Homelab

DevOps Home Lab As a retired NYPD Sergeant and U.S. Army Veteran transitioning into DevOps, I built this self-hosted, production-grade home lab to mirror real-world infrastructure. It’s designed for learning, testing, automation, and hardening — with security and observability at its core.

Hardware Setup
Device Purpose
Desktop Kali Linux + Windows 11 (dual boot) for local dev/testing
Laptop Kali Linux for mobility and SSH access
Server GMKtec N100 running Ubuntu Server
Hypervisor MinisForum MS-01 with Proxmox VE
NAS Synology DS223j (16TB) for media & backups
Core Dockerized Services
  • Traefik – Reverse proxy with auto HTTPS (Let’s Encrypt)
  • Pi-hole – Network-wide ad/malware blocking
  • Prometheus + Grafana – Metric collection and dashboards
  • Plex – Media server integrated with NAS
  • Nginx – Static site hosting (including this website)
  • Radarr – Automated movie management and downloads
  • Sonarr – Automated TV series management and downloads
  • Jackett – Indexer aggregator for Radarr/Sonarr integrations
  • Homepage – Custom dashboard for quick access to homelab services
  • HashiCorp Vault – Issues short-lived SSH certificates for secure, just-in-time server access
Networking & Access
  • TLS encryption for all services (Let’s Encrypt via Traefik)
  • Subdomain routing handled via Cloudflare
  • SSH access restricted to public key authentication and Vault-issued certificates
  • Dynamic DNS managed through Cloudflare API
  • Reverse proxy + firewall rules for tight access control
Monitoring & Automation
  • Prometheus – Time-series metrics
  • Grafana – Visual dashboards (disk, CPU, containers)
  • Fail2Ban – SSH brute-force protection
  • Bash scripts – Automated daily health reports via email (cron)
Design Principles
  • Security-first – Vault-based SSH certificates, public key SSH, HTTPS, restricted ports
  • Separation of concerns – Media, DNS, compute split by service
  • Production-like – Infrastructure mimics real environments
  • Self-hosted – Full control, no third-party lock-in
  • Flexible + Scalable – Proxmox allows isolated VM environments for experimentation
This lab gives me hands-on experience with the same tools used in real-world DevOps — and helps me continuously improve my automation, observability, and security skills.
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