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Infrastructure · Ongoing

Home Lab

A fully virtualized home lab running on Proxmox VE. Used for learning systems administration, practicing ethical hacking, self-hosting, and experimenting with enterprise networking.

Hardware

Primary Server

Mini PC

Intel Core i3, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD

Storage

NAS Array

1 TB HDD array for VM disk images and Nextcloud

Networking

Edge Device

Managed switch, pfSense VM, VLAN-tagged AP

Services

Hypervisor

Proxmox VE

Type-1 hypervisor running all VMs and LXC containers on bare metal.

Firewall

pfSense

Handles VLAN routing, firewall rules, and DNS over HTTPS.

Storage

Nextcloud

Self-hosted cloud storage replacing Google Drive for personal file sync and photos.

Directory

Active Directory

Windows Server domain controller with Group Policy, DHCP, and DNS management.

Security

Kali Linux

Penetration testing VM in an isolated VLAN for ethical hacking tools.

Media

Jellyfin

Self-hosted media server for personal video and music libraries.

Snapshots

Proxmox Dashboard

Proxmox Dashboard

VM & Container management

Windows Server

Windows Server

Enterprise Domain Control

Active Directory

Active Directory

User & Policy management

Group Policy

Group Policy

Security configurations

Metasploit

Metasploit

Exploitation testing

Wireshark

Wireshark

Packet-level analysis

John the Ripper

John the Ripper

Password auditing

Nmap

Nmap

Network discovery

Key Learnings

Enterprise Networking

Hands-on with VLANs and DNS hierarchy. pfSense provided deep exposure to production firewall configurations.

Virtualization at Scale

Learned Proxmox VE administration including VM templates, LXC containers, storage pools, and automated backup strategies.

Active Directory & SysAdmin

Built a full Windows domain: creating OUs, users, groups, and GPOs to manage enterprise-level security and access.