About
The short version
I'm Nikhil — 17 years in enterprise infrastructure, currently at De Beers Canada in Calgary. By day I design and manage VMware, Hyper-V, and Azure environments. By night I run a 4-node Proxmox homelab on mini PCs because I genuinely enjoy building and owning my own infrastructure.
I don't come from a coding background. Everything on this site — the k3s cluster, the n8n automations, the OPNsense firewall, the Frigate camera system — I learned by doing, breaking things, and fixing them at 2am.
What I work with
Enterprise
Hyper-V, VMware, Windows Server (2016–2022), Microsoft Azure, Failover Clustering, SAN storage (Dell PowerVault, iSCSI), Active Directory, Group Policy
Homelab
Proxmox, Docker, k3s Kubernetes, OPNsense, OpenWRT, n8n, Home Assistant, Frigate NVR, Immich, WireGuard, Nginx, Cloudflare
Certifications
| Certification | Issuer | Status |
|---|---|---|
| AZ-104 — Azure Administrator | Microsoft | Earned 2023 |
| AZ-303 — Azure Architect | Microsoft | Exam retired |
| VMware VCP 410 | VMware | Historical |
| MCP | Microsoft | Historical |
These reflect formal training completed; some exams have since been retired or require renewal.
Why I self-host
Most people in my role stop at the enterprise stuff. I don't — I run my own infrastructure at home because every service I self-host teaches me something I can apply professionally. Networking, security, automation, storage planning, disaster recovery — it all comes from running real workloads on real hardware.
This site itself runs on my homelab: Proxmox LXC → Nginx → Cloudflare. No cloud hosting, no monthly bills.
Connect
Email : [email protected]