As with all things in life there is never enough time to try out everything. Here I will list some of the projects that I plan to spin up soon, projects that need some final configuration, or others that need further research and practice for me to implement.

Main Goal

My goal with all these projects is to help me learn and progress towards becoming a DevOps Engineer at some point in the future. As a result, I would like to gain a solid understanding of the following software:

Skill	Current Progress
Terraform	Have installed and setup a local docker container
Ansible	Have installed and configured it with Certificate sessions to 3 machines. (Need to utilise)
GitHub Actions (or some CI/CD tool)	I have dabbled with GitLab CI and GitLab Runners to build docker images. Have yet to fully utilise it. I have since removed the docker containers and would need to set it back up again.
Build on Azure skills	I have gained the AZ-900 certification, used a developer environment to setup a Intune linked virtual machine that can download software from the Company Portal. But I need to build on my range of azure skills.
Kubernetes	I have setup a range of Kubernetes clusters. But I have always struggled to get my head around creating and deploying the pods and configurations to the cluster. The best I have managed so far is a basic NGINX pod with
OpenStack	This is my ultimate goal. The reason I bought a Dell R710 server. Once I have gained all the relevant DevOps Skills, I will attempt to setup a virtualised OpenStack cluster. So far I have only spun up the DevStack version.

Services to host

Software / Skills	Current Progress
pfSense and Networking	I would like to setup a permanent Home Lab local network to segregate it from my home network. I have used VM’s in the past. But I haven never used it as a core piece of infrastructure due to the cost to run my Dell R710. Now that I have a more power efficient machine I will likely run it as a VM on there. Allowing me to make use of the machines 24/7 uptime.
Wiki.JS or some documentation software	I have installed Wiki.JS in a docker container and have made some very basic notes about my Home Lab. However, I’m not happy with the fact that you need to login to access the content. I would like to make the information easy to access (public).
GitLab and GitLab Runners	As mentioned previously, I have installed GitLab and GitLab Runners in docker before and used them. However I wasn’t fully happy with my server configuration and were torn down. I would like to reimplement it into a 24/7 service that I can use to build my future Docker container / Kubernetes projects.
Setup a MAAS/FOG server	With all the VM’s that I cycle through every few months. It would be nice to have a service that will just allow me to deploy a pre-built image. Saving me the time setting it back up again. It may be that I decide against this if I can utilise Terraform and Ansible to do this task.
Setup an offsite storage server	At the current moment in time I only use my TrueNAS server as a secondary backup server to my 24/7 Nextcloud Pi setup. The server is rarely ever on due to power usage. I would like to setup a remote machine that allows me to have a 24/7 remote backup location. I may end up reutilising one of my Pi’s for the job due to energy costs. For the TrueNAS server, I would like to setup an ESP8266 power switch to turn on the PC. I have the board and wiring ready, I just need to recreate the code and setup the automation for the server to shut down.

Skills to build upon

Software	Current Progress
PowerShell / Bash Scripts	I will need to learn PowerShell and Bash beyond basic commands to make it useful in a enterprise environment and progress with Azure certifications. I have used basic PowerShell and Bash scripts to perform basic tasks. But have not really had a Home Lab goal that requires me to use them.
MySQL	I have only dealt with basic database setup and utilisation. I know the general gist of how to create, delete and update. But I currently need to Google every command I need.
Python	If I ever need to program then I use Python. But I haven’t done much programming since University (apart from setting up my solar panel grafana monitoring dashboard).