Blog
News, guides, and product updates from Obelinf.
Homelab for Beginners: The Exact Order of Operations Before You Buy Anything
The exact order of operations for a first homelab: define the goal, inventory what you own, settle placement, do the power and network math, set the budget, then buy.
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Kubernetes for students: the essential concepts before you touch a cluster
The Kubernetes mental model you need before your first cluster: declarative desired state, the control plane and worker split, pods versus containers, controllers, Services, and the order in which to learn the rest.
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Structured Cabling at Home: Ethernet Before Renovation
Running Ethernet while your walls are open: plan the drops, pick Cat6 or Cat6a, build a central patch point, and test everything before the drywall closes.
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What to run on your first homelab: 5 starter services ranked by value
Your first homelab server is running, so what should you install on it? Five self hosted services ranked by the value they deliver per hour of setup.
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Homelab Rack vs Shelf vs Closet: Choosing Where Your Lab Lives
Open rack, shelf, or closet: what each homelab placement really gives you, how heat, noise, and space decide the answer, and a practical process for choosing where your lab lives.
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Linux for Network Engineers: The Commands You'll Use Every Day
The Linux commands network engineers use every day: ping, traceroute, mtr, dig, ss, nc, tcpdump, ip, and ethtool, what each one proves, the pitfalls that mislead, and how to chain them through a real incident.
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OPNsense vs pfSense vs UniFi: Picking a Router for Your Home Lab
OPNsense, pfSense, and UniFi each run a homelab differently. We compare firewall control, hardware costs, and daily upkeep so you can pick the right router for your network.
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Power budget for a home server: PSU headroom and UPS decisions
Build a home server power budget that holds up: how to measure what your build really draws, how much PSU headroom actually matters, and how to size a UPS in watts with runtime and battery replacement in mind.
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TrueNAS, Unraid, or Plain Linux: First Storage Decisions for Beginners
TrueNAS, Unraid, and plain Linux compared for your first storage server: how each protects data, the drives and RAM they want, what they cost, and a practical way to choose.
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What a DevOps Internship Actually Expects You to Know About Networks
The network fundamentals a DevOps internship actually expects: which topics interviewers test at which depth, the troubleshooting tools you will use weekly, and the documentation habits that separate strong candidates.
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How to Find and Fix IP Address Conflicts
Obelinf explains how IP address conflicts happen, the symptoms they leave on your network, the diagnostics that pinpoint the duplicate fast, and the fixes that keep them from coming back.
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Network Configuration Management: A Practical Guide
Obelinf leads this practical guide to network configuration management: how to define baselines, control change, detect drift, and combine collection, automation, and auditing into a workflow a real team can sustain.
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