I'm a systems admin for a renewable energy company, and do most of my work in the cloud or with on-prem VMWare systems. I'm starting a consulting business and need to have infrastructure at home to test and evaluate solutions before breaking client's production networks.

I've run the BBS at home since 1991, mostly on bare metal hardware - first an old 286 running DOS, a 486 running OS/2, several Pentiums running Windows.

Lately, I've been using Proxmox as my homelab of choice. My homelab (https://realitycheckbbs.org/images/homelab.jpg) is running on an old Thinkpad that was being sold as parts-only. The screen had horrible keyboard marks and the keyboard is missing keys, but it's been running solidly for close to ten years. I picked up a Synology NAS used for $119 and populated it with old drives I had laying around from an older system that had a RAID array.

The BBS, an Active Directory test environment, a PiHole DNS server and ad-blocker, and a couple of desktop environments run just fine on the same hardware that just ran the BBS a few years ago.


My only concern is age -- my environment is way past any expected lifetimes. I could scrounge a spare laptop with little worry but the NAS is a little harder to think about - a new NAS and drives would cost more than I'd like.

If that happened, I'd probably just stick the USB drive onto my Proxmox host and share it via NFS/CIFS.

That reminds me, I should take the Thinkpad down, blow out the fans and replace the thermal grease - doing what I can to keep things running...

Re: What's your tech stack?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Mon Apr 22 2024 09:58 am

Hello poindexter,
I think this is a really cool and important piece of history you got here. I was born wayy after bbs and all that was "trendy" but I love seeing "retro" tech still up, running and usable.
You talked about how all of this is running on equipment that should be dead already, what would you need to keep this running?
Apologies if my replies take some time, I probably wont check in too often.
I hope everyone that reads this has a nice day,
roofstars

Re: Financial help with tech stack
By: Roofstars to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue May 07 2024 07:40 am

You talked about how all of this is running on equipment that should be dead already, what would you need to keep this running? Apologies if my replies

The NAS is end of life, but it's also overkill. I could replace it with a single drive and be mostly fine...

Re: What's your tech stack?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Mon Apr 22 2024 09:58 am

I'm a systems admin for a renewable energy company, and do most of my work i the cloud or with on-prem VMWare systems. I'm starting a consulting business and need to have infrastructure at home to test and evaluate solutions befor breaking client's production networks.

I was gonna ask you to describe what a sys-admin does, but you kinda started already; so you manage the VMs [and I assume containers/production services] both cloud on on the ground??? What does a sys-admin do week to week??

I have a bit of a home network rocking right here @ the 2oFB home - I have honed several skills and always wonder how far away I am from 'sys-admin'.

I've run the BBS at home since 1991, mostly on bare metal hardware - first a old 286 running DOS, a 486 running OS/2, several Pentiums running Windows.

Reality Check is one of the Sync boards that 'feels right'. I like your use of ANSi and IBM fonts and the tight theming that you have going on; also, not ALL Sync boards have a matrix login - its unique... yer an old OS/2 guy, eh??? I used it in between DOS and *going back to Desqview* - I know, I know; you'd prolly kill me for going BACK to DV!!

Lately, I've been using Proxmox as my homelab of choice. My homelab (https://realitycheckbbs.org/images/homelab.jpg) is running on an old Thinkpad that was being sold as parts-only. The screen had horrible keyboard marks and the keyboard is missing keys, but it's been running solidly for close to ten years. I picked up a Synology NAS used for $119 and populated i

Ooops - quoted a bit too much; slyedit don't let me erase! Thanks for sharing yer homelab; I am IN LOVE w/ Proxmox! I also am a fan of Proxmox Backup Server... have you played around with clustering yet? We might have been talking about that @ 2o...


pAULIE42o
.........

Paulie420 wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I was gonna ask you to describe what a sys-admin does, but you kinda started already; so you manage the VMs [and I assume
containers/production services] both cloud on on the ground??? What
does a sys-admin do week to week??

I have systems in Azure, AWS, and on-premise VMWare and Nutanix servers. Altogether, there's probably 600 Linux and Windows VMs running in total.

Manage cloud costs, that's a big part. Keep up with system patches,
upgrade server OSes when needed, act as a senior tech resource for the application admin people. They're typically more business people and
less technical, and most of my peers and I have been around to
understand application issues that might be hanging them up.

Lots of networking changes, opening ports and closing ports as needed.

Automation is a big part of the job, running programs like Ansible to
create system templates for automated tasks.

Identity management - creating accounts for new people, making sure they
have only the access they need and no more, and the tricky part -
removing accounts when people leave the company. No one ever tells IT,
and there are a myriad of accounts spread out across multiple systems.

With the cloud, there are architecture issues - making applications
resilient by creating auto-scaling groups that respond to increases in
traffic, and building applications across different geographic zones for
speed of access and reduncancy.

I have a bit of a home network rocking right here @ the 2oFB home - I
have honed several skills and always wonder how far away I am from 'sys-admin'.

Home labbing is a great way to get your foot in the door. With Proxmox
or one of a handful of other hypervisors, you can create an entire test environment, bang on it, and go into an interview with solid real-world
skills.

Reality Check is one of the Sync boards that 'feels right'. I like your use of ANSi and IBM fonts and the tight theming that you have going on; also, not ALL Sync boards have a matrix login - its unique... yer an
old OS/2 guy, eh??? I used it in between DOS and *going back to
Desqview* - I know, I know; you'd prolly kill me for going BACK to DV!!

Thanks for the compliment! Yep, I ran OS/2 at work and ran the BBS on it
for a couple of years back in the '90s. Maximus and Binkleyterm ran in a
window on my desktop and I barely knew it was there.

Ooops - quoted a bit too much; slyedit don't let me erase! Thanks for sharing yer homelab; I am IN LOVE w/ Proxmox! I also am a fan of
Proxmox Backup Server... have you played around with clustering yet? We might have been talking about that @ 2o...

I'm still in the "one big box" phase of my homelab. The next time I
upgrade, instead of getting one box with more cores and memory, I'm
going to get 3 USFF boxes and cluster them. Ceph looks pretty
interesting, I've seen VMs automatically migrate to another node when a
node fails. One less thing to worry about in a homelab is a good thing.
:)




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