About

Welcome to sysadminafterdark.com! You’re probably wondering about who we are and what we do. This page is dedicated to those that wish to learn more about our core values, how to utilize the site, and the team behind sysadminafterdark.

Our Core Values

• Empowerment Through Learning – We believe in the power of knowledge and the transformative potential of continuous learning. Our community is committed to providing resources, tutorials, and opportunities for members to expand their skills and grow as homelab enthusiasts. Community contribution is more than welcome here.
• Collaborative Community – We foster a spirit of collaboration, where members support and inspire one another. We value diverse perspectives and experiences, recognizing that we all have something to learn and share. Remember to have fun!
• Transparency and Honesty – We value transparent communication and honesty in our interactions. Members are encouraged to share their successes and failures, fostering a culture of trust and authenticity.
• Resourcefulness and DIY Spirit – We celebrate the DIY (Do It Yourself) spirit. Homelabbers are resourceful problem-solvers who relish the opportunity to build, create, and tinker with technology at home. We believe that building is learning, and learning is building.
• Inclusiveness and Accessibility – We are committed to creating an inclusive and accessible community. We welcome people of all backgrounds, skill levels, and abilities to join us, learn, and contribute.
• Open Source Ethos – We embrace the open-source philosophy, encouraging the sharing of ideas, projects, and solutions freely within the community. As open source is the heart of innovation, we’re dedicated to contributing to and benefiting from it.
• Fun and Exploration – Homelabbing and systems administration should be an enjoyable and enriching experience. We encourage members to have fun while exploring new technologies and pushing the boundaries of their home setups and succeed in their careers.

How To Use This Website

This website is split into multiple parts, and on the back-end, multiple servers running in thick virtual machines and thin containers across several VLANs and security boundaries. Each section was designed to be minimalist, informative, and friendly for beginners, advanced systems administrators and homelabbers alike. The website is split up as follows:

• Blog – You are here. The blog was designed to be used as finalized knowledge dumps, news, and personal takes.
• Docs – Docs was designed to hold all of my personal homelab public documentation, standards, and procedures. My goal is to have as much of my network publicly documented as possible. Unlike the blog which contains static content, this is a living system. Information will change, links will break, and content will change over time as my homelab changes and grows.
• Forum – The forum is a place to ask questions and engage with the community. It is split into multiple different categories based on various topics and technologies.
• Git – My GitLab server serves various scripts, configurations, and other code based things I have developed over the years. You can freely view all in-house developed code by searching and selecting various repositories.
• Mirror – It’s dangerous to go alone! Here, take this! Mirror is a comprehensive collection of software that may help you on your journey. Feel free to poke around and download anything you need.
• Status – Uptime is a publicly accessible Uptime Kuma dashboard that serves to inform the public the status of all public servers that hold this project together. If you can’t access something, chances are it is down due to error or I have a scheduled maintenance window in place. You can also follow my twitter for the latest status updates.
• Follow Me – A list of links to my various social media profiles. I utilize LinkStack to aggregate as much of my content as possible in one place. In addition to my various social media posts, this website also offers an RSS feed.
• Other Servers – You may have noticed I have other servers listed such as my SSO and Mattermost servers. They allow for communication and authentication for the team and are not publicly accessible.

If you have any feedback you would like to give, you may create an account on the forum and post on the Site Feedback category.

Our Team

@sysadminafterdark	@mandolinsara
sysadminafterdark is a career systems administrator of ten years specializing in corporate Windows, Mac and Linux desktop support and server security and administration.	mandolinsara is a NOC Specialist with 17 years experience in network monitoring and mitigating outages for Small Business and large corporate entities.