Starting this week we're beginning a new series I'd like to call the Thursday Thinkpiece. Some things that have been noodling around in my brain for some time with some of it fit to print.

For over a decade, Plex was the main gateway into home media servers for tech enthusiasts, DIYers, and homelabbers alike. If you're unfamiliar with it, think of Plex as your own private, self-hosted Netflix or Spotify. You don't need an expensive server rack or a dedicated lab to run it: you can easily install the server software on an old spare laptop, an unused desktop PC, a simple NAS, or even an external hard drive plugged into a Raspberry Pi holding your personal movie, TV show, and music files. Plex then automatically organizes your libraries, pulls in poster artwork and movie details, and streams your content seamlessly across a huge range of devices. Whether on LG webOS, Samsung Tizen, Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, iOS, Android, or game consoles, Plex made it insanely easy for anyone in the house to log in and watch or listen to their content instantly.

My own media streaming journey actually started way back in late 2002 / 2003 with the early days of XBMC (Xbox Media Center) running on the original modded Xbox console. Back then, managing a home media center meant spending endless hours manually scraping artwork, tweaking NFO files, and messing around with XML settings. But as life got busier, I simply didn't have the time to go deep into the metadata side of things anymore. That's when I switched to Plex, because it just worked straight out of the box without a lot of messing around.

Having relied on Plex for years after making that transition from XBMC, I bought a Lifetime Plex Pass for $74.99 USD (~£54 GBP) during a sale in February 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic lockdowns. Being stuck at home meant spending a lot more time refining my at-home services, and that era became the turning point where I truly threw myself into self-hosting and expanded my setup. Buying the lifetime pass felt right: it was a way of giving back to a project that kept my household entertainment running smoothly after years of free use, while also unlocking Plex Pass features like hardware-accelerated GPU transcoding, mobile sync, and intro skipping.

But over the last few years, the atmosphere surrounding Plex has shifted. The software has experienced a slow shift toward corporate creep (or "enshittification"), where a company slowly prioritizes corporate deals and advertising over its original core users.

As a long-time self-hoster who values complete control over my hardware and setup, watching this change has been an eye-opening lesson in tech ownership. It shows why it may be time to move to Jellyfin for true system freedom, while also examining the open-source reality of what it takes to support community alternatives long-term.

1. From Personal Server to Ad-Supported Distributor

Plex’s core business model has pivoted. Originally, they sold server software via the Plex Pass. Today, Plex’s main focus is becoming a centralized, ad-supported free streaming service (competing with PlutoTV or Tubi) backed by major studio licensing deals.

To be fair, sponsored content and Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) channels are great for casual viewers who don't host their own media. Having free movies and live channels available out-of-the-box adds genuine convenience for millions of users. However, these commercial content deals have subtly shifted Plex's focus away from its original mission: serving your own personal media seamlessly.

Open the default Plex app on a new device today, and your personal server’s libraries are buried. Instead, the home screen's populated by Plex’s own free ad-supported movies, sponsored TV channels, and commercial rows. While you can hide these in the settings, the fact that a self-hosted server defaults to pushing external ad-supported media shows where Plex’s engineering priorities and corporate revenue now lie.

Studio Pressure & Corporate Alignment: Crackdowns and Remote Watch Passes

As Plex partnered with major Hollywood studios to license free streaming content, corporate pressure mounted to clean up its platform and align with commercial streaming standards:

• The Commercial Host Crackdown: Plex began aggressively targeting accounts selling access to commercial Plex servers. This escalated into blanket bans on major cloud hosting providers (like banning entire Hetzner and OVH server IP ranges) and purging accounts tied to paid library sharing. While stopping illegal server sales makes sense legally, banning entire data center IP ranges also hurt regular homelabbers who simply hosted their own private servers off-site.

• Subscription Gating & Remote Watch Passes: To satisfy content partners and monetize out-of-home viewers, Plex introduced new subscription friction like Remote Watch Passes (requiring remote viewers or server owners to pay for out-of-home playback) while tightening how Lifetime Plex Pass benefits apply across shared accounts. What was once seamless, open sharing among family has increasingly been restructured into gated corporate tiers.

2. The Centralized Authentication Trap

From a system control standpoint, Plex has a single point of failure that breaks the fundamental promise of owning your server: Centralized Authentication.

When you log in to your Plex server, you don't authenticate locally against your host database. Instead, your app redirects to Plex.tv to log in via their central servers, which then sends a key back to unlock access to your local hardware.

• The Outage Risk: Recurring authentication outages tracked on Status.Plex.tv, as well as major incidents covered by high-authority tech publications like BleepingComputer and How-To Geek, have showed just how risky this setup is. When Plex's cloud infrastructure experiences downtime or DNS disruptions, thousands of users worldwide (including paying Plex Pass subscribers) find themselves locked out of their own local servers sitting right in their living rooms, unable to stream local files unless they've already set up offline network settings in advance.

• The Data Collection Concern: Every time a user opens your Plex app, they're talking to Plex's central servers. Plex collects data on when you watch, what device you stream on, and what items exist in your watchlists.

Compare this to Jellyfin: authentication's 100% local. Your Jellyfin server is an independent, self-contained unit. If the internet connection drops or central servers fail, your local login and local streaming remain completely unaffected. You're retaining total freedom over your own hardware.

3. Scope Creep and Feature Churn: Improved Downloads vs. Deprecated Features

Plex's feature development roadmap has been a mixed bag of great technical fixes alongside frustrating feature removals:

• The Good: Mobile Downloads Finally Work: To Plex's credit, core features like Mobile Downloads (Sync), which were notoriously buggy and unreliable for years, have recently seen dedicated engineering focus and now work vastly better and more reliably across iOS and Android devices.

• The Bad: Deprecated Features Like Watch Together: Conversely, users frequently face the frustration of beloved features being pulled out from under them. Features like Watch Together, which became an essential lifeline during the pandemic for synchronized remote viewing with friends and family, have been phased out or removed, leaving long-time users disappointed when tools they relied on disappear.

• Social Additions: Meanwhile, features like Plex Discover (which directs users to commercial streaming services) and Social Activity Feeds pull engineering attention toward engagement metrics and data collection, further drifting away from the core mission of managing personal local media.

4. The Open-Source Response: Why Jellyfin Wins (And My Recommendation for Newcomers)

This corporate shift is exactly why Jellyfin (forked from Emby when Emby went closed-source in 2018) won the hearts of the homelab community.

I've spun up Jellyfin in my own homelab alongside Plex to test its performance, client apps, and local reliability. Jellyfin is built on a simple, refreshing premise: It's your server, your media, and your data.

• No Central Account: You don't register an account with a central server. User accounts are created locally on your hardware.

• Zero Tracking: There aren't any corporate tracking metrics, ad rows, or forced discoverability features.

• Free Native Hardware Transcoding: Premium features that Plex charges for (like GPU hardware transcoding for smooth playback) are completely free in Jellyfin.

The Client Ecosystem Trade-Off: Corporate Standard vs. Scattered Community Apps

A realistic comparison between the two platforms also comes down to client availability and app stability:

• Plex's Unbeatable Reach: Because Plex operates as a commercial company with dedicated app development teams, they maintain rock-solid native apps across virtually every Smart TV app store worldwide (LG webOS, Samsung Tizen, Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, PlayStation, Xbox). Non-technical family members can download the app and start watching instantly without tinkering.

• Jellyfin's Scattered Client Reality: Jellyfin has client apps (such as Android TV, Swiftfin for iOS/Apple TV, Roku, and web interfaces), but because there isn't a single company managing them, client development is split across separate volunteer projects. As a result, apps aren't always rock-solid or feature-complete on every screen. A video file that plays smoothly on Android TV might crash on a Smart TV app wrapper, and native apps aren't always easily available on older TV app stores.

My Advice for Newcomers: If you're getting into self-hosting today and building your first home server, I strongly suggest starting with Jellyfin. You avoid corporate bloat, mandatory cloud logins, and paywalled features right out of the box; just keep in mind which TV devices your household uses.

5. The Open-Source Reality Check: Burnout, Governance, and the July 2026 Leadership Shakeup

While Jellyfin represents the gold standard for true system control and personal freedom, open source isn't immune to crises of its own.

In July 2026, the Jellyfin project experienced a massive leadership transition when several core maintainers, including Project Leader Joshua Boniface, Core Team Member Anthony Lavado, and Co-founder Andrew Rabert, announced their departures within days of each other.

This high-profile exit highlighted a growing challenge across open-source software:

1. Maintainer Burnout: Supporting millions of users as an unpaid side project takes a heavy mental toll.

2. Unrealistic Expectations: As homelab setups grow in popularity, volunteer developers increasingly face demanding end-user expectations, with users expecting unpaid volunteers to act like 24/7 paid support teams.

3. The AI-Generated PR Deluge: Modern maintainers face a flood of low-quality, AI-generated code submissions that clutter issue trackers, forcing maintainers to spend hours auditing unverified code instead of building features.

This news is an important reality check for homelabbers. When proprietary platforms like Plex restrict system freedom, we turn to open-source alternatives. But open source only survives if the community actively supports it.

6. Early Adopter Reality: Why I Still Use Plex (And Why I Run Jellyfin in Parallel)

Looking at both sides of the coin reveals an important truth: self-hosting isn't an all-or-nothing choice.

As an early adopter who built my setup around Plex over nearly a decade, I still use Plex every single day. For an existing setup that's running smoothly, the classic homelab rule applies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I've set up Jellyfin myself alongside Plex in my homelab, and I run both servers in parallel. I follow Jellyfin's development closely, and one day, when the client app ecosystem and project maturity reach the right point, I may very well flick the switch and migrate 100%. But full migration isn't for me just yet; Plex remains my primary daily driver.

This sentiment shift isn't unique to my homelab either. Even Linus Sebastian from Linus Tech Tips (LTT), historically one of Plex's biggest supporters online, slowly started complaining more about Plex's trajectory. On The WAN Show and LTT videos, Linus voiced growing frustration over cloud authentication lockouts, corporate pivots, and software bloat. Eventually, Linus Tech Tips went on to produce dedicated video content showcasing open-source alternatives like Jellyfin, showing how widespread the desire for self-hosted alternatives has become across tech culture.

When I bought my Lifetime Plex Pass back in February 2021 for $74.99 (~£54 GBP), the math made complete sense. Over the last 5.5 years (roughly 66 months of continuous daily use), that initial purchase works out to just ~£9.80 per year (or roughly 82p / $1.13 per month).

And chief among the tools justifying that purchase is Plexamp.

Plexamp is an absolute masterpiece of audio engineering. By self-hosting my music collection and streaming it via Plexamp, whether listening on mobile devices, home audio systems, or in the car via Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, I was able to completely stop paying for monthly subscriptions to Spotify and Amazon Music.

At ~£10.99/month ($11.99/month) for a commercial music streaming subscription, Plexamp paid for my Lifetime Pass within five months. Over 5.5 years, it's saved me well over £700 ($900) in recurring music streaming bills.

To Plex's credit, they've been remarkably good at adding value to the Lifetime Pass over the years, rolling out tools like Plexamp, intro skipping, hardware transcoding, and mobile downloads without asking early pass holders for another penny. Even if Plex eventually alters its terms down the road, I've undoubtedly gotten my money's worth out of that $75 purchase, and many other long-time users feel the exact same way.

But it raises a bigger question for the tech industry: Is a one-time lifetime license model actually sustainable long-term?

History shows how rare it is for tech companies to honor lifetime promises forever as cloud infrastructure costs and investor pressures grow. Major tech media coverage highlights how lifetime deals have been altered or revoked across the industry before:

• TiVo: Sold popular "Lifetime Service" passes for DVRs, but as reported by The Verge, TiVo eventually phased out hardware lines, shut down guide data servers, and left legacy devices non-functional.

• SiriusXM: Sold $500 "Lifetime" satellite radio subscriptions, but restricted device transfers and added hidden fees, resulting in a major nationwide class-action lawsuit detailed by Courthouse News.

• LogMeIn: Famously eliminated its popular "free for life" remote access tier with just seven days' notice to force users onto paid plans, as covered by TechCrunch.

• Evernote & Malwarebytes: Malwarebytes grandfathered early lifetime keys before shifting strictly to annual plans, while Evernote stripped features out of legacy accounts to push users into new paid tiers, as reported by The Verge.

The MRR Trap: Can Chasing Subscriptions Go On Forever?

In today's software landscape, both solo developers and massive tech corporations are hyper-focused on securing Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). To chase predictable recurring cash flow, companies increasingly rely on sneaky tactics: locking existing local features behind paywalls, adding unexpected subscription gates, and quietly changing terms of service to turn one-time buyers into permanent renters.

It raises a critical question for both creators and consumers: Can this endless pursuit of MRR through sneaky tactics really go on forever? When software transitions from serving users to extracting monthly rent for hardware sitting in your own living room, it creates a deep trust deficit that drives users straight to open-source alternatives.

When a company realizes one-time lifetime payments can't fund perpetual development and server hosting, they inevitably pivot toward ad networks, locked feature tiers, or price hikes, which is precisely what we're watching unfold with Plex today.

The Problem Today: Huge Price Increases & Eroding Value

However, what made financial sense in 2021 looks completely unrecognizable today. Historically, prospective homelabbers knew they could rely on Plex's regular annual sales events, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, February anniversary sales, Pro Days, or targeted email promo codes offering lifetime passes for $75 to $90.

For years, standard community advice for newcomers was simple: "Just hold off and wait for the Black Friday sale."

Many users held off for months or years expecting those familiar discounts to return. But people were caught completely off-guard when Plex silently ended those sales events and instead hit the community with massive price hikes, covered across major tech media outlets like AppleInsider and official Plex Pass documentation:

• The Lifetime Pass: Historically $119.99 USD (and $75–$90 during sales), Plex first increased it to $249.99, before skyrocketing the Lifetime Plex Pass to an eye-watering $749.99 USD (~£595+ GBP) in July 2026.

• New 5-Year Tier: Alongside the $750 lifetime price tag, Plex introduced a 5-Year Pass at $249.99 USD, effectively shifting what was once a true lifetime purchase into an expensive multi-year subscription cycle.

• The Monthly Alternative: Granted, you don't have to pay $750 up-front, as Plex still offers a monthly subscription at $6.99 / £6.99 per month.

But that brings us to a fundamental question for self-hosters: Should you really have to pay a recurring monthly rent to a third-party company just to access and unlock features (like GPU hardware transcoding) on hardware you bought and own in your own home?

Asking a new user to pay $750 up-front (or shell out $6.99 every single month indefinitely) for software that increasingly buries your personal media below ad-supported FAST channels, pushes commercial studio content, and locks your local server out during cloud authentication outages feels really hard to justify. When Jellyfin provides native GPU hardware transcoding, local multi-user auth, and full media streaming for $0, the reason to buy into Plex today just isn't there anymore for anyone starting fresh.

The Pragmatic Verdict: Complete System Freedom & Active Stewardship

The debate between Plex and Jellyfin isn't about rigid tech dogma; it's about practical utility and freedom.

• If you're starting out today: Go with Jellyfin. It gives you total control over your hardware without cloud gatekeeping or corporate ad clutter.

• If you're a long-time Plex Pass user: There's zero shame in keeping Plex as your daily driver while running Jellyfin alongside it in your home setup. Running both in parallel lets you enjoy tools like Plexamp today while positioning your infrastructure to flick the switch over completely when Jellyfin reaches full client maturity.

However, we can't treat open-source projects as "free enterprise software." If we want alternatives like Jellyfin to thrive alongside commercial tools, tech enthusiasts, DIYers and homelabbers must actively contribute back, whether through financial sponsorship, documentation improvements, code reviews, or setting healthy community boundaries. If you enjoy using Jellyfin or want to help the maintainers out, consider donating to the Jellyfin project to help support ongoing development and infrastructure.

At the end of the day, I really like Plex, and to be clear, Plex isn't evil. They're walking a tough corporate tightrope, trying to serve millions of different users while remaining as legally compliant as possible with major Hollywood studios and copyright regulations.

Managing a commercial business at that scale is no easy feat, and Plex may very well surprise us all down the road as they continue evolving. I've used Plex for a decade, and I'll continue using it as my primary daily driver alongside Jellyfin.

But open-source projects like Jellyfin still deserve their flowers. Having a robust, community-driven alternative is vital for healthy competition overall: keeping commercial platforms honest, preventing total vendor lock-in and guaranteeing that tech enthusiasts always have a path to complete system freedom.

Virtualization lets you use a single piece of hardware's resources to act like several different pieces of physical hardware e.g one physical server acting like 5 smaller virtual servers.

Confusing yes but also very useful.

Virtual machines can be run inside an operating system like Windows using something like Oracle Virtualbox.

Virtualbox let's you run these VMs alongside your normal programs when you need to but you can run into performance and compatibility issues.

The more efficient way to do this is through a Bare Metal Hypervisor like Esxi. This allows you manage your resources and virtual machines more effectively without all the extra bloat of a full OS.

Plus it's a bit closer to how this would work in a real production server environment.

Why Esxi?

The vSphere Hypervisor (Esxi) from VM Ware is a Bare Metal Hypervisor that is installed onto a physical server. Once installed this is used instead of an OS like Windows and allows you to run multiple Virtual Machines on a single piece of server hardware.

https://www.vmware.com/uk/products/esxi-and-esx.html

The software has a simple Management web dashboard that you can connect to from a browser, with quick access to all of your VMs. You can start, stop, copy, monitor, troubleshoot and edit them as you need all in one place.

The real pull though is that you used to be able to get perpetual licenses for free to try out the software. It's closed source and so you have to go to Esxi for your updates directly.

This lets anybody run a single Esxi host without all of the more advanced options that that are only available with the more expensive paid licenses in V-Sphere.

If you want to cluster your hosts for High Availability failover or to share those resources between hosts you'll need one of those paid licenses.

I was able to get hands on experience in my own home lab with the free VM Ware evaluation licence myself. Playing around with this, I was able to then use those skills in my day-to-day job through practice outside it.

Why the need to change?

Well, since the purchase of VMWare as a whole by Broadcom many ways in which the software is licensed and sold is being revised.

There's panic that prices will now start to sky-rocket for licenses to use Esxi in businesses by the new owners of VM Ware.

Broadcom have stated they have plans to deal directly with their top 2000 VM Ware Customers thus pivoting away from just releasing updates for everyone.

Things are still are still in flux around the topic but I like any excuse to try out new software. I'm now looking at the other options that would work for me.

I'd like to try and use something that would be used in an Enterprise environment so I can learn at home to use as work.

With that in mind I've narrowed my picks down to just 3 choices

Proxmox

First up, it's Proxmox and probably the one you've most likely already heard of.

https://www.proxmox.com/

I built my current Esxi host in March 2023 moved over from another host pretty much starting from scratch. At the time I looked into Proxmox but couldn't really see this being used in businesses.

Delving deeper they do actually have an Enterprise license but being based in Europe might be a bit of a barrier for those companies in the states when it comes to that support.

The main benefits for me are:

• Open-Source and Free for Personal Use

• Linux Based System (It's just Debian and I like a bit of Debian)

• Container support built in

• Lots of Community online support in Guides, Forums, other users

• Great looking Web Dashboard Interface built in

• Simple and free way to cluster the hosts

• Simple way to schedule and perform backups

• Live migrations of running VMs

• Can be set up with High-Availability for failover and redundancy

The main cons for me are:

• Enterprise support could be tricky due to time difference

• Proxmox can take a little time to learn for specific functions

• Nested virtualization can be an issue e.g. Hyper V in a VM

• Potential issues with passing through graphics cards

XCP-NG

This is the one that really caught my eye as it looked the most like Esxi and the project seemed to be based on Citrix XenServer.

https://xcp-ng.org/

Released in March 2018 after a successful KickStarter by the original founder of Xen Orchestra, Oliver Lambert. It's built off the base of several different Linux Distributions including CentOS and other tech stacks.

It's slightly different in that you need to have a running VM or somewhere else on the network to run it's Management dashboard software called Xen Orchestra.

https://xen-orchestra.com/

The main benefits for me are:

• Open-Source and Free for Personal Use

• Linux Based System

• Container support built in

• Lots of Community online support in Guides, Forums, other users

• Great looking Web Dashboard Interface To Manage Many Hosts

• Simple and free way to cluster the hosts

• Nested Virtualization works

• Simple way to schedule and perform backups

• Live Migrations of running VMs

• Big install and user base

• Great Enterprise support packages

The main cons for me are:

• Not a big fan of having to use a VM on the machine for the Xen Orchestra Management dashboard

• The GUI doesn't have much information in default overviews

• Uses yum for packages instead of apt which I would need to learn

VM Ware Esxi

In a shock twist, I actually made Esxi my third choice.

I've managed to keep the current Esxi host on an old Dell XPS 8930 Desktop running for 188 continuous days without a reboot before I had a powercut due to a flood.

I'm already very familiar with it and in my opinion with the some customers getting multi-year renewals means there will still be people using this for years to come.

The main benefits for me are:

• Free for Personal Use

• Container support built in

• Lots of Community online support in Guides, Forums, other users

• Great looking Web Dashboard Interface In Built to manager VMs

• Nested Virtualization works

• Big install and user base

• Great Enterprise support packages if you pay for them

The main cons for me are:

• Getting an evaluation license for new installs is now almost impossible

• Enterprise support renewals could be tricky now moving forwards

• Potential issues with passing through graphics cards

• No more patches for free license users

• What other surprises may come from Broadcom

• Will customers reject the new pricing scheme making it obsolete

• Closed source so development is only done by the VM Ware Team

Closing Thoughts

Now, for those who've just built an Esxi box for the first time.

First, up well done, that wasn't an easy install and I don't think there's really any rush to move to something else just yet.

For me, I'll be staying on my single Esxi host for a little while longer while I weigh up the options.

I'm also interested to see what else I've missed before I take the plunge.

Esxi has worked for me till now and sometimes if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Don't forget to explore the rest of our website as we build out more content.

https://reprodev.com

Stay tuned for more tutorials, tips, and tricks to help you make tech work for you.

If you want to stay up-to-date with regular updates, make sure to subscribe to our free mailing list.

That little padlock in the address bar that makes sure the traffic is trusted, encrypted and going through a HTTPS connection.

About a year ago, I was given my first real SSL renewals from a Certificate Authority like GoDaddy to look at. Even though I was very new to the implementation, I had a rough idea of the execution.

Up until now I'd only used Letsencypt Certificates with ACME servers where most it was just automated and in Linux so this was all kind of new.

I learnt that most production SSL certs are bought and renewed every year after Apple stopped accepting 2 year certs a few years ago.

https://www.digicert.com/faq/public-trust-and-certificates/how-long-are-tls-ssl-certificate-validity-periods

Everything was going fine doing these requests while doing Windows IIS Server CSR requests inside of Windows Server but then I came up against a new challenge where there wasn't an IIS server present.

I had been given a introduction and some guidance to getting OpenSSL installed on my work laptop but for some reason whenever I tried to use the same commands as my colleagues it just wouldn't work for me.

I got him to do it for me this time and thought it was so rare I shouldn't have to worry about it. Then it happened again this time for a wildcard certificate and without I was under a bit of tighter deadline than I usually was.

The engineer in me decided that I needed to have a solution to this issue and had by this time already removed all traces of that previous installation from my device.

I span up a Windows Development 11 machine in Hyper-V with 2GB of Ram and started following the a newer guide from AdamTheAutomator for the prerequisites, again this time keeping everything installed and configured in the VM.

I finally had a good way of doing these on a machine that was available to me whenever I needed but the CSR process and private key generation were still a bit fiddly especially if I mistyped one of the details.

I decided I needed to design a GUI for this as I know had all of the working lines of code for this.

Introducing PowerCSR GUI Tool

his GUI tool designed and running in Powershell will let you use a machine that has OpenSSL and the environmental variables set correctly to generate CSRs and Private Keys in a much easier way.

I tested this out on my own machine first with some dummy certificates and information to see if they worked and they did.

You will need to have your Powershell Execution Policy set to Unrestricted and let it Run Once for now.

• Make sure you have OpenSSL installed with the correct Environmental Variables (https://adamtheautomator.com/openssl-windows-10/)

• Download the PS1 file to a folder of your choice on your Windows machine from the GitHub Repo (https://github.com/reprodev/PowerCSR/)

• Run with Powershell (Make sure you have your Powershell Execution Policy set to Unrestricted)

• Enter the name of the domain that you need to secure and the other details like Organization and Organizational Unit (No need to fill out every line if not needed)

• Click Generate CSR

• This generates the mycsr.csr (CSR text file) and mykey.key (Private key) in the same folder that you ran this in. Make sure that you copy these somewhere else before you generate again.

• If you want to check this file is correct before submitting to a CA then you can check this txt file by pasting in an online CSR decoder like https://www.sslshopper.com/csr-decoder.html

You can then use this to request and validate the certificate for use on your services e.g. a website from the usual SSL places like GoDaddy.

Optional: As an added bonus you can also add a password to generated files with inbuilt error checking to make sure you can't generate one until these passwords match.

This has reduced my frustration when it comes to doing these and I can definitely suggest using it to bring down your overall SSL stress level.

This first release is to makes sure that the underlying logic works and that it's actually production ready for more features to be added.

I would also like to spin off exporting and combining validated certificate files to create a PFX file to be imported into IIS Servers and other devices that may need a new SSL cert.

This small step into the world of SSL Certificates is definitely one that I've enjoyed.

Check out https://reprodev.com for more guides, tutorials and self hosted tips.

For more code examples and ongoing projects you can tap into my Github

https://github.com/reprodev

Many of you reading this blog may work in the IT industry in some way or may be trying to break into it.

I was always advised to get certifications but wasn't too interested in doing work outside of work to do only do more work.

I knew enough to get by and was the technical go to guy for everyone. I could usually work out systems pretty quickly once given a bit of documentation, guidance or just working it out.

I sometimes had the technical knowledge in early roles to resolve complicated issues but not having any certifications would cut me out of the conversation.

I was stuck between First Line and Second Line support but wasn't going to let that be where my career ended.

I remained determined to learn the ins and outs of Windows Server at home on a janky old laptop to learn Active Directory. I learnt about GPOs and File Permissions but knew that at some point I'd have to make this knowledge a bit more legit.

Fast-forward a few years with remote roles from home and being in the pandemic, I had a bit more chance to get creative with scripting. I learnt Powershell to do some very basic Mailbox and Calendar admin tasks using a menu and GUI system.

Many companies I'd worked with up till now really weren't too forward with spending money to get me or any of the engineers certified.

That changed when I started at an MSP who were very focused on learning and personal development. They were a Microsoft Gold Partner which really attracted me as this to me meant they invested in their staff.

This was now around 5 years into my overall IT career with the pandemic now winding down.

They spoke to me about my current skill set and where I wanted to be in a few years from now. We set a timeline and they really encouraged and supported me with shielded training time in hours every week.

Each week I would have 2 and a half hours set aside to revise for my first ever official Microsoft Certification Exam.

I chose to do my all my exams at a Pearson Vue Test Centre as I was worried about noise or other unexpected issues doing this from home.

I booked a morning in January of that year for my first exam.

The first was the MS-700: Managing Microsoft Teams and after about 3 months of Microsoft Learn and YouTube videos I headed to the Test Centre to ace it.

I failed. The pass mark was 700. I got 610. I failed.

Leaving the test centre my confidence was shot and I didn't like the feeling of this kind of failure at all.

I spent the next 9 months dedicated to setting up a real study schedule and taking it as seriously as I would any of my exams back in secondary school.

It was boring but worked. A month after the MS-700 failure, I passed my first exam, the MS-900: Microsoft 365 Fundamentals the very next month in February.

I then planned out my next 2 certs with my AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals and the more advanced AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator with a much better study plan.

I would pass my AZ-900 in that August and then my most proud moment being the AZ-104 first time that October making me officially a Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate.

With this burst of confidence I would then book in my AI-900 Microsoft AI Fundamentals the week after so get 2 Microsoft certs passed in that month of October.

I tried to compliment all of this studying with as much real world experience as I could from work where it was relevant and asked those that could answer some of my more abstract questions.

Plus things like ChatGPT helped to break down some of the more complex concepts to better understand some of the course material but I'll go into a more detailed study plan in the future.

The big questions is was any of this even worth it other than just to stroke my own ego.

Well, the short answer is yes.

Being able to learn these topics in a more structured way helped me in my day to day role and the cross over was noticeable very quickly.

I also noticed that my CV had started to attract more intermediate roles as these stood out amongst other candidates. I was getting way more emails and phone calls from recruiters than I usually did when my CV updated on the job boards.

I was able to start applying for roles that asked for these due to the confidence I had in passing the previous ones.

This allowed me to also speak with confidence about my technical abilities knowing that they had something to validate and check those against.

In turn this helped me land my first purely Cloud Second Line Engineer role and got me out of what I lovingly refer to as the First Line Trap.

For me, getting the first certification was a watershed moment in me being able to progress my IT career to the next step.

The learning in IT is never ending and the non 900 certs last for only 1 year. The AZ-104 will be my first renewal soon but I hear it's open book and less stressful.

However, before that renewal I'll be studying up for my next one the MD-102: Endpoint Administrator Exam to become a Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate.

My advice to myself if I could have made one change to my career would have been paying for industry recognized certs like the ITIL Foundation or the CompTIA when my companies weren't providing them years ago.

I know these would have helped when I started but I just didn't see the value in them until now.

For those about to cert, I salute you!

My Current List of Certifications from 2023

• Microsoft 365 Fundamentals - MS-900 February 2023

• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals - AZ-900 July 2023

• Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate - AZ-104 October 2023

• Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals - AI-900 October 2023

Check out my website for guides, tutorials, code and more ReproDev.com

It's always hard to figure out the first post on a website. It's easy to make big promises for ideas and mission statements that you have for the future but it's not always easy to execute those.

The same can sometimes go when learning a new programming language, applying that useful patch for something you use everyday or trying out a self hosted alternative.

With that in mind let's start this first post with something that you can try out yourself, right now.

A few ways to say Hello World in a few languages I've been tinkering with till now that could jump start a project of your own.

Paste the below one liners into your favourite IDE and run your first program.

Powershell

Write-Host 'Hello, World!'

Python

print('Hello, world!')

Bonus Tip:

The featured image for this post was created using carbon.now.sh

You can paste in any kind of code and it will let you export a high quality png or svg file for a website post or for social media. It's free and very useful for documenting projects as you go aswell.

Don't forget to explore the rest of my personal website https://reprodev.com from Docker to Powershell.

Stay tuned for more tutorials, tips, and tricks to help you make tech work for you.