Upgrading Mellanox ConnectX firmware within ESXi

Last summer, while reading the ServeTheHome.com website, I saw a great link to Ebay for Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI cards (MCX354A-FCBT). These cards where selling at $299 on ebay. I took three of the awesome cards. These Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI adapters where simply too...

Homelab 2014 upgrade

I’ve been looking for a while for a new more powerful homelab (for home), that scales and passes the limits I currently have. I had a great success last year with the Supermicro X9SRL-F motherboard for the Home NAS (Running NexentaStor 3.1.5), so I know I loved the...

The homelab shift…

I believe that we are at a point of time where we will see a shift in the vSphere homelab designs. One homelab design, which I see as becoming more and more popular is the Nested Homelab using either a VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion base. There are already a lot...

VSAN Lab issues due to Infiniband OpenSM failover

This isn’t really a blog where you will get a recipe on how to implement VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) or InfiniBand technologies, but more a small account of my troubles I experienced yesterday with my infrastructure. I did publish a picture yesterday on twitter,...

InfiniBand in the Lab at LonVMUG

Tomorrow, the London VMUG will happen in London. I will give a Lightning Talk about InfiniBand in the Lab, and why for small labs, the InfiniBand is a solution that can be more performant and much cheaper than 10Gb Ethernet. Here is the Presentation that will be given...