Introduction

Welcome to day 1 of of my continuous learning track for 2023. As mentioned in the overview for 2023, I have a bunch of topics I want to learn more about.

Of course, these expectations don’t come out of the blue, they apply either directly or indirectly to projects and ideas I’ve been working on. As you can read on the homepage of my blog, I specialize in management of NetScaler and Fortinet appliances. Products from both vendors generally require quite a bit of knowledge to operate efficiently, especially in the managed services arena. As I run these products in my homelab as well, I try to tinker with them as much as possible because I obviously don’t know everything. The list below is obviously just an initial starting point, as there will be many other topics to explore as a sidetrack.

Many topics will also not fit in a single category and there will be considerable overlap when learning about them.

Categories and Tags

To try and get this organized at least a little, all post will have categories and tags assigned to them, so you have quick access to content. Use the following links to access the full list of categories and tags.

Categories

Tags

  • CL/CD: All posts about ContinousLearning/ContinuousDocumenting
  • CL/CD-2023: All posts about ContinousLearning/ContinuousDocumenting - 2023

Projects

System Engineering

  • NetScaler
    • Investigate proper naming conventions for:
      • Regular deployments
      • Automated deployments (e.g. using the ingress controller for CPX)
    • Create a Terraform module for a variety of topics:
      • Deploy CoreLogic
      • Deploy a content-switching environment using CoreLogic
      • Deploy NetScaler Gateway with best practices
    • Writing a book for beginners
    • Create a backup utility
    • Create a configuration parser
    • Create a configurable system metrics exporter
    • Create a configurable application metrics exporter
    • Integrate Let’s Encrypt certificates for NetScaler based on HTTP requests
    • Create a uniform configuration language to transpile into different formates (CLI, API, Stylebook, Terraform resource)
  • Fortigate
    • Create a Terraform module to deploy a VLAN in my homelab
    • Use Terraform to automate the complete deployment of my Fortinet-stack
  • 1Password
    • Use 1Password to obfuscate sensitive data in scripts
    • Use 1Password to obfuscate sensitive data in config files
  • IPv6
    • Dual-stack IPv6 on the internet
    • Dual-stack on the internal networks
  • Kubernetes
    • Deploy a Kubernetes cluster
    • Manage a Kubernetes cluster
    • Use Rancher to install and manage clusters
    • Use Longhorn for persistent storage
    • Use K3s for edge components
      • Use K3s in a managed service appliance
      • Manage K3s over a VPN-connection

Software Development

  • Go
    • Learn how to develop a command-line utility
    • Learn how to develop a REST API
    • Learn how to develop a gRPC service
    • Learn how to develop a GUI application
    • Learn how to write idiomatic Go
    • Contrinbute to an open-source project such as OpenFaas or Fyne
    • Creating a parser
    • Integrating Prometheus metrics
    • Logging
    • Develop an alternative for Pi-hole and AdGuard Home using NetScaler as DNS load-balancer
    • Develop a URL shortening service using NetScaler as reverse proxy
  • Hugo
    • Learn to develop a website from scratch
  • Docker
    • How to efficiently use containers during development
  • Twitter
    • Create a Twitter-bot

Automation Tooling

  • HashiCorp
    • Packer
      • Build images for different builders at the same time
      • Learn to optimize the building process
        • What to install/configure during the build process
        • What to delegate to a later provisioning step using configuration management
        • Use 1Password to obfuscate sensitive data
    • Terraform
      • Learn to optimize the provisioning process
      • Use scripts to control the provisioning step
      • Use Ansible to control the provisioning step
      • Use 1Password to obfuscate sensitive data
  • Ansible
    • How to properly manage infrastructure
    • How to integrate with other tools such as Terraform
  • Scripting

Personal

  • Adopt a DevOps mindset
  • Engage in speaker opportunities based on the content of this learning track

Closing thoughts

Some closing thoughts after going over the list above:

  • The list is quite a handful
  • I will learn a lot, even if I just manage to get a quarter of the list in
  • Many topics will have some overlap, so it will be worth revisiting some of the topics on a regular basis

If you have any comments, let me know! And I hope to see you again!

Resources

Internal

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External

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