Let’s Encrypt is a great service that automates deployment and renewal of SSL certificates, at a bargain price. For most situations where you have a regular OS, the default Certbot Acme client works well. However for more embedded solutions, like Ubiquiti’s Unifi Cloudkey this is not an option as there is no full Linux OS. After researching a few of the alternative options, Acme Shell was the clear winner. It runs using the Bourne shell, and has Unifi support built in.

An important part of setting up a new storage array is testing how to recover from common failure scenarios. This is the procedure to replace a failed drive. Documented here for a time when I might need to use the procedure in anger. A zpool status showing the failed drive: root@thor:/home/wayne# zpool status tank pool: tank state: DEGRADED status: One or more devices are faulted in response to persistent errors. Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a degraded state.

The IBM M1015 is the go to Host Bus Adapter (HBA) for enthusiasts wanting a reliable and reasonably priced HBA for systems using advanced filesystems such as ZFS. I acquired a number of these cards for my file-server upgrade. I needed cards to support my new Norco RPC-4224 Chassis. There is a lot of discussion on line about these cards, and re-flashing them to remove the boot & raid firmware.