Seperate servers (with different locations - one in LAN,one with Hetzner, one with OVH) that provide intranet (only available in the HomeLAN or via Wireguard), extranet(“public” services as in “to friends and family”) and Backup/Monitoring services.

Everything behind OPNsenses, with strict firewall rules, crowdsec and acting as a reverse proxy. Additionally certain things are locked down via hosting provider based firewalls (as I have the luxury to have a static IP at home I can easily do limit ingress for some extranet services)

VLAN seperation both within HomeLAN and Proxmox. Proxmox firewall rules to limit intra VLAN access. Unpriviliged LXC containers - seperated per service. Anything needing docker runs in rootless podman within an unpriv. LXC. (If it does not run like that it won’t run. End of discussion) Authentik for OIDC. If it does not do OIDC/SAML is does not run. (Only exception is LDAP in HomeNet as I am running free IPA anyway) Also acts as Jumpserver via VNC/RDP.

As I am using ansible/Terraform (via Semaphore) for everything I also strictly enforce fail2ban and certain monitoring components. (Namely Zabbix and Wazuh)

No, not personally.

But I don’t live in the US (so healthcare costs are not much of an concern, despite me being disabled) and know I am incredibly lucky. Is it economically worse? Fuck yeah.

I am self employed/have my own company and I am also blessed with a high earning (and in every other aspect awesome) wife who brings in the main income (she works full time, I normally would work 70%).

Two years ago I had 5 full time slots(filled by 7 people), now I am down to 3. Being unable to renew contracts with people at the beginning of the year broke something in me. It’s not their fault. They did their best. While I sure could have done some things differently I am somewhat sure by now that in the broad picture I could not have done much to save their jobs - I already have reduced my own payout to the legal minimum (less than 50% of my already average theoretical wage) and used loopholes to even pay nothing to me for half a year. But cutting costs only goes so far if not enough new projects come in.

My clients are mostly healthcare and public services and these sectors are forced to massively cut costs due to our incompetent neocon government.

The only thing that lets me sleep at night easier is the fact that by now I could “recommend” all affected people (who wanted that) into new jobs, so none is left unemployed.

While it hasn’t been direct make me struggle personally I am struggling with my company.

Which sucks balls,especially considering seeing how competitors get huge grants just for “being in the right party”,etc.

We are also otherwise very lucky - We (well,half of it is owned by the bank,but who 's house isn’t) own a house - but it’s an three apartment building we simply live in one. The other two apartments are rented out (below median rent and far below what I might get if I push things) and our apartment is rather, well, mediocre. But that’s okay. It’s mainly meant as a way to invest money I made when younger by doing some incredibly risky but lucrative jobs. And to make sure we don’t need to bother with another landlord ever again. We just liked the location, the age (it’s over 70 years old) and the property - and have now have a relationship with our two other renters that is basically “live and let live”. They know they can simply knock on our door if something’s wrong and have profited by the modernisation of some core things, but also don’t bother me with bullshit.

The rent we now receive will go to the bank for at least two more decades,so it’s not something that helps us financially now - but it might help my kiddo one day.

So yeah. I am still incredibly lucky.

What a badly written AI slop

OVH Storage Server with Proxmox Backup server (you can also use if for non-Proxmox clients,btw) and a additional S3 bucket at another hoster.

Sadly the realities are different: I visit around one healthcare facility every other week in all of Europe, far more infrequently in Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Hospitals consistently have the worst IT departments I ever see - outdated technology, budget constraints (I literally saw a full IT loss due to “we don’t pay for our firewall licences for over 3 years”) and a fucking lack of care. One of the most well known clinical information systems has a hardcoded admin account with a single letter as PW in it Another popular system will try to install an ancient version of TeamViewer. In other words: It’s a mess - btw often the budgets are huge and more than what nurses cost.

That’s why this unicorn stuck with me. They were “relaxed” - because they all had a workload that was “manageable”, there was someone to take over if shit hits the fan,etc. And they didn’t feel like they would need to do this and this - I know and fear this myself, it’s the bane of my existence as a project guy. They? They had a nice, lean but powerful project workflow and change management.

In the end it all came down to very very good management - a manager who knows their team that well is worth their weight iin gold.

Tbf, I might have seen a unicorn: A hospital with no tech debt neither me nor my technically more inclined colleagues could find. And we were literally paid for looking for things swept under the rug.

They had a top notch IT department with very professional management who (despite their limited budget) managed to attract talented people - simply with good working conditions, a room for creativity, etc. Everything they had was so well documented that it made me cry and think of my company’s documentation. And while they intentionally did not go with every trend and fad their stuff was rock solid and modern. I have seen much much larger companies with half their thought into infrastructure, etc.

I don’t know if they still maintain that standard,but it was a real unicorn.