So as with all of my hyperfixations, I think about all the things I want to add to my homelab. Some of the plans around all of these additions haven’t been fully fleshed out, and therefore are not deserving (in their current form) of a whole section. However, I do want to write down what I want to add, and why I want to add them.

• Ansible and IAC - So one thing I have already noticed that will get old quickly is configuring servers. I mentioned in the DNS Server section that I think configuring basic hardening is something that there is zero excuse not to do. I don’t want to let my laziness get in the way of my principles, and thus now is the time to implement ‘Infrastructure as Code’. Several of the YouTubers I follow recommend Ansible for this, namely NetworkChuck, Wolfgang, and Jeff Geerling. I will write more about this when the time comes for me to implement it, but this will allow me to automate a lot
• Uptime Kuma - As my home lab grows I want to be able to monitor all of the services that I am running. Uptime Kuma is one of the easiest ways to do this that I know of.
• Git server - I use GitHub as my portfolio, and because of that, I want to avoid cluttering it with things like the files that this website is run on. For that reason I ideally
• Certificate Authority - I will get into why I want to do this more at the time when I do it. To keep things simple however, it is mainly because I want to make sure that all my services communicate over HTTPS, and I don’t want to make exceptions for their certificates on individual devices. Yes, I can do that dodgy thing with Cloudflare and subdomains, but frankly, I want my network infrastructure to be self-sufficient.
• PiKVM - I have a post I am writing where I go through the list of things I have saved in my RSS “read later” folder. One of the links was an LTT video on PiKVM. It made me realise I may benefit from having 1 (or 3) of these. One hooked up to my main pc, another given to my parents to allow me to remote onto their PC and help out from anywhere, and one that I can potentially use as a drop box to get remote access during pen-testing (although this would require some modifications to work). It’s not strictly speaking part of my home lab, but if I was to ever upgrade to a server I would need something like this.