Dran

Depends on where you work and what their policies are. My work does have many strict policies on following licenses, protecting sensitive data, etc

My solution was to MIT license and open source everything I write. It follows all policies while still giving me the flexibility to fork/share the code with any other institutions that want to run something similar.

It also had the added benefit of forcing me to properly manage secrets, gitignores, etc

I use ansible on one of my side projects; I use puppet at work. It’s the same reason I use raw docker and not rancher+rke2… it’s not about learning the abstractions; it’s about learning the fundamentals. If I wanted a simple abstraction I’d have deployed truenas and Linuxsserver containers instead of Taco Bell programming everything myself.

Sure. I have an r630 that is configured as an NFS server and a docker host called vacuum. There is a script called install_vacuum.sh that with a single command, can build the server to my spec from a base install of Ubuntu 24.04. it has functions to install base packages from repositories, add new repositories, set up users, create config files for NFS, smb, fstab, crontab, etc… once an NFS server exists on my network, any other server could be my docker host. My docker host is set up from a script install_containers.sh. as with before, it does all the things to get me a basic docker host, firewalled, and configured for persistence via my NFS server. It also has functions to create and start docker containers for all of my workflows (Plex, webserver, CA, etc), and if those containers don’t exist, it will build a docker image for said workflow based on a standardized format (you guessed it) bash build script for the containers. There is automation via cron on whatever host runs docker to build and update the containers once a week, bare-metal servers update themselves nightly, rebooting when necessary via unattended-upgrades.

Basically, you break everything down into the simplest function possible, have everything defined via variables in shared configurations that everything sources before running, and you have higher and higher level functions call other functions until you have a single function that cascades into a functioning system. Does that make sense?

Have you started collecting your notes into scripts?

Not sure if many people do what I do, but instead of taking notes I make commented functions in bash. My philosophy is: If I can’t automate it; I don’t understand it. After a while you build enough automation to build your workstations, your servers, all of your vms and containers, your workflows, etc, and can automate duplicating / redeploying them whenever required. One tarball and like 6 commands and I can build my entire home + homelab.

For the average user you’re definitely right, but I will say for the sysadmin of headless systems, having a powerful cli editor is a godsend. While it may seem arcane and unnecessary, learning vim is easier than managing remote x or sshfs or copying files to and from a system.

I didn’t learn vim to be a contrarian; I learned it because it seemed (and still seems to be) the path of least resistance for many workflows.

Nothing beats the bang/buck ratio of used enterprise hardware (always buy new drives though if you care about the data)

https://www.theserverstore.com/ https://www.serversupply.com/ https://www.servermonkey.com/

I’ve bought from all of these in the past, personally I’m a fan of dells but there are arguments for just about any of the major 3 (dell, hp, sueprmicro)

Personally my main server right now is an r630. 96 threads, 768gb of ram. With that many memory channels, not only can you run all of what you listed, you can even do medium-sized inferencing/diffusion if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

I run ubuntu’ server base headless install with a self-curated minimal set of gui packages on top of that (X11, awesome, pulse, thunar) but there’s no reason you couldn’t install kde with wayland. Building the system yourself gets you really far in the anti-bloatware dept, and the breadth of wiki/google/gpt based around Debian/Ubuntu means you can figure just about any issues out. I do this on a ~$200 eBay random old Dell + a 3050 6gb (slot power only).

For lighter gaming I’ll use the Ubuntu PC directly, but for anything heavier I have a win11 PC in the basement that has no other task than to pipe steam over sunshine/moonlight

It is the best of both worlds.

the best way to learn is by doing!

I just built my own automation around their official documentation; it’s fantastic.

https://www.wireguard.com/#conceptual-overview

https://www.wireguard.com/install/

https://www.wireguard.com/quickstart/

vyatta and vyatta-based (edgerouter, etc) I would say are good enough for the average consumer. If we’re deep enough in the weeds to be arguing the pros and cons of wireguard raw vs talescale; I think we’re certainly passed accepting a budget consumer router as acceptably meeting these and other needs.

Also you don’t need port forwarding and ddns for internal routing. My phone and laptop both have automation in place for switching wireguard profiles based on network SSID. At home, all traffic is routed locally; outside of my network everything goes through ddns/port forwarding.

If you’re really paranoid about it, you could always skip the port-forward route, and set up a wireguard-based mesh yourself using an external vps as a relay. That way you don’t have to open anything directly, and internal traffic still routes when you don’t have an internet connection at home. It’s basically what talescale is, except in this case you control the keys and have better insight into who is using them, and you reverse the authentication paradigm from external to internal.

Talescale proper gives you an external dependency (and a lot of security risk), but the underlying technology (wireguard) does not have the same limitation. You should just deploy wireguard yourself; it’s not as scary as it sounds.

You should consider reversing the roles. There’s no reason your homelab cannot be the client, and have your vps be the server. Once the wireguard virtual network exists, network traffic doesn’t really care which was the client and which was the server. Saves you from opening a port to attackers on your home network.