Homelab Setup

Overview and Objectives

A walk through my homelab architecture and steps on how I set up a proxmox server, to host services, virtual machines, and storage.

Architecture & Network Diagram

Hardware & Procurement

I went to Facebook Marketplace first thing and try to find necessary equipment to run my own server. It took around 2 weeks before I was able to get a hold of a mini-pc with decent enough specs to run what I wanted. I found a seller that was about an hour away that had both a mini-pc and a UPS.

Equipment

• PC: HP ProDesk 600 G3 (Intel Core i5-7500, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD
• UPS: CyberPower CP850PFCLCD
• Other: SanDisk Extreme PRO Dual Drive

(Pictures soon! Success!)

Proxmox Installation & Initial Configuration

Preparing the ISO

1. I downloaded an ISO of the Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) on my primary personal PC.
2. Flashed the image onto my USB drive using Rufus
3. Plugged the USB into my target home server pc. Booted into the BIOS/UEFI and selected the USB as the boot device. This then started up the GUI for the installer.

Post-Installation and Environment Hardening

After Proxmox was up and running, I layered in a few core services to turn the box into a real security lab environment. Each of these will get its own dedicated write-up later, but the current stack includes:

• pfSense — Firewall and network segmentation. I set it up as a VM to isolate lab traffic from my home network and create dedicated subnets for vulnerable machines, SIEM ingestion, and general lab devices.
• Pi-hole — Network-level DNS filtering and ad blocking. Helps cut down noise from telemetry and unwanted outbound calls during analysis.
• Wazuh — Open-source SIEM and XDR. Used for endpoint monitoring, log collection, and alert generation across the lab VMs.

I will go over the configuration and lessons learned for each of these in future posts.

What's next?

Next, I plan to build out an isolated penetration testing range and a sandbox environment for safely detonating malware, testing detection rules, and practicing incident response workflows. I also want to add more segmented networks, vulnerable target machines, and automated playbook-driven deployments so the lab can grow without becoming unmanageable.