VPS to a coloed server, my homelab journey - Part 1
As a young child I always had an interest in computers and tech, little did I know that it would foundation for my carear path that I have chosen today.
So where I am retracing my steps of how I ended up with a server colocated in a datacenter that made me the sys and net admin I am today
How I Started
Age 12 - I had built my own website (but thats a story for another post.)
At age 19, I had already learnt about running small business networks and managed a couple for family businesses and friends but I had no equipmenent or anything to learn and try things on. Thats when I learnt what a Homelab is.
What is a Homelab?
I can hear you in the back … What is a homelab?
A homelab, in the simplest terms is a sandbox that you can learn and play with new or unfamiliar technologies. They can be as simple as a set of VM’s on an old PC or laptop to as complex whole network with it’s own ASN (we will get to that, eventually …)
Virtual Private Servers with OVH
VPS Number 1: The website
After doing some research I new two things:
- What service I wanted to Hhst: my website
- The rough location I wanted it hosted in: France
A bit more research later I found OVH, they are a web host based in france. OVH offered and still do cheap and very good Virtual Private Servers. I went and chose a 1vCore and 512 Mb RAM server to run my website that was based on Wordpress1.
This VPS2 eventually ended up hosting the website for EvansMedia, my IT and Web services company until the 10th March 2021 and what I will call ‘The Great Fire of OVH 🔥’3, where their four Strasbourg Datacenters went up in smoke (literally, more on that later).
VPS Number 2: The storage server
THe next VPS2 came around when I was looking to sync my files acroos my many devices, for privacy reasons I didn’y want to use Google Drive or an equivalent. I ended up on Owncloud and then moved to Nextcloud which is what I still use today. Nextcloud is functionally similar to Dropbox, Office 365 or Google Drive, It can be hosted in the cloud or on your own server.
Next time: I’ll go over what moved me to a dedicated server and soon after my own hardware colo rack with a charity run ISP
Photo by Thomas Jensen @ Unsplash.com
Other posts in this series:
