How I configured Wazuh as a full XDR platform for my Debian 12 LXC fleet and integrated a local Ollama LLM for automated alert triage – all self-hosted, no cloud dependencies.

A practical guide to weekly Proxmox VE maintenance across multiple sites, including ZFS health monitoring, backup validation, memory optimization, and the scripts I use to keep everything running.

Step-by-Step: Install and Configure Pi-hole with the Proxmox Community Script

This guide covers a full technical setup for Pi-hole on Proxmox using the Community Scripts installer.

It includes:

• creating the Pi-hole LXC
• assigning a static IP
• verifying DNS is working
• configuring your router, ISP modem, or firewall DHCP server to hand out Pi-hole as DNS
• fallback options when your ISP equipment does not allow custom DNS
• post-install Pi-hole configuration
• basic validation and troubleshooting

What this guide assumes

You have:

Why Home Assistant Is the Ultimate Smart Home Platform (And How to Build It the Right Way)

Most “smart homes” today aren’t actually smart.

They’re cloud-dependent, subscription-driven, and locked into a single vendor ecosystem. If the internet goes down, half your house stops working. If the company changes its pricing or kills a product line, you’re stuck replacing devices.

That’s not automation. That’s renting control of your own house.

This is where Home Assistant changes everything.

Why Many Home Lab Builders Are Moving from UniFi Cameras to Reolink + Blue Iris

For years, UniFi Protect has been one of the most popular surveillance systems for home lab enthusiasts and small businesses.

It looks great.
The interface is polished.
And the integration with UniFi networking gear is seamless.

But over the past few years, a noticeable shift has started happening in the home lab and self-hosted communities.

Part 2: Set Up Nginx Proxy Manager on Proxmox with Cloudflare DNS & pfSense

In Part 2 of this series, we’re setting up Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) inside Proxmox so we can start exposing our local services with clean HTTPS URLs and valid SSL certificates.

This is where the home lab starts feeling real.

Instead of accessing Home Assistant with something like:

• http://192.168.1.20:8123

…we’ll be able to use:

• https://ha.domain.com

And because we’re using Cloudflare DNS validation, we can issue a wildcard certificate for our domain and keep everything secure and polished.

Why Proxmox Is One of the Best Hypervisors You Can Run in a Home Lab

There’s something incredibly satisfying about owning your infrastructure.

Not renting it.
Not trusting it to some mysterious black box.
Actually owning it.

That’s the spirit behind home labs, and it’s exactly why Proxmox VE has become one of the most powerful hypervisors available to builders, tinkerers, and serious self-hosters.

It’s fast.
It’s powerful.
It’s ridiculously flexible.

About Me

Network engineer with a focus on Azure, Microsoft 365, identity, and modern infrastructure.

I build, break, and document systems so I can rebuild them better.

But this site is more than a bio, it’s a living record of my journey.

Because while my day job lives in the cloud, my real learning often starts at home, in the rack, behind the firewall, inside the lab.

Why This Site Exists

I created this site for a simple reason:

Let’s Connect

If you’ve made it this far, chances are we have something in common.

Maybe you’re building a home lab that started as “just a spare PC” and somehow turned into a rack.

Maybe you’re tuning pfSense rules at midnight trying to figure out why VLAN 30 won’t talk to VLAN 10.

Maybe you’re spinning up another Proxmox node because “this time I’ll document it properly.”

Or maybe you’re deep in Azure networking and Conditional Access policies at 11:47 PM wondering why one test account refuses to cooperate.

From Zero to Segmented: Installing pfSense CE the Right Way (With VLANs That Actually Teach You Networking)

Most home networks are flat.

One LAN. One WiFi. Everything trusts everything.

Your laptop can talk to your smart bulbs. Your TV can talk to your NAS. Your IoT camera can reach your workstation.

That’s not a lab. That’s a liability.

If you want a home lab that actually teaches real networking, segmentation, routing, firewall policy, and security boundaries, you need a real firewall.