General tech – Owen Reynolds Personal blog

Let’s rack & roll with a Dell R640 to ‘serve the home’

The title of this blog was an obvious lift from the mighty Patrick Kennedy blog ServeTheHome Server Storage and Networking ReviewsCheck out the site or watch his related YT channel INTRO First, let’s start with some numbers 46 years old is my age as of Oct 2025 20 is the number of years I’ve been…
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VMware PowerCLI automation for vSphere environmental checks

The TASK New automation efforts are often born from the need to automate repetitive tasks. I was a dedicated virtualization consultant from 2017 to early 2024. During that time, I’d often get engaged to help out customers who were running into performance and scalability issues with their vSphere environments, sometimes it started with the dreaded…
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Alabama & Arizona

I’ve been watching Peter Santentello’s YouTube travel channel for a few years now. Peter’s channel is part of the the reason I pay for YT, as his videos are often 1-2 hours, and I’m not keen to getting dozens of ads listening to his content (and more) each time I queue one up. On his…
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My method for better decision making life (™️)

Intro First of all, today’s topic is based on accepting that there is such thing as “free will” Sorry Robert Sapolsky, I’m not seduced by your proposition that “free will doesn’t exist” , yet 😉 If you’re not familiar with Robert’s work, his take on “free will” is that we are “running on rails” ;…
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Monitor upgrade for #2024

I’ve been WFH in one form or another for 11 years (2013 to 2024). As part of working from home, I want to ensure my home setup is optimized. This includes ergonomics, productivity , sound, function and ascetics (plants, window view) Each element has improved over the years, however, until the first week of January…
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vSan 8 express architecture on HP EliteDesk G4 home lab kit

My lab is in an in-between state, with 3x HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFFs (Skylake i5-6500) and two new HP EliteDesk 800 G4 units (i7-8700). Until last week, the 3x HP EliteDesk G3s were in a 3 node vSan 7 setup (non express architecture) which is Samsung 860 standard SSD for storage and Samsung evo…
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A simple / fast method to ID EOL Windows server OS’s by PowerShell

In this post, I’ll talk about how to use a simple PowerShell script to scan for end-of-life versions of windows server within a Microsoft active directory environment. The script was written in October 2023, when a lot of IT depts are working hard to Win 2012 to meet the Oct 10, 2023 end-of-support timeline. It’s…
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Before / after metrics for Citrix environments using free and built-in tools/scripts

Intro This post builds on a post I’d written last year on , where a client asked me to implement “Citrix direct workspaces” and wanted to show the before / after You might be engaged by your client or employer to investigate a performance issue. The request could come when you’re properly caffeinated and ready…
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Recover from “trust relationship” error when local admin isn’t available

Quick post for a fix I’ve used a few times to recover from the following scenario: You attempt to logon to an existing VM with an existing known working domain account and receive the below message: Don’t fear! As long as you’re not working in an environment which blocks caching existing domain user credentials, you…
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How to deliver bad news

Intro For the past 2 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a number of interesting and challenging assessments for Citrix and VMware environments. Some of these assessments have been tied to a Citrix implementation , where we need to collect information to write the migration plan. Others have been proactive, where the client…
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Category: General tech