Published on : 2025-08-04 16:40
       
       They said running a homelab was a fun hobby. They didn’t tell me 
       it would turn into a full-time job involving power engineering, 
       DNS sorcery, and the occasional battle with an ancient USB cable. 
       But here we are.
       
        - ⚡ NUT + UPS + Docker = Apocalypse-Proof?
       
       My setup looks like this:
       
        * One humble APC UPS (aka The Battery Brick of Destiny)
        * A Dockerized NUT (Network UPS Tools) server running on Alpine, 
       because I like pain and tiny images
        * NUT clients checking UPS status with upsc, like obedient little 
       penguins
        * Logic to gracefully shut down services when the battery dips 
       below "oh no" levels
       
       Extras:
       
        * Ping tests to check if my nodes are alive or just lazy
        * Wake-on-LAN packets to yell at lazy nodes
        * Gotify for shouting notifications to my phone like a panicked 
       toddler
       
       The idea? If the grid fails, my cluster becomes a polite gentleman:
       it warns everyone, saves its work, and lies down until the lights 
       return.
       
       And it worked! ... until yesterday. My internet went down for more 
       than 3 hours. (Not that I have a lot of traffic and everybody 
       noticed that my sava.rocks services were down).
       
        - 🚫 The Unexpected Boss Fight: Internet Outage
       
       Power stayed on. But the internet died.
       
       Suddenly, my proud little cluster — which survived power chaos 
       like a champ — sat idle, confused, alone, unable to resolve even 
       a simple DNS query.
       
       It was like watching a bodybuilder forget how to open a peanut jar.
       
       Why? Because while I protected against power failure, I forgot 
       the other lifeblood of modern homelabs: connectivity.
       
       Without internet:
       
        * My Gotify alerts went nowhere.
        * DNS? Nah. Local resolution was so last week.
        * My cluster, once mighty, was now just a blinking box of 
       existential dread.
       
        - 📶 Time for Plan B: A Bucket of Wireless Internet
       
       I needed a backup connection. A plan. A dream.
       
       So, what counts as emergency internet?
       
        * A 4G/LTE modem stuffed into the router like a digital EpiPen
        * Tethering from an old Android phone named "HotspotOfLastResort"
        * A Raspberry Pi that screams "INTERNET DOWN!" via text-to-speech
       
       Okay, maybe not the last one. (Or maybe yes.)
       
       Even better: bake internet monitoring into my NUT logic:
       
           if ! ping -c1 1.1.1.1; then
           send_gotify "Internet down. Releasing the backup modem kraken"
           fi
       
        - 🌐 But Wait — What About the Domain?
       
       Keeping your services online isn't just about having internet. 
       It's about being reachable. So I needed to fix DNS too.
       
        - 🌀 Option 1: Dynamic DNS Like It’s 2009
       
        * Use DuckDNS or similar to point my-cool-cluster.duckdns.org at 
       whichever IP is online
        * Set up your router or a script to update the DNS record when 
       the connection flips from "cable" to "we found Wi-Fi in the 
       neighbor's mailbox"
        * Bonus: add a cron job that checks if your LTE IP changed, and 
       sighs loudly when it does
       
        -  🧠 Option 2: Fancy DNS Failover
       
        * Use a DNS provider with health checks like Route 53, Bunny, 
       or Cloudflare
        * Set up two A records — one for your main line, one for backup
        * If the main IP dies, the provider swaps to LTE like a digital 
       stunt double
        * Downsides: sometimes DNS propagation is slow enough to brew 
       coffee between flips
       
        -  🛠️ Option 3: Self-Hosted DNS With Control Issues
       
        * Run `CoreDNS` or `dnsmasq` in your cluster
        * Teach it to serve different IPs depending on ping tests, 
       rituals, or moon phases
        * Will it work? Yes. Will it break in hilarious ways? Also yes.
       
        - 📚 Takeaways From My Internet Faceplant
       
        * ⚡ Power is just one piece of the uptime puzzle.
        * 🌍 Internet is the other piece. Sometimes the bigger one.
        * 🧩 DNS is the glue holding everything together - or exploding 
       spectacularly.
       
       My cluster lived through a lot of power blackouts like a stoic 
       wizard. But a simple internet outage turned it into a confused 
       puppy.
       
        - 🔮 What’s Next?
       
       I'm now working on:
       
        * A fully automatic failover to LTE
        * Smarter DNS routing that doesn’t require divine intervention
        * Possibly duct-taping a Starlink antenna to a drone ...
       if I get a drone :)
       
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