Remote administration tools such as Remote Desktop, VNC, etc. are great for controlling systems without needing to be physically present. There is only one big problem: all of these tools require a functional operating system to be present in order to function. You may think, ‘Yes, of course you need to have the operating system installed first.' While it is usually simple enough to administrate your system(s) while you are at home, what if you encounter issues that are not easily resolved when you are away from home?

I have long considered self-hosting my own Git server to use for personal projects, but I never took the time to do so. Now that I have Proxmox and have come to love being able to run containers/virtual machines for everything, I thought it was time to set up a local GitLab installation. My main GitLab repository which I use to host this site is on GitLab.com. Ideally, I would like to push all my updates to the local GitLab server and in turn have the updates be migrated to the remote repository on GitLab.

Understanding how to forward ports and create firewall rules for the WAN interface of your router is important if you wish to access services hosted on your router or a server in your internal network. Knowing when to use a WAN rule versus a NAT Port Forward rule may be confusing to new users. WAN vs. NAT Port Forward Rule: Which one to use? Generally speaking, WAN rules should be used for any service running directly on your router and NAT port forward rules for any service host on a server in your internal network (either virtualized or physical).

Have you wanted to take a look at OPNsense without installing it to a dedicated machine and/or deploying it as your primary home router/firewall? The easiest way to evaluate OPNsense without installing it on separate hardware is to virtualize it. I wrote about running OPNsense in VirtualBox. Now that I run Proxmox on my server instead of Ubuntu (I still use Ubuntu for many of my LXCs/VMs on Proxmox), I wanted to run OPNsense on Proxmox so I may use when writing content for this site.

Sunny Valley Networks is a company that has partnered with Deciso, the creators of OPNsense, to create a plugin called Sensei which adds deep packet inspection and more to OPNsense. These features add greater visibility into your network. Sensei also has built-in cloud threat intelligence that can be used to block web/application traffic and to prevent known malware attacks. For users who wish to have a low cost option yet have advanced network monitoring and protection, OPNsense with Sensei is a great option to consider.