💡 The Learning Journey: Doing > Reading #
Welcome to my corner of the internet. I’m Steve Manzo, a Sr. Cybersecurity Architect who believes the best way to understand a system is to build it, break it, and then monitor the wreckage. Currently, Splunk and Wazuh are my SIEMs of choice for keeping the lights on.
Stay tuned for upcoming project posts where I’ll dive deep into the specific choices I made while architecting and securing this very site. Beyond this infrastructure, I’m also actively building a comprehensive threat-hunting lab utilizing Zeek, Suricata, Osquery, and more—I look forward to sharing those workflows and findings with you soon.
The Evolution of the Lab #
I’m a big believer in the power of open source and the “learning by doing” philosophy. While certifications have their place, there is no substitute for the panic of a storage error or the satisfaction of a perfectly automated CI/CD pipeline. Building a homelab wasn’t just a hobby; it was a deliberate investment in my professional development.
I originally started with the idea of a mini Raspberry Pi cluster, but I quickly realized I wanted more power and a setup “truer to life.” I wanted enterprise-grade hurdles: VLANs, hardware RAID, and proper hypervisor management. I traded the desk-clutter for a 12U Network Rack and started rack-mounting my way to a private cloud.
The Hardware Manifest: #
- Perimeter: Protectli Vault (Running OPNsense).
- Compute: Custom 2U Server Chassis running Proxmox VE.
- Storage: Custom 4-Bay NAS (SilverStone Chassis) running TrueNAS SCALE.
- Switching: Ubiquiti 16-Port PoE Switch for VLAN segmentation.
- DNS: Dual Raspberry Pis running Pi-hole for redundant, ad-blocking DNS.
- Power: 2U CyberPower UPS managed by a NUT (Network UPS Tools) server.
- Wireless: Repurposed Synology router acting as a dedicated AP bridge.
Current Office Setup: #
Why This Matters #
This stack is my sandbox. It’s where I formost learn, but also host my internal services, test new security tools, create CI/CD pipelines, and create anything I put my mind too.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and sharing ideas as the lab continues to evolve. Thanks for stopping by!