Last time I did this was January 2019. So… Let’s go again. This is well over due. I blogged about this at the time here, here and over here as well.

So far, I have only had time to work on this for two evenings since getting the new server working. That was thanks to Chris, a friend of mine. It took ages to get it to build the raid aray. This was an appliance when it was bought first. When I bought it off the company that had been using it, they were running a closed source file server. So it took way longer than I expected to get around their blockers.

So what have I done so far?

I decided right from the beginning that I was going to use Tailscale. One of the problems I had back in 2019 was reconfiguring the server for the public facing address pool when it got to the data centre. So this time, I’m configuring it with an external IP right from the beginning while it it is sitting on my desk. This means that from the beginning, I am connecting to the various VM’s, firewall, web server, streaming server, database server etc using the Tailscale host name. So when it leaves my desk and is installed in a remote rack, accessing it will be no different.

So with that explained, here is what I’ve done so far with just two nights of configuration.

• Night 1:
  • Installed hypervizor operating system
  • Hardened operating system
  • Created accounts
  • Downloaded operating system ISO’s for guest virtual machines
  • Set regional, language and timezone configuration
  • Installed screen reader for accessibility
  • Configured firewall
  • Created virtual switches
  • Created five virtual machines
  • Installed five operating systems
  • Removed unneeded applications
  • Installed screen reader where needed
• Night 2:
  • Started configuring virtual firewall. Set up private LAN for use within the virtual environment.
  • Created routing rules and configured gateway for outbound Internet access from the LAN
  • Installed Tailscale on firewall
  • Installed Tailscale on all Windows and Linux VM’s
  • Tested connectivity
  • Applied licenses
  • Configured autostart options.
  • Fixed some networking issues. For example, stopped the VM’s connecting to the external network. They should only connect to the internal LAN.

Today is day 3. I have a few htings planned. Get some software installed on the Linux virtual machines, configure auto power on for the physical server and configure some inbound and outbound rules on the virtual machines. I don’t have a huge amount of time tonight though. So let’s see how this goes.