I figure it may be a good Idea to start a new series called “In The Lab”, which would detail my accomplishments for the year and give me an opportunity to spell out what my goals are for the coming year in my homelab. I have been extremely busy building a solid foundation for the next generation of the After Dark Enterprise environment this year, including plans to decommission proprietary systems in favor of open-source solutions and rein in corporate control over my life.
The Scorpion and The Frog
At my day job, I am primarily a Microsoft Windows systems administrator with a bit of Linux thrown into the mix – mostly because I’m the only one on the systems team that knows how to manage ‘nix systems at scale. It should come as no surprise that I quickly jumped into the Microsoft ‘n’ friends proprietary ecosystem for my own purposes due to familiarity.
I have frankly regretted doing so from the moment I pulled the trigger on setting up that environment. After all is said and done, I have the skill, tools and patience to do all my own stunts, but chose the easy way out because of convenience and complacency.
I want to own my solutions to the highest degree, even if this means taking a path less traveled. This places the onus on me for providing a truly free computing environment free from any control from whatever Scooby-Doo villains from Temu decide to rear their ugly head that day.
The powers that be are no longer playing by the previous agreement that built our society and allowed it to function in an open and free way. It seems every damn time I turn on the TV or read the news, some mega-corporation buys another and makes a business decision to the detriment of the end user or customer. I’m specifically talking about events such as the Broadcom-VMware merger, the Disney-Hulu merger, the Xbox GamePass kerfuffle, and Oracle being handed unchecked autonomy over TikTok and Skydance Media, which includes Paramount.
I have been entirely radicalized by the current political landscape and feel like the frog from the old fable “The Scorpion And The Frog”. You know…
A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river.
The frog hesitates, saying, “But if I let you on my back, you’ll sting me and I’ll die.”
The scorpion replies, “If I did that, we’d both drown — I’d have no reason to harm you.”
Convinced, the frog agrees and lets the scorpion climb on.
Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog.
As they both start to sink, the frog gasps, “Why did you do that?”
The scorpion calmly replies, “I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature.”
The moral of the story here is some people (and politicians and corporations) cannot resist their destructive tendencies, even when it harms themselves.
The scorpions will decide what content you consume, who consumes it, and the terms and conditions of what you consume. You’ll own none of it, but you’ll gladly pay for the opportunity. When the time finally comes for the scorpion to sting you, there are absolutely no consequences in place for them, other than perhaps a boycott or a bit of lost revenue.
Like the frog, I’ve carried too many scorpions across the river. I’m done trusting corporations to respect my freedom. I’m done drowning for their nature. The new After Dark Enterprise will stand on open ground.
Sisyphus, The Sysadmin (after dark)
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, open-source, and more recently self-hosting, have been growing in popularity as a powerful solution to bring personal compute back into the hands of the people.
Additionally, advances in technology have allowed savvy users to build complex rackmount infrastructure in their home or allow minimalists to grab a fifteen year old Dell Optiplex from Goodwill and spin up a versatile micro-environment.
I have always thought of Linux and open-source solutions as the “third wheel” or “meme-tier” solution (I run Arch, BTW). Linux struggles from a lack of a cohesive, solutions orientated ecosystem and tends to require “extra glue” compared to commercially backed solutions. Take for example, Microsoft’s ecosystem. They have a client and server operating system and sell the tools to make their systems more than just web browser and text editor machines with a suite of rich management tools like Active Directory and SCCM or Intune. Oh, but hey, another Debian or Arch fork will make things easier! This time will be different!
After many hours of research, I think I’ve found the way to break the curse and build my own tightly integrated ecosystem:
- Proxmox – Hypervisor
- FreeIPA – For LDAP, possibly with an Active Directory trust.
- Keycloak or Authentik – For SSO and modern authentication.
- WordPress – You are here! For blogging, of course!
- Mailcow – Email
- GLPI – Ticketing system for issues and automated alerts
- OpenProject – Project planning
- BookStack – Documentation
- MatterMost – Communication
- Nextbox – Network diagrams
- PHPIPAM – IP Address management
- Zabbix – Monitoring
- Grafana – Advanced dashboards
- Foreman – Lifecycle management
- Gitlab – Versioning for code and configs
- Nextcloud – File storage and sharing
- Vaultwarden – Passwords and secrets storage and sharing
- Netbird – VPN
- Jellyfin – Movies, TV, and more
- N8N – Middleware
I’m honestly extremely excited to take on this project, but i can’t help but feeling like Sisyphus, rolling a bolder up hill for eternity in the name of digital sovereignty.
Come And Take It
After Dark Enterprise isn’t just a homelab anymore. It’s a declaration that we can still build, host, and own our digital lives. It’s my small act of rebellion against corporate-driven decay.
So, come and take it (and Fuck Broadcom too!)! We have the stickers to get our message across.
I encourage everyone that enjoys technical content to keep an eye on my social media posts and this blog. I’ll be writing articles and releasing long form video content related to building out and maintaining my infrastructure.