Hey there,
Welcome to Packet Flipper. If you love playing with technology, securing networks, or trying to figure out why a self-hosted server suddenly stopped working at 2 AM, you’re in the right place.
I’m a Systems Engineer with over six years of professional experience. My day-to-day specialty is Linux, handling both on-premises infrastructure and cloud setups, but my real passions lie in deep networking and cybersecurity. I’ve always believed that to secure a system truly, you have to understand exactly how data moves across the wire.
On the academic and professional side, I hold a Master’s degree in Computer Science and have earned several certifications, including Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, Microsoft AZ-900, and OCI Foundation Associate.
For me, IT isn’t just a 9-to-5 job; it’s a sandbox. When I’m not at work, I’m usually messing around in my home lab. I use it to test new enterprise tools, break things safely, and build infrastructure projects from scratch. Over the years, my lab has grown into a fully functioning enterprise environment. Here is a look at the stack I build and manage:
- Virtualization & Compute: Running bare-metal hypervisors using VMware, HyperV, KVM, and Proxmox VE.
- Networking & Security: Configuring custom firewalls, DNS, NTP, and deploying security monitoring tools like Wazuh and Nessus.
- Automation & Monitoring: Managing infrastructure with Ansible, building workflows in n8n, and keeping tabs on system health via Nagios XI.
- Traffic Management & Performance: Setting up Nginx and Kemp load balancers, along with Redis for lightning-fast memory caching.
- Identity & Storage: Managing central authentication with Active Directory/LDAP and handling bulk data pools via TrueNAS.
- Backups & Collaboration: Ensuring data integrity with Proxmox Backup Server, Veeam, and ReaR (Relax-and-Recover), while self-hosting Nextcloud for personal cloud storage.
Packet Flipper is my way of documenting that journey. I wanted a place to share practical, real-world guides on infrastructure, cloud engineering, and security, minus the dry, boring textbook language.
When I actually manage to step away from the glowing screens, I try to stay as active as possible. You can usually find me traveling to new places, hitting a hiking trail, working out, or planning my next hands-on DIY project. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. Thanks for dropping by. Take a look around the blog, check out the configurations, and let’s build some cool stuff.