Welcome to My Homelab Journey (and Beyond)
I’m excited as a kid on Christmas Day; the workstation I ordered to upgrade my homelab has finally arrived.
It’s a refurbished HP Z640 with an 18-core Xeon CPU, 128 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD. It’s an older machine, but it can still hold its own even by today’s standards, and most importantly, it’s capable of powering the mini data center I’m building.
I’ll be standing up multiple VMs -- Active Directory, SQL Server clusters, Linux servers, IIS, App servers, Azure Arc, and more, all running atop Windows Server Datacenter 2025. The intent is to replicate an enterprise environment.
My explorations will serve as a means to preserve and expand my skills while I prepare for my upcoming Azure Administrator and Solutions Architect certifications.
Why I Started This Blog
Over the years, I’ve mentored junior data analysts, developers, and DBAs. One piece of advice I always share is to build a homelab.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate. My first one was just an old spare PC running Windows XP, Visual Studio 2010 Express, SQL Server Developer Edition, and R. What’s key is that it allows you to freely experiment and learn by doing in a low-pressure environment.
That's the spirit behind this blog.
I’ll be writing about my homelab experiments, my lessons learned, and technical explorations, that’s only part of the story though. This space will also capture my musings on leadership, communication, and other things I’m passionate about, from Toastmasters experiences to books that provoke new insights.
To sum it up, this blog is about growth and preparation through practical application, whether that happens to be through homelab and Azure experimentations, a complex project, or delivering a Toastmasters speech behind a podium.
Or as the rapper Suga Free once said, “If you stay ready, you don’t got to get ready.”
