Supermicro Server BIOS Update

Having received my Supermicro SYS-5028D-TN4T servers for my home lab it’s now time to update the BIOS on each unit. This process can be achieved either through bootable media or if you have the correct license key for the dedicated IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) interface you can update through that. In my case I … Read more

Supermicro SYS-5028D-TN4T Servers First Look

Yay! Today my Supermicro SYS-5028D-TN4T servers arrived which will make up my home lab along with the Cisco SG300-20 switch. The microservers pack one hell of a punch, let me give you some quick specs. 8 core Xeon-D 1541 SoC (System on Chip) which includes hyper-threading and every feature you can think of enabled 128GB … Read more

Cisco SG300-20 Switch First Look

Today I received my Cisco SG300-20 network switch – part of the new lab environment I am putting together at home. It’s a 20 port gigabit switch with layer 3 functionality. The unit itself looks very nice as you might expect from a Cisco switch and importantly for me is passively cooled so no noise! … Read more

Tale of the changing MAC Address

Today I had an interesting e-mail from a supplier with regard to an issue they were experiencing. Firstly let me outline the issue – Devices are tracked using a combination of radio frequency technologies to ensure we can local objects (people, equipment etc) within a building Each device has an identifier, this supplier would like … Read more