Week 1

This week marked the beginning of my weekly learning-in-public journey in Cloud and DevOps. It’s amazing how much you can build just by showing up every day and doing one thing at a time.

What’s up y’all I’m Angel. This is IT with ANC and welcome to my blog, let’s get into it!

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What I Worked On

Here’s a closer look at what I built, configured, and learned from Sunday through Saturday

Debian 13 Home Server Setup

I repurposed an old Surface Laptop 2 as a home server. I installed Debian 13, set up Docker Compose alongside Portainer for container management, and created a homepage dashboard using “Meet-Homepage”. On top of that I configured it as a Tailscale exit node, which came in handy when the network at my job was acting funny when we tried to access work services behind SSO. It allowed me to route my internet traffic through my home server to access work systems behind SSO when using the my jobs wifi or LAN was not letting me. It also inspired others to do the same.

FOG Imaging Server

Together with my colleague Joseph, I deployed a FOG server to enable imaging/cloning PCs on the floor using iPXE with a “silver image.” This helps us standardize computer setup and speeds up deployments across the floor. It also allows us to create images as well.

KASM Workspaces

I single-handedly deployed a KASM Workspaces server so that our team can stream containerized apps or desktops to their browser. We also demoed its isolation features to representatives of another school. Super useful for forensic research, testing, and ensuring a clean sand boxed environment.

Windows Server 2022

I spun up a Windows Server 2022 instance which assisted Joseph with AD, DNS, and DHCP setup. Even though I’m not a windows guy anymore, It’s always good to get hands-on with core Windows infra to complement the Linux side of things.

Proxmox Cluster Documentation

I started writing documentation for our Proxmox cluster, which is where many of these services (KASM, FOG, etc.) are running. Documentation is becoming one of my priorities, because without it, future work becomes fragile or hard to onboard others.

GitHub Repo & GitOps Workflows

I set up a plan for a professional infrastructure repository in GitHub. Part of that was practicing Git workflows like feature branching for documentation changes to start off. This is laying the foundation for more formal GitOps practices, when we add our IaC and our config playbooks as well as future projects.

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Key Takeaway

Small consistent steps are powerful. Even basics like documenting, installing tools, and setting infrastructure support are what compound into real skill and confidence. Also; doing things in public adds accountability, clarity, and momentum.

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What’s Next

Here’s what I’ll be focusing on in Week 2:

• Make the Master repo for our cluster infra

• Finalize and clean up the documentation structure and add it to the master repo

• Write the first meaningful Ansible playbook (beyond just pinging nodes)

• I will also be (attempting) installing Arch Linux on a PC i picked up recently

Thanks for following along I’ll be back next Friday with Week 2’s reflection and what I learn!