Oct 5 • General discussion
Current and future setup.
I currently use the following for cert prep and study:
ThinkCentre M83 Tiny (Win 11 Pro using Hyper V)
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4785T
- SSD: Crucial MX300 275GB
- RAM: Samsung M471B1G73QH0-YK0 2x8GB
- MBD: Lenovo 10E9000WUS
Looking at purchasing a NucBox K11 (Ryzen 9 8945HS) Barebones
Adding:
64GB RAM
500GB NVMe - OS Drive
4TB for VMs, Lab + NextCloud StorageWhich becomes my primary lab + personal cloud server, handling:
- IAM/CloudeSec cert prep and study labs
- Defender/Sentinel ingestion
- Nextcloud hosting and file migration
- VM orchestration, snapshots, and nested virtualization
The M83 Tiny becomes the redundant home node, focused on:
- File sync (via Nextcloud Federation or rclone)
- VM backup target (cold storage or rollback points)
- Monitoring and alerting (Uptime Kuma, Grafana, etc.)
- Secure remote access (via Tailscale or WireGuard)
This setup gives me the following:
- Mobility: Take your lab anywhere with the NucBox (Travel/work abroad)
- Resilience: Your M83 quietly backs me up at home
- Privacy: Full control over my data, no reliance on Google or Microsoft cloud storage
- Scalability: Add nodes or storage as my certs and consulting work evolve
2
2 comments
Current and future setup.
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