deploy: 2c7234f2a2b7953c6bcb53728e6144c5fb4bdf13

blog/2021/09/06/what-to-do-with-a-homelab/index.html

@@ -139,8 +139,7 @@ tech blog
 <p>Do you want host your own Media server? Ad blocker? Web server?
 Are you interested in learning more about Linux? Virtualization? Networking? Security?
 Building a homelab can be an entertaining playground to enhance your computer skills.</p>
-<p>One of the best parts about building a homelab is that it doesn&rsquo;t have to be a large investment in terms hardware.</p>
-<p>One of the simplest ways to build a homelab is out of a <a href="https://ca.refurb.io/products/hp-800-g1-usff-intel-core-i5-4570s-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd-wifi-windows-10-pro?variant=33049503825943">refurbished computer</a>.
+<p>One of the best parts about building a homelab is that it doesn&rsquo;t have to be a large investment in terms hardware. One of the simplest ways to build a homelab is out of a <a href="https://ca.refurb.io/products/hp-800-g1-usff-intel-core-i5-4570s-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd-wifi-windows-10-pro?variant=33049503825943">refurbished computer</a>.
 Having multiple machines/nodes provides the advantage of increased redundancy, but starting out with a single node is enough to reap many of the benefits of having a homelab.</p>
 <h2 id=virtualization>Virtualization</h2>
 <p>Virtualizing your hardware is an organized way of dividing up your machine&rsquo;s resources. This can be done with something such as a <em>Virtual Machine</em> or something lighter like a container using <em>LXC</em> or <em>runC</em>.
@@ -150,7 +149,7 @@ Containers have much less overhead in terms of boot time and storage allocation.
 <h2 id=services>Services</h2>
 <p>So what are some useful services to deploy?</p>
 <ul>
-<li><a href=https://www.plex.tv/>Plex</a> - basically a self-hosted Netflix that can be used to stream from multiple devices, and the best part is that you manage the content!</li>
+<li><a href=https://jellyfin.org/>Jellyfin</a> or <a href=https://www.plex.tv/>Plex</a> - basically a self-hosted Netflix that can be used to stream from multiple devices, and the best part is that you manage the content! Unlike Plex, Jellyfin is open-source and can be found <a href=https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin>here</a>.</li>
 <li><a href=https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io>changedetection</a> - is a self-hosted equivalent to something like <a href=https://visualping.io/>visualping.io</a> that will notify you when a webpage changes and keep track of the diffs</li>
 <li><a href=https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome>Adguard</a> or <a href=https://pi-hole.net/>Pihole</a> - can block a list of known trackers for all clients on your local network. I&rsquo;ve used pihole for a long time, but have recently switched to Adguard since the UI is more modern and it has the ability to toggle on/off a pre-defined list of services, including Netflix (this is useful if you have stealthy young kids). Either of these will speed up your internet experience, simply because you won&rsquo;t need to download all of the extra tracking bloat.</li>
 </ul>
@@ -160,7 +159,7 @@ Containers have much less overhead in terms of boot time and storage allocation.
 <h2 id=monitoring>Monitoring</h2>
 <p>Monitoring can become an important aspect of your homelab after it starts to become something that is relied upon. One of the simplest ways to setup some monitoring is using <a href=https://www.netdata.cloud/>netdata</a>. It can be installed on individual containers, VMs, and also a hypervisor (such as Proxmox). All of the monitoring works out of the box by detecting disks, memory, network interfaces, etc.</p>
 <p>Additionally, all of these different agents can be connected to <em>netdata cloud</em>, which can alert you when some of your infrastructure is down or in a degraded state. Adding additional nodes to netdata cloud is as simple as a 1 line shell command.</p>
-<p><a href=https://grafana.com/>Grafana</a> is another popular way of visualizing metrics, although it requires more initial setup.</p>
+<p><a href=https://prometheus.io/>Prometheus</a> metrics combined with <a href=https://grafana.com/>Grafana</a> is another popular way of visualizing metrics as well as setup alerting. These are powerful tools that many companies use in production systems. If you are looking for inspiration, check out <a href=https://home.cern/>CERN</a>&rsquo;s <a href=https://monit-grafana-open.cern.ch/>public Grafana</a>.</p>
 <h2 id=in-summary>In Summary</h2>
 <p>Building out a homelab can be incredibly rewarding and it doesn&rsquo;t always require buying a rack full of expensive servers to get a significant amount of utility.</p>
 </div>