Rachel Kroll
I've been wanting to do this for a while: basically, to write a really snarky post about the bare minimum required to run your own hardware in a colocation environment. I'm talking about doing as little as possible, and possibly screwing up bigtime while you're at it.
Based on chats with some of my friends, it seems like this model is not well known. One of them had a situation a while back where everyone was now working from home due to COVID, and so they would all VPN back to the office park where the servers were, including their NAS "box-o-disks". It was obnoxiously slow and laggy and failed a lot, too.
I said he could probably find a spot to colocate that stuff given that he lives in a major metro area, and sure enough, he did. A few weeks later, everything was parked in there, and the resulting boost in connectivity (throughput and availability both) made everyone so much happier.
I think they were also able to dump the remaining cruft at the office park as a result. Win-win, right?
So, without further ado, here's the terrible list I just scribbled down rather quickly to get this going:
0. Scrounge up at least an old dumb Ethernet switch (or *gasp* a hub!) and some random-ass hardware that'll run Linux, like a Raspberry Pi, or some old PC box or whatever.
1. Install Linux on the box. Turn everything off but sshd. Turn off password access to sshd. If you just locked yourself out of sshd because you didn't install ssh keys first, STOP HERE. You are not ready for this.
If you somehow survived, continue as usual.
2. Find a place that you can physically access that will sell you some chunk of a cabinet, rack, shelf, or whatever else. You have to be able to get there somehow: walk, bike, drive, take the bus, whatever ... *while carrying equipment with you*. Keep that in mind.
If it's on the other side of the country (or planet), it might not be what you want, in other words.
3. Make a deal with the place. Prepare to throw some money at them.
4. Wait for them to set up your account. Get the networking details. Make sure they know you're just going to be running a stupid little switch and not a full-on router.
They'll probably carve out a tiny little block of v4 space where their router is one of the IP addresses, and you get to use the rest. They'll probably do the same with IPv6, only it'll be a /64 because why the hell not? (If they don't do IPv6, ask for your money back and run away.)
5. Configure the Linux box to match those details: static IP assignments! Yes! No DHCP here!
6. Figure out how to get your laptop to work while plugged into that same switch within your IP space, and WITHOUT any sort of wifi access while it's still at your house. You won't be able to see the outside world but you will be able to see your server. Filter out the world pre-emptively, because where you're going, you're not going to be behind a firewall.
7. Haul yourself and your stuff to the actual co-lo space: switch, Linux box, laptop, power cords, and Ethernet cables. Consider bringing a screwdriver and a flashlight (any halfway decent place will provide those for you, but you never know).
8. Plug everything in and turn it on. Connect to the server from your laptop. Verify that the server can get out to the Internet. Verify that you can get back to the server FROM the Internet. (That is, plug your switch into their network. Obviously.)
9. Go home and set up the rest from there - you know, DNS, loading stuff on the actual box, and so on.
...
To the usual broken people: knock it off. I know that you don't HAVE to use Linux, and can install a BSD, or Windoze, or whatever the hell else. I'm giving you A path, not THE path. Now shut up.