How My Website Lives on the Edge of a Nanode and Loves It

Hey there, cyber wanderers and fellow tinkerers! Welcome back to BareMetalBridge, where we don’t just bridge concepts; we sometimes literally bridge traffic from the digital cloud right to my doorstep. Today, I’m peeling back the digital curtain to show you how this site, and its future sibling sites, are stitched together. It’s a setup that might make a sysadmin weep tears of joy—or maybe just because they saw I styled this in what I think I will call Geocities2024 Style 😜

Step 1: The Mighty Linode Nanode

Our journey starts with a Linode Nanode. This little trooper grabs all your requests from the vast void of the Internet. It’s small but mighty, and it’s the gatekeeper that ensures everything runs smooth as butter before passing the baton.

Step 2: Homeward Bound

From there, your digital shout-outs get zipped straight to my home IP. Imagine it as a digital highway where the Linode is the on-ramp. This part is seamless, blending the high seas of public web traffic with the cozy bylanes of my personal setup.

Step 3: OpnSense, the Guardian

Once at my home network, the packets hit the OpnSense firewall. It’s like the bouncer at the club. If you’re not on the list, you’re not getting in. It checks the IDs, ensures no troublemakers, and keeps the riff-raff out. Safety first, folks!

Step 4: HAProxy, the Traffic Director

Next up, we dance with HAProxy, running on a lab server. This savvy conductor sees your requests and, like an old-timey phone operator, connects you to the right line. It makes sure everyone ends up exactly where they should, no mix-ups!

Step 5: Nginx VMs – The Final Frontier

And finally, your requests land on the Nginx VMs. These are running on a beast of a machine—an AMD 3970X Threadripper with 256GB of DDR4 RAM. It’s the powerhouse that hosts the party you all came for. The Threadripper doesn’t just rip threads; it weaves them into the fabric of this site.

Storage Galore

Oh, and I can’t forget about storage. We’re talking 26TB of mirrored ZFS glory, backed by 128GB of dedicated DDR4 Ram just for caching. It’s like having a library with every book you could ever want, and the librarian remembers every page you’ve ever loved.

I Love Block Diagrams

You will figure out as I import more content from my old sites and write new content for this site that I love using block diagrams to explain things. So, below is a block diagram of how the routing explained above works.

Thats Amost It, but Enough For Now

So there you have it—a peek into the engine room of BareMetalBridge. It’s a setup that’s a bit overkill, a bit geeky, and a whole lot of fun. We’re not just building sites here; we’re playing with technology, exploring what’s possible, and maybe, just occasionally, being a bit silly with our font choices.

Stay tuned, keep exploring, and remember, whether it's Comic Sans or complex load balancers, the best part is always the fun we have along the way. Until next time, keep your bridges bare and your minds full. 😉