🧩 Problem

I wanted a centralized monitoring platform for my homelab that could monitor:

• On-premises VMware ESXi hosts
• Linux virtual machines
• Windows systems
• HPE iLO hardware management
• Cloud-hosted workloads

The challenge was that most of my infrastructure lives behind NAT at home, and I did not want to expose services publicly or configure complex port forwarding.

🛠️ Solution Overview

I built a hybrid monitoring architecture using:

• Zabbix 7.0 LTS hosted in Azure
• ZeroTier for secure private connectivity
• Zabbix Proxy running locally in my homelab
• VMware API monitoring for ESXi
• SNMP monitoring for HPE iLO

This design allows cloud-hosted monitoring while keeping home infrastructure private.

Network-wide ad blocking using AdGuard Home deployed as a VM on ESXi. Blocks ads, trackers, and malicious domains at the DNS level — before they reach any device on the network.

🖥️ Environment

• Hypervisor: VMware ESXi
• VM OS: Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS
• VM Specs: 3 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 60GB disk
• AdGuard Home Version: Latest stable

🚀 Step 1: Create the VM on ESXi

Created a new VM in the ESXi web UI with the following settings:

🧩 Problem

I attempted to install ESXi 8 on my Dell OptiPlex homelab machine, but during boot, I encountered a Pink Screen of Death (PSOD) with errors like:

• Fatal CPU mismatch on feature
• HW feature incompatibility detected

This prevented ESXi from installing or booting successfully. !

🛠️ Root Cause

The issue is caused by modern Intel CPUs (12th Gen and newer) using a hybrid architecture with:

• Performance cores (P-cores)
• Efficiency cores (E-cores)

ESXi expects uniform CPU cores, so it crashes when it detects different core types.

title: Setting up Cloudflare DDNS on Ubuntu using cloudflare-ddns-updater date: 2026-03-20 draft: false tags:

• cloudflare
• ddns
• homelab
• ubuntu
• automation

🧩 Problem

My home network uses a dynamic public IP address, which changes periodically. This breaks remote access to my self-hosted services.

🛠️ Solution Overview

I used an open-source tool (cloudflare-ddns-updater) to automatically update my Cloudflare DNS records whenever my public IP changes.

🔧 Environment

• Ubuntu Server (DDNS host)
• Cloudflare domain
• API Token with DNS edit permissions
• Git installed

🚀 Step 1: Create Cloudflare API Token

1. Log in to Cloudflare
2. Go to My Profile → API Tokens
3. Create a token with:
   • Zone → DNS → Edit
   • Zone Resources → Specific Zone (your domain)

Save the token securely.

🧩 Problem

I wanted to simulate a real-world security environment in my homelab where I could detect and respond to SSH brute-force attacks and at the same time monitor my devices

🛠️ Solution Overview

I deployed Wazuh as a SIEM solution and configured it to detect SSH login attempts and automatically block malicious IPs.

🔧 Environment

• Ubuntu Server (Wazuh Manager)
• Linux target machine (with SSH enabled)
• Public exposure via port forwarding

🚀 Step 1: Install Wazuh

curl -sO https://packages.wazuh.com/4.14/wazuh-install.sh && sudo bash ./wazuh-install.sh -a

After installation, accessed dashboard: