Practical Projects

Project - TrueNAS Scale on refurbished Dell Server

1. Problem: Server did not originally support booting from NVMe SSD

   • Solution: Purchase NVMe PCIe adapter, setup a Clover EFI Bootloader USB drive and boot from that drive in the server initially to then automatically select the NVMe as a boot drive for TrueNAS

   • Result: Server boots and runs from the NVMe SSD inside thanks to the Clover EFI USB Boot device taking the inital boot and routing the server to the NVMe to boot from

2. Problem: Server showing faults with some drives

   • Solution: Checked and studied on SMART tests and possible fault readings, ran tests on drives to check health and monitor the results, found 2 drives faulty so bought replacements and replaced them

   • Result: All 4 drives working fine and running 2 x as a RAID 1 for redundancy for the home network NAS storage and 2 x Drives also in RAID 1 for redundancy purposes for applications being run on the server, offering a RAID 1 dataset of 2TB SAS SSD storage for Applications and a RAID 1 dataset of 16TB SAS HDD Storage for the home NAS system

3. Problem: Manual updates was slow and inefficient

   • Solution: Developed a BASH script to run as a Cron job on the Proxmox Server to automatically update the Virtual Machines and software running on them

   • Result: Saved time manually checking Apt update/alternative updates on software and Systems in the Proxmox Hypervisor Virtual Machines

4. Problem: Default Network Configurations presented security vulnerabilities

   • Solution: Take control, installed custom Network Switches and Custom Router to allow total control of the settings, performed NMAP scans on the systems, implemented SSH-key auth and UFW Firewall rules for all systems, setup Zero Trust tunnels and VPNs to allow outside connection ONLY from permitted devices

   • Result Achieved zero-trust architecture for internal lab traffic

5. Problem: Dell Poweredge 1Gb NiC running through the Gigabit switch was slow and inefficient when transferring files to or from the Home PC

   • Solution: Purchased and installed 2 x 2.5Gb Nic cards and Cat 6 Ethernet Cables to install in the Server and PC creating a direct link on a separate subnet between devices

   • Result: Files transfer much faster between the devices (potentially looking to upgrade to 10Gb SFP in the future for added speeds)