The "Geek's Cookbook" is a collection of guides for establishing your own highly-available docker container cluster (swarm). This swarm enables you to run self-hosted services such as GitLab, Plex, NextCloud, etc.

You already have a familiarity with concepts such as virtual machines, Docker containers, LetsEncrypt SSL certificates, databases, and command-line interfaces.

You've probably played with self-hosting some mainstream apps yourself, like Plex, OwnCloud, Wordpress or even SandStorm.

So if you're familiar enough with the tools, and you've done self-hosting before, why would you read this book?

1. You want to upskill. You want to do container orchestration, LetsEncrypt certificates, git collaboration.
2. You want to play. You want a safe sandbox to test new tools, keeping the ones you want and tossing the ones you don't.
3. You want reliability. Once you go from playing with a tool to actually using it, you want it to be available when you need it. Having to "quickly ssh into the host and restart the webserver" doesn't cut it when your wife wants to know why her phone won't sync!

I want your money.

No, seriously (but yes, I do want your money - see below), If the above applies to you, then you're like me. I want everything I wrote above, so I ended up learning all this as I went along. I enjoy it, and I'm good at it. So I created this website, partly to make sure I documented my own setup properly.

I'm also writing it as a formal book, on Leanpub (https://leanpub.com/geeks-cookbook). Buy it for $0.99 (which is really just a token gesture of support) - you can get it for free (in PDF, mobi, or epub format), or pay me what you think it's worth!

See my Patreon page for details!

Need some system design work done? I do freelance consulting - contact me for details.