[kev2021]

Hi ,

Just been on chat with BT, unfortunately wont be moving to it.  The price they showed was £20 a month BUT it seems that is only because i have paid line rental up front.  My plan was to drop the line rental and have the FTTP for £20 a month meaning its a bit cheaper than what I pay now.  Unfortunately, the £20 was because I paid line rental, if I got rid of the BT line, the price goes up to £39.99 which isn’t a viable option for me.

Shame as I can’t see why they make it £20 ONLY if you pay BT line rental, if not its basically £40 but surely if you get rid of the line, there is nothing they need to support other than the FTTP and the £20 is only for the 150 connection so seems either way you pay £40 – either you split it 50/50 for the line and BB or its £40 for the BB.

Bit daft, especially as they want to get rid of the BT lines anyway and move to voip….

So just to make you aware incase you get an attractive offer, its likely to not be as it seems :)

I realise the FTTP is fairly ne etc so I guess in time, it will reduce to be more affordable, especially when people catch on that they are giving up the BT line but still paying the same amount just for the internet only :)

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi @UK Sentinel,

Check out BT sites again, I just looked and they are offering FTTP 150mb for quiet a good price, compared to what they were offering before so might be the same for you, worth checking.  Maybe they starting there BB deals earlier than Black Friday this year? or its a misprint and tomorrow morning I’ll find different prices lol

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi,

Wouldn’t be too sure on the no come back lol ;)

I’m running esxi 6.0.0.xxxxxxx, the license is: “Product: VMware vSphere 6 Enterprise Plus Licensed for 1 physical CPUs (unlimited cores per CPU)”

My Esxi consists of 4 HDs, 2  in raid 1(mirrored) for esxi only and some iso file and 2 in raid 1 (mirrored) for the VM’s so I copy from VM mirror to the esxi mirror using the browser data store via vsphere console and copy the folder for 1 VM and paste into the esxi mirror – it works fine BUT on 200Gb file takes literally 10hrs plus…

IF however from the datastore window i use the download button and save to my local desktop PC, it takes around 40mins-1hr tops BUT i get the flat.vmdk file.

I not seen the esxi hidden console,in the browse datastore window it doesn’t show the -file.vmdk file but I’ve read it exists and the vmdk is a pointer to it but I’m concerned incase it goes wrong when i re-upload it.  Would the -flat.vmdk go back to be hidden or just be visible all the time?  Biggest confirm its a main VM i have so not a test one i can afford to loose if it goes wrong.  i’m thinking I’m gonna have to take the hit and copy it wait 10+hrs for it to copy – effectively a whole day.

Copying in between datastores seems to work ok BUT can takes ages to do.. even a 30GB file takes 2hrs or there about’s… its pretty slow…. unsure why as if i download 200GB it 40mins .

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi,

This is my data, its my own VMs.  Its a mixture of my main VMs to run my network and also some Testing VMs when i;m testing out apps or OS’s etc i.e. one is SCCM which I’ve added into my main domain now.

Yes, aware of the 2 files and usually i don’t see the -flat.vmdk file so hence i’m wondering if I “upload” the folder back to the new drive, does the -flat.vmdk get hidden by default and i just see the normal vmdk file or will they both be visible and do i simply just point to the vmdk to add it back into vsphere or is there some other process?

If i copy from one drive to another within esxi (same server) i don’t see the -flat file and i just re-add the vmdk file and its all good.  At worst it asks if i copy/moved it and i choose copy and that it, it just boots up.

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

Yes, atm i’m backing nas once a week to a wd usb drive connected at the back.

The VMs have always been a issue as from what i could tell i needed to buy a 3rd party product to install on esxi and then setup/config etc and just wasn’t too sure about doing that.

How I’m copying at the moment is browsing the datastores via vSphere client and literally copying folder for each vm and pasting in other datastore.  When I launch the copied version it pops up and says did u move/copy i choose the default copied and it then launches ok.

Some I have deleted off the original storage. but now I not deleting just copying then later will remove the drives etc.

Kev

 

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[kev2021]

Thanks, will take a look, just thinking once this is done, be nice to get some kind of automated backup maybe once a month etc of the actual machine as i have a backup of the data held on most of them.  It’s really on my my DC I need a full VM backup of to avoid having to re-join machines to domain etc.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Will do,

Drives expected to arrive today so hoping to maybe doing in a week or so, Just moving all my shutdown VMs atm and then will shutdown active VMs and re-power on after to keep them up and running.

Will do be quicker to get them back up and running as I only need to move abut 5 VMs to and get them started.  The rest are used adhoc so no major urgency to get them moved back so wont take too long to get main ones back up and running thankfully.

Does anyone know if there is like a batch file equivalent on esxi whereby I could get it to shut down the VM and then copy the folder to a network drive i.e. my NAS and then power it back on when its finished copying it?  Is there then a way to schedule it like a schedule task in Windows?

I’m not familiar with esxi command line / linux etc.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi all,

The Synology is a NAS, its a DS1819+ so could take SSDs if got a caddy probably.  I didn’t look at that as a option to get equivalent sized SSDs to give the storage capacity would be very expensive but it is possible to do.

I thought about option 2 but I’ve seen quiet a few reports online saying they are getting “queued for rebuilding error 776” and some people having issues mirroring to larger capacity drive as your meant to mirror to identical sized drives so I’m currently doing option 1 – taking forever.. but at least at the end I can remove the raid for the 2 VM storage drives, remove them, add in 2 new drives, setup mirror from scratch and then move the data back again.  Looong process but these current WD Green drives have lasted 13 years so far and are not advising of any errors etc, I’m just replacing them due to age (2008).  I’m replacing them with WD Gold 2 TB drives which are enterprise class and meant for 24/7 operation, which the Greens were not to my knowledge so I’m hopeful they will last a good number of years too fingers crossed.

The O/S drives would be the next ones to do but they are 2011 (same model) so whilst would be a pain if they died, its easy to re-install as they only have OS and ISOs (which I have copies of on my nas) so would only mean re-installing OS and then re-mounting/adding VMs back in again s not too bad.  Could have it back up in a day for sure.

Kev

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[kev2021]

oh incase it matters, I’m replacing the 2 x 1TB Greens for vmstore with 2 x 2TB drives as I’ve used about 90% of the drive but I suspect I can loose some of the VMs.  AS mentioned before biggest issue is I can’t run them all at the same time due to RAM limitations.  Not to mention CPU will likely suffer also on some of them.

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

Been looking at this a bit more and it seems quiet a few people have mentioned poor performance when using over iscisi so i’ve decided to simply buy 2 new drives to replace my agng drives in the microserver.

1 currently have:

2 x 1TB WD Green drives in a raid 1 containing the esxi OS and ISO files – Year 2008…

2 x 1TB WD Green drives in a raid 1 containing the VMs – Year 2011 – Not too worried about these, if it fails, i’ll put a new drive in, re-install the OS and then i’l; simply add the VMs back in and setup the ones i need to auto startup and shut down etc. Not a major issue as ESXi is fairly easy to install and doesn’t take too long.

So new question…

Whatsthe best way to replace the drives for the 2 drives containing the VMs?

Option 1:

1. Move VMs off to Esxi OS drives
2. Remove raid on raid controller,
3. Power off the server
4. Remove the 2 drives
5. Insert the 2 new drives
6. Power on the server
7. go into raid setup and setup the raid 1 on the new drives
8. Move Vms to new drives and mount in vmware

Option 2

1. Power off the server
2. Remove 1 of the drives in the mirror
3. Replace with a new drive
4. Power back on server
5. do raid repair of mirror
6. Power off server
7. remove other drive in mirror
8. insert new drive
9. power on
10. let it repair mirror and then all is good

I’m currently going with option 1 but its taking quiet a while to copy the VMs as it not overly quick, not sure why.  Main issue I cannot afford to loose any of the VMs as its my main server, not my test one.  I have files backed up but don’t have the VM’s themselves backed up as not found a easy free way to do this so I’m currently manually copying from the vmware vsphere client by browsing the 2 datastores and then simply right clicking the folder -> copy and then click on other windows and paste it and then wait for around a hour or two for each one so far.

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

But what if you have a issue and wired device keep dropping off? If it showed you the times you would know how long it had been connected for and could help pin point when it lost connection so could try and develop a pattern i.e. happens when another device turned on or very x hours etc.  If the feature is there, surely it should show the times? Every other router I’ve had has always shown times, BT routers , Netgear and draytek.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Thanks – glad it’s not just me :)

Will look forward to a update, would be nice to see some numbers :)

Kev

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[kev2021]

ok thanks.

Yes, setup is basically:-

ONT -> RT-AX86U WAN port

Cables in house all go to Patch panel -> Switch -> RT-AX86U LAN port

VOIP phone base station -> RT-AX86U LAN port

 

My VOIP phone base station connects direct to RT-AX86U LAN port but again still no access times shown.

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi,

:) My raid 5 is made up of 5 drives and looking online, this seems to be what they suggest is the max in terms of not running into problems.  They suggest if going beyond 5 drives, to move to raid 6 for additional protection of 2 drives being able to fail and not just 1.

My nas has 3 empty drive bays so I can add more drives but I’m considering not and I’m currently thinking I’ll keep these 3 drives so that IF I run out of space, it may work out cheaper to buy 3 larger drives and move content over to that and then add drive(s) in future, as opposed to buying 5 larger drives and replacing 1 drive at a time and waiting hours/days for the raid rebuild to complete for each drive.  I did this when up upgraded from my smaller drives and it took best part of 24hrs to rebuild each drive so i did it over 2 weeks replacing 1 drive, letting the array rebuild, leave it for a day or two to ensure was all ok and also power the nas of and on to ensure all ok before replacing the next drive.

Don’t have any unifi stuff, have looked at it but bit expensive so decided to just get the ASUS router in the end plus at the time there was lots of reports of issues with the USG and BT You View not working and having to go in and manually alter some code etc which sounded a bit unnecessary and should of worked out the box as it does with very other router.   So decided to avoid that as we had BT You View at the time but now no longer have it.  Plus I have *limited* access to unifi in work (we have 1 switch and AP for meeting rooms on 1 floor) and we had some issues with ipads connecting to it after a update/reboot of the ipad if SSID is hidden, it just wont reconnect even though all info is saved etc.  Only way is to make SSID visible, connect all ipads for about 1 hour then hide the SSID.  If you do it any sooner, the ipads just disconnect. Very odd.

No UPS here.  Fortunately power doesn’t go off hardly at all and on odd occasions, everything has been fine.

Router – no issue just boots back up

switch – no issue just boots backup

Nas – boots up ok and just warns of incorrect shutdown

microserver – n issue just boots back up, OS’s will complain of improper shut down but they all come back up.

I started to look at home automation, installed it in docker and started to set bits up BUT then I got the Asus router, setup all my IoT on a separate wireless network which my nas is not part of so of course it no longer seems them lol so I’ve either got to make the IoT wireless have access to internal network or not bother and leave as is.  At the moment, they operated though apps so its not a major issue, it’s just not all the same brand so would of been nice to have them all in one place to control as needed.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Did you get any reply from Asus @UK Sentinel?

My setup is RTAX86U – 1 LAN port to network switch which everything is connected to but I can’t imagine it can’t see the times for each device as each has its own mac address etc to determine it as it shows them all on the router.

Kev

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