/ about
Christopher Lorenzo
stayZ3RO is the handle. I run a homelab like it is production, and I write down what it teaches me.
open to platform and systems engineering roles. the lab is the resume, these entries are the references. best reached via linkedin.
now · sep 29, 2026
a snapshot of what is running and in flight. not a roadmap.
- UniFi gear through its isolated baseline. The production cutover is still gated on it.
- The second node on stability watch before anything new lands on the cluster.
- Next: PBS verification and an isolated restore drill, then n8n and Forgejo on Compose.
- After that: Talos/Flux Kubernetes, with observability moving along.
- This manual and the portfolio are mid-rebuild in one shared design family.
signal
proof of work, from people who watched.
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"one of the best service desk specialists I've ever worked with in my 20+ years of experience"
workday recognition -
led the desk’s side of a ~60-device fleet migration for an acquired business unit: 3 waves, hard external deadline.
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promoted twice in ~12 months, contractor → analyst i → analyst ii. escalations land with him by name.
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directors have seen and backed his automation work; brought into leadership planning workshops.
The lab
Three Proxmox nodes at home. DNS is a pair of Pi-hole instances behind a keepalived VIP, so losing a node does not lose name resolution. Backups go to Proxmox Backup Server, and an encrypted offsite layer lands in Backblaze B2 through Kopia. The network is managed UniFi gear: a router, a PoE switch, and access points in AP mode, each doing exactly one job. A small VPS runs Caddy in front of this blog, the portfolio, and a public status page. Everything else is reached over Tailscale.
How I work
Everything lands in Git. A backup is only real after a restore test, which is why the backup posts exist: I broke things on purpose and watched them recover. Claims ship with evidence attached, usually a screenshot, a config, or a repo link. If a post says something survived, there is a test behind the sentence.
Where this is going
The service desk paid for the troubleshooting instincts. The lab is where I learned to build. The direction is platform and systems engineering: infrastructure as code, observable systems, and automation that survives contact with reality.