Cumulative Learning, Operations Practice, and Certification Projects

This repository documents a long-term, evolving home lab used to build and reinforce practical IT skills through hands-on experimentation, troubleshooting, and structured documentation.

The lab is designed to:

• Support industry certification preparation
• Practice job-realistic IT tasks and workflows
• Produce interview-ready examples grounded in real scenarios
• Strengthen foundational systems knowledge
• Serve as a living technical reference over time

This is not a short-term portfolio. It is a career-grade learning environment.

• Personal learning and long-term reference
• Interview discussion and technical demonstrations
• Recruiters and hiring managers evaluating hands-on capability
• Practice ground for enterprise-style documentation

• General-purpose home lab that evolves alongside career goals
• Emphasis on operational IT disciplines:
  • Troubleshooting
  • Deployment
  • Diagnostics
  • Decision-making under constraints
• Not a production environment
• Not focused on exploitative security or niche DevOps tooling
• Technologies are explored only when relevant to current objectives

The focus is on thinking like an IT professional, not collecting tools.

Current and planned work aligns with both exam objectives and real job duties.

• CompTIA A+
• Microsoft AZ-900

• Network+
• Security+
• Linux+
• AZ-104
• Additional vendor or domain-specific certifications as appropriate

Labs and playbooks are explicitly mapped to:

• Exam domains
• Common Tier-1 / Tier-2 support tasks
• Operations and infrastructure fundamentals

• Legacy desktop PC (Windows 7-era hardware)
• Windows 11 Pro desktop
• Windows 11 Home laptop
• Ubuntu desktop laptop
• Synology NAS
• Virtualization platforms:
  • VirtualBox
  • Hyper-V

• Microsoft Azure
• AWS
• Google Cloud
• Microsoft 365

Cloud usage is deliberate and minimal, prioritizing:

• Cost control
• Architectural correctness
• Tear-down after use

Linux is used for:

• Supporting legacy hardware
• CLI-first troubleshooting practice
• Reinforcing OS-agnostic fundamentals
• Preparation for Linux-focused certifications
• Understanding cross-platform behavior

README.md               # This document
LICENSE
CONTRIBUTING.md
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
.github/
  ├─ ISSUE_TEMPLATE/
  ├─ PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
  └─ workflows/
docs/                   # Diagrams, designs, reference material
labs/
  ├─ comptia_aplus/
  ├─ azure/
  └─ linux/
playbooks/              # Troubleshooting templates and completed playbooks
scripts/                # Automation snippets (PowerShell, Bash, Python)
assets/                 # Screenshots and photos (no secrets)
archive/                # Retired or superseded experiments

• main — stable reference
• develop — ongoing work
• feature/* — experiments or isolated changes
• Semantic tags for milestones
  (e.g., v1.0 — CompTIA A+ readiness)

Playbooks document repeatable problem-solving, not just fixes.

Each playbook should capture:

• Context and scope
• Environment and assumptions
• Symptoms and indicators
• Diagnostic steps and tools used
• Root cause
• Resolution and validation
• Lessons learned

Both checklist and step-by-step formats are encouraged where useful.

• Emphasize reasoning and decision-making
• Capture reproducible steps
• Use screenshots or photos only when they add clarity
• Never store credentials, secrets, or sensitive data
• Favor depth when it improves repeatability
• Write so another technician could reproduce the work without context

• README.md — high-level orientation
• CONTRIBUTING.md — formatting, commit, and contribution standards
• Issue templates:
  • Bug
  • Enhancement
  • Lab request
• Pull request template:
  • Summary
  • Testing performed
  • Impact / risk
• Lightweight GitHub Actions may be used for:
  • Markdown linting
  • Spelling or formatting checks

Planned expansions include:

• Structured lab exercises mapped to certification objectives
• Reusable playbook templates (Markdown / YAML)
• Infrastructure-as-Code examples (Terraform, ARM, Bicep)
• Configuration management samples (Ansible, PowerShell DSC)
• Containerized lab environments (Docker Compose / k3s)
• Automated cloud teardown scripts to minimize cost
• Architecture diagrams and system flows
• Certification progress trackers and study logs

• Initial environment setup and hardware assessment
• Primary objective: CompTIA A+ Core 1 readiness
• Secondary objective: Build Tier-1 troubleshooting documentation that mirrors real support work

• Professional, technical, methodical
• First-person where reflection adds value
• Neutral, operational tone where documentation clarity matters
• Written so content can be reused directly for:
  • Resume bullets
  • Interview explanations
  • Internal documentation examples

• All systems are non-production
• Misconfigurations are introduced intentionally for learning
• Cloud resources are ephemeral and destroyed when no longer needed

This repository is a living technical reference documenting how systems fail, how problems are approached, and how resolutions are verified.

The emphasis is on operational thinking, reproducibility, and professional documentation rather than novelty or scale.

Title:
Date:
Author:
Environment:
Symptoms:
Diagnostic Steps:
Root Cause:
Resolution:
Verification:
Notes / Lessons Learned: