From d468e7c0ea0052578fde1c2773286bb25da7f313 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Joshua M. Boniface" Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 00:00:16 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] Added next section to "Anatomy of a Homelab, part I" --- content/post/anatomy-of-a-homelab-I.md | 42 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 39 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/post/anatomy-of-a-homelab-I.md b/content/post/anatomy-of-a-homelab-I.md index fef0d53..1288112 100644 --- a/content/post/anatomy-of-a-homelab-I.md +++ b/content/post/anatomy-of-a-homelab-I.md @@ -8,8 +8,44 @@ title = "Anatomy of a Homelab, part I - Meatspace" +++ -It's late 2016, and the "cloud" is everywhere. It is a mythical, monlithic entity at this point, provided by Amazon and Google and Microsoft, and meaning: "I don't need to spend money on hardware". But despite the widely-held beliefs of middle-managers and salesfolk, even the most modern of "clouds" needs something tangable - power and cooling and machines - humming along somewhere. When I first started with homelabs, they were small: a router and a server running some flavour of Windows or Linux, which could easily be mistaken for almost any corporate deployment in the late-2000's. As time has passed and I've grown into a seasoned Linux sysadmin, I've expanded and expanded my lab. However, while many of my ilk were flocking to the new cloud, with its on-demand instances and smooth monthly billing, I instead chose to double-down. I've always loved the hardware, and taking ownership of my house, I was finally able to get away with plans I never could before. And as the plans matured along with my abilities, I started looking to that cloud as inspiration. Today, I can safely say I'm proud of the cloud I've built, and hope now to share it with you, to entertain, to inform, and to inspire. My growth in knowledge has been long, and will never end, but at this time I hope I can impart something onto you! Please enjoy your read. +It's late 2016, and the "cloud" is everywhere. It is a mythical, monlithic entity at this point, +provided by Amazon and Google and Microsoft, and meaning: "I don't need to spend money on hardware". +But despite the widely-held beliefs of middle-managers and salesfolk, even the most modern of +"clouds" needs something tangable - power and cooling and machines - humming along somewhere. When I +first started with homelabs, they were small: a router and a server running some flavour of Windows +or Linux, which could easily be mistaken for almost any corporate deployment in the late-2000's. As +time has passed and I've grown into a seasoned Linux sysadmin, I've expanded and expanded my lab. +However, while many of my ilk were flocking to the new cloud, with its on-demand instances and +smooth monthly billing, I instead chose to double-down. I've always loved the hardware, and taking +ownership of my house, I was finally able to get away with plans I never could before. And as the +plans matured along with my abilities, I started looking to that cloud as inspiration. Today, I can +safely say I'm proud of the cloud I've built, and hope now to share it with you, to entertain, to +inform, and to inspire. My growth in knowledge has been long, and will never end, but at this time I +hope I can impart something onto you! Please enjoy your read. + + +# What and why? + +The first question is: what is a homelab? Simply put, it is a collection of server and networking +equipment that a person runs in their home, instead of in a company computer room or datacenter. +Homelabbing is a popular hobby among the system and network administration communities, and among +some who don't work in the industry. I myself got into system administration through tinkering with +a small home server. Once I began my professional career after several years of schooling, I was +finally able to afford a large system both financially and in terms of time. And here we are today. + +If you're finding my blog for the first time, you should know that I'm a systems administrator +(sysadmin) specializing in the open-source GNU/Linux operating system. This means I spend a lot of +time staring quizically and typing furiously into a terminal window, making systems do my bidding. +Some would say I'm a wizard, especially myself. This isn't just my chosen career, but my passion +and my main hobby as well. It is also an industry that is constantly changing, even day to day, and +keeping up and is good takes a lot of time. But to me, it is a pleasureful and immensely fun +activity. To further the hobby side, I need an environment with which to work, and living in a full +house with a basement to isolate the sound and heat, I was able to acquire a significant quantity of +equipment over the year. And I still enjoy doing it; this is the "why". + +# The Rack in the Room + + + -# Anatomy of a Homelab, part I - Meatspace -This is a lorem ipsum text. It is designed to mimic normal English text but was composed, verbatim, by Joshua Boniface on this, a warm, balmy fall night in October, while enjoying a smoke. As I thought about my day, I began to write a blog post. This post now contains this stream-of-consciousness text. I hope you enjoy it.