Accidental Home Lab – June 26, 2021

Homelab
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I got to spend a bit more time working with the accidental Home Lab this week. I thought I would jot down a few notes in the hopes that it helps someone else.

LAGG. Link aggregation between the synology NAS and the Unifi switch was very easy. As expected there is no single stream increase in speed. The benefit is that when the virtual server is transferring data to or from the NAS at full speed, the NAS can continue to serve data to other users instead of bogging down due to congestion.

I have modified my virtualize all the things policy. Instead of moving things from docker on the NAS to docker on the NUC, I make a step in the middle by installing them as an LXC container on top of a turnkey-core image. This forces me to figure out how the docker container works instead of treating it like black magic.

The NUC is working out surprisingly well as a virtual server I leave on 100% of the time. It has plenty of cpu speed, memory, and harddrive space for my continuous needs. It sips power 15 Watts at idle.

I added a NVIDIA Jetson Nano to my lab. Previously, I had run it on my desk with a KVM. Once I got it setup it works just fine. I would like to figure out Wake On Lan as I am too lazy to walk across the room to turn it on!

SSH config. I came across a great video at How To Setup an SSH Config File - YouTube . The biggest value for me is forcing me to add each new system or service to the config. It helps with the self discipline of creating consistent logins for everything.

Moving from Physical to Virtual. I am totally stumped trying to move my primary windows laptop to a proxmox VM. I think my problem has to do with the fact that my laptop is dual boot ubuntu/windows and I have not done a fresh install of windows in many years. I got a number of programs with an education discount years ago and have just been upgrading ever since.

I think I have used clonezilla twice to move the entire system to new laptops. While it was disappointing, I can’t reasonably expect any tool to deal with that level of cruft. Things I tried:

  1. Clonezilla. Cloning both the partition and entire drive.
  2. VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client.
  3. Creating a new install and restoring via Synology active backup.
  4. Creating a new install and restoring via windows image restore.

I didn’t have much luck googling from the various error messages I received along the way.

I think, my next approach is going to be:

  1. Removing the ssd from my laptop and replacing it with another one from an old laptop.
  2. Install windows 10 from scratch.
  3. Restore via Synology Active Backup or windows image.
  4. Verify that it works.
  5. Use clonezilla to go from the new ssd to a VM.
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For virtualizing Windows, or anytime you’re moving it from one host to another (even a physical to physical transfer) I recommend the following. It may sound like overkill, but it’s worked for me.

1.) Take a Clonezilla image of the entire disk before you start or modify anything
2.) After you take a Clonezilla image, use Sysprep on Windows to generalize it
3.) Make sure to select the shut down option in Sysprep
4.) Take another Clonezilla image after Sysprep. Be VERY careful not to let Windows boot again at this point, make sure to boot into Clonezilla (Microsoft only allows three Sysprep attempts, if you boot back into Windows too soon, you lose one).
5.) Restore the image onto the VM or physical machine
6.) When it starts up, it may go through some screens like you’ve never used it before, don’t worry
7.) It might go through a bunch of driver reinstalls, and require several reboots, also normal

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Thanks,

I was not familiar with sysprep