Hey, everyone. I’ve been perusing this subreddit for the last hour or two, and I’ve decided to post due to the overwhelming positivity and knowledge that I am seeing being passed around here. I’m about a month from graduating with an Associate’s degree in Cybersecurity, and I went to a few conventions and networking groups where I was told that making a Homelab will put me ahead of most of my competition.
I have roughly $1000 I can spend. I can spend more if there’s a good case to be made.
There are so many options and videos I have seen on the subject. I’m neurodivergent, so in this context, I simply have too many options, but no direction to go. Preferably, whatever build I go with will have utilities that will allow me to
- Support VLAN and trunking
- Support segmentation
- Create multiple VM’s
- Allow me to set up a SOC environment and a red team environment
- No preference for Windows or Linux servers
- Really would prefer something that didn’t take up too much space
I’m open to whatever. NAS, SAN, enterprise technology, whatever.
I saw a Firewalla device that looked pretty neat. Firewalla Gold Plus: 2.5G Cyber Security Firewall & Router Protecting | Firewalla , looks like it combines a router, VPN, IPS, and SIEM environment.
I’ll Venmo $50 to whoever is willing to walk and talk with me and maybe offer some guidance. Also, I’ll send you a connect on LinkedIn and write you a glowing recommendation to sweeten the deal if it’s something you’re open to.
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Why don’t you get a single machine with lots of pcie slots, slap a hypervisor on it (like proxmox), and then spin up a router VM that does all the network options with virtual adapters? You can do any number of x86 operating environments if you wanted to know how to secure/penetrate them and the pcie slots let you attack/configure physical devices as well that may have their own peculiarities. And then when you’re done, go after the hypervisor itself.
If you want to learn against specific branded stuff (which you should if you are in the industry) then I don’t think that can be emulated. But before you go specifically for a firewalla that might not be in the sector where you are working, see what is out there (like I’d get whatever Cisco network device that has a similar OS to what is commonly being used right now).
Unless you are going to secure/attack flustered systems, I wouldnt go for multiple mini systems. If you figure 10 GBs per os (which is a lot for most distros) a single TB NVMe can get you 90 systems up at the same time.
Do you have product recommendations for all this? I love what you’re saying. Sounds simple in terms of concept.