- 0 Posts
- 79 Comments
from a diagramming pov, remember to document the link speed at each end as well as the ethernet cable type. if your cable modem supports 10GB I would really really look at 10GB network devices pretty closely, budget allowing. I would steer cleared of managed, it’s just a PIA for your setup.
You might want to experiment with modem <-> switch <-> wifi vs (modem <-> wifi <-> switch). remember wifi is just ethernet. so the order may or may not matter as much (vendor gets a vote). there does not appear to be a reason to march ethernet cable traffic thru the wifi router, but maybe there is???
def agree an 8 port switch might be better for you, use a 5 to split a single cable at a single location (say, tv + game console + speaker combo)
Remember if you need a WiFi mesh (multi access-point) to connect your devices, if possible, link the mesh backplane together via ethernet cable so that you don’t chew half the speed with wi-fi backplane chatter.
how many devices do you need to update?
ansible wants to have a home base and an inventory of devices to manage. for example, if you have a flock of Rasberry Pi’s and a server stashed under a desk somewhere, yes, ansible is 100% going to simplify your life.
ansible mgmt from a device to that same device… It might be just as easy to make backups and track your file deltas. the temptation is to use ansible so you remember what changes you made, but it can be a pia when you need to do a quick shift and have to go thru the playbook (unless you have playbooks on the ready).
what you are attempting is called high availability; it might not be worth it; usually would need three different physical devices (in a homelab situation)…a load balancer to route traffic, and two nodes to handle said traffic. to perform your storage upgrade, you pull one device out of the load balancer, do your upgrade, and then add it back in. then, you do the same for the other load balancer. this would have 100% service availability…but this is a lot of work for a one-person show!
do that for fun - you do you. however, if you can handle a few hours of downtime and don’t want to burden yourself with the long time care+feeding the above setup will require…
remember you can use USB boot, mount both your drives, and then if you are lucky, your distro (on USB) will have a disk management/cloning utility.
click click click, boom…you have bit perfect copy of small M2 on to large M2.
Do not change your small M2! power down, swap 'em, and power on! if it doesn’t work, you still have your OG M2 to boot from.
there are backup/restore utilities and other ways, each taking more and more time…but M2 is pretty quick.
For sure.
My point was more … first time, ever, you boot a raw device, a display can be handy unless you know what you are doing. Once it survives a reboot…
After that, if you need a GUI — just run an x windows server on your main rig; interact with your remote server as the client without the need of a display.
A NAS serves data to clients; I know this is tilting conventional wisdom on it’s head but hear me out: go for the most inexpensive, lowest power storge-only-NAS that you can tolerate, and instead…put your money into your data transport (network) and into your clients..
As much as possible, simplify your life - move processing out of middle tiers, into client tiers.
you could probably roll your own pretty easily, just prowl around /proc etc
https://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/proc.html
Actually…for a NAS, your network link is your limit.
You could have 4xPCIe5 M.2’s in full-raid, saturating your bus w/64Gb/s of glory, but if you are on 1Gb/s wifi, that’s what you’ll actually get.
Still, would be fun to ssh in and dupe 1TB in seconds, just for the giggles. Do it for the fun!
Remember, it is almost always cheaper and fast enough to use a Thunderbolt / high-speed USB4/40Gbs flash drive for a quick backup.
That’s not how downtrodden works.
What about mercs getting paid in drugs and rape?