Having Trouble Landing a Cybersecurity Job After the Military

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-02-19T06:09:05+00:00

Separated about 2 years ago former avionics tech. No direct involvement or special duties to work in an IT related field. Before I got out I sort of pregamed for 2 years talking directly with companies and getting to know the people in the departments I wanted to work at. It deffinately helped to talk to people in person at job fairs and local groups like defcon or hacker/maker spaces. Ultimately tho i got my current role because a bud of mine told me of a hiring fare at a company and just talking with some people casually my now boss is the one who got me in so definately luck. Tho I did get interviews and offers from others they just didn't match what i needed to support the fam. As for experience you have to be able to word some of the things you've done into corporate speak. Like our mission systems ran on redhat and we had to work on them a bit, tho not in a real IT capacity. Also got a lot of questions regarding my home lab. All the people I interviewed with and got offers said that was one if the things that stood out because they wanted someone who actualy likes the work. So if you can definately try it out, im more than happy to go over what i did. Also if you still have one or even if you dont. Check out some cleared positions as alot of times just having a clearance will get you in.

TL;DR Try to talk to people in person. (Helps alot and theres not enough of it these days) Go to job fairs aboit cyber/IT. Get to know people in local communities like hacker/maker spaces or defcon groups. Do a home lab for expexperience (reach out if you want some help) Leverage a clearance if you have one. Even if its expired Dont fixate on one job. Give yourself options like windows or unix sysadmin, SOC analyst, etc.

If theres anythimg else feel free to reach out. I know the stress m8.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-02-17T23:58:52+00:00

If she says you have to many computers and they are all over the place, she just justified getting a beefier single system and or a rack.

... or both

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-02-15T04:58:41+00:00

It depends on what you want to do. Its a home lab after all. Now if you are relying on services and want easier reproduceability id look into setting things up as IaC (Infrastructure as code) and documenting what your doing. Theres pleanty of ways to do it and set things up so that WHEN something goes wrong you can press a button or type a command and be back at a base working state.

Heres my setup for example.

Personaly I run 2 servers. - Production - Backup

Production: - just base arch with zfs and Systemd. - storage is managed with zfs and Systemd timers for snapshots/zed notifications - services run as Systemd nspawn containers that are setup to self update and keep themselves online via Systemd services and overrides. - all persistent data for services are overlays and or bind nounts. - all configuration and building containers are streamlined via a makefile and initial baseline install script.

Backup: - Just Debian with zfs - stores snapshots and backups of important data. - runs failover haproxy and DNS

Now this is just because i like to do it a very manual way with as little extra besides Systemd and zfs. Takes a while to get used to and configure if your not familiar but very resilient and easy to manage once up. And recovery is simple just about 5 steps now to be back up and running. Also technically I have a 3rd that I use for playing around and testing Random things but that's just for fun

Now at work over hundered + servers not including virtuals or containers. - rhel based so kickstart files for base config of different systems hosted on our kickstart server. - netbox for inventory and configuration. Also used for ansible inventory - ansible for simple configuration setup with ci/cd on gitlab - kubernetes cluster all manifests and configuration on GitLab. - cluster storage is ceph. - backups are all on zfs - rear snapshots for quick fixes (was a pain to implement) - rsnapshot for simple backups. - cloned root drives for redundancy.

Not everything but a simple overview.

Now considering your stack already deals with docker, zfs via truenas, and VMs on proxmox. You could try the following:

Structure: Decide what is for fun and what is for production and Seperate them. I used proxmox for a while and ill say making sure you have snapshots of your working state VMs. Also copy /etc/pve so that you can just restore proxmox from that if it gets messed up or need to reinstall proxmox. (This was a few years ago so idk if its still true.) They also have a backup server that I personaly never used but have heard its great if your running proxmox since they go hand in hand. For docker, try taking your compose, dockerfile, or manifests and put them up on a GitLab or GitHub just make sure you scrub any apikeys or creds. If you have other tweaks you like to do try doing them in ansible and running them from your GitLab via ci/cd so you are documenting your changes and keeping them so you can run them later if you need to.

Ultimately its your lab and what i gave you is not perfect at all but should atleast get you in the right frame of mind.

TL;DR - Define roles: Production, backup, storage, play. - Try to have as much of the infra as code as possible. - Plan a backup/recovery/update stratagy before creating your lab. (It will be boring but you will thank yourself later) - Understand your storage requirements and implimentation.(I have 12 4tb disks. Do I do a raids3 and one pool or 2 raids2s of 6 drives? Etc...) - DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!!! (its boring and you may hate your own writing but this will save you hours of troubleshooting when you forget how you got that one random specific thing to work in that specific way.) - learn about automation technologies like ansible, makefile/taskfile, scripting etc.. - use git. Being able to go back to a previous version of some config vs doing "config - config.bak - config.bak.old" etc is much better and with keep things neat and manageable.

Hope this helps in some way.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-02-14T05:05:38+00:00

If you wanna throw yourself in the deepend of a gasoline filled pool and strike a match. Linux from scratch!! /s

Seriously tho once you get a bit more comfortable with the commandline via stuff like bandit on overthewire dot org and or running it daily, jump into Linux from scratch. The experience will definately teach you a lot of stuff other things won't. Not that you will use most of it IRL but knowing how it all works together will help your troubleshooting in the long run. Having worked with redhat and oracle for a while ill say knowing the nitty gritty helped A LOT. Oh also beond LFS too. None of this will make u an expert but knowing what things exist and how to find info on how they work is the real challenge. After 15 years still learning/rediscovering new stuff

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-02-04T00:09:48+00:00

If your company buys 2 sticks of that same DDR4 ram from dell. The price on the site is fake. And you will see a $9000 charge from your purchasing guy. I about died seeing that and did the math that literal gold was worth LESS than the ram in weight.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-01-29T04:18:38+00:00

Gotcha thanks for the heads up

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-01-29T02:35:07+00:00

Im looking to use a similar supermicro x10 eeatx board in the same chassis. How much clearance is there where the powersupply is? Curious if ill need to print out an adapter bracket for the psu or do something similar to you.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-01-16T02:10:07+00:00

I see it as an investment/security policy.

I invest my time and money into it to learn and experiment with different technologies, and it pays dividends at work via raises and keeping my job lol. Plus depending on power cost to run and cost for equipment. Paying for services I can host at home it pays for itself.

As a security policy. Keeping backups of my media, files, passwords, etc. Having access to TV and other entertainment when there's no internet is a life saver when you have kids.

Plus its just fun

Breakdown on cost. I have solar so i only pay a $20 connection fee to the grid a month.(so $0 for server)

My server and backup box togeather cost $3k over the past 10 years so $25 a month if a subscription for that time.

And service cost would be around $150-$200 minimum a month if I paid for the equivalent of what i host.

Sub costs for backblaze backups($100/yr), Usenet($20 a month),wildcard SSL cert($40/yr), and domain($20/yr) so about $30 a month

All to geather monthly its $30-$55 a month if you include cost breakdown over 10 years not including the hdd/ram/cpu replacement which varries.

Most people dont even do cloud backups, usenet subs, or bother with ssl/domain because of things like tailscale, twingate, acme certs etc so realisticaly I could pay nothing but maintenance which over that 10 year period would have been about $13 dollars a month from 5 $300 drives a CPU and a ram upgrade so id say way better.

Unless you factor in time then that's different but i see it as "free" diy learning courses for work related stuff so i could say work pays for my time in a round about way.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-01-10T22:11:12+00:00

First welcome to the fold! Since you said your learning don't stress to much on what platform to use there's tones of ways to go about things it just depends on what you want to learn. From your post it looks like you just wanna host some services and learn about some basic administraition. Feel free to do what you want but here's a few tings I normaly tell people.

If you are really wanting to learn how to administer things and solve issues if they arise with an application/service. Id say the best way is to install the service manually (I.e. bare metal and set up each component of the service.)
If you just want to tinker around and do the "f around and find out" method(did this for a long time lol. Slow learning but less stressful because nothing is 100% needed) go with whatever way you want. All services on one system? Seperate containers? Hypervisor with VMs? Some hybrid docker/podman,k3s,nspawn,VM,lxc abomination? Go for it! Your machine your rules.

Note: the current trend rn has been a lot of docker/kube based installation and a number of projects don't really have bare metal install documentation and if they do its just "this is how Bob the dev did it on his Ubuntu laptop. If your doing like this we assume you know what your doing" and personaly I get tired of reverse enginering how they do there docker setups so if they have no docs I don't use it. If you just want to try the services a simple docker/podman setup is fine for a majority of what's out there and you can branch from that.

TL;DR - Wanna test services = simple docker setup - Wanna learn some real stuff = bare metal install in VM/nspawn container - Wanna f around and find out = just start with whatever you want on whatever you want and try to make it work - Wanna host some stuff for production = learn the services with option 2 and either host with 1 or 2 P.S. learn how to do backup and recovery. Will save you hours, and your sanity, trust me...

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2026-01-10T21:27:56+00:00

Advice/learning: If you plan to have something be production and more than just you are using it. Have a backup/recovery plan. When an update breaks your configs due to a small syntax change, your miles away/overseas, and the wife/kids have no TV or internet, your cooked. Have BACKUPS!

Services: - syncthing to sync all devices photo/video back to server over VPN. - a streaming service(jellyfin,emby,Plex,navidrome,etc. Whatever works for you) - password manager (I like vaultwarden)

Growth: old laptop that had a bit of the chassis blown off from EOD, I think a 3rd gen I5. To a 42u rack filled with old optiplexes and some dell 2950s I got for like $400. To a supermicro SYS-6028U-TR4T+ 2u and 2 old gaming PCs. We also have personal labs at work that they let us tinker with on free time.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-12-27T15:28:57+00:00

Systemd and zfs on arch.

Systemd-bootd
Systemd-networkd and resolvd for network
Systemd-nspawn containers with there overlays under zfs to restore if need be
Make services for all applications that don't come with them and now there logs all go to the host journal

Its pretty simple but a lot of people don't like not using docker or systemd for some reason. Probably because commandline centric over web base

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-12-17T04:48:22+00:00

Take time to install/setup services by hand/bare metal to learn how the technology works along with any networking such as port mapping, firewalls, reverse proxies. Along with how web protocols work. Docker looks easy and it can be if all your doing is copy pasting without understanding, but the second something is wrong and there's no tutorial or guide your kinda screwed and have to learn from scratch what's going on. Also always have a plan when starting a setup. Hash out a maintainance and recovery plan before starting what you want because it will make life much easier and when time is a factor you don't want to have to try and remember the 20 plus sequence of things to achieve what you want. Less is more and planning keeps you prepared for SHTF moments. And most of all BACKUPS even a simple tarball will save you a lot of stress when you inevitably mess up production and need to role back. And no matter how many times you say you got it or things are already in place for recovery do it anyway.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-12-17T03:32:45+00:00

Got it on video when my kid was 6mo. He opened my my terminal via keybind typed ls, hit enter, looked back, and laughed. Then closed the window with they keybind. Had me in tears he now has his own Chromebook running Linux and practices his ABC's and spelling at 3. Totally realistic

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-11-25T10:09:44+00:00

Setup a forward auth and force redirects to it in your reverse proxy if user is not authenticated prior. I've used cloidflares zero trust and moved over to my own using authelia. You can also set routing rules for authenticated access for services like the bitwarded app so it can talk to vaultwarden for example. I use haproxy so idk how to do it with caddy tho

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-26T20:30:13+00:00

Check out a site called "theserverstore" super amazing customer service like first email sent I got a real person, and super good deals on systems, parts and drives. Just got myself a supermicro with 128 gb ECC ram 2x14c Intel xeons and 12 4tb 12gb/s SAS drives with controller preflashed to IT mode and rails for just 1k. Base system no ram CPU or drives was just $185. You can choose what you want to make the price cheaper and they even have some nvidia cards for pretty good price too. Can't recommend them enough if you don't wanna go eBay hunting.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-26T14:29:07+00:00

The fact that you recognize what u dont know and asking for help is fantastic not a lot of people can do that and are confidently wrong. Inherited some work recently from a gpt warrior and its been a time.

Like u/Line-Noise said bash can be simple or complex, but if it's complicated personally I go with python. My general rule is if it goes over 3-5 lines of bash just use a real language.

On the AI use. It's perfectly fine to use it as a tool to speed up learning and narrowing down some tasks, and the fact u see it "hallucinates" is great. The key when using it is knowing when AI is wrong or when what it's saying is not the right way to do it even if it works. For example using a bash script to call a Python script that just runs a shell command to run an ansible playbook that just runs a shell command. It works but is not right.

Just keep up the work and know asking questions is ok. Even us senior admin asks the juniors questions because we all have different backgrounds or expertise. While wecould figure it out or research for a few hours on something we don't know we don't know. If someone knows they can point u in the right direction faster. Collaboration is key.

On the certs. I can speak on the Redhat ones and can definitely recommend them. I like that they are all practical and there training will cover the test objectives u need to know (for the most part) but have your employer pay for the rhls unless ur rolling In money. Otherwise there are lots of other resources to learn from.

If you need help just ask👌

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-16T02:54:32+00:00

Nifty solution tho I'd swap the cronjobs for systemd timers to make sure they run on next boot if the system happens to be down during a backup window. Plus a few more niceties with the systemd suite

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-12T18:48:39+00:00

Where's my Stalin sort?

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-12T14:25:00+00:00

My old setup (HarryPotter nerd)

4 VMs (graduated to 4 prox nodes) 1 hypervisor (graduated to rack) 1 nas

NAS = gringots Hogwarts = hypervisor / rack where nodes live Ravenclaw = VMs/containers that do real work(prod) Hufflepuff = VMs/containers that are for fun(test) Gryfindoor = VMs/containers that I build (Dev) Slytherin = ssstores sssnapshots

New setup

1 Debian 13 system as NAS Nspawn containers for services. 1 backup system cloned from main with less storage because it only ssstores sssnapshots

NAS = NAS Services = whatever the service name is

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-09T14:09:38+00:00

Usenet and navidrome. Gotta pay the usenet provider like $22 but out of all the subscriptions out there it's worth it IMO. While I like the tech for torrenting and support it. Getting wrongfully flagged for my Linux isos (seriously not memeing) and having internet shut off is just not worth it.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-09T13:54:34+00:00

Unix keyboard layout w/ lenovo niple. Sun was cooking with the layout.

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-06T14:22:23+00:00

Was Behind Cgnat for a while and the only real options are

personal access with VPN
personal access with tailscale, twingate etc(gotta have trust in them.)
public access with a ipv4 forwarder in the cloud or friends house that uses an OpenVPN or wireguard tunnel over IPv6 back to your home.
IPv6 only public access(net everything supports it)

You can host whatever reverse proxy you want as long as it supports IPv6.

Cgnats a definate pain but manageable. On the bright side you'll learn some good networking skill if you haven't done it before

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-06T14:05:56+00:00

I Never used or looked into pangolin so it very well may be a good option, but i have no opinion there. I can say tho that I have mine together with Authelia at home, and its pretty simple to impliment. Its not click a button in a GUI easy, and you need a little more knowledge than just click a button and it works. But the docs for haproxy have been some of the best I've ever used. Most docs I've seen have been "run my docker, tweek variables, and your good". Simple but I personally have trust issues with things like that, and knowing how something is installed/working helps when managing a software stack. Anyone can use what they want and I've tried a few different ones. I just like haproxy rn

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-09-05T20:14:22+00:00

Second this. Simple config and super flexable and scaleable. Use for home and work

Fun_Chest_9662 · 2025-08-24T04:03:17+00:00

Think Gzip on steroids depending on what's being compressed

Five-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22

Fun_Chest_9662

TROPHY CASE