Posts on Mircea Anton

RouterOS as a Whole Homelab: Router, NAS and Apps on a ZimaBoard 2

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I recently put MikroTik’s RouterOS on a ZimaBoard 2 and gave it three jobs at once: router, NAS and application server. No Proxmox, no VMs, just RouterOS running the whole thing. You can watch the YouTube video for the full story and the test results.

This post is the companion to that video. It’s less narrative and more of the actual config, broken down section by section, plus a few things that didn’t make the cut. If you just want the script, you can download it as a .rsc file.

GitOps in the Wild: How we run FluxCD at Raiffeisen Bank

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago I had the pleasure of attending CloudNativeDays Romania, but this year, as opposed to last year, I attended as a speaker instead of a participant. My presentation went well enough that people asked me to post the slides, which, sure, I’ll do, but a PowerPoint by itself feels a bit lonely. So here’s the companion piece: the story behind the slides, in a format that actually makes sense to read.

From Zero to Website in 100 Minutes

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview#

This workshop will guide you through creating, customizing, and deploying your own website using Hugo and GitHub Pages, all within GitHub Codespaces.
By the end, you will have a fully functional website hosted online, built entirely from your browser.

Prerequisites#

A GitHub account (free)
No prior web development experience is required

Everything else will be done using GitHub’s cloud tools, so you will not need to install anything locally.

Setting Up Ceph in My Proxmox Cluster

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re following along with my homelab journey, either here or on the YouTubez, you might know that a few weeks ago I got a new three-node Proxmox cluster up and running.

It’s been great for compute, no complaints there. If a node dies, VMs can restart elsewhere. But only if they were using my NAS for storage.

Any VMs on local storage? Toast if that node dies. VMs on my NAS? Great until the NAS decides to take a nap. Either way, I’ve got single points of failure everywhere, and calling this “highly available” feels like I’m lying to myself.

Getting Started With Mikrotik and Terraform

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I “recently” (like… almost a year ago at this point 😅) upgraded from my DIY OPNsense setup to a MikroTik RB5009. You can watch my YouTube Video for the full story of the why, what and the how.

After much ado and months of procrastination, I’m finally getting started with my Terraform-Mikrotik network automation. This post will not be a full-blown guide or walk-through. Rather, I am just aiming to show you how to:

Terraform: No Backend? No Problem!

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction#

So I’ve been terraforming quite a bit lately. Since migrating from OPNsense to MikroTik, where I began automating my entire network setup, I have actually moved to a new apartment! This has pushed me to rework my entire network configuration, and along the way, I started rethinking how I manage Terraform state.

Traditional State Backends#

One issue I’ve always had with terraform was choosing an appropriate state backend. Granted, this could very well just be a skill issue on my side, but it was an issue nonetheless.
I must (shamefully) admit that most often I’m just using the default local backend, which stores the state file in a local directory.

My Kubernetes Certification Journey

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Back in ‘22 (2022, that is), I decided to challenge myself and get all three Kubernetes certifications within 3 weeks. One week per exam. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure if this was ambitious or just plain stupid, but hey, I pulled it off! Let me walk you through my entire journey, exam by exam, and hopefully save you from some of the pain I went through.

As a junior DevOps engineer with about 1.5 years of experience at the time, I felt reasonably confident going into this challenge. It appears that my confidence was justified for two of the exams, but the third one… well, we’ll get to that.

Doing Secrets The GitOps Way

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Alrighty then, let’s talk GitOps.

I think it’s pretty neat that you can push all your manifests to Git, and just like that, your cluster auto-magically syncs up seamlessly. I also think it’s a bit of a pain to push all manifests to git, since among those manifests lurk some secrets that definitely shouldn’t be out there for the world to see.

In this blog post, alongside a YouTube video I’ve put together, I’m going over one of the solutions that allows me to simply push those secret files to git without worrying about them.

The Best OS For Kubernetes

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re not using Talos Linux for Kubernetes, you’re probably doing it wrong. Read along and let me explain why.

The Relic of the Past#

“Old Ubuntu Being Old” by bomkii

When setting up an on-prem Kubernetes cluster, the usual process involves installing, configuring and hardening a base OS like Ubuntu or RHEL, installing a 3rd party tool to deploy kubernetes and then - finally - deploying Kubernetes. While this approach is not wrong per-se, it has plenty of drawbacks.