I’ve been using Linode’s object hosting for my website for ~2 years now, and it’s time for a change. I’m not unhappy with Linode, but object hosting isn’t for me any more and I’d like to move up to a virtual private server. Object hosting is a fantastic way to get started with a static website for a low cost, but I want better backend analytics and more control of the whole process, so I’m setting up my own VPS using Caddy.

A common challenge in web design and network architecture is grouping multiple web services in a single host, or behind a single IP address. This is especially true with IPv4 due to the scarcity of addresses. The solution to this is a reverse proxy or load balancer. Essentially, this takes connections from clients and dispatches them to the correct server based on the domain name or URL in the request. In this video, I’m going to explain what a layer 4 or layer 7 load balancer even is, and setup a layer 4 example using HAProxy.

Imagine if we could establish a level of trust that in our network, we can verify with certainty that a computer really is who it says it is. By bringing mutual authentication and trust into networking, we can better make security decisions on when connections should be allowed. This can enable our services to talk to each other securely over the global internet, and reduce the dependence on a a trusted perimeter.

As an engineer, I LOVE looking at DATA! So today, I’m setting up my Proxmox system to push data to InfluxDB, where I can view it using Grafana. With this setup, I can keep track of how many resources all of my homelab services are using, which really helps when trying to size VMs, hosts, containers, etc. Contents Video Install InfluxDB 2.0 Install Grafana Example Dashboard Using TLS Video Install InfluxDB 2.

TRUST. It’s what certificates are all about. How do we know that we can trust a server? We verify that the server has a certificate, and that the certificate is signed by someone we trust. That can be a well-known third party like Let’s Encrypt, or our own certificate authority. In this video, I’m going to cover the basics of setting up a root private key and signing certificates using OpenSSL, and running a certificate authority server.

Do you have so many self-hosted services running in your homelab that it’s hard to keep track of them all? Do you hate typing the IP/port for each one? You could use DNS, but a nice dashboard would make it easier too! Today I’m setting that up with Dashy, a beautiful and easy to edit homelab dashboard tool. It’s not the lightest weight tool in the world, but the look is worth it for me.

Do you have a need to extend your home network around your property? Maybe you want reliable internet in the shed you turned into a work-from-home office, or your garage or workshop? Today I’m going to explain what you need to run fiber optic newtorking around your home and property on a budget, for high bandwidth and low latency networking. Fiber doesn’t have any issues with lightning or electrical potential changes between buildings, and can handle much higher bandwidth with higher reliability than wifi mesh or point to point systems.

I’ve used a lot of different small form factor machines over the years, from the Raspberry Pi to used ebay thin clients. All of them are good at some things. But when Icewhale sent over their x86-based Zimaboard for me to take a look at, I’ve been impressed with the flexibility it has for me to test new software and hardware in a relatively cheap way. It’s not spectacular at any one thing, but it’s versatile enough that it’s a great foundation for so many of my projects.

I’ve gone from “no backups” to “raid is a backup” to “two zfs pools in one box”, and decided it’s finally time for a proper backup solution. So, I settled on Proxmox Backup Server! And today, I rebuild my HP Microserver Gen8 with 4x10T refurbished SAS drives, a new SAS controller card, and more! With this backup solution, I’m feeling a lot better about my data migration to Ceph. Contents Video SAS Drive Formatting ZFS Pool Setup Next Steps Video SAS Drive Formatting Since these drives were refurbished they were formerly formatted for a hardware RAID controller and were giving me lots of protection errors in dmesg - specifically blk_update_request: protection error (and failing to read, but not write).

I have a rack-mounted KVM now, and it’s great, but I’m working on building out a new Proxmox cluster which might not have a graphics output at all on some of the nodes. So, I need a new remote access solution for them. The new nodes I’m planning on building will all be based on used consumer hardware, so I’m limited by what would be available on normal mATX boards. This doesn’t include IPMI, and if I go with AMD-based CPUs, doesn’t include an iGPU either.