My home lab is a fully segmented network environment I built and maintain outside of coursework, as a place to apply what I'm learning in real conditions instead of just theory. At its core is a pfSense firewall handling routing and traffic filtering, with multiple VLANs separating trusted devices, guest traffic, and lab/test systems so nothing bleeds into anything it shouldn't.
Virtualization runs on a Proxmox cluster, which lets me spin up and tear down servers, test configurations, and simulate scenarios I wouldn't get to touch in a live production environment as a student. I also run centralized logging across the lab, so I can see what every segment and VM is actually doing — the same visibility principle that matters in any real SOC or NOC setup.
System Health Dashboard
One project built directly on top of the lab is a System Health Dashboard — a Python + Grafana setup pulling real-time metrics from Linux servers and network devices, with automated alerting and log aggregation. It's the monitoring layer that turns the lab from "a bunch of VMs" into something I can actually observe and respond to.
What's Next
The lab isn't static — I'm expanding it with enterprise-grade gear through 2026 to push closer to what a real small-to-mid-size network looks like, and to keep giving myself harder problems to solve as my coursework in networking and cybersecurity advances.