I’m building a new old computer

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Yes, you’ve read that correctly. The title is confusing. I’m building a new old computer. Usually, something is new or old, but it can’t be both. But this time it is indeed both. It’s not directly Schrödinger’s computer, both old and new at the same time. But I think you’ll get the point.

Before we go into this topic: it has nothing to do with virtualization. Well, technically. But first things first.

Many moons ago I stumbled across some Tweets (that was before it was called X) of people gathering old hardware. Pentium III CPUs, old graphics cards like the Voodoo series, or Creative SoundBlaster sound cards. And for sure the very legacy beige computer cases. The good old stuff we all remember. The seed of building such an old computer has been planted a long time ago. And it germinated, grew, and now the young plant is blooming.

I didn’t start directly with gathering hardware and buying shedloads of old stuff. No. I first did some trial & error in my vSphere homelab. Yes. You can install Windows 98 as a virtual machine on your vSphere environment. I’m not saying you should, but it’s possible to do so. Unfortunately, you won’t have sound output, at least as far as I was able to test. So I moved on and set up a virtual machine on VMware Workstation. After installing the right sound driver, there was that iconic Windows startup sound. Oh, how I loved it!

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How to remove a host from a vSAN cluster

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This blog post, I call blog posts like these “quick & dirty posts”, will show you today how to remove an ESXi host permanently from your vSAN cluster. Yes. Permanently. Forever.

Usually, you’re adding more capacity to a cluster, which means adding more hosts or disks to solve that problem. However, some legitimate reasons exist to remove an ESXi host from a vSAN cluster. Maybe you’re currently in the middle of a hardware renewal. The new hardware is already installed and running in production. And now, server by server, you’re removing the old hardware because you’re on track with the workload migration. The same counts for adding a cluster with nodes that have more “meat by the bone”, more compute power, and storage capacity. Nodes that are running more energy-efficient than the old ones. You see, only two reasons, but there might be many more.

But let’s dive into this topic now.

How to remove an ESXi host from a vSAN cluster?

We’re starting with making sure that the cluster and the disk groups have enough space to have one host removed. If the cluster is fine, let’s move on to remove the host.

Place the host into maintenance mode

Right-click the host, choose “Maintenance Mode”, then “Enter Maintenance Mode”.

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How to add a new host to a vSAN cluster

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This blog post, I call blog posts like these “quick & dirty posts”, will show you today how to add an ESXi host to your vSAN cluster. You may need additional compute power, and/or storage capacity. Or you want to implement another storage policy to leverage storage efficiency and more failures to tolerate (RAID 5 / RAID 6 erasure coding). Maybe you want to create a stretched cluster, which needs an even number of vSAN nodes on each side plus a vSAN witness. So many reasons to add another vSAN node.

But let’s dive into this topic now.

How to add a new host to a vSAN cluster?

In my vSAN cluster, based on the Express Storage Architecture (ESA), I’ve got six hosts currently. I want to add another host to the cluster because of the computing and storage power. How to do this?

Right-click your cluster and choose “Add Hosts…”. So far, nothing special.

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How to shut down a vSAN cluster – and start it again

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Just a few weeks ago, to my shame, I stumbled across an interesting feature in VMware vSphere when trying some things with vSAN. To be honest, and to make it clear before we dive into this topic in this blog post: I screwed up when I tested this feature the first time. Because I didn’t know about this feature and because I didn’t proceed as I should have, as per this feature. At the end I had to reinstall all my vSAN nodes and create a new clean environment after that I screwed up. It was somehow needed anyway because of the most recent homelab rebuild. So, somehow a win-win for me and the lab.

So don’t screw up! No, just kidding. you may know the feature better than me. And I can tell you, vSAN is stronger and more resilient than you may think.

In this blog post, I’d like to show you how to shut down a vSAN cluster, and how to start it again. The feature is hidden in plain view, right-click the vSAN cluster and you’re good to go. Or not?

In this blog post, I’m assuming that the vCenter is NOT running on the vSAN cluster. I may update this blog post, or create another one, with vCenter running on the cluster. Without searching the internet and checking the VMware docs, I don’t know by heart if this is even possible. Anyway. So how do you shut down the vSAN cluster?

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New homelab hardware installed – HP Z8 G4 workstation

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I may have skipped some homelab generation upgrades in my documentation here. However I have updated the page as far as I could, and I would like to provide you with a brief update on my current homelab setup with this blog post as well.

Last year, my wife and I moved into our own house. Yes, I married my love and we built a house. I didn’t shout about it because it’s something personal and I don’t have to rub it in everyone’s face. But yes, I’m a married house owner now and a loving father. Oh, I forgot to mention that my wife gave birth to a beautiful son this year. So many things happened! But anyway, back to topic.

You may have seen some images I posted on Twitter last year, about the huge IT rack I got my hands on, and the first “production” deployment in my new homelab rack. This “production” deployment was an actual beer fridge that was small enough to fit into that rack. If you don’t believe me, please go ahead and check the pictures here. The beer fridge is still there, but the huge and heavy IT rack has gone. The huge rack has been replaced by a desktop-size rack from StarTech.com. This rack is enough to provide a nice mount for my SuperMicro servers and networking equipment.

But the main topic in this blog post is the recently acquired hardware. I bought a refurbished HP Z8 G4 workstation!

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