I'm very new to Kubernetes. A few days ago, I actually spun up a K8S cluster in my home lab. I have a master and three worker nodes all running on Ubuntu 24.04. I was able to successfully set up the cluster. I just need to learn how to deploy apps on it to where I can understand. I have been playing around with Docker as well. I have a separate Ubuntu server vm that is running my Docker containers. I set up vaultwarden, nextcloud, and other cool services and using Nginx Proxy Manager to access them from the Internet. But with this new K8S cluster I set up, I may try to migrate my containers from my docker host to the cluster. I'm still trying to understand how the nginx-ingress works. NPM is easy enough to use so may keep using that until I learn more about Kubernetes. With this cluster, I will be able to decom some of my vms : )

PlayStation mostly but do enjoy PC games from time to time.

I've been looking for a solid solution myself. Currently, I'm using the built in Windows Server backup for my Windows servers and rsync to a NFS share for my Linux servers. I've used Syncback in the past but now it seems you must pay for it. I liked Veeam, I used the CE version for my VMs initially, but I grew past 10 vms. I was able to obtain the "home lab" noncommercial license from Veeam for a year but that only supports 20VMs. I'm past 20vms lol. So, I'm using the native tools and backing up to a network shared folder. It's not the best solution since it only keeps one copy since it is on a shared network folder, but it's better than nothing. I tried using Bacula, but I honestly couldn't understand how to set it up. There's another one I tried "UrBackup" in a Docker container that works with Windows and Linux, but I had issues connecting it to remote storage. I'm also open to suggestions.

Oh I forgot to mention... I'm about to explore DPM. Data Protection Manager that is part of Microsoft's System Center since I'm immersing myself into that.

I run two domain controllers that handle DNS. The primary domain controller does DNS and DHCP and my secondary domain controller does DNS. I thought about setting up DHCP on the secondary as well and doing a split scope, but that's a little complex and overkill for a small network. I prefer doing this way because it's Active Directory integrated and dynamically updates my DNS records if an IP address changes. It also makes more sense since my day job is a Windows SysAdmin. I can statically set a DNS host record for my Linux servers, and it will synchronize between the two DCs. I'm also a little old school and set in my ways. If it works, why change it? I'm not opposed to using BIND or similar, just most familiar with Windows DNS.