• Installing Server 2016 and learning to provision machines and set group policies in active directory.
• Running Wazuh and lerning how to remediate issues and errors across Windows, Mac, and my Linux machines…or at least learning what they are.
• Using Windows, Mac, and Linux.

I remember one interview where the subject of Home Assistant came up and one of the interviewers was having an issue with his set up and I told him how to fix it. I got an offer from that company.

So, in my experience, a general interest in technology and continuos learning…just because you genuinely like it, helps.

Software developer here and I had to learn k8s for work (small startup, we didn’t have devops people). We manually were provisioning Debian servers to add more api backends, and it took us one hour per instance. Figured there had to be a better way. So in no particular order:

• docker / containerization.
• secure certificates for everything: nginx / reverse proxy / certificates.
• k8s.

Super steep learning curve. Easier to do on the cloud than it is in the homelab. In the homelab:

• segmenting home network into different VLANs, firewall rules.
• Tailscale for multi-site access.
• cloudflare zero-trust tunnel for secure off-site access by friends.
• reverse proxy backed by let’s encrypt TLS for secure private connections.
• getting all the *arrs setup via docker. plex on nuc, media share on NAS, accessible via NFS. Orchestrating so that either restarting is recoverable.
• Prometheus / grafana for monitoring
• setting up alerts for everything

Current project:

• migrate off docker into k3s on top of metallb for ingress, longhorn for persistent storage, helm for charts, argocd for gitops, ansible for automation. I never want to SSH into a server again. And I want to manage all my infrastructure through a git repository. Totally overkill for the homelab but guaranteed to get you multiple offers in Silicon Valley.

I think setting up active directory domain controller with all the DHCP/DNS and group policies is a number one thing to do, if you don’t know how to do that.

Another thing would be running a Linux server and have a website. Learn how apache and Nginx works. And how to use them together.

It also helped to understand networking and virtual networking from non Cisco perspectives. I have a ccna and net+ and setting up opensense+pihole with network services was very weird, it felt completely different compared to ccna and net+ studies.

Well and of course having experience with virtualization. Learning different types of virtual storage and just in general how virtualization works.

The last thing is options but it is something that I decided to do, that can help you with networking(however there are other things you could set up that would be more useful). I would set up the gns3 server. This would help you with networking, especially if you are trying to study for network certs after ccna. But like I said, there are other projects that you can set up, that will be way more useful as a beginner.

vlan
k8 cluster.
hpc cluster simulation
GPU cluster simulation
proxmox-/vmware install and management.
building general networking and solving mid level networking issues.

Gonna echo some of the other replies on what I’ve used at home that’s helped me out.

1. Media - Used Windows Media Center on Windows XP/7 to start with > XBMC/Kodi > Plex - on several different machines

2. 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.

3. 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.

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.

Trying to setup Nextcloud calling on docker 🥹

Truenas/Linux Proxmox/Virtualization Docker/Containerization/Portainer Traefik/Reverse Proxy/SSL Certificates PiHole/DNS

I’m going into my 2nd year self-hosting and home-labbing. i learned all of these skills from watching TechnoTim, DBTech, Network Chuck, Raid Owl, Christian Lempa, Level1Techs, Learn Linux TV, Awesome Open Source, Craft Computing, and Jeff Gerling. These guys are awesome i highly recommend them.

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.

Setup a Plex/Jellyfin server and then oversubscribe it to family and friends.

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

set up dedicated game servers to share with friends. Especially on some hyperviso.

Running my own vmware server

Configuring guest network

Multiple vlans

Configuring tagging on switches for said vlans

Installing Linux on a VM and taking the plunge to learn it.

A robust PKI implementation.

setting up a pfSense router is cool.

you can use docker to run some local services and give them their own domain names with pfsense

if you want to progress further, you can use traefik to give docker/kubernetes services hostnames and get a cloudflare certificate to enable https on everything