The Glorious Plan

At the very beginning of this blog, I promised you, my Adoring Public, a whole library of VM images, configurations, instructions, smarts, goodies, oodles, and whatchamacallits.

Unfortunately, my desktop scream-machine has decided that it no longer likes VMs, and has screaming fits whenever I try to instantiate them.

But a gentleman keeps his promises.

I'm not exactly sure how that applies to me, as I have neither a coat-of-arms nor any landed property -- but whatever.

So there's a bright side to all this: I get to tinker, and you get to watch me do it.

And have I got a plan for you!


Here it is, oh Adoring Public -- the Glorious Plan!

1. Recreate the desktop in all its virginal glory -- make a fresh Windows 7 installation.
   ... but ...
   We'll customize the installation so all those useful little programs -- 7zip, TeraCopy, Steam, ... -- are included in the install!
   
   Which'll save time for what is truly important: Skittles(?!?) tacos and beer.
   
   
2. Create a standard Archlinux VM image.
   
   Ideally, having a standard image will let us rapidly deploy a whole constellation of VMs, and give us more time for important stuff: playing with weird network configurations.
   
   
3. Scrap my existing server, and use the Windows desktop / VM-constellation as the server.
   
   This'll entail a couple of other things:
1. Relocate the desktop to a back room (to be out-of-sight, &c.)
   
   (Especially pertinent as my five-month-old daughter grows up and learns all about pouring juice into things, followed shortly by learning all about the joy of putting out electrical fires ...)
   
2. Put in a lot more storage.
   My desktop has a cool terabyte. Which is awesome for Steam gaming. And lousy for a NAS.
   I want to store my entire music collection! And all my DVDs! And every crappy picture of every middling dessert I've ever looked at!
   And that means I'll need as much storage as I can get -- at least another terabyte.
   
3. Install another Network Interface Card.
   Right now the desktop has an NIC built into the motherboard, which is great.
   
   But we want this machine to eventually provide services to the entire network -- which includes a firewall. And our firewall won't amount to a hill of beans carrots if it can be bypassed. We need to make sure that all network traffic needs to go through the firewall.
   
   
4. ?????
   
   
5. Profit!

Up next: How I Learned to Windows (And So Can You!)