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Case study / Infrastructure

Securityhomelab

TrueNAS and ZFS infrastructure that doubles as an offline target for red-team work.

Role
Owner and administrator
Status
Running
Since
2025
Platform
TrueNAS / ZFS
Services
Local LLM container, Pi-hole + Unbound, Nextcloud, Jellyfin
TrueNAS / ZFS local LLM container Pi-hole + Unbound Nextcloud, Jellyfin

Overview

Why run a lab

The homelab is where I get to be the administrator, the attacker, and the person on call. It gives the research an offline target and gives me real infrastructure to break and fix.

  • TrueNAS / ZFSStorage and app platform
  • Local LLM containerOffline red-team target
  • Pi-hole + UnboundDNS filtering, Docker Compose
  • Nextcloud, JellyfinSelf-hosted services
  • Uptime monitoringAlerts to my phone
  • Monitoring toolPython, SQLite, Trivy

Walkthrough

A six-minute tour

The TrueNAS dashboard and the applications running in the lab. Captions on by default.

Lessons

Things that broke

  • Recovering after a move. A subnet change and an interface misconfiguration took the server offline; I brought it back, confirmed ZFS pool health, and set a DHCP reservation so it wouldn't drift again.
  • Stale DNS. When the server's IP shifted, a stale Pi-hole DNS reservation broke name resolution until I traced it back.
  • Security monitoring tool. A Python tool with SQLite storage and Trivy scanning, built in phases. It isn't on GitHub yet.

Roadmap

What's next

Wazuh is the highest-leverage addition, since it brings SIEM-style detection home. Also planned: Tailscale, Vaultwarden, and Nginx Proxy Manager.

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