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.)

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 (2.5+ GB/s)
• OS: MacOS Sonoma 14.x.x
• Microsoft Office for Mac (One Drive & Outlook removed)

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 Sonoma 14.x.x
  • Microsoft Office for Mac (One Drive removed)
• Fusion Pro 13 Virtualisation Software
• 2nd Monitor: Samsung 32″ 4K or iPad Pro

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

• 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

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

As a DevOps & QA Person, I have two phones, one Android and another iPhone, which helps with running/testing apps on both eco-systems.

Phone 1: iPhone 12 Pro Max (2020)

• iOS 17.x
• 6GB RAM
• 512GB Storage
• A14 Bionic Chip
• SIM: Smarty SIM (Three Network)
• eSIM: Lyca Mobile (EE Network)

Phone 2: OnePlus 5 (2017)

• Android 10
• 8GB RAM
• 128GB Storage
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 OctaCore 4×2.45GHz & 4×1.9GHz processors
• Adreno 540 GPU
• SIM 1: GiffGagg (O2 Network)

Storage / Personal Cloud Units

NAS: Synology DS1515+

• 5 x 3TB Hitachi UltraStar Drives (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 9TB 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 4TB Seagate Red (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 12TB Useable)
• Quad-Core 2.4 GHz CPU
• 16GB RAM (DIMMS upgraded)

This DS1517+ is my workhorse.

NAS: Synology DS1819+

• 6 x 6TB Seagate Enterprise Drives (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 24TB)
• 2 x Samsung EVO 2TB SSD Drives (RAID 1) [Read/Write Cache]
• Quad-Core 2.1 GHz CPU
• 32GB RAM (DIMMS Upgraded)

With a server-class CPU, more memory and SSD Cache, this machine handles all of my Non-Docker Virtual Machines.

NAS: Synology DS1813+

• 8 x 4TB Seagate Red (Synology Hybrid RAID 2 – 24TB)
• 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 2TB 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
  • 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

Desktop PC: 27″ i5 iMAC (Mid-2011)

• Quad-Core i5 (2.7GHz 6MB)
• AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB of GDDR5 memory
• 16GB RAM
• 2TB Crucial SSD (Internal)
• 1st OS: Mac OS X High Sierra 10.13.x (for Target Screen Mode)
• 2nd OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Desktop (Default) – Very capable Linux machine
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Headphones: Bose Quiet Comfort for home working, & Apple Air-Pods Pro for out and about.

Corlitec/KGOGO (JL-MAC-01) Portable Air Conditioners (9000 BTU)