Hello selfhosters!
I’v small homeServer (Dell Wyse 5070) and I’m thinking about upgrade of main SSD M.2 storage.
Currently most of my services are docker containers. During upgrade I want to refresh whole setup and learn ansible a bit during the process.
I’ve got few services that I want to avoid to stop for hours/days which could take me to set the whole server from scratch in the new way (NextCloud, Home Assistant, Matrix), all of them used locally (trough Tailscale) by my family.
I’m thinkging about keeping them running, by connecting old SSD M.2 drive to my laptop and run inside VM. Do you think that will be doable / what kind of troubles I can get through that process? Asking about that “keeping services on my laptop” think. With refresh of server it will of course be the journey with troubles, but I will have time for that, when crucial services will be running on different machine.
imho it’s going to give you more troubles than just a direct upgrade. You will end with a “temporary” server that will last years
I’m not afraid of that risk and just try to mitigate possible outage of services longer, than expected (I hope to refresh the server in 1 day, but as with everything new, it can take longer).
What do you mean by “direct upgrade”? I want to have every direct modification done on OS to be done troguht ansible playbook on refreshed build, so my assumption is that I have to purge / start from new SSD in that case.
Replace the drive and start new but anyway because they’re docker containers you can mount the old drive and temporarily run them again
how many devices do you need to update?
ansible wants to have a home base and an inventory of devices to manage. for example, if you have a flock of Rasberry Pi’s and a server stashed under a desk somewhere, yes, ansible is 100% going to simplify your life.
ansible mgmt from a device to that same device… It might be just as easy to make backups and track your file deltas. the temptation is to use ansible so you remember what changes you made, but it can be a pia when you need to do a quick shift and have to go thru the playbook (unless you have playbooks on the ready).
I’ve got personal laptop + mentioned Dell Wyse 5070. In near future (months) I’m thinking about extending to another home server client.
I know using ansible in that scenario will be somehow harder than direct ssh, but I want mainly to learn the process (for future work possibilities) and have that extended control of the changes on the bare OS.
Awesome, go for it! ansible (more or less) is directed ssh. inventory, role, playbooks + templates, etc; for learning, definitely go for it! if you were to roll your own automation framework, you’d end up w/ansible.
