In my previous post I walked you through configuring DHCP with hiera yaml files. These entries allow you to reserve IPs for nodes. These IPs can then also be tied to DNS entries. However I always strive to integrate all services I run. One of those core services is a Unifi Controller. Unifi’s web interface is great for viewing current Wifi clients and also to troubleshoot and track down connectivity issues. However when a system doesn’t advertise its name, you are presented with a MAC address or in the case of some IOT devices a random string. Vendor lookups don’t always help given the same chipset being used on multiple platforms. In this post I’ll show you how to sync Unifi with a yaml file.
In my previous post on using Razor with Cloud Init I was able to get newly created VMs to PXE boot to razor and automatically install debian. This allows me to quickly deploy VMs for testing and hosting services. However to create these VMs still required clicking though multiple pages of settings in the Proxmox UI. Given I use terraform so much as work I wanted to use it in my home lab. I this quick post I will show you some example code to provision a VM in proxmox with terraform. New to Terraform, checkout Learn.
I was introduced to Zero tier a few years ago. I find it pretty solid and the free plan works well as a sort of reverse NAT style VPN’esk solution. Each node gets a multi homed IP that’s always available. This means I can ssh into my laptop no matter where it is, or have it backup to an internal server consistently. You don’t have to open any ports up as your routing traffic through their servers. Additionally you don’t need a static IP to make this work.
Bare metal imaging is certainly not the rage anymore. Tools like packer allow us to walk the line between golden images and infrastructure as code. I really like packer but I often want more tools in my belt. In a home lab I want to be able to install physical machines with ease the way I install virtual ones at work. Looking at the commit history of razor you can see that its not something being actively updated that much anymore. That said, its actually very versatile software when you get know it. Its light weight and adding modern tools to the mix makes it work quite well. Its lack of use can also be attributed to it being difficult to get started with. Hopefully this post can help.