Scope 🔗The IPA in FreeIPA stands for Identity, Policy, and Authentication. Obviously I use these services, albeit in minimal extent. Also of note, FreeIPA provides DNS and certificate services which may continue to be useful even in an environment devoid of enrolled systems. This post will focus on my FreeIPA deployment as it pertains to the former set of features. Source of Constraint 🔗FreeIPA is the primary constraint that ties me to the Red Hat ecosystem.

In February of this year, I drafted an article called “Act II: Redesign,” as a followup to “Another Year Another Crisis,” criticizing the obsolescence of my network and calling for a redesign around OpenStack. I had every intention of publishing said article in February, however a quick glance at a calendar will reveal it is now June. What happened? Reality sunk in. On February 13th, I ordered two new Precision workstations I could use to spearhead the effort of transitioning my network to OpenStack.

Update, courtesy of Ars Technica: Seems I underestimated Red Hat under IBM. According to Ars Technica, Red Hat has a plan to begin offering free RHEL subscriptions to production deployments of 16 servers or fewer. I stand by my plan to diversify my network, however this means I can spend more time getting familiar with FreeBSD instead of learning Debian. I may deploy some Debian servers in the future, however.