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.

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

VMware vSAN cluster, ceph cluster, building HA for different services, containers, k8s cluster. The list goes on.

I have multiple things I tested and learned.

Firstly an opnSense firewall.

An Active Directory (aka setting up a Domain Controller with DNS etc) with a test client, DHCP failover (active passive)

When you have an AD (=Active Directory) you should try to set up an Exchange server, making mail flow rules etc. maybe a cluster

Docker

Reverse Proxy

And last but not least setting up Vlans -> I have a basic understanding and know how it works (and should be set up) but sadly haven’t actually configured it here at home

And virtualizing things and get some hands-on experience with VMware/Hyper-V/Proxmox/QEMU etc.

That are the things I have learned and improved my skills with at home -> At work we have no opnSense firewalls, but for learning setting up pfSense, opnSense or using an old firewall (regardless of the manufacturer) helps understanding access rules, NAT PAT etc.

V

Absolutely nothing has been as helpful in understanding how the internet works, as setting up and actually using BGP. An asn and a /40 for ipv6 can be had for almost nothing as a one time fee if you go through a LIR. Ipv4 is very expensive to buy but renting a /24 can be had for around $100 a month. And then you’re ready to start peering over tunnels or you can get VPSes that support it or ask your ISP (usually only on higher end business connections).

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

A robust PKI implementation.

Setting up a full k8s cluster (vanilla k8s, not k3s etc.) and running most of my self-hosted apps in that cluster caused me a lot of headaches but also got me an immense amount of knowledge and experience.

Oh…wow. That’s quite the loaded question. How much time do we have? ::checks watch::

The short answer is that almost every technical skill I’ve learned or improved (and some non-technical ones like public speaking as well) has been a result of my home lab. I just needed the right push/motivation/use case to dive into it.

The first iteration of my home lab started 20 years ago while I was in college. I started my lab because I wanted more hands on experience, and my curiosity pushed me forward from there.

So…it really depends on what skills you want to develop and where you want to start your career. IT is a very large area.

The best thing you can do is find problems you have and use your lab to design and implement a solution.

In general, I would say the following:

1. Troubleshooting- Build things in your lab just to break them. Learn how to figure out what you broke and how to solve the problem.
2. Networking - Build a network. Understand how applications and services talk to each other. Learn a little about TCP/IP and basic routing. It doesn’t need to be complex (unless you want to go for your CCIE)
3. Virtualization - Build out a small virtual environment. Use it to run a few applications or services for personal use. This is also good because you can put multiple services on the same piece of hardware.
4. Share what you’re doing - A big part of IT is communications skills. Once you start doing something interesting, share it. Blog. Find user groups for the technology you’re interested in and talk about how you use your lab to learn it. Good communication skills will get you further than good technical skills.

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.

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

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.

Im a little “seasoned” at 45 rotations around the blue ball so YRMV lol

1 - Pirated Movies - XBMC -> Plex (2 bare metal servers with transition to Virtual in progress)

2 - Storage - Freenas -> Synology (300+TB across 6 units)

3 - Networking - Unmanaged -> Managed / Multi Vendor / LACP / WIFI

4 - Compute - ION Based NUC -> ThinCentre / ML360G6

5 - Virtual Envio - Single ESXI Host -> 5 Node Proxmox Cluster with Ceph on 10G

Basically for me it started with Saving private ryan on VCD / CDR back in the day, that led me down the IRC rabbit hole and i got into XBMC for playback. That meant NAS storage for more movies and then from XBMC i moved into Plex so needed more server based compute and such. All the while needed to learn networking to hook it all up and make it work correctly.

I also went from working at Terminix as a pest control operator to doing customer support via email for a .com in the early 2000’s to now leading technical deployments at a forture 10 pharma :)

All cause of Saving Private Ryan on Pirated VCD in CAMMED quality lol