Category: Project

2 Meter Ground Plane Antenna

As a newly licensed Ham Radio Operator, I was ready to move beyond a handheld radio and be able to extend my range.  Since most of the Technician Class License privileges are in the 2M / 70 CM bands, a base station in that range made the most sense to get started.  There is a lot of DIY tradition in the Ham Radio community and having a 3D printer made some of the construction easier.…

Moving a rack of computers into a Sardine can

Challenge

Like many others in IT, I keep a lab environment at home where I can try out ideas without the cost of company down time.  Let’s face it, I have a hobby I get paid for!  Anyways, my Microsoft Active Directory installation was on a pair of SuperMicro 1U machines. They were loud, consumed a lot of power and created quite a bit of heat too.  Something was going to have to go but I really needed to have the lab machines.

After introducing my employer to virtualization, I needed to find a way to bring it home.  I had rolled out VMWare to 30 grocery stores and did a “Physical to Virtual” (P2V) conversion on 20+ machines in the data center so this was not going to be a problem in the home lab.

My main problem was going to be finding a quiet host with low heat output.…