CNM Tech Board 2023-12-14

CNM Tech Board 2023-12-14 is the meeting of CNM Technology Board‎ that occurred on December 14th, 2023. The predecessor meeting is CNM Tech Board 2023-11-02; the successor meeting is CNM Tech Board 2023-12-21.

"Old" businesses

All of "old" businesses are related to launch of iDosvid in Kenya in order to make iDosvid pitch real.

Farm-level review

• Task (critical): To review Opplet Infrastructure in order to suggest optimization paths.
• Situation: We have been developing CNM Farms for many years, but have never really optimized it. Over the years, we generated many DNS records that are no longer in use and just generate security vulnerabilities. We also created a few resources that require payments, but no longer produce any value. Gary published expense reports in Bureau Infrastructure, Lab Infrastructure, Campus Infrastructure, and Fed Infrastructure to compare against DNS records, web server files, actual resources, and business needs.
• Action decisions:
  1. Natalia will summarize actual resources to compare against the expenses.
  2. Gary will copy DNS records to analyze.
  3. Natalia will copy web server files to analyze.
  4. We will restructure Campus Infrastructure
  5. We will move Fed Infrastructure into Bureau Infrastructure
  6. We will bring experts aboard to review Bureau Infrastructure

HumHub

• Task (critical): To deliver CNM HumHub as the primary tool for initial engagement with the students.
• Situation: Traditionally, a pair of CNM Moodle and CNM MediaWiki was used for initial engagement with the students. However, both of those tools lack social interaction, particularly, in meeting organizing. CNM HumHub looks like a way better tool. For CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects practice specifically, we have added the "Meetings" module. Kevin planned to suggest the action plan, but he lacks power-user permissions.
• Action decisions:

Recording

• Updates: VM-based recording experiments. 4 cores CPU, 32Gb RAM, 64Gb hard. Natalia to create a kind of instruction, Natalia and Kevin to collaborate
• Discussions: Can we install OBS Studio to VM?
• Plans:

Sandbox MVP

• Task (critical): To define MVP of sandboxes that shall emulate workplaces for the students.
• Situation: We have developed a range of technologies that we can offer our students for practice. However, we don't know at this moment what we shall offer initially and, therefore, what we are missing. Gary developed an initial draft on the Educaship pitch wikipage, but this draft needs reviews.
• Action decisions:
  1. Kevin will review Gary's draft.
  2. Natalia will review Kevin's draft.
  3. If we bring a school tech lady aboard, she may review Natalia's draft.
  4. Based on the latest draft, we will decide the scope of the sandbox MVP.

Wiki

• Task (critical): To move public contents from CNM MediaWiki.
• Situation: CNM MediaWiki no longer satisfies us because of its (a) lack of CNM LDAP integration, so new students cannot access the wiki, and (b) weak mobile-friendly design. We assessed several wiki engines and are ready to make decisions.
• Action decisions:
  1. We shall use CNM Social/CNM HumHub's wiki as our primary vehicle to deliver public contents.
  2. We shall keep XWiki in mind for its possible applications to our development and/or advanced training.
  3. We shall keep Wiki.js in mind for its possible applications to our website development training.
  4. We shall use BookStack as our marketing vehicle for EmployableU Concepts.
  5. We shall continue deploying CNM MediaWiki as our legacy system.
  6. If we build demonstrations for wiki engines, we may utilize BlueSpice.

WordPress

• Task (critical): To position our services on the market.
• Situation: We are getting closer to our MVP, so we can start positioning our services on the market. This may help attract both potential customers and staffers. Natalia set up several CNM WordPress instances.
• Action decisions: Gary will start propagating the setup instances.

Businesses to watch

Advisory committee

Educaship pitch sprint is complete and it is now in beta testing.

Community

Meetings of CNMCyber Community Board were postponed, but we can re-start them to connect with a school teacher. Updates: CNMCyber Community Board, Careerprise bizopp, Educaship pitch, iDosvid pitch, CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects

Jitsi

• Updates: Create an instance on the non-clustered Proxmox, Jitsi bandwidth
• Plans: Gary to reach out to previous applicants
• Discussions:

LMS

• Task (not critical): To provide the learners with a lightweight LMS instance, so they can practice with that, while populating it with the courses. For MVP, we plan to use the wiki as the content delivery platform.
• Situation: CNM Moodle looks like well-suited for CNMCyber Bootcamps, but less appropriate for the first two courses than Canvas LMS. So, Natalia was trying to install it. OpenEdX is, probably, too complex for us for now and, most importantly, for MVP too.
• Actions: Get back to the project when critical tasks are resolved.

Onboarding

• Updates: Joseph, Natalia to check the CNM Lab project
• Discussions: Are we ready to onboard? If no, what else do we need to do?
• Plans:

Proxmox cluster

• Updates: CNM Bureau Farm, Jitsi/Odoo/HumHub, DNS, CNM pfSense, monitoring -- Telegraf + InfluxDB + Grafana, Uptime Kuma, Passbolt, mail server, LDAP, DNS zone, IPv4, what else to do? HA test, alpha testing, DNS
• Discussions: Muhammed, next steps
• Plans:

Proxmox Lab

• CNM Lab Farm

VPN and proxy

• Task (critical): To set up Shadowsocks before the trip.
• Situation: Gary is going to a country with restricted Internet. We practiced with OpenVPN and Outline VPN. At one place, OpenVPN was blocked. Natalia changed the port and the block was lifted. However, at least expedia.com refuses to accept VPN, so we should take a look at Shadowsocks? It is regarded as the best solution to our needs at least here -- https://www.howtogeek.com/802198/vpn-alternatives-what-can-you-use-besides-a-vpn/
• Actions: No additional actions, Gary missed that Shadowsocks works with Outline VPN.

WSO2 IS

• Updates: Natalia to install WSO2 IS on the CNM Lab Farm and try to plug to Opplet, "A" record
• Discussions:
• Plans: After CNM WordPress integration, we will look for contractors to plug in other applications.

"New" businesses

First-priority backlog

1. Mail server: mail.opplet.net, mail.bskol.com, mail.cnmcyber.com,
2. CNM Lab
3. Possibly, get rid of DigitalOcean

Second-priority backlog

1. CNM Tube, livestreaming
2. CNM Lab Farm, non-cluster Proxmox; for VM project -- Ansible; time tracking
3. CNM Campus Farm

Waiting backlog

1. PHP tasks such as CNM MediaWiki beyond CNM LDAP
2. CNM LDAP, LDAP-C contractor
3. Cloudflare