First up, this post is really a summary of a great how to from TinkerTry. https://tinkertry.com/configure-automated-shutdown-homelab-datacenter-15-minutes I wanted to move my lab server to a shelf in the eves in my garage but didn’t fancy having to go out there to poke it after a power cut. A UPS was therefore needed – normally I would buy an APC but...
My small home lab is protected by a CyberPower CP900 UPS (full spec here). I will write-up configuring the CyberPower PowerPanel software (I used their CentOS VM which comes as an ESXi OVF template so is really easy to deploy) in another post soon. Update 29th May 2020 – setting up PowerPanel is detailed here: To monitor the UPS via...
A number of my articles use the Cloudflare API for issuing SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt via the DNS-01 challenge. This post walks-through creating a new token. Sign into the Cloudflare portal, click the user icon in the top right corner and go to “My Profile”. Once there, click API Tokens, then Create Token and finally click “Use template” against...
There are a number of ways Let’s Encrypt (LE) can validate a request to issue an SSL certificate via the ACME standards, with the two most common ones being HTTP-01 and DNS-01. The LE documentation details each with the advantages and disadvantages here. I’ve started using the DNS-01 challenge method for internal systems in my lab as it means I...
READ MORE Let’s Encrypt DNS-01 Challenge & the Cloudflare API
The final VM in my lab to have its’ SSL configuration sorted was my Unifi controller. This runs on another Ubuntu 16.04 LTS instance, so the usual tools/methods will be used/installed: Let’s Encrypt SSL acme.sh Cloudflare DNS-01 challenge First up, a nod to James Ridgway for an excellent walk through of how he achieved this task on a UniFi Cloud...
Update April 2024 I have a new article with instructions for installing on Ubuntu LTS 22.04 and all the things that have changed since writing this guide. Original Instructions The next server in my lab to sort out with a Let’s Encrypt (LE) trusted SSL is Pi-Hole. Pi-Hole does a good job of ad-blocking without needing to mess with anything...