Well, build log, profession advancement... The works I guess!! :) Complete and Total Overkill part 3!!

Well, how do I start this thread going...


So, little bit of background.. When I left school (16), went to college (3 years) finished college and tried to get a job IT.. Never worked, nothing got me close to IT work (did everything under the sun and inbetween) until about 2 and a bit years ago, I finally got my chance (about 18 years after lol) so when I got my chance I took it


Now two and a bit years later, I've been given some amazing kit to use and try at home so I'm trying to think how I can use that better than what I'm currently doing.. So, this is a bit of a project log of the journey I take and setup for testing or just even getting to grips with things. Now I think it might interest some, it might bore others and others might think, what the heck is he doing...


Well I've recently had a bump into the Infrastructure side of things, so a step up from the service desk/desktop support role I had previously.


As I'm a huge hardware loon, I like to get my hands on things and use things that will make use of what I have. This is one of the reasons why I run WCG and FAH on so many machines at home, A because I have them and B with solar power, it's free whilst the sun is out, so why the heck not...

But aside from the masses of CPU power I have at home, I'd like to do different things as well, so things like creating a domain, setting up a file server, print server and whatever else I can think of, even with some input from everyone here, I'd love to learn and do more and more and push myself with the tech I have access to and I've been given so that rather than it just sitting there, I'm actually making some use of it and more so learning more to push my career forward.


So now all the boring text is out the way, I'd just like to ask about the forum to see if anyone else 'bothers' with this sort of thing at their home, whatever the scale. I know we have a Homelab section which I love seeing @Solaris17 and everyone else that post in there (apologies for not mentioning everyone!!) I'm also going to be hopefully following some of Solaris17's guides in setting things up that he has done via his YouTube, so I'm looking forward to that.


So, for starters then I'm thinking I'd like to start with something that I can build a domain on. So, if anyone has any ideas of some specs I should be using or any suggestions at all, I'll willingly take that on board and see what I can find at home. I've a few things I think I should get out the cupboard (so to speak) and make use of I'm not sure if I'm honest a Domain Controller would need to do a massive amount of work, but I'll hopefully find out soon enough


Some things I'd like to touch on with my project is Linux, VMWare (or just VM's in general) and learning about Group Policies (from scratch) and then maybe moving on to Clusters and maybe a bit of something more in dept like NetApp storage or setting up something similar.. I'll also add in some networking fun as well..... I'm sure that list will grow


So I'll stop boring everyone to death now and look forward to some comments and such I'll see if I can add some photo's at some point to this first post (or second) and then it'll hopefully look a little more pleasing than a load of text and me waffling on...

Thanks for looking anyone who makes it this far!!