So going along with last post about how I am really not great with the administration of vSphere, or the setup(last time was 5.5). Its time to look at the more fundamental stuff, and how bad I am with the Network component.

Addendum: I hope these help someone out there grow themselves. I know I’m growing in leaps and bounds as I learn through doing.

My Goal was to create 2 subnets, one for home, and one for the lab. I want these to be open to each other to an extent(l2) but still be stable(still working on that part)

Ubiquity

So I decided to grab some ubiquity networking pieces to start. I grabbed the Ubiquity Edge Switch to go along with my Netgear Nighthawk router. I was looking for VLAN capabilities, and my goal was to setup the subnets on the router and then pass them through on the switch.

Learning point 1: VLANs

So its worth pointing out that VLANs on the features of a product don’t really mean SUBNET/VLANs. This kinda bit me in the butt a while, because I ended up trying to create one basic subnet and tried to create a VLAN with a different subnet… No Bueno… In fact when I created VLANs on the router, the whole thing crashed.  However, I found out that the Ubiquity switch I had was a dream to work with (after I updated the firmware). However, I looked and looked and the switch can pass through VLANs, but again, not subnet it.

Learning point 2: Devices

So for anyone looking into doing this, Its worth looking into your ISP and see if more speed is needed. I found out that I was more than doubling my devices and would need to look into my speed usage. It may not be an issue, but for me I found out that for a small figure I’d double my speed. So sure! I got a lot of OVA’s to download anyway 😉

Learning point 3: Unified Management

So there I was swapping from Netgear to Ubiquity and back. Finally I gave in and bought the Ubiquity Edge Router. I went with this one cause the price point didn’t phase me and the functionality of the router looked tremendous. Well, I learned how much this thing could do. I literally love this little box that could. It does the subnet VLANs that I wanted as well as DHCP servers for both subnets. I went with the WAN+2LAN2 connection and set my home to a 192, and my lab to a 10. Oh man, I love this thing

The firewall, services, natting, just so much for me to learn in this tiny little box. Once I got this setup, I changed my Netgear into an access point, and set the ISP connection to static from the router. One thing about the Ubiquity Edge Router though, these small boxes use a big plug than so they take up like 2-3 spots in the UPC. Which leads me to the next point.

Learning point 4: Power

If you saw where I am going, it gets better. So every hour or so my whole network would just crash. I’d lose both my LAB and home networks and it would cause some severe anger in my brain(I think I have a couple extra knots in my back from it). I went through SOOO many settings to figure out what it is. I reset the firewall settings(which wasn’t easy considering all I’ve done before was Windows Firewall). Set specific VLAN subnets and reset. Set port forwarding when I couldn’t figure out why I needed to. Well, this went on for about a month(which is also why I have been slacking on posts). I just couldn’t move forward with an unstable lab. Well yesterday I was at the end of my tether. I troubleshooted each device one at a time. During troubleshooting each device my anger boiled. Finally I found out the little box that could was the culprit. It would crash and everything would just die. So I pulled it out to RMA it to get another one, or the gateway(As I hear good things about it). When lo and behold I realized it… I had plugged the central router into a crappy extension cord. *Le Sigh*. Just… no…. If you use a UPC like me and find your missing ports… Get These

Thoughts

I cant express how much I’ve grown doing these things. I’ve figured out so much and learned in this past month more about architecture in the past couple years.

IT is so segregated right now that we lose sight that each feature has to troubleshoot differently, and its really hard. Especially for a Rookie to try to keep swapping gears. I’ve learned from the pure windows standpoint, then PowerShell automation, then vRA. I’ve never been allowed to play with the other parts. But with this Lab, I’m getting to. If your on the edge thinking if a home lab is worth it… It is. Even in a corporate lab, I still wouldn’t learn this much. However, If your not interested in the whole stack, why deal with the trouble right?(and it is Trouble).

RELEASES

This week VRA7.6 was released doing some EXTREMELY needed updates to Orchestrator, Vrops 7.5 was also released plus ESXI 6.7U2 Get to downloading and updating folks! Now go break stuff, and learn how to fix it.