27 May 2024 - Tanner
It’s been a long time coming, but thanks to having a bit more time now and single-board computers (SBCs) being back to normal pricing, I don’t think there has been a better time.
Today, Monday May 27th 2024, is my last day of college for my computer science degree. My final paper has already been submitted, and now I have the pleasure of waiting until the weekend to find out my final grades and start the graduation process! Yesterday, the 26th, I also did my first trail race-a half marathon with over 2000ft of vertical gain, with the last 5k being similar to a Tough Mudder.
Now, how are those related to a Raspberry Pi? They aren’t directly, but they were two things that were using most of my free time when not at work. I do have more races to do this year, but training should be easier summer starts and the amount of rain or poor weather lessens. Back to the Raspberry Pi, I always wanted to do some sort of project(s) with them, but never was quite sure what I wanted to do. Enter the idea of building out my homelab! While I have a very small one already thanks to a NAS and a mac mini running ESXi, I don’t have some of the networking gear I would like to have better insight and control over the network.
The goal is to map out an idea and make a networking diagram, and make a list of things that need to be acquired, such as a managed switch and a router and AP that have more control than an Eero. I want to be able to segment the network in various ways such as IoT, guest network, my homelab area, and the normal part. I want to segment the homelab to start since I plan to run vulnerable systems for some security research and it gives me a playground to mess with whatever else I wish without disrupting the entire network.
Eventually, the pipe dream is to build up enough knowledge and infrastructure to be able to self host some things such as a website, game servers, and possibly even start using my own “cloud” instead of relying on the typical vendors. This is more tricky as it includes opening up my homes network some and making it a much more interesting target for would be attackers, which is why I have been looking at PFsense and endpoint sensors to help with monitoring.
I’m pretty excited to be able to move on from the theories of college and spend more time diving into the random topics that interest me. Real world, hands-on projects teach much more than many courses, because in the real world, things go wrong all the time and learning how to fix those things, or work around them, is a crucial skill. I’ll be back again next week to probably share the diagram and list out the machines I’m planning to get, or I’ll ramble about Boring Weather in preparation for WWDC…