Home lab ideas to be a network/systems administrator

Hello everyone. I'm currently a helpdesk/support tech and been doing this line of work for about 18 months now. I hold no certifications but a BS in CIS. I currently have a hypervisor server built at home and played around with DNS, AD, and domain replication. I'd like to know what type of environments I can run at home to simulate or practice to become a network/systems administrator. My chances of actually doing this at work is difficult given my job description so am hoping I can practice some stuff at home. Please tell me what you have done at home or ideas I can try out. Appreciate the feedback.

Thanks in advance,

Peter

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kaizen_404

If you're interested in being a Linux Sysadmin then this Reddit post might help.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/2s924h/how_did_you_get_your_start/cnnw1ma

pngb4

This is a nice project however am new to Linux so trying to get the nuts and bolts down first with Microsoft Server stuff. Thanks for the link I will keep in handy for future home lab projects.

Thanks,

Peter

kohr-ah

Hi there!

Well if I can chime in here is how I'd do it the best way if you have some money to spend.
First buy a box you can host ESXi on. 5.5 or 6 doesnt matter which. I host it on a Nuc 4th Gen i5 and run 9 VMs on mine.
Why?

For networking just spin up a GNS3 VM and start tacking in equipment. You can run ASAv, Fortinets, Juniper, IOS-L2, IOS-L3, and more now.

For non networking you now can spin up Infoblox, Win 2012, 2008, ANYTHING you want. My box all together cost me about 350. You can get older HP and Dell single pizza box servers for less off ebay (see reddit.com/r/homelab) and keep learning.

This is how I practice linux, OSPF, BGP, Fortinets, CENTOS, Debian, Python, etc...the whole shebang.

dhay13

agreed. i bought a Dell PowerEdge 2950iii off eBay a few months ago for under $200 shipped. it had (1) 1TB HD, (2) Xeon quad cores, and 32GB RAM. i have ESXi 5.5 installed and have had about 4 servers running at a time wit no issues. i haven't even begun to work that thing yet. a word of warning, it is very noisy