For me it is writting docker compose files describing my services. I like to test them on my machine before pushing them to the server(s). But I guess that’s my own fault for not using something like portainer or even SSHFS.
What’s the most annoying / painful step for you?
Most painful? Guess that depends on your insistence on making it good.
Most painful for me was definitely running shielded cat 6a through my whole house and my ceilings don’t have strapping so getting my ceiling mounted ap’s installed and my AI pickup mics was a nightmare. I ended up cutting a 12 hole in one wall and having to use a 50" drill extension to drill into a floor joist cavity and then carefully and painfully fushing my endoscope through wiring holes for lights etc pulling it around with giant magnets. Took me 3 days to get the one in the kitchen…
But I mapped every pipe, and every wire so thats good.
I ran 6 runs to my office alone because I wanted 6 sets of poe++ lines in my office so I could play with poe circuits on my electronics bench.
Also for the servers I had to install 2 new breakers and run two sets of romex for two 25 anp circuits. And I wall mounted that rack, so that sucked too.
However while my servers are in the garage, my router, fiber modem ,switches etc are under the living room stairs. I wasnt about to run 25+ ethernet lines out to the garage so the garage only has 4.
I rain All my upstairs ethernet out of the attic into the same cavity straight down the side wall of the stairs directly behind our entertainment center and into the under stairs soace behind it. Then into the crawl space for the downstairs stuff and garage.
Wiring stuff, definitely the pain point.
I went with ubiquiti dream machine se, unify, ubiquiti aps, ubiquiti bullet cams, and poe for stuff.
Even my living room lights are poe.