Network Rack for Small Office (Build Guide)
Last week I walked into an empty 5 × 4 ft storage room. By the end of the week, that blank space held a fully functional network core designed to keep a small…
20 Best Network Switches Under $100 (2025)
Choosing the right network switch is essential for building a reliable home network, home lab, or small‑office setup. The process can feel deceptively simple until slow file transfers or unexpected upgrade costs remind…
6 Essential Checks Before Choosing a Network Switch
Choosing a switch can feel deceptively simple, until slow file transfers, port shortages, and similar unexpected upgrade costs remind you otherwise. Before you click “Buy,” it helps to step back and look at…
10 pfSense Setup Changes to Make Post Install
Just installed pfSense? Before diving into VLANs, firewall rules, or VPN tunnels, take a few minutes to lock in these essential setup changes. These quick tweaks will boost security, improve reliability, and prevent…
pfSense Firewall Config: My Settings with Screenshots – Part 2
Let’s pick up right where Part 1 left off: pfSense Firewall Appliance Unboxing. This isn’t a quick-start guide. It’s my logbook from weeks of fine-tuning pfSense. Weeks, not years, so follow along and…
My $300 pfSense Firewall Appliance – Part 1: Unboxing
For the past three years, I’ve been putting off an upgrade to my network’s firewall. During that time, I was balancing multiple priorities: maintaining uptime with multiple ISPs, managing VPN performance limitations, and…
sudo command in Linux with examples
The sudo command in Linux is one of the most important and widely used commands for managing system permissions. It allows you to run a command as the superuser, giving you elevated privileges…
iotop command in Linux w/ examples.
This iotop command guide follows my previous 90 Linux Commands frequently used by Linux Sysadmins article. As time allows, I will continue to publish articles on the 90+ commands geared toward Linux sysadmins…
Diagnosing Swap Usage with smem on Linux
If you’ve ever looked at your server and wondered why it’s using swap even though plenty of RAM is available, you’re not alone. This is a common scenario on Linux systems, and it…
MySQL Performance: Stop hoarding. Drop unused MySQL databases
Recently, I supported a client with solving MySQL performance issues. There were several areas where MySQL performance issues were addressed. One issue, however, that was overlooked before our communications was that of keeping…
MySQL Performance Schema
When it comes to database performance monitoring and optimization, MySQL offers a powerful tool called Performance Schema. This versatile instrument provides invaluable insights into the inner workings of your MySQL database, enabling you…
pfSense: Optimizing PHP-FPM for Long-Term Web UI Performance
I’m sharing these PHP-FPM tweaks for pfSense publicly to solicit feedback and help anyone exploring similar optimizations. There may be more efficient methods or edge cases I haven’t covered. I welcome any suggestions,…
10 Best WordPress Remote Backup Plugins and Tools 2025
We all know how important it is to back up our data regularly. Disk drives fail, databases crash, and human error or bad actors can wreak havoc when you least expect it. Hurricanes,…
How I Chose the Best Managed Network Switch for My Home Lab
Recently, I started the process of upgrading my home network to give myself more room to experiment and grow. The first major step was replacing my router with a new firewall appliance, which…
50 Top ‘Internet of Things’ Security Solutions
A couple of months years back, I decided to maintain a list of companies that offer IoT (internet of things) security tools and solutions, which you can find below. Please don’t hesitate to…
100 Top Observability Tools (+ Server Monitoring and APM solutions)
Looking for application monitoring and observability solutions? On this page, I’ve listed the top application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, and observability solutions to date. The listings are updated periodically as APM and…
Linux Updates: Command Line Guide
Updating your Linux system is one of the most important things you can do to keep it secure, stable and running well. With updates, you can patch vulnerabilities, fix bugs and access new…
60 Linux Networking commands and scripts
Recently, I wanted to test network throughput via command line with at least 3 tools. For the life of me, I could not remember iperf. Not being able to remember previously used command…