What would you recommend to a guy whose just getting started out and pursuing his trifecta?
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VMware vSAN cluster, ceph cluster, building HA for different services, containers, k8s cluster. The list goes on.
Trying to setup Nextcloud calling on docker 🥹
Gonna echo some of the other replies on what I’ve used at home that’s helped me out.
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Media - Used Windows Media Center on Windows XP/7 to start with > XBMC/Kodi > Plex - on several different machines
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Networking - First wireless router was a Netgear N750, and it was great until the wife spilled some water on it > Netgear Nighthawk R7000 > Ubiquiti Edgerouter ER-X and UAP-AC-LR Access Point > still using the ER-X router but got a U6-Lite AP and then an Engenius controller and ECS-357 AP > ER-X and Aruba AP315/325 converted to be IAP models.
Got a Meraki MS120-8LP switch for POE for my APs. Ended up getting a bunch of Cisco switches and routers of different models to use at home from my current job. Still haven’t setup a working lab with those yet.
- Compute - This has been the most recent developments due to getting disposal mini desktops from work. Currently have a 3 node Proxmox cluster with 2 Windows server 2022 eval vms. One is a domain controller and the other is going to be setup for MECM(new acronym for SCCM).
I reckon that’s it for now.
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Hypervisor cluster, K8s Cluster, routed Vlans. Learn a lot of IT things building clusters and lot of networking things building out a routed vlan network. Before that just hosting websites, network shares, email, setting up postfix/sendmail running DNS servers. The first stepping stone for me was running a hypervisor so I could build the rest of the things in there.
vlan
k8 cluster.
hpc cluster simulation
GPU cluster simulation
proxmox-/vmware install and management.
building general networking and solving mid level networking issues.1st: Virtualization
2nd: Firewalls and networking
3rd: Containers, Docker, (Podman) and LXC, (Incus)
4th: All the above leads onto Hypervisors
5th: Which leads you to Kubernetes
The first three require minimal hardware. Once you’ve got the hang of the them, it’s time to get serious with a dedicated machine with greater hardware resources to run a Hypervisor.
Kubernetes, all that built in redundancy makes it hungry beast. Enough to get you looking for one or more those big old servers that homelabers love.
This. Honestly has helped grow my skills across a lot of disciplines that has been a great strength to my IT/Cyber career.
I had to upvote this because I like the added “progression path analysis” given. Everything checks out so far from my personal experience.
However I have not yet delved into kubernetes yet.
Could the poster of this reply elaborate (briefly is fine) what some advantages are with Kubrn8s? You mention redundancy. From my completely inadequate understanding of kuber, you can cluster together the resources of different individual systems? Like how truenas can use all the storage of different sized drives to form one pool that can be managed as 1 resource? This of course would just be an example of what it does in concept?
So theoretically, one can sort of network a cluster of old PC’s to make a really decent, redundant “server” that shares the workload?
Hop over to the Youtube channel “Jim’s Garage”. Awesome detailed tutorial series for Kubernetes. If your brain cells have been enjoying the quiet life, it’s over, because boot camp is here. It tough going, but it’s worth it.
I have multiple things I tested and learned.
Firstly an opnSense firewall.
An Active Directory (aka setting up a Domain Controller with DNS etc) with a test client, DHCP failover (active passive)
When you have an AD (=Active Directory) you should try to set up an Exchange server, making mail flow rules etc. maybe a cluster
Docker
Reverse Proxy
And last but not least setting up Vlans -> I have a basic understanding and know how it works (and should be set up) but sadly haven’t actually configured it here at home
And virtualizing things and get some hands-on experience with VMware/Hyper-V/Proxmox/QEMU etc.
That are the things I have learned and improved my skills with at home -> At work we have no opnSense firewalls, but for learning setting up pfSense, opnSense or using an old firewall (regardless of the manufacturer) helps understanding access rules, NAT PAT etc.
Absolutely nothing has been as helpful in understanding how the internet works, as setting up and actually using BGP. An asn and a /40 for ipv6 can be had for almost nothing as a one time fee if you go through a LIR. Ipv4 is very expensive to buy but renting a /24 can be had for around $100 a month. And then you’re ready to start peering over tunnels or you can get VPSes that support it or ask your ISP (usually only on higher end business connections).
Setting up a small website hosted locally helped me understand the whole stack so much better. Roles / permissions / firewall rules / ports/ webservers / appservers / devops / daemons / docker / DNS and a bunch more
Setting up a full k8s cluster (vanilla k8s, not k3s etc.) and running most of my self-hosted apps in that cluster caused me a lot of headaches but also got me an immense amount of knowledge and experience.
A robust PKI implementation.
Oh…wow. That’s quite the loaded question. How much time do we have? ::checks watch::
The short answer is that almost every technical skill I’ve learned or improved (and some non-technical ones like public speaking as well) has been a result of my home lab. I just needed the right push/motivation/use case to dive into it.
The first iteration of my home lab started 20 years ago while I was in college. I started my lab because I wanted more hands on experience, and my curiosity pushed me forward from there.
So…it really depends on what skills you want to develop and where you want to start your career. IT is a very large area.
The best thing you can do is find problems you have and use your lab to design and implement a solution.
In general, I would say the following:
- Troubleshooting- Build things in your lab just to break them. Learn how to figure out what you broke and how to solve the problem.
- Networking - Build a network. Understand how applications and services talk to each other. Learn a little about TCP/IP and basic routing. It doesn’t need to be complex (unless you want to go for your CCIE)
- Virtualization - Build out a small virtual environment. Use it to run a few applications or services for personal use. This is also good because you can put multiple services on the same piece of hardware.
- Share what you’re doing - A big part of IT is communications skills. Once you start doing something interesting, share it. Blog. Find user groups for the technology you’re interested in and talk about how you use your lab to learn it. Good communication skills will get you further than good technical skills.
Setting up exchange server cluster with backups, OWA webmail behind reverse proxy doing IPS+SSO+ MFA, setting up DKIM, DMARC and SPF for this server / testdomain.
Windows PKI using offline and issuing CA. Using these certificates for 802.1x auth.
Hardening Windows Active Directory, setting up LAPS, enforcing TLS where possible, restricting service accounts etc.
Using Azure AD for SAML SSO to where possible. Using JIT or SCIM prorvisioning for accounts. Access roles from groups etc.
Setting up Intune managed workstations with device complience policies and using these policies in conditional access policies.
So yeah mostly Windows stuff.
Countless projects over the years, but two that stand out in my mind as most formative:
1.) Running a Minecraft server back in the day on CentOS and Ubuntu VPS taught me server administration.
2.) Running my own secret, private network in my college dorm for my friends and I (college provided WiFi sucked) with PFSense at its core taught me the basics of networking.