Friday, 09 May 2025 / Published in Networking
Starlink’s new Roam 10GB service plan gives you reliable, high-speed internet on the go. For £8/mo, get 10GB of data which is equivalent to a full day of normal internet use. If you need more, simply add it in your account for £2/GB. This is most welcomed plan and offers good value for money if you only
Monday, 23 July 2018 / Published in Lab, Networking
This post details my experiences getting the GNS3 VM on ESXi to work with 802.1q. I’ve been using the GNS3 VM on VMware Workstation for years, so far I’ve been unable to get virtual devices on the GNS3 VM to link to external networks using 802.1q. From my research I believed the issue to be
Friday, 01 June 2018 / Published in Automation, Lab, Networking
This is a follow up post to the last one about backing up VMware host configurations. This post details how to Restore VMware ESXi Host Configuration. Restoring a configuration requires the host to be running the same product and build version that the backup was taken from. This was harder than I thought to work out
Sunday, 25 March 2018 / Published in Lab, Networking, Security
How do you upgrade a VMware ESXi host that VCSA is running on? well, you can not use VCSA VUM (vCenter Server Appliance, VMware Update Manager). In this case we have a chicken and the egg problem. This is due to maintenance mode required on the host prior to patching but maintenance mode requires VCSA
Friday, 16 February 2018 / Published in Automation, Lab, Networking
New script published to GitHub, a Cisco SG300 backup python script used to backup my SG300’s in my home lab. The script uses Netmiko to handle the ssh connection. The configuration from each switch is saved to a TFTP server in my home lab. I’ll shortly be adding an alternative version of the script which
Tuesday, 27 June 2017 / Published in Networking
It can be tricky finding a reliable USB to serial adaptor. I’ve recently brought a new as I’ve replaced my laptop and my old adaptor was not compatible with Windows 10. Fortunately I found one that works on my first purchase, the StarTech USB to serial Adaptor. The Adaptor was recognised by Windows 10 with
Thursday, 01 December 2016 / Published in Lab, Networking
I don’t usually write “this how you configure this” type blogs but for this particular problem I experienced I’ll make an exception. This post details how I resolved an issue with a Windows server 2012 domain controller not authenticating users. Up until I purchased a VM backup solution I was manually and occasionally taking backups
Monday, 11 July 2016 / Published in Automation, Lab, Networking
This is the first post of many detailing the scripts I use to backup devices in my home lab. This post details a Palo Alto configuration backup API script. Eventually i’ll move to using Ansible but for now some simple scripts work nicely. Almost all the the backups in my lab are now automated. The script
Friday, 11 December 2015 / Published in Networking, Personal
Solarwinds posted something on twitter recently, a picture of a T-Shirt which had printed “I find your lack of backups disturbing”.  Being a star wars fan myself this did make me chuckle. I don’t have a great deal of experience with storage other than providing connectivity for storage platforms to the network. Since a recent
Saturday, 29 August 2015 / Published in Certifications, Networking, Security, The Bookshelf
Superbly written by Laura Chappell the Wireshark Network Analysis (Second Edition) is a must have book. Not only to learn the Wireshark tool in great depth but also protocol analysis in general. I’ve been eager to study for the WCNA (Wireshark Certified Network Analyst) for some time now so I made the purchase a few