Tech Smart Review

As an IT systems engineer with decades of experience, I've seen nearly every scheme imaginable to increase the performance of computer storage and reduce the chance of data loss to an acceptable level for an individual or company.  Nearly everyone will have a unique requirement and situation, whether that is constrained by budget, industry regulations, technical support requirements, or specific business needs.  With such a complex set of requirements, there is a rich field of technology dedicated solely to the science of mitigating against the inevitable failure of storage components.  Today, there are many more solutions than I will mention, so instead of typing a research paper, I will share with you some of my experiences and the preferences I have come to adopt when recommending solutions for these challenging and very important issues. Introduction to RAID First, a little background.  RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks and has been the primary techniq

Chromebook by Dell On June 26, 2018, Dave Gershgorn wrote an excellent post for Quartz entitled "You Don't Need a Mac Laptop" which inspired me to add some comments of my own. Dave related his story of transitioning out of the Apple software ecosystem to the world of web-powered applications and I have to admit, I have often felt the same.  I'm not an Apple user, far from it, but I have been using Microsoft products for decades and have noticed the same trend.  As more platforms move to cloud-powered web applications, the need to individually license and maintain software locally on your computer starts to evaporate.  Google has been very instrumental in this movement, but they aren't the only ones.  Everyone uses a computer a little differently, but I can absolutely see the case for a Chromebook if you don't need the complexity of a traditional Windows or Mac operating system or the expense of a high-powered laptop. The options are plentiful if you a

Part 3 In the previous two parts, I demonstrated setting up a VirtualBox VM environment and installing CentOS 7 minimal on a test VM.  I covered some of the details around VM sizing and network configuration along the way.  Now in this post, I'll cover the details of installing and configuring the Pi-Hole software itself on your test VM.  If you have questions or issues, please post them in the comments and I'll follow up to try and help you out. Installing Pi-Hole Boot up your CentOS 7 VM and log in as root. Now type the following to launch the Pi-Hole installer: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash This command gives the Pi-Hole installer full access to the bash command shell, allowing it to have full control of your VM.  It is certainly a questionable method to install software, but it is simple and fast, and for the purposes of this demonstration, we can feel free to use it to quickly set up our system. The first thing that we see is a warn

Part 2 In the last post, I demonstrated the setup of  Virtual Box  to get a test environment ready for a  Pi-Hole  service running on a  CentOS 7  VM.   I discussed Pi-Hole in an earlier post , and a few scenarios that might make it an interesting configuration to use if you intend to block ads for your home or small business network.  The larger your network, the more likely you would be to want to run this on a  dedicated piece of hardware like a PFSense Firewall , but even for small networks this software can be run off a  $35 Raspberry Pi  making it a very interesting project for a networking hobbyist or security enthusiast.  Hopefully with my guide, even an entry level enthusiast can follow along and get some positive results on their own.  Be sure to let me know in the comments if you try this out and what sort of experience you had! Installing Cent OS 7 CentOS 7 Cent OS 7 has a minimal distribution which we will be using for this demonstration.  I'll be running t

A great way to test experimental new software is to run it in an isolated software environment such as a Virtual Machine.  This tutorial will walk you through a the basic steps and a few things you need to know to configure your own test environment using Oracle's Virtual Box and Pi-Hole running in a custom CentOS 7 VM. Oracle VM VirtualBox The first thing you will need is Virtual Box.  This software is free to use for private non-commercial purposes such as a test lab.  It is an important distinction to make, and you will want to contact Oracle or find another solution if you were going to use this in a commercial or for-profit setting.  Follow the link above or visit  https://www.virtualbox.org/  and follow the download links to get the latest version for your operating system.  Install it once you are finished, selecting the defaults and reboot if necessary.  Once you load it up, you will be greeted with the Virtual Box interface and ready to create a new virtual machi

Image Courtesy of PCPartPicker.com It is June of 2018 and the Do-it-Yourself PC Market is still out of control.  RAM prices are way up, video cards prices are still way too high, and new processors are coming to market and with them the need to upgrade to a new motherboard.  My question today is this: Is it still worth it to build your own PC in 2018?  Let's take a closer look and find out. Why Build your Own? In the last couple of decades the DIY PC market has changed completely.  Today, it is easier than ever to get in to a straightforward custom build with less than ten components, and the quality of those components (and return policies of vendors like Amazon and NewEgg) have improved to the point where there is little risk and a lot of satisfaction to building your own rig. The main pre-built PC vendors really excel at one thing, and that is warranty service.  When you buy an HP Omen ,  Lenovo Legion , or a Dell Alienware , you are going to get the support from a wo