My HomeLab network was recently treated to a networking upgrade in the form of a Cisco Nexus 5010 switch. Whilst it’s been working absolutely fine, it occurred to me the version of NX-OS (Cisco’s operating system for Nexus devices) installed was from 2009 and could probably do with an update.

Nexus devices run NX-OS, not Cisco iOS, as is typically seen on other Cisco products such as the Catalyst switch range. As such the upgrade process is a little different for this operating system.

In this post I’ll be showing how I sourced the firmware for my device and the steps required to update it to the latest NX-OS version as of September 2018.

With the release of vSphere 6.5 VMware have drastically improved the state of vSphere security by implementing new features such as VM-level disk encryption, encrypted vMotion and support for the new secure boot model. Unfortunately, unlike Microsoft’s Hyper-V, VMware took the path of relying upon an entirely separate key management system for the storing of encryption keys.

In this guide I’m going to be showing you how to setup vSphere’s encryption features from scratch, suitable key management solutions, and my personal recommendations.

My home Wi-Fi password has always been rather simple and memorable. It makes it easy to give out to guests, input on devices without keyboards, and remember when needed. I always knew it was a little insecure, but how insecure?

In this post I’ll be showing you how you can put your home WPA2 Wi-Fi network password to the test with free open-source tools and less than £30 worth of hardware.