Automating my Homelab with Ansible

Homelabs can be great fun. But how do you take care of device configuration, backups, testing, patching, upgrades, and hardware replacement?

Well, I use Ansible wherever I can to make sure the boring parts of homelab ownership are automated. In this presentation, originally delivered at AnsibleFest 2022 in Chicago, I'll give a tour of my homelab and talk about how I automate parts of my Homelab using Ansible.

Homelab equipment (some links are affiliate links):

Mentioned in this video:

#homelab #ansible

Contents:

00:00 - Homelabs
00:26 - My homelab
02:06 - Three purposes
02:40 - "I'll never fill up this rack"
04:58 - What's in my rack?
07:32 - No manual drudgery
08:41 - Ansible projects
11:09 - Much to do
12:24 - Why we homelab

[eiadurrahman]

My home lab is just a bucket full of things I salvaged from e-waste

[WolfgangsChannel]

Amazing video! Your homelab content got me interested in learning Ansible and building my own homelab

[Necrox]

You actually made me to make a homelab. Currently have a old pc serving as a nas and a raspberry pi 3 running pi-hole

[Vhbaske]

Your father looks so young! I lost mine in 1997, spend all the time you can have with him, while he is with you.

[PhilipSHempel]

Your presentation was awesome at Ansiblefest! Thanks for taking the time to do this. It was great meeting you and hope to have the opportunity to meet again!

[MarcJennings]

I am just getting started with Ansible, and your 101 series has been great. I'm just starting splitting out into roles since a lot of my servers are different yet related.

[roguethinker]

There.s nothing finer than to find someone who loves what they do and make it contagious.

[MarcoGPUtuber]

0:11 Every home lab has a story.

It was DNS.

[crashtfa]

Ansible for home lab was an amazing talk, thanks for coming!

[cookicuttr]

Sir, you discussed my home lab journey word for word. Even the part about the electric bill, lol. also, like I tell all my friends, " my greatest fear is, when I die my wife will sell my network equipment for the price I told her I bought it for." lol

[edwardvanhazendonk]

Thanks for sharing Jeff! Homelab is around EdgerouterX, Proxmox on a HP EliteDesk, storage on a Synology NAS, lot's of VMs, LXCs etc, some IoT. And yes, Ansible to automate things and have stuff done correctly.

[MrTA]

You get more awesome every video I watch lol. Good thing you have a significant other that doesn't choke out that creativity 👍

[Aick]

I started off with a Raspberry Pi running OMV, and made a Plex NAS. Then after discovering You, Network Chuck, RAID Owl, Techno Tim, and Lawrence Systems I've got an Optiplex w/Pfsense, and an old gaming PC w/ Proxmox VM w/TrueNAS Scale, Pi-hole, Plex, and currently working on Ansible scripts for upkeep. I followed your internet-pi tutorial and have a visualization of Comcast screwing me. I have spent way too much money, but it's still so much fun to play pretend as a Sys-admin! Thank you.

[thij_zert]

1:30 the best Jeff Gerling content I've seen so far :)

[rjramalho]

Guys and videos like yours made me create my own homelab. I am scaling down because of energy bills but it's a great experience, and you learn a lot from doing it.

[Kubex]

Love seeing your dad participate in your projects. Makes me wish I had a cool dad lol

[muddyexport]

Keep on keeping on Geerling! Looking forward, as always, to the next installment.

[Richardj]

Thanks Jeff, makes me feel better about my collection of hardware and computers. Always learning something new.

[phoenixbird]

Thank you!!! I use your playbooks all the time.

You deserve a medal! Thank you for all your work!

[reecepeart]

It’s funny how your discoveries especially about equipment not fitting in the rack and getting a family member to help you build your first deep server rack resonates with me 😂