure cost me that much in the first place, I think I will keep with RAID 10 for the while. RAID 5 would, potentially, give me 32Tb usable on my Archive, but 250 is a bit steep. for now…

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day 4 of #100daysofhomelab

Day 4 of #100daysofhomelab and I am still reading the docs I posted yesterday on Kubernetes. I hope to get something sorted this weekend… On a different note, I posted a new YouTube video on the iODD ST400, linked below. This is a follow-up to my iODD Mini review I did a couple of years back. Hopefully, I will have a second video with some speed tests and a better walk in the next few days… hopefully.

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