In my spare time I thoroughly enjoy expanding my knowledge of opensource and self hosted systems\/solutions which keeps me in touch with current tech trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I run\/have a highly virtualized and containerized home lab environment using both Linux and Windows solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LINUX<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I use a physical firewall to protect my LAN from the dangers of the WAN. For scenarios where I have several VLANs running off of one port on the physical firewall I like to also have one machine on every one of those VLANS run pfSense for added security.<\/p><\/div><\/div> pfSense is an amazing firewall but unfortunately it relies on third part software like snort (which does not provide the best end-user experience) for intrusion detection. I therefore started using Security Onion which has quickly become my go to intrusion detection system to run along pfSense. <\/p><\/div><\/div> I run T-Pot to give me insight into who is scaning my network from the WAN side and more importantly get some peace of mind if anyone has breached the firewall.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Ads and Popups are a pretty popular vector for malware delivery. Pi-Hole is my DNS solution that allows me to block ads and harmful popups before users on my network reach the site.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Virtualization is integral part of any modern network environment. For my Linux environment I use ProxMox a Debian based virtualization solution that offers great management benefits when running Linux VMs.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Rancher, Kubernetes, and Docker is what I use to deploy and scale up\/down all my Linux based applications.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Heimdall allows me to have a centralized dashboard to manage all my Linux and Windows based applications.<\/p><\/div><\/div> One of the solutions I have used in both personal and professional environments. Bookstack is an awesome application that allowed me to seamlessly and securely exchange knowledge and more importantly create a more company specific web based “search engine” I can direct employees to for answers to their departments top FAQs.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Asides from being open-source and free UptimeKuma integrates with several popular communication tools like slack to help notify the appropriate parties once an user defined event is trigger (ping failure etc).<\/p><\/div><\/div> Logging is an essential part of system administration and Grafana is what I use to make sure that my systems are working optimally.<\/p><\/div><\/div> TrueNAS core (previously FreeNAS) is my lab NAS solution which allows me to implement technologies such as RAID and share data through SMB and NFS.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Similar to OneDrive and GoogleDrive NextCloud is a great way to self host cloud data sharing.<\/p><\/div><\/div> 3CX is a great VoIP solution which integrates with AWS chime and EC2 to offer incredibly affordable VoIP solutions (I have deployed this in professional environments where the phone bill averaged $1 a month for a toll free number and six office extensions)<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n WINDOWS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Windows is the go to OS for productivity and is what I personally like to use on my main machine. With that being said any home lab would not be complete without running Windows Servers. My next goal for my windows domain is to run an exchange server and integrate some 2FA abilities with AD using DUO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Hyper-V and Esxi are widely used in professional environments and being familiar with these hypervisors is necessary when trying to run efficient virtual environments. Using Hyper-V also has the added benefit of providing system administrator with added management features when managing Windows VMs.<\/p><\/div><\/div> Distributed File System or DFS is windows solutions for sharing data while providing fail-overs and redundancy.<\/p><\/div><\/div> AD DS is most likely the top used Windows Server feature and in my environment I use it to test GPO deployments and manage users accounts for family members.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my spare time I thoroughly enjoy expanding my knowledge of opensource and self hosted systems\/solutions which keeps me in touch with current tech trends. I run\/have a highly virtualized and containerized home lab environment using both Linux and Windows solutions. LINUX WINDOWS Windows is the go to OS for productivity and is what I …<\/p>\nVirtual Firewall Solution – pfSense<\/h3><\/div>
IDS Solution – Security Onion<\/h3><\/div>
Honypot Solution – T-Pot<\/h3><\/div>
DNS Solution – Pi-Hole<\/h3><\/div>
Virtualization Solution – Proxmox<\/h3><\/div>
Containerizing Solution – Rancher\/Kubernetes\/Docker<\/h3><\/div>
Dashboard Solution – Heimdall<\/h3><\/div>
Knowledge base Solution – Bookstack<\/h3><\/div>
Monitoring Solution – Uptime Kuma<\/h3><\/div>
Logging Solution – Grafana<\/h3><\/div>
Storage Solution – Truenas Core<\/h3><\/div>
Cloud Data Sharing Solution – NextCloud<\/h3><\/div>
VoIP Solution – 3CX hosted on AWS<\/h3><\/div>
Virtualization Solution – Hyper-V & Esxi<\/h3><\/div>
File Sharing Solution – DFS<\/h3><\/div>
Domain Solution – Active Directory Domain Services<\/h3><\/div>