205: Home Sweet Home Labs

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Thanks everyone - very informative and entertaining show as usual :slight_smile:

I seem to have somehow missed the details of the Solarwinds issues you mention, probably because in the UK we have our own dramas unfolding which are a distraction from important things like computers :wink:

I have to say I’ve never dabbled in server technology yet, apart from running web server software when I was teaching myself web development a few years ago. Nextcloud and GitLab have their appeal, I have to say and they’ll probably be the first I try when I get around to server projects.

@dasgeek, as inspiring as your dance moves are this episode, I have to say I’m curious about your opinion of Watchmen, as I seem to notice a poster in the background. I loved the Graphic Novel and film adaptation but have not seen the TV series at all. I even found the prequel novels interesting. I wonder what your views are?

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I must push back on the ā€œhome labā€ conversation.Most of the examples of services were things that people would miss if they disappeared. That’s not a lab service if you will miss it when it’s gone. A lab is a playground. It’s meant to be torn down and rebuilt. If you tear down your lab, what happens to your pihole? It goes away along with your DNS resolution…your VPN, your proxy server, etc.

I’m not saying don’t run these…I’m saying don’t run these in a home lab. Create a ā€˜production’ environment from the services you play with in your lab.

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Great show today (as usual) folks!!!

As far as home labs, I’ve often built franken-computers but actual home labs has been just me dabbling. Lately, i’ve been bitten by this bug, so hope to do more fun stuff in the home lab arena. Thanks again for a great show!

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I agree with @mjbmd.

A Home Lab is a place to test things out. Like scientists to in a regular lab.

For example. I don’t have anything in my Home Lab right now.
But I do have Jellyfin and Home Assistant in my Home Network, which is something I rely on.

So what the DLN crew is probably talking about is setting up a Home Network, not a Home Lab.

Ah I see what you are saying. It is a poor choice of vocabulary. So ā€œlabā€ is where you test things and then ā€œproductionā€ is where things go from the test stage to the full time use stage.

I think for most people just getting started, the lines between these are pretty blurry. Personally I do all my ā€œtestingā€ on the same machine that runs my ā€œproductionā€ services. I use docker exclusively so that makes it possible to do this easily. If services weren’t in containers, I could see myself having separate machines for lab and production.