Technical Inventory

Technical Inventory

This document details my technical expertise, structured logically from the physical layer up to the application layer.

The focus is on what I have actually worked with, not aspirational or marketing-driven claims.

Experience levels

  • 🟢 comfortable – confident hands-on experience and operational understanding
  • 🟡 working knowledge – practical usage with ongoing learning
  • ⚪ basic – limited experience through specific tasks, incidents or migrations

Personal preference

  • ❤️ preferred technologies – tools and platforms I like

1. Physical Hardware & Environment

Compute & Platforms

  • 🟢 x86 server platforms (HP ProLiant, Dell PowerEdge, Lenovo ThinkSystem)
  • 🟢 ARM-based systems (Raspberry Pi, Odroid, etc.)
  • 🟡 DIY server builds using consumer-grade components
  • 🟢 Component-level troubleshooting (RAM, CPU, PSU)

Physical Networking & Storage

  • 🟢 Rack installation, rail kits, cage nuts, basic datacenter hygiene
  • 🟢 Structured cabling, patch panels, cable management ❤️
  • 🟢 Hardware RAID controllers (legacy environments)
  • 🟢 Disk diagnostics (SMART, burn-in testing)

Power & Environment

  • 🟢 UPS systems (sizing, battery maintenance, NUT integration)
  • 🟡 Basic airflow and thermal management in racks and chassis

Out-of-Band Management

  • iDRAC 🟢 (Dell), iLO 🟢 (HP), XClarity 🟡 (Lenovo)
  • 🟢 Remote console, BIOS/firmware updates, power cycling
  • 🟢 IP-KVM

2. Infrastructure & Virtualization

Networking & Edge

  • 🟢 TCP/IP fundamentals, subnetting, gateways
  • 🟢 VLAN-based segmentation (servers, users, IoT, guest)
  • 🟢 LACP / link bonding
  • 🟢 NAT, port forwarding, basic IPAM
  • 🟡 Network troubleshooting (tcpdump, ip, ss, traceroute, dig)

Network Platforms

  • 🟢 MikroTik (RouterOS / SwitchOS)
  • 🟡 Ubiquiti (UniFi)
  • 🟡 pfSense (stateful firewalling, rules, aliases)
  • ⚪ Fortinet, Barracuda, Palo Alto

VPN & Secure Connectivity

  • 🟢 WireGuard ❤️ (site-to-site, remote access)
  • 🟡 IPsec / IKEv2
  • 🟡 OpenVPN

Storage Logic

  • ⚪ CephFS (conceptual / limited hands-on)
  • 🟢 Btrfs, ext4
  • 🟢 Storage protocols: NFS, SMB, iSCSI, 🟡 S3-compatible APIs
  • 🟢 TrueNAS ❤️ (ZFS-based: mirrors, RAID-Z, datasets, compression, snapshots, replication)

Backup Infrastructure

  • 🟡 3-2-1 backup strategy ❤️
  • 🟡 Proxmox Backup Server (datastores, pruning, deduplication)
  • 🟢 File-level backups
  • 🟢 Restore testing and verification

Virtualization & Orchestration

  • 🟢 Proxmox VE ❤️ (clusters, HA, LXC)
  • 🟡 KVM / QEMU
  • 🟡 Hardware passthrough (GPU, NIC, HBA via IOMMU)
  • ⚪ Kubernetes (homelab / learning)
  • ⚪ Talos Linux (evaluation)
  • 🟡 VMware ESXi, Hyper-V (legacy)

3. Platform & Operating Systems

Operating Systems

  • 🟡 Linux (FOSS-first)
    • 🟡 Debian / Ubuntu Server ❤️
    • 🟢 Manjaro / openSUSE ❤️ (desktop, rolling-release)
  • Windows
    • 🟡 Server (AD DS, DNS, DHCP basics)
    • 🟢 Desktop (Windows 98 → present)
  • Mobile & Other
    • 🟢 Android (rooted environments, custom ROMs)
    • 🟡 macOS / iOS (user-level support)

Containers

  • 🟡 Docker & Docker Compose ❤️
  • 🟡 LXC (system containers)
  • ⚪ Kubernetes fundamentals (pods, services, ingress)

Cloud Compute

  • VPS-based infrastructure
  • ⚪ Public cloud
    • AWS
    • Azure
    • Google Cloud
    • 🟡 Oracle Cloud

Core Platform Services

  • 🟡 Web servers: Nginx, Apache
  • Reverse proxies: 🟡 HAProxy ❤️, ⚪ Traefik
  • 🟡 TLS & certificates: Let’s Encrypt, ACME, wildcard lifecycle
  • 🟡 DNS infrastructure: BIND9, PowerDNS, Cloudflare DNS
  • 🟡 Datastores: PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Redis, InfluxDB

4. Applications & Services

Corporate & Enterprise Stack

  • 🟢 Microsoft 365 ecosystem
    • 🟡 PowerShell / Microsoft Graph
    • 🟢 Exchange Online (mail flow, users, groups)
    • 🟢 Entra ID / Azure AD (identity, conditional access basics)
    • 🟢 SharePoint / OneDrive (administration)
  • Endpoint & device management
    • 🟢 Intune (compliance, configuration profiles)
    • 🟢 General MDM concepts
  • Collaboration & productivity
    • 🟢 Microsoft Teams (administration)
  • Security tooling
    • 🟡 Windows Defender
    • 🟡 SentinelOne
  • Identity & access patterns
    • 🟢 MFA / OTP / 2FA enforcement
  • Project & service management
    • 🟡 Jira (workflows, issue tracking)

FOSS & Self-Hosted Services

  • 🟢 Actively running and maintaining FOSS and self-hosted services to replace proprietary SaaS solutions
  • Focus on data ownership, transparency, and long-term maintainability
  • IoT integrations
  • Local AI experimentation (LLaMA-based models)

5. Security, Observability & Operations

Monitoring & Observability

  • 🟡 Metrics & visualization: Prometheus, Grafana
  • 🟡 Infrastructure monitoring: Zabbix
  • 🟢 Uptime checks & status pages: Uptime Kuma / Checkmk
  • 🟡 Centralized logging (syslog pipelines) / Graylog
  • Alerting concepts: 🟡 E-mail and 🟡 ChatOps notifications ❤️ (Webhook, Matrix, Telegram, Discord)

Security & Identity

  • 🟢 SSH hardening (Ed25519 keys, no root login)
  • 🟡 Firewalling strategies
  • 🟢 Fail2Ban, CrowdSec
  • 🟢 Bitwarden ❤️ / 1Password / KeePass
  • 🟡 Wazuh
  • ⚪ HashiCorp Vault

Operational Practices

  • 🟡 Backup verification and recovery testing
  • 🟡 Documentation (wikis, runbooks, changelogs)
  • 🟡 Migration planning and risk awareness
  • 🟡 Vendor lock-in awareness in tooling and architecture ❤️