Installing ESXi 7.0 on a whitebox server

 

Server specs

 

It can be a pain to get common hardware working with ESXi especially network cards….

Motherboard	Gigabyte Z390 UD LGA 1151	https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/Z390-UD-rev-10#kf
CPU	Core i3-8100 Coffee Lake	https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/126688/intel-core-i3-8100-processor-6m-cache-3-60-ghz.html
Memory	32 GB 2x16GB DDR4-3200 Corsair	https://www.microcenter.com/product/616299/corsair-vengeance-lpx-32gb-(2-x-16gb)-ddr4-3200-pc4-25600-cl16-dual-channel-desktop-memory-kit-cmk32gx4m2e3200---black
Ethernet Card	Gigabit Pro/1000 CT PCI-e Desktop Adapter EXPI9301CT	https://www.amazon.com/Intel-EXPI9301CT-Gigabit-Desktop-Adapter/dp/B001CXWWBE/

Pfsense ntop getting prometheus data

 

I have pfsense with ntopng installed on it.
I would like to get some of this data from ntop into my prometheus se

so I can make cool graphs of my data usage in Grafana.

 

 

 

 

 

Lowering Your Video Streaming Bandwidth

 

OK last month I went over my bandwidth limit.  My Bandwidth limit is pretty high 1.2 TiB each month… That sounds like a lot.  But with everyone home these days and folks watching more and more videos it all adds up.

I know for myself many podcasts I used to listen to I know watch on YouTube which greatly increases how many Bytes I download.

So I have two options use less bandwidth or pay for unlimited.   Truth be told I will eventually pay for unlimited because I do see over time my usage just going up and up and up.  More videos, more games, more music, … just more.  But I want to push off the inevitable a few more months.

 

So how can I do this?  Well try and go after my worst bandwidth offenders, Streaming Videos.   Due to the pandemic we now have almost all the major streaming services so I want to explore what the current GiB/hr they usually run and how, if at all, I can reduce them.

 

Adding Prometheus as a Data Source to Grafana

 

I recently wrote a few article on installing Grafana and Prometheus.

http://www.whiteboardcoder.com/2021/01/installing-grafana-on-ubuntu-2004.html [1]
http://www.whiteboardcoder.com/2021/01/installing-prometheus-on-ubuntu-2004.html [2]

Now that I have it set up and I have prometheus ingesting some data I want to hook it into Promtheus and see some beautiful graphs 

Now I want to start getting some real data into it to have something to graph! 

 

Installing Prometheus Node Exporter

I recently wrote an article where I installed Prometheus on Ubuntu 20.04 http://www.whiteboardcoder.com/2021/01/installing-prometheus-on-ubuntu-2004.html [1]

Now I want to start getting some real data into it to have something to graph!