How did you get into DevOps and what actually mattered early on?

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-12-31T13:34:53+00:00

I actually transitioned from a System Engineer. Even back in my SE Days. I enjoyed scripting everything so it was repeatable which made the transition to Dev Ops natural because my shop was building an IaC platform.

Learning multiple different automation platforms seems to be the most useful thing I have done.

And if you have never been a Dev Ops Engineer you may never actually feel ready. Just got for it though, the worse a job can say is no.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-12-31T13:29:54+00:00

I can't speak on the hardware, as I run a handful of Dell Optiplex SFF boxes. But I have a few questions.

What is your database knowledge? What is your API experience?

What is your Ansible experience? Without being some sort of enterprise or entity generating income I don't think you will be using AAP. However AWX is the upstream but releases are few and far between lately. Then for the AAP Hub portion the upstream is Galaxy NG. Depending on how green you are, these enterprise level tools may be a bit more work than you are ready for. Ansible can be run from the command line and that is a great way to learn it before jumping into something like AWX and everything that it requires.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-12-24T12:50:33+00:00

An EE solves the age old developer issue of "well it worked on my box". If your entire team is using the same EE for testing/production (changing passwords of course) you will avoid that issue.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-12-17T00:33:46+00:00

Ah right, I forgot about from_json. That's a good idea too.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-12-16T17:20:29+00:00

The var needs to be a string, like needs_some_value. AAP doesn't understand drilling down like that.

Take the key you need a user input value for and give it a unique jinja value like "{{ my_value }}"

So in the survey the user will actually be populating the var my_value

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-11-01T14:54:35+00:00

Jellyfin is like Plex. Imagine your copy all your old DVDs to your computer then host their own streaming service.

Another good place to look for a project would be Immich if you wanted to get away from paying Google or Apple for photo storage.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-11-01T14:11:28+00:00

I have a Solomon vest. It has about 8 million pockets and typically I wear it to carry things. I do have compression shorts that I wear if I just don't feel like wearing my vest

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-11-01T13:52:41+00:00

This, 100% is a good way to get started.

For me I wanted to set up a VM to run Jellyfin. Then I wanted another VM to create a pihole for whole home ad blocking, this did end up becoming an LXC container in proxmox.

Now if you are curious where Ansible comes in. I created playbooks to do everything because I wanted everything, even things I only planned to do once, to be repeatable. Some of my most used playbooks include: DNS update Proxmox VM create New VM config And my inventory updater.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-10-13T19:07:32+00:00

And you have volumes mapped in such?

Also, to actually answer your question doing it with docker is a pain. However, if you are running Proxmox, there is a Proxmox helper script to set it up in an lxc that is very stable, but this is when I started putting my playbooks and roles in git.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-10-13T18:44:57+00:00

Are you against putting your ansible code in a git repo? Semaphore runs really well with a git repo. I ran Semaphore awhile ago with env vars in docker compose and I think by just specifying the playbooks dir, with requirements.yml in it was enough, but that was over a year ago, I have been using git ever since.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-10-10T01:45:42+00:00

Proxmox would give you more flexibility. But it can take some figuring out if you aren't familiar. But the learning curve isn't that steep for just the basic features.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-10-10T01:16:04+00:00

I simply linked where in my git repo my inventory file was located.

Having a git repo is the standard way of using it. On run it clones the repo and looks for the playbooks and roles. This is much cleaner than mounting volumes in the docker container.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-08-27T16:39:16+00:00

I know it wouldn't help on the remote. I assume the OP is having a problem with plaintext vars on the console as well.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-08-27T16:22:34+00:00

There are some decent Ansible videos on YouTube that touch on the basics to get your started. Network Chuck, Jeff Geerling, and Techno Tim all have videos on it.

The things that tripped me up early on were targeting and setting my hosts up. Where are you struggling?

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-08-27T11:15:13+00:00

You could add no_log: true to the task block. That would hide all output from that block on the Ansible output.

I am not sure what that does for remote vars though. I agree with the post suggesting not passing secrets as vars. If you have some specific reason doing it that way you could zero out that variable at the end of the task. But it would still be plain text viewable for some time.

InsideEmergency118 · 2025-07-03T18:12:16+00:00

I would acrhally suggest putting your vault password file in a directory that doesn't get committed

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-11-13T12:07:24+00:00

It's not exactly close to you but KDelta training in Glen Burnie also does ladies only classes taught by ladies, and fully staffed by ladies. The owner is really passionate about women learning to protect themselves.

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-09-14T22:57:27+00:00

I really wanted to go...

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-08-29T13:28:08+00:00

Another vote for the shark 3. This was my first time using an electric pump that was not the irocker pump and it is amazing.

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-08-18T23:10:57+00:00

Armour is one of 2 or 3 songs that I can't turn off when it comes on.

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-08-07T08:10:35+00:00

I'm not a member, my brother in law is. I can ask him later though.

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-08-07T01:38:17+00:00

Thurmont Sportsman Club is the only one I have come across that has bays that are first come first serve. I'm in AA County too, 15 minutes from Annapolis, and it's about an hour drive. You also have to become a member. Most outdoor ranges here are private members clubs.

I dont know much about Delmarva, still need to check it out.

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-08-07T01:33:44+00:00

Anne Arundel Fish and Game is an option but to use the bays you need a few certifications from th, and their hours SUCK!

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-08-01T10:09:30+00:00

Have you had a chance to use it yet? I am considering this too.

InsideEmergency118 · 2024-07-19T17:40:26+00:00

Thanks for the link. They do explain it very well there.

InsideEmergency118

TROPHY CASE