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JumpCloud® is a full-suite cloud directory service for central user authentication and access control, as well as system management. Although it’s designed for departmental and enterprise deployments, creative IT administrators put the platform to use in other ways.
System Engineer Faranoosh Ahmadzadagan, for example, uses JumpCloud to manage his home lab cluster. Faranoosh chronicles his home lab experiences in a personal blog, including his experimentation with virtualization.
In one post, he writes: “I might be biased but I don’t believe there’s a replacement for the experience of building, maintaining and troubleshooting your own environment and equipment. Whether you’re a hobbyist or considering a career in IT, home lab can provide a local and cost effective learning and training environment.” This now includes JumpCloud’s Directory-as-a-Service®.
Use Free Account to Test & Tinker
Faranoosh uses JumpCloud’s free offering to tinker with IT management at home. Admins can create an account with up to 10 users and 10 systems and take advantage of the platform’s full functionality for free. This includes not only access control and system management but also system telemetry and event logging — free and premium functionality.
Faranoosh worked his way from a helpdesk technician to a system administrator, and he now works as a system engineer for his company’s platform services team. The free account gives him an opportunity to manage his home lab, as well as trial the product for his company. He’s sought out cloud directory services to avoid the limitations and difficulties that come with a traditional Active Directory® deployment, including the requirement that admins must join machines to the domain to manage them properly.
“I have a home lab with a lot of functionality similar to an enterprise,” Faranoosh said. “In an effort to stay away from Microsoft® proprietary products, as well as hard to set up services such as bare LDAP, I’m trialing JumpCloud.”
Faranoosh uses JumpCloud to establish central authentication for the administration of servers, hypervisors and a firewall system, provide remote access to a friend via a VPN and multi-factor authentication (MFA), and provision and manage two Linux servers. He installed the JumpCloud agent on his two Linux servers, and the agent communicates with JumpCloud, enforces GPO-like Policies, and relays custom commands. In particular, Faranoosh likes that he is able to manage his servers, including restriction of SSH to PKI authentication.
“I find the agent quite useful for Linux servers and the easy management of users and authentication,” he said.
He also appreciates that he could avoid the red tape he would’ve expected to get such a trial.
“The free account gave me a good overview and chance to test freely, as opposed to delays normally caused by approval and/or vetting in a typical enterprise environment.”
Try JumpCloud Free
At JumpCloud, we’re here to serve organizations — and home labs — no matter what challenges they’re up against. Get started with a free account here.
Interested in reading more about Directory-as-a-Service in action? Check out our case study with luxury real estate firm Chase International and IT Manager Justin Price, who implemented JumpCloud and guided the organization through an urgent transition to remote work earlier this year.
