Project Saṃsāra
Network • Infrastructure • Automation • Observability • AIOps
Project Saṃsāra is my continuously evolving home network and infrastructure engineering lab.
I use it to design, build, troubleshoot, automate, monitor, and document systems in an environment where I can safely experiment with technologies that mirror real-world network and infrastructure operations.
The goal is not simply to maintain a homelab. Saṃsāra is where I practice thinking and working like a Network & Infrastructure Engineer.
The Lab
Project Saṃsāra combines networking, compute, storage, monitoring, automation, and local AI into one integrated environment.
The lab includes a managed network edge, segmented networks for different device and security requirements, dedicated network services, virtualization, centralized monitoring, home automation, network-attached storage, and a separate Cisco-based networking lab.
Sensitive operational information such as live addressing, internal URLs, access controls, and detailed security configurations is intentionally excluded from this public portfolio.
What I Work On
- Network Design & Segmentation — VLANs, routing, addressing, traffic separation, and access-control concepts.
- Infrastructure Services — DNS filtering, time synchronization, local services, and supporting network utilities.
- Virtualization & Compute — running services and workloads on a dedicated virtualization platform.
- Monitoring & Observability — collecting metrics and visualizing infrastructure health with Prometheus and Grafana.
- Storage & Backup — NAS administration, family storage workflows, and cloud-integrated backup planning.
- Automation — scripting repeatable checks, maintenance tasks, and operational workflows.
- Local AI / AIOps — experimenting with a local AI system that can interpret infrastructure health information and assist with operational analysis.
- Cisco Networking Practice — maintaining a separate Cisco router/switch environment for routing, switching, ACL, and CCNA-oriented experimentation.
Charlemagne — Local AIOps
Charlemagne is the local AI operations node being developed as part of Project Saṃsāra.
Built around locally hosted AI models, Charlemagne is being developed to assist with infrastructure monitoring, health-check interpretation, troubleshooting workflows, documentation, and eventually tool-assisted network operations.
Current work includes automated infrastructure health checks, structured logging, local model-based summaries, and integration concepts involving monitoring platforms such as Prometheus and Grafana.
The long-term goal is to explore how AI can support an engineer without replacing the engineer’s responsibility to understand, validate, and troubleshoot the underlying systems.
Engineering Approach
Project Saṃsāra follows a simple engineering cycle:
Observe → Design → Build → Test → Troubleshoot → Document → Improve
When something fails, the objective is not merely to make it work again. I document the failure, identify the root cause, understand why the solution worked, and determine what could prevent or expose the issue earlier next time.
This approach turns the homelab into an ongoing engineering environment rather than a collection of devices.
Technologies & Skills
Networking
- VLANs and network segmentation
- IPv4 addressing and subnetting
- Routing and switching
- ACL concepts
- DNS
- Network troubleshooting
- Cisco IOS practice
Infrastructure
- Linux
- Proxmox virtualization
- NAS administration
- Raspberry Pi services
- Home automation
- Backup and cloud synchronization
Observability
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Node Exporter
- Infrastructure health checks
- Logging and operational monitoring
Automation & AI
- Bash scripting
- Ollama
- Local language models
- Automated health checks
- AI-assisted log summarization
- AIOps experimentation
Current Development
🟢 Operational
- Core network and infrastructure
- Segmented network environment
- DNS/network services
- Virtualization platform
- Monitoring stack
- NAS and storage services
- Automated infrastructure health checks
🟡 In Development
- Charlemagne AIOps capabilities
- Improved infrastructure alerting
- Public engineering case studies
- Expanded automation
- Portfolio documentation
⚪ Planned
- Additional automated remediation/testing
- Expanded Cisco lab scenarios
- More detailed sanitized architecture diagrams
- Long-term infrastructure trend analysis
Why I Built It
I built Project Saṃsāra because I wanted a place where learning did not stop when a course, shift, or certification study session ended.
It gives me an environment where I can break things, troubleshoot them, rebuild them, automate them, and understand them more deeply.
Every iteration of Saṃsāra is another opportunity to become a stronger network and infrastructure engineer.
