RYAN · KB8PMY
HAMILTON, OHIO
ELMER
CLOSE FRIEND
Ryan is the reason this homelab exists in its current form. What started as help standing up a single Proxmox
box grew into the full backbone this site runs on today — the 10G switch fabric, the gateway config, the
container stack philosophy. Good friend, patient mentor, and the guy N9LYA calls when the iron needs to run.
FOUNDATION WORK
├─ Introduced N9LYA to
Proxmox and walked through the initial server build
├─ Assisted with physical setup of the
HP DL380 Gen9 hypervisor
├─ Helped stand up the
MikroTik RB5009 gateway configuration
└─ Assisted with
MikroTik CRS switches — initial deployment and VLAN groundwork
STACK RECOMMENDATIONS
├─
The Dude — network monitoring (MikroTik)
├─
ZeroTier — remote access VPN (since superseded by WireGuard road warrior)
├─
AdGuard Home — DNS-level ad/tracker blocking
├─
HAProxy — SSL reverse proxy for internal services
├─
Ollama — local LLM inference (now on dual Tesla P4s)
├─
Home Assistant — home automation platform
└─
Other containers in the current stack — all Ryan recommendations
ONGOING
├─ Helped install the SFP+ 10G card on the XPS 8900, bringing it to near-2.5Gb into Proxmox
└─ Still the first call for network and hypervisor troubleshooting when something goes sideways
The packet radio work, AMPRNet coordination, solar monitoring, and all the layers built on top came later —
but none of it would exist without Ryan pointing N9LYA at the right tools and helping get the iron running.
73 de N9LYA — KB8PMY, much appreciated.