My fray as a system-administrator started with my curiosity to have a-go and enjoyment of running my server cluster to fulfil my computing and web-hosting needs. I started creating websites almost 20 years ago- when I barely left primary school. Till, then I’ve never looked back. 10 years ago, went into the hobby of server management. Looking back, one of the reasons is to sustain the growth of Shaunchng.com from a free geocities-hosted website of the mid-90s to one which had out-grown it’s shared web-hosting 6 years ago and running on its own dedicated server, managed by yours truly.
Technically, running server clusters in datacenters is not one you call a typical mainstream hobby, but the enjoyment of managing a website from the hardware bare-metal back-end perspective to the content frontend delivery has taught me plenty of managing servers over a whole range of open and closed operating systems, as well as hardware platforms. I am a Mechanical Engineer by profession, by Computer Engineer by accident through these experiences in server management, which brings about hardware and software design, load optimisation and security. I’ve alsocustom built-servers for various needs.
The digital infrastructure I’ve created over the years allowed me to web-host a couple of project websites for friends, relatives, as well as serve as a render farm for complex render/computational power on-demand for my developmental projects. I’ve moved away from offering public web-hosting as a business given the lack of time for the commitment, and moved to supporting closed web development with people within my close circle of developers. These developmental environments also allowed me to test and develop various security suites when setting up environments for testing and testing vulnerabilities.
The site is definitely here to stay. I’ve not mentioned these milestones previously given University and work commitments over the past year, so I guess it’s never too late to do a reflection of what the site it is today.
