Category: Hands-on Lab
About Me

Building the Perfect Edge AI Supercomputer – Cost Effective Hardware

Keeping up with today’s technology is both exciting and demanding. My passion for home labs started many years ago, and while my family often jokes about the time and money I spend on self-education, they understand the value of staying ahead in such a fast-moving field. What started as curiosity has grown into a journey of building cost-effective supercomputers for edge AI and virtualization.

Attila Macskasy 2025.09.07.
Azure

Terraform deployment for FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall in Microsoft Azure

This blog explores deploying FortiGate VM in Azure, tackling challenges like license restrictions, Terraform API changes, and Marketplace agreements. It offers insights, troubleshooting tips, and lessons learned for successful single VM deployment in Azure. Using an evaluation license combined with B-series Azure VMs running FortiGate is primarily intended for experimentation and is not recommended for production environments.

Attila Macskasy 2025.01.28.
Hands-on Lab

The perfect nested virtualization-based demo LAB: adding Template VMs (and vSAN)

Recently, I have installed several template virtual machines in my lab. My primary objective is to automate large-scale migrations to the AWS Cloud using the AWS CloudEndure Migration Factory Solution. The secondary objective is to test VMware HCX based migrations to Cloud. This article gives you an idea of how to prepare vSAN based nested LAB to achieve similar goals.

Attila Macskasy 2022.03.17.
Hands-on Lab

The perfect nested virtualization-based demo LAB: Basics, vCenter, vSphere, shared storage, networking

I am building my lab to support testing cloud migration tools. It is not only for “legacy” VMs but cloud native workloads as well. I deployed ESXi7 on nested Workstation 16, added Synology NAS via NFS to store ISOs, built core infra like DC on Windows Server 2022, and thought about the proper diagramming tool supports the hybrid design and automated deployment.

Attila Macskasy 2022.02.11.
Hands-on Lab

Buying my new Google Domain and getting started with Workspace and GCP

When you register a domain it is a big deal. It is your e-mail address, it is connected to your organization, you will use it in Cloud IAM and connected APIs. You will type it in CLI and pick it from GUI multiple times. I added my experiences with Microsoft Azure/M365/Teams and AWS Route 53/Chime as well.

Attila Macskasy 2022.02.06.
Hands-on Lab

Hands-on LAB! “The source system.”

Storage is key, saying as ex. Virtana employee. If you want to build a fast and great lab, you need to understand your options in this area.

Attila Macskasy 2021.09.21.
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