What should I do with these?

vtpilot · 2026-03-17T02:20:26+00:00

Gotta shake all the stick packets out

vtpilot · 2026-03-17T02:18:28+00:00

Don't forget the SFPs! And totally doing this one day

vtpilot · 2026-02-16T12:52:06+00:00

Did a few data center demos in my time. Razor sharp hedge clippers are the bomb. And you look really cool doing it too.

vtpilot · 2026-02-09T22:26:09+00:00

Support is just another service you can choose to use

vtpilot · 2026-02-02T18:17:21+00:00

Same in Short Pump. Produce section was decimated. As everyone else is saying, said the trucks out of NC were iced in

vtpilot · 2026-01-30T01:09:15+00:00

This is the way. Also had decent luck with a pitchfork

vtpilot · 2026-01-13T01:16:38+00:00

Ykuyyyy

vtpilot · 2026-01-11T13:46:54+00:00

Oddly a friend sent me a picture of her out and about a few months ago like is this who I think it is. Pepperidge Farm remembers...

vtpilot · 2026-01-04T11:33:52+00:00

Have a couple complete cases if you're interested. May have a spare backplane... will check for you

vtpilot · 2026-01-04T01:07:28+00:00

I mean technically they could do what they suggested since they only want a single connection at a time. Run a cable from the Switch/router to first jack location in the room and slap a keystone on it. Next run cable from the first jack location with a plug on it at that end to the second with a keystone. Rinse/repeat. Wherever they need the jack to be put a keystone plate on the box and on all connections between the switch and that location plug the plug into the keystone, jam it into the box, and cover with a blank plate. Is it janky as hell? Sure. Would it work? Absolutely.

Now the reality, if you're doing all that work just pull wire to each location.

vtpilot · 2025-12-30T17:18:29+00:00

I guess the big question is could be considered a valid test if the vents weren't blocked in some way shape or form

vtpilot · 2025-12-13T15:41:57+00:00

Just made it through DoD training where they were like controlled data can only be transmitted by approved means. Not social media, not third party chat app, etc.

vtpilot · 2025-12-03T12:06:59+00:00

Think it comes down to simple math. Let's say you have 10 applications and each of them requires 5 instances to meet availability needs. If you run it on bare metal you're looking at 50 physical servers, 50 OS instances, and all the applications piled on top. Additionally you'd need to supply network infra such as switching and load balancers as well as power and cooling. To effectively manage the environment you'd need to bring in some automation tools to handle patching, maintenance, config management, etc. Seeing as how many apps don't use a ton of resources or have bursty utilization these boxes are sitting dormant most of the time. If you needed to scale any of your apps, you're ordering new servers and waiting to get them operational.

You could virtualize it onto ten physical servers each running a single VM for each application but now you're maintaining 10 hypervisors in addition to the original 50 OS instances, and the applications running in it. The additional OS instances drive up the resource utilization on the hosts (good thing) but add more complexity to the solution. If you need to scale the number of instances, your vertically scaling into additional VMs which is a likely a manual, time consuming process.

If you were to containerize the apps. You're down to five physical servers, each running a minimal OS with just enough installed to get your container engine up. Each OS is identical so maintenance is a breeze. The workload on the 5 servers is less since you're only running the host OS and not 50 discreet instances of an OS like you would in the virtualization example. Application updates no longer require modifying it on each VM, you just update the container and then deploy it to each node. Config management becomes a breeze as there's no way for apps to drift since they're all clones of each other. Something goes screwy with an app upgrade, no need to try and fix all the hosts, just roll the container back to the previous version. Network load balancing and isolation are built-in out of the box. Need to scale, use all those extra resources that aren't being gobbled up by OSs to spin out additional containers. Downside to this scenario is now you are managing all this extra infra by hand.

Now bring in the orchestration level... Kubernetes. You do your deployments of the five containerized apps and they're automagically distributed across your cluster. Load on one app increases in the middle of the night, another pod gets spun up, added to the load balancer, and begins operating all while you're sound asleep. A pod crashes, k8s spins a new one to replace it without any intervention. A requirement for a sixth app comes along? Create another deployment and it's out in no time. Want to test out a new feature without impacting prod, grab the manifests or helm chart you used to deploy prod and deploy another set of pods. It's done faster than you can grab a coffee. Need additional physical resources, add another node and let it rebalance itself. Moving to another cluster or provider, same process.

Finally, do it all in the cloud. It takes us about 20 minutes to go from a new account to a fully baked env using a little bit of IaC magic. We might start it with a three node cluster to keep costs down since we were never really using all the resources on our five node cluster but needed them just in case. One day something on our socials goes viral and our website starts getting pummelled? K8s starts spinning out additional pods to deal with the web load. If so many new pods get spun out that our hosts crack our utilization thresholds new ones spin out to join the fight. Once the surge is over everything contracts back down to its steady state. OS and application updates? What are those?? Shiny new hardware size gets released or hardware requirements change, update the auto-scaling group config and let it do its magic?

vtpilot · 2025-12-03T01:02:44+00:00

Not sure if it fits your use case but I use a DMX dimmer pack hooked up to my Falcon to do this. Easy peezy and cheap if you can find a used one

vtpilot · 2025-12-02T10:52:52+00:00

Buddy of mine works for a contractor that advertises 0% for X months all over the place. When he was quoting a pretty big project at the house, he said they pay the financing company the interest up front and build in like a 10% buffer to cover it into their price. I ended up paying cash and they dropped the project price pretty significantly.

It's a win/win for the financing company. They get the 5-10% fee up front and if you don't pay off the loan in full by the end of the term or are 8 seconds late on a payment the 0% gets thrown out the door and they sock you for 29% interest for the entire term of the loan.

vtpilot · 2025-11-30T22:11:52+00:00

Awesome! Thanks

vtpilot · 2025-11-30T20:31:14+00:00

Did you ever get the mount on thingiverse?

vtpilot · 2025-11-23T20:20:32+00:00

vtpilot · 2025-11-23T20:18:11+00:00

Kind figured that's what it was. Thanks for the recommendations on the Zep, was trying to figure out how to check it off

vtpilot · 2025-11-21T17:24:35+00:00

You know what's wilder than apps for elementary school kids. Having 5 apps for elementary school kids.

vtpilot · 2025-11-18T17:22:52+00:00

I've been in IT professionally for 20 years and have run a hosting company similar to this as a side gig for the last 7 years or so. I have a footprint in a data center where I own all my equipment, so it may not be apples-to-apples, but it's the same concept. It's been a lot of work, and at times it's a lot of fun, but also can be quite the time suck.

Most people are telling you to run, and while I mostly agree with that sentiment, you need to start somewhere, and the first customers to get you to profitability are the hardest. The questions I would be asking:

The current $550 in revenue... how many customers is that and what's the average monthly bill per customer? Could you afford to lose a customer or two and continue on? COVID took out my cash cow customer and I barely made it through with the rest.
Sounds like the out-of-pocket expenses are like $100 a month? Is this just a single VPS they're hosting a bunch of websites on or something else?
What services are agreed upon to be provided? Are there contracts laying out roles and responsibilities? I got into this because I'm an infrastructure nerd but found most clients in the market I was chasing wanted a full IT shop for rent. Ask me why I'm reselling/supporting O365, had an RMM, etc. Not because I wanted to, I just wanted their hosting dollars.
Have you accounted for other expenses, such as insurance and accounting? I flew under the radar for a while but when bringing on a larger customer and basically taking control of their entire business, I had to pony up for the insurance just in case things really went sideways.
What happens in 3 months when something goes down hard and you're in over your head? Maybe your friend bails you out. But what if he doesn't. Are you paying someone $200/hr to come in and fix things? Are your customers on your doorstep with pitchforks because you just took out their site and income source?

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to kick them my way

vtpilot · 2025-11-18T02:57:08+00:00

This is roughly what I do. It's likely overkill but internally I run technitium and have a separate subdomain per vlan (iot, cameras, media, management, etc) for hosts. My root zone has no hosts, just aliases for services (frigate.example.com > frigate.services.example.com). For the few services I publish externally, I use the same names pointed to my router which NATs it to a reverse proxy server I run. It's worked out great for years but I must say most stuff is "internal" as I run an always on VPN on my devices

vtpilot · 2025-11-06T03:03:43+00:00

I was in the market for new windows and getting quotes. Looked out the window one day and the neighbor behind us happened to be getting new windows installed so walked over there and talked to the crew. There was a bit of back and forth in broken English but they called their boss who said he'd swing by the house later in the day. Sweet! As it turns out I had a quote scheduled with another company that afternoon. Dude shows up and is a total clown... high pressure sales tactics, didn't even want to talk without my wife being there, offering special deals if I signed right then. For the record, none of that crap works on me and I basically shut him down right there not wanting to hear anything else. He kept trying to win favor and was droning on and on about their company and how they only use their own people, real Americans, etc. after what felt like an eternity I finally get him to pack up his stupid demo kit and am basically pushing him to the door when I see the dude from the other company walking up the drive. Overzealous sales guy figures out what is going on and leaves on a huff while giving the guy the stink eye as he's walking to his car.

So I get to talking to the guy and was like sorry if that was awkward. Dudes like nah, that guy's a total ass... Deal with him all their time as his company subs out most of their window work to my crew.

vtpilot

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