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Deploying Restic on OpenStack Flex with User Data

Restic is an open-source backup tool that focuses on providing secure, efficient, and easy-to-use backups. This blog post will show you how to automatically install and configure Restic on a fresh OpenStack VM using user data (cloud-init).

Here’s what you’ll accomplish:

  1. Install Restic to /usr/local/bin.
  2. Configure a systemd service and timer that runs every 12 hours to back the /home directory.
  3. Store backups in Swift using application credentials.

Running Talos on OpenStack Flex

talos-linux

As developers, we're constantly seeking platforms that streamline our workflows and enhance the performance and reliability of our applications. Talos is a container optimized Linux distribution reimagined for distributed systems. Designed with minimalism and practicality in mind, Talos brings a host of features that are particularly advantageous for OpenStack environments. By stripping away unnecessary components, it embodies minimalism, reducing the attack surface and resource consumption. It comes secure by default, providing out-of-the-box secure configurations that alleviate the need for extensive hardening.

Dealing with SSH MAC Limitations in Modern Systems

Modern SSH configurations can sometimes lead to MAC (Message Authentication Code) limitations when connecting between systems with different client setups. I've recently run into this issue when operating from a Mac and connecting to newer operating systems, like NixOS. These limitations can be frustrating, but they are fixable with minimal effort. This post will show you how to change your SSH client to use an appropriate MAC, even if it's not explicitly allowed in your configuration.

Building NixOS from Another OS to Use as NixOS on OpenStack

A wordy title, but it was fun to write and hammers on "OS;" OpenStack / Operating System. With the release of OpenStack Flex, we have opened up some much needed ease of operation and functionality into our multi-tenant OpenStack platform. One of the many new features in our public cloud is the ability to simply create and manage custom images. In this blog post, we will guide you through creating a NixOS 24.05 QCOW2 image which is cloud ready. We'll use resources found in the nixos-openstack GitHub repository and we'll build all of this from Ubuntu within OpenStack Flex.