Home server

But I do understand, because what about Ansible? Ansible is a great example.

I can test IAC really easy with Kubernetes, but with Ansible, if I'm just saying, oh, I want to add an extra step to this role, then how do I test that in CICD? I have to spin up a whole entire VM programmatically and then run it against it, and then how do I even validate that? That's a lot for Homelab.

Well, yeah, and in your Homelab environment, I think you're much more likely to do something like I'm doing, which is spin up a new VM from a template or test it or clone your existing production VM run your changes there and then test it.

I mean, I don't have a CI CD platform that I'm running at home, right? Even when I'm deploying stuff for real, I'm just running Ansible playbook dash I infantry.ini from my machine.

Well, it's from a jump box, but yeah, same difference.

I'm glad I came through.

let's see where we can go with this because I'm relatively new to Ansible-ing out my environments.

I'm keen to hear from all of you who have used Ansible a lot more than me to understand what the gotchas are and best practices that you've found using that in production or even Homelab production over time.

I think the lesson here is if you're gonna commit a felony, hire an Uber.

A guy on R/Homelab built a working Proxmox server almost entirely out of scavenged parts he found visiting his county landfill.

His local landfill has a dedicated e-waste bin for people who don't know the value of things, filled with functioning PC parts.

He found everything from SSDs, hard drives, GPUs, and even a working ASUS ROG laptop that just needed a battery replacement.

Oh, that was a feature that I talked about when we first tech previewed it back in 8.0.3.

I was like, this is going to be a game changer for Homelab.

I did not realize that it was going to be a game changer for the Enterprise Data Center as well.

And this week, I haven't had any meetings yet or my breakouts, but I have been talking to a lot of customers and that's been top of mind as well.

So what the hell's the point? Uh, that your market for this product doesn't exist right now.

you're not selling a business product, you're selling a Homelab product.

And no one in their right mind is going to go drop $1,000 for a NAS and then $12,000 in hard drives to fill it.

Like, that's not a Homelab

budget.

And speaking of vibes on this, too, like, it also seems as though we're getting more offers than ever to review NASs.

I

don't think there's a connection.

So, yeah.

Homelab and building things.

I think...

I don't...

I think there's...

Once you get the hardware, there is an exceeded value in putting things on your home lab, especially like... with the trends in vibe coding and the trends in, it's mostly vibe coding.

Now that it's so cheap to write code, I really like Homelabs because I can just throw things up there really quick.

There's no ridiculous, like with Vercel, I do CICD.

of environment.

And so it's just knee-jerk reaction, especially with something as low-key as a Homelab, to just go in and it's like, you know what, I'll fix this configuration file here on the server that's running live.

But the problem is, the next time you reboot that server onto a new version, that change is wiped out.

And so it's really hard to train yourself to, no, I need to be efficient about this, I need to go into the configuration file, make the change there, in a Git repository where it's version controlled and it ties into my automation.

Yeah, so I met the Portainer guys because I approached them as a customer, is how I ended up here.

I used it from a Homelab perspective for, I think I was just looking up trying to see when a particular server I built was, probably like 2019-ish, 2014.

So the reason I found them is because like I'm my prior experience was a virtualization focused one.

So VMware certified and that whole thing.

And so they all went in the freezer.

I got a comment the other day, someone saying to not in the home lab series.

He wanted to see the next video.

Yeah.

Honestly, making the video series like slowed me down because it's like, I don't ever want to install anything because I'm like, I want to make a video about it.

And then, you know, I went through this whole dry spell where I wasn't making any videos.

So basically my home lab has just been sitting.

I've used it for a few personal things.