Project Overview

Welcome to the Enterprise Homelab documentation. This environment is the foundation for NetDevOps experiments, Cisco networking labs, Linux systems administration, and the future Local SRE Platform.

Evolution in Progress

The lab is continuously evolving. Documentation is updated as new services (Ansible, observability stack) are integrated.

Architecture

Figure 1: Physical network architecture with collapsed core design.

A hybrid infrastructure combining physical Cisco hardware with a Proxmox cluster: physical switches for real Layer 2/3 behavior, virtual machines for emulation and services.

Current Status

1. Architecture: HP t740 compute node, Catalyst 3560-CX core, 2960 access — documented in Hardware Specs.
2. Hypervisor: Proxmox VE on the t740 with nested virtualization for EVE-NG.
3. Networking: VLANs, trunking on Cisco switches; Tailscale mesh for remote access.
4. Emulation: EVE-NG bridging virtual IOS nodes to physical switch ports.
5. Observability (planned): Prometheus and Grafana via the Local SRE Platform.
6. Next: Ansible automation for VLAN and switch provisioning.

Documentation Map

1 Architecture Hardware specs, IP schemas, subnets, and physical cabling.

2 Hypervisor Proxmox installation, storage, and PCIe passthrough.

3 Networking Cisco VLANs, LACP, trunking, and Tailscale mesh.

4 Emulation EVE-NG deployment and Cisco IOU/QEMU images.

5 Compute Docker engine and compose stacks on Proxmox.

6 Observability Prometheus scrape targets and Grafana dashboards.

7 Troubleshooting Root cause analyses and resolutions.