Andrew’s Equipment

I spend many hours tinkering with Cloud environments, DevOps pipelines and other tech projects, but what equipment do I use?

I don’t have the latest equipment, as I believe it’s what you do with the tools rather than the tools themselves.

(I recently had a tech refresh with 2nd hand equipment, and I can recommend Hoxton Macs as a refurbished Apple equipment supplier.)

Having recently returned to contracting, and my equipment being what I use and rely on to make money and pay my salary, I’ve invested heavily in upgrading my equipment to offer the best value to my clients. This includes gigabit fibre to the premises and multi-gigabit WiFi and Ethernet.

Keyboard and Mouse

I have the following mouse and keyboard, one set at home and another for work.

Keychron K10 Mechanical Wired/BT Keyboard for Mac & Windows (Mac Layout)
Cherry MW 3000

Equipment for Day-to-Day Work.

Desktop PC & Jump-Box: Apple M1 Mac mini (2020)

8 Core M1 CPU (4 Efficiency & 4 Performance Cores)
8 Core Apple M1 GPU (1920 x 1080 – Default, Supports 6k)
16 Core Neural Engine
16GB RAM Unified Memory (68GB/s Memory Bandwidth)
512GB SSD (3+ GB/s)
2048TB Netac ZX-10 Extreme 2TB NVMe
OS: MacOS Sequoia 15.x
Microsoft Office for Mac (One Drive & Outlook removed)

Peripherals for Mac-Mini

Laptop PC & Work Horse: 16″ M1-Max Macbook Pro (2021)

10 Core M1 Max CPU (2 Efficiency & 8 Performance Cores)
32 Core Apple GPU (3456 × 2234 Retina Screen)
16 Core Neural Engine
64GB RAM Unified Memory (400GB/s Memory Bandwidth)
1TB SSD (5+ GB/s)
OS: MacOS Sequoia 15.x.x
- Microsoft Office for Mac (One Drive removed)
- SimpleMind Pro
- Various Dev/Ops Software
Fusion Pro 13 Virtualisation Software
2nd Monitor: Samsung 32″ 4K or iPad Pro

iPad Pro & 2nd Laptop Screen: 12.9″ M1 iPad Pro

iPadOS 18.x
8 Core M1 CPU (4 Efficiency & 4 Performance Cores)
8 Core Apple M1 GPU (2732 x 2048 Retina Screen)
16 Core Neural Engine
8GB RAM Unified Memory
256GB SSD
iPad: 17.x.x

16″ Windows PC

14 Core (20 Thread) Intel i9-12900H CPU
Nvidia RTX3060 GPU, 6G Video Memory
64GB of RAM
2TB SSD (3 GB/s)
OS: Windows 11 Pro
- Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus, Visio 2021 & Project 2021 (OneDrive removed)
- SimpleMind Pro
- Various Dev/Ops Software

Now and again, you need to build a bunch of Intel Containers, and an Intel Machine is a little bit better suited for the job. With a 14-core, 20-threaded 12th Generation i9 Processor and 64GB of RAM, this machine will get it done.

However, you might need to open a window, as when the fans get going, this beauty can kick out some severe heat.

Notes and Checklists Software:

Synology Drive Client Sync (sync between devices) for Windows/Mac OS X/Linux & Android/iOS
Synology Note (sync between devices) for Windows/Mac OS X/Linux & Android/iOS
Apple Notes on MacOS & Linux

Networking Equipment

2Gbps FTTP (Fibre To The Premises)
2.5Gbps Enterprise Firewall
2.5Gbps Switches connected by 10Gbps Fibre Connections
3 x Ubiquity U6 Enterprise APs (2.5Gbps) [WiFi 6E] (2.4GHz, 5GHz & 6GHz)
Netgear NightHawk M6 Pro Mobile Router (Upto 4Gbps downstream from 5G and > 2.5Gbps WiFi on both 5GHz and 6GHz) (2.4GHz, 5GHz & 6GHz) Connected to firewall for fallback @2.5Gbps, but also has its own WiFi and guest networks outside the firewall to keep guests and visitors off the leading network.

Primary Document Scanner: Fujitsu/Ricoh ScanSnap ix1600

40 Double Sided Scans (Duplex) per minute
Automatic Document Feeder
2.4GHz b/g/n WiFi connected

I scan, store and shred my business mail as it arrives; this device makes it extremely easy!

Laser Printer: Brother HL-L8260CDW

USB / WiFi & Ethernet
33 pages per minute. Colour or Mono
Duplex printing
300 Sheet Input Tray
HP LaserJet Compatible
iPrint & Scan, Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint

This is a real workhorse printer. I don’t regret replacing my old laser printer with this more industrial unit.

InkJet Printer: Epson EcoTank ET-2810

Ten pages per minute Mono
Five pages per minute colour
It uses ink tanks, not ink cartridges
Flatbed scanner

Used to create photo-realistic laminated covers for documentation/instruction manuals.

Phone: iPhone 16 Pro Max (2020)

iOS 18.x
12GB RAM
1024GB Storage
A18Pro Bionic Chip
SIM: Smarty SIM (Three Network)
eSIM: Lyca Mobile (EE Network)

Storage / Personal Cloud Units

NAS: Synology DS1515+

5 x 4TB Hitachi UltraStar Drives (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 12TB Useable)
Quad-Core 2.4 GHz CPU
16GB RAM (Internal & External SIMMs upgraded)

This DS1515+ is where I do my “Lab Projects”.

NAS: Synology DS1517+

5 x 6TB Seagate Red (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 16TB Useable)
M2D18 PCIe Adapter Card with 2 x 1TB WD Blue SA510 SATA SSDs [RAID 1] (Cache for the RAID 6 Array)
Quad-Core 2.4 GHz CPU
16GB RAM (DIMMS upgraded)

This DS1517+, my workhorse, syncs my files to my machines and backs them up to the internet.

NAS: Synology DS1819+

8 x 14TB Seagate Enterprise Drives (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 [RAID 6] – 76TB)
M2D18 PCIe Adapter Card with 2 x 1TB Samsung EVO 980 NVMEs [RAID 1] (Cache for the RAID 6 Array)
Quad-Core 2.1 GHz CPU
32GB RAM (DIMMS Upgraded)

This machine handles all my non-Docker Virtual Machines with a “server-class CPU”, more memory, and SSD Cache.

NAS: Synology DS1813+

8 x 12TB Seagate Red (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 65TB)
Dual-Core 2.13 GHz CPU
4GB (DIMMS Upgraded)

This DS1813+ is where my backups from the DS1515+, DS1517+ & DS1819+ go,

Timemachine and other archives (lesser accessed data)

NAS: Synology DS214+

2 x 4TB Western Digital Red Drives (Synology Hybrid RAID 1)
Marvell Armada XP Dual Core 1.33GHz
1GB RAM (Non-Upgradable)

This handles my downloads.

Other Computer Equipment

Desktop PC: 27″ i7 iMac (Late-2015)

Quad-Core i7 (4.0 GHz 8MB) 8 Threads
AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory
32GB RAM
2TB Seagate SSD – Main Drive
3TB Apple Fusion Drive – Time Machine
OS: Mac OS Ventura 13.x.x (via OpenCore Legacy Patcher)
- Microsoft Office for Mac
2nd Monitor: 2011 27″ iMac is used as a second monitor in target display mode.
DJ Software
- Serato DJ Pro
  - Play Expansion
  - FX Expansion
  - Pitch ‘N’ Time Expansion
- In Key
  - Platinum Notes
  - Mixed In Key
- Algoriddim
  - Neural Mix Pro (Mostly Replaced by Serato’s Real Time STEMS)