Posts

Learn Containers and Databases at Home with WordPress

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  Learn Containers and Databases at Home with WordPress on a Raspberry Pi or Tiny VM YouTube: https://youtu.be/imKHhUHS_9k One of the best ways to learn modern infrastructure is by building something real. And few projects are better for beginners than running your own  WordPress  site using containers. Why? Because in a single small project, you learn: Containers Docker Databases Networking Infrastructure automation Linux Web applications All from a Raspberry Pi or a tiny VM on your laptop. Even better, you end up with a real working website you can customise, experiment with, and rebuild anytime you want. Why WordPress Is Perfect for Learning WordPress powers a huge portion of the internet. Blogs, business sites, documentation portals, portfolios, and online stores all run on it. But behind the scenes, WordPress is also a fantastic way to understand how modern applications work. A WordPress deployment needs: A web application A database Networking between services ...

Automation Lab with n8n

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  Build Your Own AI Automation Lab with n8n on a Raspberry Pi or Tiny VM YouTube: https://youtu.be/59xIITMvU0k Artificial Intelligence is rapidly moving beyond simple chatbots. The next big shift is  agentic workflows  — systems where AI can: Trigger actions Make decisions Connect tools together Process documents Automate repetitive tasks Interact with APIs and databases That sounds futuristic, but here’s the exciting part: You can start learning all of it today using: A Raspberry Pi 5 Or a tiny Linux VM on your laptop Docker containers And    n8n This setup becomes the perfect foundation for future projects involving: RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) AI agents Local AI tooling Workflow automation Knowledge pipelines And it all starts with one lightweight home lab. Why n8n Is Such a Great Learning Tool n8n is a visual workflow automation platform. Think of it like digital LEGO. You connect blocks together to create workflows: Receive a webhook Read a fi...

Peppermint on a Raspberry Pi or Tiny VM

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  Learn Containers at Home with Peppermint on a Raspberry Pi or Tiny VM YouTube: https://youtu.be/4yYphPc439M Containers can feel intimidating at first. Words like: Docker Compose Volumes Networking Infrastructure-as-code …sound like something reserved for giant cloud companies. But the truth is much more exciting: You can learn modern container technology right at home using a tiny virtual machine, a Raspberry Pi 5, and a beautifully simple application called    Peppermint . And within minutes, you’ll have your own self-hosted ticketing and helpdesk platform running locally in Docker containers. Why Peppermint Is a Great Learning Project Peppermint is a modern open-source helpdesk and issue management platform. Think of it as a lightweight internal support system where you can: Create tickets Track issues Organise tasks Manage requests Explore databases and web applications But the real magic is what happens underneath. Peppermint runs as containers. That means you ...

Build Google’s GKE Microservices Demo Shop on a Raspberry Pi or Tiny VM

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  Build Google’s Microservices Demo Shop on a Raspberry Pi or Tiny VM Matching YouTube: https://youtu.be/cMGQCKA8qwU Original source:  https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/microservices-demo Modern applications rarely live inside a single monolithic server anymore. Instead, they are built from dozens — sometimes hundreds — of tiny services working together. One service handles payments. Another manages products. Another deals with recommendations, shipping, email, or advertisements. This architecture is called  microservices , and one of the best ways to learn it is through Google’s fantastic demo application: Google Cloud Microservices Demo Google designed this project for  Google  cloud platforms like Kubernetes and GKE, but the exciting part is this: You can run the entire thing at home on: A Raspberry Pi 5 A small Linux VM on your laptop Or an old mini PC sitting under your desk And suddenly, you have your own miniature cloud-native application stack ...

Safe Minecraft Server for Your Kids

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  Build a Safe Minecraft Server for Your Kids on a Raspberry Pi or Laptop VM There’s something special about kids building worlds together in  Minecraft . Castles appear overnight, secret underground bases emerge, and entire stories get created one block at a time. But public servers can be overwhelming. Random players, griefing, spam, and unpredictable behaviour can quickly ruin the fun. That’s why running your own local Minecraft server is such a great family project. Instead of opening the game to the internet, you create a small private world where only your child’s friends can join. It’s safer, simpler, and surprisingly easy to build using either: A Raspberry Pi 5 A small virtual machine running on your laptop Or an old spare computer sitting at home Even better, the whole thing can run quietly in the background using Docker and Vagrant. Why Run a Local Minecraft Server? A local server gives you complete control. Your kids can: Play only with friends they know Build toget...

Building Your First Tiny AI Lab: The Basic Requirements

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  Building Your First Tiny AI Lab: The Basic Requirements One of the best things about learning modern infrastructure and AI engineering today is that you no longer need expensive enterprise hardware to get started. You can build a surprisingly capable learning environment using: A Raspberry Pi A normal laptop Free open-source tools A little patience and curiosity This project is designed to teach professional infrastructure concepts in a practical and approachable way. We are not just learning commands. We are building the foundations for: Containers Automation Kubernetes AI infrastructure Platform engineering Home lab clusters Distributed systems And we are doing it on hardware that most people already own. The Goal The long-term goal is to build a lightweight but professional infrastructure platform that eventually scales across multiple Raspberry Pis using: Kubernetes Helm Podman Container workloads AI services But before we get there, we start with something much simpler: A vi...

Building a Tiny Home Lab for Big Tech Skills with Raspberry Pi, Vagrant, and Podman

  Building a Tiny Home Lab for Big Tech Skills with Raspberry Pi, Vagrant, and Podman If you want to learn modern infrastructure, AI platforms, containers, Kubernetes, and cloud-native systems, you do  not need a huge server rack or expensive cloud bills. You can start with: A Raspberry Pi A small laptop A lightweight VM Open-source tools Curiosity That is exactly what this project is about. The goal of this series is to build a  real professional platform , step-by-step, using small and affordable hardware while learning the same concepts used in enterprise environments. We will begin with something simple: Vagrant Podman Podman Compose Apache2 running in a container A basic HTML page Then, over time, we will evolve this into: Multi-container applications Private container registries AI services Monitoring and logging Kubernetes Helm Multi-node Raspberry Pi clusters By the end, you will understand concepts used by companies running massive AI and cloud platforms — but yo...