Is it normal for books to have version bumps? Traditionally, we call them "editions," but this thing has a Git repo, a changelog, and branches. So versioning feels correct. And less than year since initial publication, THA is ready to jump to version 2.0.0. I'm really excited about it.
You can grab your copy of The Homelab Almanac right here!
What's New in v2.0.0
I know it sounds like a complete rewrite. It isn't. In truth, the first go-round did most things pretty well! But following Semantic Versioning standards, I had to bump to v2 because there are some breaking changes in the flow of the book and the resources it uses.
But let me start with what isn't new. Every single word in the book, every single line of code in the Seclab repo, was written by people. Mostly me, with a PR here or there from some great folks. But people. Not generative models. TTI will stand firm against the tide of generative dreck to ensure you receive quality, human-crafted educational material.
In addition to several bug fixes, perhaps the biggest material change is a transition to a different Terraform provider. The "official" provider was in such a state of flux, it became ultimately unusable. I've switched to a much more capable one, that hopefully will be a lot more stable. Every single Terraform plan in the lab has been tested against the latest Proxmox build.
Also new in v2: a brand new way of connecting to your lab, using Wireguard instead of port forwarding. Not only does this technique open countless networking possibilities for your lab, it invites you to get your hands dirty with Wireguard itself, rather than relying on one of the "helper" utilities out there. Don't get me wrong; they're great, but this book is about learning how things work. Let's do it the hard way first, so we know we can trust the easy way later.
A brand new deployment is available as well: Velociraptor! A crowd favorite IR tool is now included for use in the Malware Lab—or anywhere else you want to deploy it. Take the time to get to know this indispensable incident response tool.
I almost forgot my favorite part: the offline version of the book is truly offline. No more needing to stand up an ad-hoc webserver. What you get is simple linked HTML, viewable right in a folder. It even looks pretty good.
There are lots more subtle changes, but suffice it to say: v2.0.0 is intended to be smoother and clearer, making your homelab journey that much more enjoyable. I hope you have as much fun building the lab as I did writing the book.
- MT
Important Notes
Hey thanks for reading this far! If you're new to THA you can use code ALMANACV250 to get 50% off the purchase price until the end of May. If you have already purchased THA, you already own v2. Just go back to the Digital Downloads section of TTI and redownload your purchase. It'll be the new version!