ABOUT ME

Learning infrastructureby actually running it.

I'm Cole Stephens, an IT student and field technician building hands-on experience with systems administration, networking, Linux, virtualization, automation, and self-hosted infrastructure.

My homelab gives me a place to work through the same kinds of problems that make infrastructure interesting: failed services, network segmentation, DNS problems, storage design, monitoring, backups, remote access, automation, and the occasional configuration that doesn't survive first contact with reality.

cole@lab:~

$cat profile.txt

role:Field Technician

education:Information Technology

focus:Systems & Infrastructure

learning:CompTIA A+ / Network+

lab_status:online

$_

From troubleshooting devices to infrastructure.

My professional background is rooted in hands-on technology support and troubleshooting. Working directly with customers, devices, networks, and real-world technical problems pushed me toward the infrastructure side of IT.

That interest eventually grew into a home lab where I could move beyond individual devices and work with complete systems: virtualization hosts, firewalls, VLANs, storage, Linux servers, containers, monitoring platforms, VPNs, DNS, and automation.

I use the lab as both infrastructure and a learning environment. If I want to understand a technology, I prefer to deploy it, configure it, break it, troubleshoot it, document it, and then improve the design.

Areas I'm developing.

The technologies change over time, but the focus remains on understanding how infrastructure actually works.

01

Systems Administration

Linux administration, service deployment, virtualization, system troubleshooting, backups, storage, and infrastructure maintenance.

LinuxDebianProxmoxLXCZFS
02

Networking

Routing, switching, VLAN segmentation, firewall policy, DNS, DHCP, VPN connectivity, and network troubleshooting.

OPNsenseVLANsDNSVPNFirewall
03

Observability

Collecting metrics, monitoring services, visualizing system health, identifying failures, and building useful alerting.

PrometheusGrafanaUptime KumaNode Exporter
04

Automation & Self-Hosting

Containerized applications, reverse proxies, infrastructure automation, smart-home integrations, scripting, and reusable deployment workflows.

DockerComposeHome AssistantNginx

Troubleshoot first.
Document what mattered.

01

Understand the problem

Start with the actual symptoms and verify assumptions before changing the configuration.

02

Work from evidence

Use logs, metrics, command output, documentation, and controlled testing to narrow down the cause.

03

Understand the fix

Getting something working is useful. Understanding why it worked is what makes the solution reusable.

04

Leave documentation behind

Record the architecture, important decisions, problems encountered, and lessons learned for the next time.

See what I'm building.

The Projects page contains selected infrastructure work, while the Lab Journal follows the ongoing troubleshooting and learning process.