5 articles in the notebook
After reinstalling Windows Server 2012 R2 your Storage Spaces don't show up — not even in Computer Management. The fix: authorize the server for read-write and re-attach the virtual disks, via GUI or PowerShell.
OwnCloud is a free personal Dropbox alternative where your server sets the storage limit. It didn't work perfectly out of the box on Windows, so here is the full setup guide with the fixes I needed.
Windows can mount WebDAV shares as drives, but refuses basic auth by default — and getting Apache to serve digest auth that Windows accepts took some troubleshooting. The working setup, documented.
Active Directory lets NTDS, NTFrs and NetLogon pick random ports, which makes firewalling a domain controller a pain. Here is how to pin them to fixed ports and finally enable the firewall.
Varnish claims to be "10 times faster than squid" but isn't built to be a general internet proxy — so I chained it with Squid on a Debian box for my cable modem. The full setup, step by step.