This repository documents my homelab journey and serves as a way to showcase my progression into Cybersecurity, including the challenges, learning moments, and hands-on experience that come with building and maintaining a home lab.
The main goal of this homelab (besides it being really cool) is to create a contained environment where I can:
- Simulate security events
- Learn and experiment with common cybersecurity tools
- Build hands-on experience across networking, monitoring, and defensive security
A secondary goal is to improve and restructure my home network to make it more functional and secure.
Things I want to achieve here include:
- Proper Wi-Fi segregation between home and guest networks
- A NAS so my partner can store her millions of photos without paying for Google Drive
- A Plex server to digitise DVDs/Blu-rays and make them accessible at any time
The homelab will be built in three phases, each with a specific focus.
This phase focuses on building a solid networking foundation. The goal is to properly segment the network using VLANs, improve security, and gain hands-on experience that aligns with my Network+ studies.
- Cisco Catalyst 3750 Switch
- Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole
- ThinkCentre M720q with an additional Intel I210 NIC, functioning as a pfSense firewall
This setup allows:
- Network segmentation using VLANs
- DNS filtering and monitoring
- Firewall rules and traffic inspection
- Real-world networking practice alongside certification study
In this phase, a dedicated server will be introduced to host multiple virtual machines and security tools.
- Dell Optiplex 7060
- Intel i5 CPU
- 64GB RAM
- Splunk – SIEM monitoring
- Wazuh – Endpoint detection and response
- Nessus – Vulnerability scanning
- Windows Server 2022 – Active Directory
- Windows 11 – Domain-joined workstation
- Kali Linux
- Metasploitable
This list isn’t definitive, but it provides a solid foundation for building attack and defence scenarios.
Once the core environment is stable (though homelabs are never really “finished”), the plan is to expand with some nice-to-have additions.
- Ubiquiti Access Point
- Proper Wi-Fi coverage
- Centralised management, likely hosted on the server
- NAS
- 2TB–4TB storage
- Split usage:
- Plex media storage
- Photo and general file storage
This repository will continue to evolve as the homelab grows.
Configuration details, diagrams, lessons learned, and troubleshooting notes will be added as each phase progresses.