I converted this site from Wordpress to Hugo with wp2hugo to get me started. Reason behind this is that I really liked writing the blog in Markdown when I wrote a post for AlmaLinux, besides that it also gives a great showcase for your abilities in working with Git and code on its own. One of my goals was to maintain my search engine rankings by keeping the old pages at the same location, which it handled nicely. ...
This year was a busy year with bigger long running projects, which take quite a toll but are in the end very rewarding. In a small list the following activities are the most notable: Migrated a Nagios Core monitored environment to a Zabbix environment, based on the Zabbix agent 2 and Active checks; Previously we built the Nagios config files with Python from our CMDB, in Zabbix we use Autoregistration rules based on metadata. Consolidated 3 datacenters, consisting of 10 racks into 2 datacenters with 8 racks, doing so decommisioning older servers and rebuilding the entire network infrastructure, transistioning from traditional copper to fully fiber, standardized on Singlemode, fully multihomed, built with Juniper Apstra; Upgraded two PowerDNS nameservers to up-to-date versions; Upgraded multiple Proxmox clusters from 6.x to 8.x; Upgraded multiple Ceph clusters from Nautilus to Reef; Deployed and implemented multiple MariaDB Galera clusters; Migrated servers from one Fortigate VDOM to another with minimal impact; Expanded Ceph clusters and replaced nodes with live workloads; Cleaned up two RIPE ORGS and handled the audit of one; Built a campus network based on Fortiswitches managed by Fortigates. Worked together with Juniper on a Case Study about Juniper Apstra; Handled multiple CentOS 6 to AlmaLinux upgrades; Upgraded Zabbix 6.4 to 7.0 LTS; Gave multiple presentations and trainings about networking and Proxmox; Attended AlmaLinux Day, CloudFest, Juniper NL Tech club, Dutch Proxmox day, NLNOG Day 2024 and Cephalocon which sparked my interest and got me more involved in opensource communities and trying to bring my relevant input;
Something very easily overlooked is what my homelab looks like, as it mostly just works! It is a well thought out combination of fit for purpose hardware, without becoming “work”, so while I do have a preference for specific hardware, I still have the freedom to build it differently than I would do at my day job. It consists of the following parts: Netgate SG-4860-1U as a pfSense firewall and router; 2x Juniper Networks EX2300-C-12P for switching, running as a VC (virtual chassis); 2x Unifi NanoHD as WiFi Accesspoints; A small server running Proxmox, built within a Fractal design node 304 case: Intel i7-8700k cpu; 64GB DDR4 Crucial memory; Asus Prime H310I-Plus motherboard; Google Coral m.2 TPU; Sonoff Zigbee dongle P as a Zigbee router for Home Assistant. Flexoptix optics for terminating my fiber internet. While I like to automate at scale, I tend to like to get hands on at times in which my homelab gives great opportunities to test and try out new things, but also run mission-critical services to support my personal needs. ...
Last December I was invited by Niels Raijer from Fusix Networks to join their Fusix Podcast, last year I’ve been working closely with Fusix as there were some big Networking projects on the roadmap, which is a really nice experience. Of course I gladly accepted the invite and couldn’t wait to make my first appearance in a podcast! It can be heard here: https://app.springcast.fm/18944/intent-based-networking-met-david-der-nederlanden We talked about replacing the whole network for a museum without any interruption and working with Juniper Apstra. ...
For some time the AI-based development has been going on now, and I’ve been watching closely how and what it changed as of today, by no means I am a AI expert however. At first I was a bit sceptical, while AI can definitely help in our day-to-day life, it can also quite quickly create short-sightedness in which it becomes just as smart as you are. Let me explain, you give a prompt to the AI, and the AI gives you an answer, which means that what stays in our own hands is writing the prompts and interpreting the answers for maybe writing further prompts. This means that describing our intent becomes more and more important, it is not only about who knows what line of code goes where best, it is turning into whether you’re able to describe your intent as detailed and clearly as possible. ...
In my experience there hasn’t been a month with a lot of changes, this experience can get more intense as you grow in your role and at some point become overwhelming. Well, it can be, it doesn’t have to be, to deal with this myself I try to make -well weighted- choices to be good at a specific skill set, which involves specific tools. I do this because I think no one can be a “know it all”, there are however some sets of combined skills that go together like fine wine and cheese. For example, in my case, Linux, Networking, Automation and Virtualization. I don’t mention Security, as I think that the meaning of Security has changed, it isn’t just a list of rules to go by anymore, which -of course- is still very important and are rules to live by when you’re a “builder”, however Security as a skill nowadays is something that goes on 24/7, hackers never sleep. ...