J-Cave.dk

My hypervisors in 2026: phoebe, priscilla and stephen

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 08:44:00 +0100

The last two parts of this series were about getting here: a new Proxmox server, and the one big box I would build if I could. This part is about what I actually have. Three machines, what each one is for, and how they are going to work together.

From one big server to three small ones

This series started with an HP ProLiant ML150 G6 from 2009 and the Smart Array controller I put in it. Two years ago I took stock of what I had. The ML150 has since been retired and is gone.

Setting up an LXC container in Proxmox

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 08:17:00 +0100

This is the third part of Proxmox from scratch. In part 2 we created a virtual machine. This time we make the other kind of guest, a container, and I show how I run my own services in them.

The container in this post is a real one: the one that will run Jellyfin on my main server, phoebe, in the coming Jellyfin at home series. The screenshots are from the evening I created it.

Site Update October 2026

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0100

A month of finding your way around

The September update was about the new look. This month the work went into the structure underneath it: how posts are grouped, how you get from one to the next, and how a post page uses the screen. And, at last, into writing posts: twelve went online in October, and fifteen since the last week of September. Two series got going: Proxmox from scratch started, and My home servers picked up again after a long pause.

Hyperconverged Hypervisor

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 08:17:00 +0200

Having a homeserver lets you host your own services. There are a lot of ways to do this. This post explains what a hyperconverged hypervisor is, why I want one, and why I don’t have one yet.

I do not have the luxury of buying new specific hardware that fits the jobs I am looking to solve. I often have to make do with 2nd (or even 3rd) hand hardware to be able to have the systems that run both my business as well as protect our personal data such as photos and important documents.

Setting up a Virtual Machine in Proxmox

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:40:00 +0200

This is the second part of Proxmox from scratch. In part 1 we installed Proxmox VE on a small PC. Now we put it to use and create the first virtual machine.

A virtual machine, or VM, is a whole computer made of software. It has its own virtual disk, memory, processor and network card, and you install an operating system in it the same way you would on a real PC. That makes it the right place for things you don’t want on your own PC, like a test build of a desktop that may well have bugs. That is what I install in mine: the testing edition of KDE neon. I chose it on purpose, because it lets me try the coming Plasma releases before they come out, without risking the desktop I use every day.

MD-102 Old vs New Exam

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 08:56:00 +0200

MD-102 Endpoint Administrator replaces MD-100 + MD-101

As Microsoft has been moving away from on-prem tools like SCCM and Domain Controllers to cloud they introduced a new exam to reflect this change towards the cloud and tools like Intune, Entra, and Autopilot. And for the new Endpoint Manager that also meant a new certification to replace the old MD-100 Windows Client, and MD-101 Managing Modern Desktops.

As a budding Systems Administrator, MD-102 Endpoint Administrator is a good way of learning about modern Endpoint Management and protection, as well as document my knowledge. But how much of the old ways should I also learn?

New Proxmox homeserver

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:36:00 +0200

My current Proxmox server

My main Proxmox server is called phoebe. It is a Lenovo Tiny PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3400GE processor and 64 GB of RAM, and it runs a couple of LXC containers (Nextcloud among them) and a few virtual machines.

Its storage used to be an NVMe drive for booting and two spinning drives in an OpenZFS mirror: a 4 TB 2.5" hard disk drive inside the case and an 8 TB external drive connected via USB 3. That gave 4 TB of usable space, as the smallest drive in a mirror dictates the capacity.

Homelab backup strategy: 3-2-1 in practice, not just in theory

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 08:10:00 +0200

Most posts about backup explain the 3-2-1 rule and then show a setup that follows it. I can’t write that post yet. What I can do is go through the rule, hold my own homelab up against it, and show where it falls short today.

The 3-2-1 rule, briefly

Backblaze puts the rule in one sentence: “keep three copies of your data on two different media with one copy off-site” [1]. The three copies include the original, so it is the data you work on plus two more [1]. “Two different media” comes from the time of tape and CDs. Today Backblaze reads it as two different devices [1]. Off-site means a place that a fire, a burglary or a lightning strike at home doesn’t reach.

October 2026 for Microsoft admins: what changed on the 1st, and what ends on Patch Tuesday

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0200

Note

Updated 13 October 2026, after the release. This post went out the day before Patch Tuesday. It now says what actually shipped: 1,411 fixes, one of them for a flaw that is already being used in attacks, and one known issue with USB audio. The other sections are brought up to date as well.

Patch Tuesday was on 13 October, and this one was more than a batch of fixes. Several products got their last update on the same day, three things had already changed on 1 October, and a Secure Boot certificate expires six days later. Here is the month as a list, with what to check for each.

Windows 11 24H2 gets its last update on 13 October, and Windows 10 gets another year

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0200

Two Windows dates have been mixed together in a lot of headlines this autumn, so here they are, separated.

Windows 11, version 24H2, Home and Pro: the last update comes on Tuesday 13 October 2026 [1].
Windows 10: nothing ends this month. The extended security updates for home users, which were supposed to stop now, run until 12 October 2027 [2].

Windows 11 24H2: update to a newer version

Each yearly version of Windows 11 is only maintained for a limited time. For Home and Pro that is two years, and 24H2 came out on 1 October 2024 [1]. After 13 October, a PC that is still on 24H2 gets no more security fixes.

Office 2021 support ends on 13 October: what are your options?

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0200

On Tuesday 13 October 2026, Office 2021 gets its last update. That goes for the version you bought in a shop and for Office LTSC 2021, the version organisations buy through volume licensing [1] [2]. Microsoft leaves no opening: “there will be no extension and no extended security updates” [1].

What end of support means

Word and Excel will start on 14 October exactly as they did the day before. “All of your Office 2021 apps may continue to function. However, you could expose yourself to serious and potentially harmful security risks.” [1]

Setting up a Proxmox Virtual Environment server

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 08:18:00 +0200

This is the first part of Proxmox from scratch. By the end of it you have a server running Proxmox Virtual Environment, reachable from a browser and up to date. The following parts build on it: virtual machines, containers, storage, networking and backups.

Everything here is done on Proxmox VE 9.2, which came out in May 2026 [7]. If you find an older guide for version 8, be aware that 8 stopped getting security updates on 31 August 2026 [7].

What's new in Jellyfin 12, and what to check before you upgrade

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:18:00 +0200

Jellyfin 12.0 came out on 7 September, and the first bugfix release, 12.1, followed a week later [1] [3]. If you run 10.11 today, the next version is not 10.12 and not 11. It is 12. Here is what is new, what breaks, and what to do before you press upgrade.

From 10.11 to 12

The number first, and a little history, because the obvious question is why a project that began in 2018 was on version 10 at all. Jellyfin started “in early December 2018 primarily as a result of Emby’s decision to take their next release (4.x) closed-source”, as a fork of Emby 3.5.2 [6]. The new project wanted a clean break from Emby’s version numbers, and chose to go up rather than down. The first Jellyfin release, in January 2019, was 10.0.0, and the plan was “10.X.Y, with X being major feature releases and Y being bugfixes” [7].

Teams and Copilot are moving to cloud.microsoft: check your allow-lists before October

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:47:00 +0200

Two of the most used Microsoft 365 web addresses are changing this autumn. Copilot is moving to copilot.cloud.microsoft and Teams on the web to teams.cloud.microsoft. If something in your network blocks *.cloud.microsoft, October is when your users find out.

What’s changing

Copilot: m365.cloud.microsoft becomes copilot.cloud.microsoft

In message center post MC1462915 Microsoft says it started redirecting users from m365.cloud.microsoft to copilot.cloud.microsoft in early September, in organisations where the new address is reachable. Everyone else gets redirected in early October [1]. If the address is blocked, the redirect happens anyway, and “affected users may be unable to use Copilot in the web app, desktop app, and Microsoft Edge experience” [1].

Torvalds joked about blaming AI for Linux 7.3-rc2 — what actually happened

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:32:00 +0200

The joke: “We’ll obviously all blame it on AI”

Linux 7.3-rc2 came out on Sunday 6 September, and Linus Torvalds ended the announcement with this: “It might be just random, but we’ll obviously all blame it on AI, because whether that’s really the cause or not, it’s an easy thing to blame ;)” [1]. That line made the headlines [2]. The rest of the email, where he lists what actually made the release big, got far less attention [3].

What's new in Nextcloud 35 (Hub 26 Summer), and what's next in 36

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:25:00 +0200

Cover image: Nextcloud GmbH, from the Nextcloud Hub 26 Summer press release (see also the Nextcloud press page).

A short history of Nextcloud

For those of you new to self-hosting and Nextcloud itself, I would like to start this post off with a quick introduction to Nextcloud.

Nextcloud is a way of hosting your own files for yourself and a team similar to what OneDrive and SharePoint do in a Microsoft 365 environment, but without the intranet capability of SharePoint.

September 2026 Patch Tuesday broke Excel: the case for ring-based deployment

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:12:00 +0200

September’s Patch Tuesday was the biggest Microsoft has ever shipped, and one of the updates in it broke copy and paste in Excel. Together they make a good argument for something small IT departments often skip: letting a few people get the updates first.

What shipped on 8 September 2026

A record count, however you count it

How big depends on who you ask. BleepingComputer counted 966 vulnerabilities [1], Tenable 964 [2], the Zero Day Initiative 972 new Microsoft CVEs [3] and SecurityWeek 974 [4]. When I first noted the idea for this post I wrote down 973, which is roughly what you get from reading enough headlines.

Site Update September 2026

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:25:00 +0200

A month of rebuilding

In the August update I promised that the site would be redesigned as we went. A month later, most of that list is done, and the site looks and works quite differently. Here’s what changed, and what’s coming.

A new look

The minimalistic look from early August is gone. The site now has its own colour scheme: a dark charcoal frame around a warm parchment reading area, with terracotta and pine green as accent colours, and a serif font for headings.

Homelab Handbook: Getting Started is now available

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:35:00 +0200

My first guide is out. Homelab Handbook: Getting Started is a practical, no-nonsense handbook for turning an affordable used PC into your first homelab, and it’s available now from the Kaddu Systems shop.

What it is and who it’s for

A homelab is simply a computer (or a few) that you run at home to host services you’d otherwise pay someone else for, or hand your data to.

It can also be a playground where you can experiment and learn new skills, without affecting your production systems and important data.

Site Update August 2026

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:32:31 +0200

Note

Update, September 2026: a lot of what this post plans has since happened or changed. See the Site Update September 2026 for where the site is now.

Site update as of August 2026

This site has long been in a state of missing new posts. But here’s to a new lease!

It actually comes not just as a refresh, but a whole new base, as we have changed from Wordpress as a CRM to an Open Source Static site generator called HUGO. This shift should make the site delivery a lot faster, as the pages are actually pre-generated abd just needs to be served straight from the server.