SMB Infrastructure
Overview
Two separate small-business engagements, both with essentially zero budget and no existing infrastructure. The first, paid partly in groceries, came first and proved the approach. It spurred the second: a mixed Windows/Linux environment for a second business, built on the same philosophy but with a wider scope.
The problem
Neither business had any of the basics most infrastructure takes for granted: backups that actually restore, visibility into what’s running, secure remote access, or any monitoring at all. Budget in both cases ruled out new hardware or commercial licensing.
Architecture
First engagement: built on a repurposed 12-year-old HP EliteDesk 800 G1 desktop. Proxmox for virtualization, LXC containers per service, URBackup for bare-metal recovery, Tailscale for encrypted remote access, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring, Wazuh for SIEM-level visibility, Ansible for day-2 operations.
Second engagement: a mixed Windows/Linux environment on spare hardware. CheckMK for monitoring, Ansible for automation, and an offsite immutable backup stack.
Result
Both businesses went from zero infrastructure to backed-up, monitored, remotely-accessible systems, delivered entirely on hardware that was already on hand.
Read the full story
- I Got Paid in Groceries. Here’s What I Built. — the first engagement: backups, monitoring, remote access, and SIEM on a single repurposed desktop.
- Necessity is the mother of invention — the second: a mixed Windows/Linux environment, CheckMK, Ansible, and an offsite immutable backup stack.