Welcome to the ‘IT Guy Show’, your go-to destination for all things tech with Eric, your friendly neighborhood IT guy! Join Eric as he shares his wealth of knowledge, insights, and experiences gained from years of working in the IT industry. From troubleshooting common tech issues to exploring the latest trends and innovations, each episode is packed with practical tips, expert advice, and engaging discussions. Whether you're a seasoned IT professional looking to stay ahead of the curve or a tech enthusiast eager to expand your knowledge, Eric has you covered. With a passion for simplifying complex tech concepts and a knack for making technology accessible to everyone, Eric creates an inclusive and welcoming space where listeners can learn, laugh, and connect. Tune in to 'Office of the IT Guy' and embark on a journey of discovery, empowerment, and endless possibilities in the ever-evolving world of technology. Don't miss out on the chance to join Eric and his special guests as they navigate the digital landscape, one episode at a time. Subscribe now and make the 'Office of the IT Guy' your new favorite tech destination!
Episode 27: Open, Repairable Homelab Hardware with 45HomeLab | The IT Guy Show 027
I've got a Dell PowerEdge R720 in colocation that sounds like a jet engine, it's six to eight years old, and I refuse to pay Dell a thousand dollars just to unlock its IPMI port. So instead of guessing my way into a replacement, I brought in someone who builds this hardware for a living.
Zack Perry is a Solution Specialist at 45Drives and the face of 45HomeLab, the homelab side of a company that's been building open, repairable, enterprise-grade storage since it was making servers for Backblaze. We walk the whole lineup, from the Home Client and Workstation up through the HL8, HL15, HL15 Beast, and the new Unraid X15, and Zack lays out which one actually fits what I'm running. Then he does the thing I needed: he takes my real numbers, 16 virtual machines and about 124 gigs of RAM with room to double, and points me at a specific box, right down to the CPU, the HBA, and how loud it is from three feet away.
We also get into what we both refuse to self-host, a good networking rabbit hole, and moving a whole lab onto an infrastructure-as-code workflow. If you're weighing colocation against bringing it home, this one's for you.
Chapters
00:00 Stream Start
00:38 Meet Zack Perry
04:09 From 45Drives to 45HomeLab
08:05 Why My R720 Has to Go
10:32 The 45HomeLab Lineup
18:33 What People Actually Run on These
21:22 Speccing My Next Box
30:43 The Noise Question
32:22 Networking Rabbit Hole
41:25 What We Refuse to Self-Host
43:28 Staff Picks and Wrap-Up
Links
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/itguyeric (https://linktr.ee/itguyeric)
Zack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-perry-45drives/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-perry-45drives/)
45HomeLab: https://45homelab.com/ (https://45homelab.com/)
Homelab #45HomeLab #SelfHosting #OpenSource #Linux
Special Guest: Zack Perry.
Support The IT Guy Show (https://www.patreon.com/itguyeric)
4 Aug 2026
Episode 26: Open Source Password Manager?! | The IT Guy Show 026
Most password managers ask you to trust them blindly. Bitwarden opens the hood and shows you the code instead. I sat down with Kasey Babcock, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bitwarden, to get into why that openness matters when a tool is holding every credential you own.
We start with the trust argument for open source, then walk through what is new at Bitwarden lately, from the archive feature and fill assist to encrypted file sharing and Access Intelligence reporting. Then we go where most password manager conversations never do, which is your infrastructure. We talk Secrets Manager, the Terraform integration, pulling secrets into automated workflows, and the mistakes teams make when they move secrets out of plaintext.
We close on passkeys, passwordless, and where the whole industry is heading. Whether you are a security nerd, an admin wrangling secrets across environments, or just tired of reusing the same password everywhere, this one has something for you.
Chapters
00:00 Stream Start
02:01 Meet Kasey Babcock
03:57 Why Open Source Matters
09:19 What's New at Bitwarden
19:52 Access Intelligence for Teams
24:02 Secrets Manager and Infrastructure as Code
30:31 Passkeys and Passwordless
36:41 Wrap-Up
45:30 Closing
Links
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/itguyeric (https://linktr.ee/itguyeric)
Kasey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasey-babcock/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasey-babcock/)
Bitwarden #OpenSource #SecretsManager #DevOps #Passwordless
Special Guest: Kasey Babcock.
Support The IT Guy Show (https://www.patreon.com/itguyeric)
21 Jul 2026
Episode 25: The Homelab SLA
Most of us treat our homelabs like a junk drawer. Something breaks, we shrug, we fix it whenever we get around to it. Mathias Palmersheim does not operate that way. He's a Solutions Engineer at VictoriaMetrics, where he spends his days helping companies monitor infrastructure at serious scale, and he's brought that same discipline home. He runs his personal homelab against an actual SLA, the kind of uptime commitment most of us only deal with at work.
Mathias joins me to talk about VictoriaMetrics itself, the time series database built for high cardinality metrics and logs at scale, and why open source observability tooling matters even outside the enterprise. But the real fun is in how he applies that professional rigor to his own gear at home. We get into what it actually takes to hold yourself to an SLA when there's no boss checking in, what breaks the plan, and whether this level of intensity is something the rest of us should aspire to or just admire from a distance.
If you've ever wondered what happens when a monitoring expert points all that expertise at his own home network, this one's for you.
Welcome to The IT Guy Show, your go-to destination for all things tech with Eric, your friendly neighborhood IT guy! Join Eric as he shares his wealth of knowledge, insights, and experiences gained from years of working in the IT industry. From troubleshooting common tech issues to exploring the latest trends and innovations, each episode is packed with practical tips, skilled advice, and engaging discussions.
Connect with me! https://linktr.ee/itguyeric (https://linktr.ee/itguyeric)
Connect with Mathias: https://links.shiftsystems.net (https://links.shiftsystems.net)
VictoriaMetrics: https://victoriametrics.com/ (https://victoriametrics.com/)
Chapters:
00:00 Stream start
00:41 Introductions
04:05 VictoriaMetrics
12:35 ShiftMon
16:09 Mathias' Homelab
37:48 Closing thoughts
39:29 Wrap up
Graphics and bumpers by Free Hive Agency
Special Guest: Mathias Palmersheim.
Support The IT Guy Show (https://www.patreon.com/itguyeric)
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