Tima Nlemvo, operator of the Alliance Fleet
Transmission Online → Alliance Fleet

Systems Administrator.
Eight years of IT operations.
Building toward Cloud and IAM.

// AZ-104 in progress · Los Angeles · BSTG

Infrastructure I actually run: a three-node Proxmox cluster, 25+ self-hosted services, five VLANs, and a documentation standard that treats the homelab like production.

ACT II
Role Sys Admin I · BSTG
Cert Path AZ-104 → SC-300
Fleet 3 nodes · 25+ services
NODE-A ONLINE
NODE-B ONLINE
NODE-C ONLINE
K-2SO ONLINE
34.0522°N · 118.2437°W · MID-CITY LA
Operator
Tima Nlemvo

// Senior IT Engineer → Systems Administrator → Cloud + IAM Engineer (in progress)

Eight years running enterprise IT for film studios, creative agencies, and a professional esports org. Sole IT owner at Team Liquid for three-plus years: 200-plus users, one person, everything from Google Workspace to physical access control.

When the layoff came in March 2026, I didn't start building. I already had a three-node Proxmox cluster, a SIEM, an identity platform, and 26 running automations. The lab existed because the gap between "operating systems" and "building them" needed closing on my own terms.

Mid-City LA AZ-900 ✓ AZ-104 → Spanish / English Star Wars nerd Retro gaming Cyberpunk 2077 Arc Raiders UniFi / Ubiquiti Homelab operator
Career Arc
Field Service Technician RealPro Consulting Jul 2016 – Nov 2019
POS deployments, Cat5e/Cat6 cabling. Contract work nights and weekends, overlapped with Turner Tech from May 2018.
Service Desk Lead Turner Tech → Fox Studios May 2018 – Nov 2019
W2 MSP deployed to 21st Century Fox. M365, SCCM, AD at studio scale.
Helpdesk Lead & Asset Lead Creative Artists Agency Nov 2019 – Aug 2021
AD, JAMF Pro, CrowdStrike, Crestron, PingOne. Century City, LA.
Sr. Information Technology Engineer Stagwell Aug 2021 – Mar 2023
M365, Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace across distributed agency network.
IT Engineer Team Liquid Mar 2023 – Mar 2026
Sole IT owner. 200+ users, Google Workspace, ManageEngine RMM, OpenPath physical access control. Santa Monica, CA.
Systems Administrator I BSTG (MSP) May 2026 →
Hybrid identity, endpoint lifecycle, network triage, and security incident response across a multi-client portfolio. Entra ID, Active Directory, JumpCloud, Datto RMM, IT Glue, SonicWall, ThreatLocker, UniFi.
Cloud / IAM Engineer Target role 2027 →
AZ-104 → SC-300 → AZ-500. The fleet is the lab. The certs are the proof.
Currently
▶ Playing
Arc Raiders
Also: Assassin's Creed, Cyberpunk 2077
Retro on Canto-Bight via Sunshine → Moonlight
ES-DE + RetroArch · SNES / PS2 / Dreamcast
⚙ Building
Alliance Fleet Codex
BookStack + NetBox + Gitea on Yavin-IV
Phase 2 · Target: mid-August 2026
Documenting the fleet like it's production
⚙ Building
Holonet Uplink
Jocasta live on Coruscant · Hermes v0.18 · 76 skills
K-2SO rebuild to Fulcrum (NanoClaw v2)
Agent-to-agent integration · UniFi port control
◆ Studying
AZ-104
Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate
AnythingLLM RAG on MS Learn PDFs
Jocasta cert-study skills in Discord
SC-300 next → AZ-500
01

Alignment Matrix

Domain Enterprise Experience Alliance Fleet Implementation
Identity & Access Okta, Entra ID, AD for 200+ users · OpenPath physical access · JAMF/Intune endpoint identity Authentik SSO → OIDC/SAML, 15+ services, 100% MFA · Entra Connect PHS · alliance.lab AD forest
SIEM & Detection CrowdStrike, ManageEngine · incident ownership · escalation triage at enterprise scale Wazuh → 10+ agents, MITRE ATT&CK rules · AbuseIPDB enrichment · automated UniFi IP blocking
Automation Google Workspace API scripting · SCCM deployment · ManageEngine RMM workflows n8n → 20+ active workflows, Detect/Enrich/Decide/Act/Report · CVE digest to local LLM
Observability ManageEngine monitoring · endpoint telemetry · alert-to-resolution ownership TIG Stack → Telegraf + InfluxDB + Grafana at 10s resolution · GPU telemetry · forensic timeline
Network Security VLAN design review · firewall policy enforcement · Tailscale mesh for distributed teams 5-VLAN segmentation · UniFi inter-VLAN firewall · Tailscale subnet routing · Bot-Net /28 isolation
02

Fleet Status

Millennium Falcon
FCM2250 · NODE-A · 192.168.1.10
ONLINE
CPU
18%
MEM
34%
GPU
68%
CR90 Corvette
QCM1255 · NODE-B · 192.168.1.11
ONLINE
CPU
26%
MEM
58%
ZFS
42%
Gozanti Cruiser
OptiPlex 7050 · NODE-C · 192.168.1.12
ONLINE
CPU
14%
MEM
44%
DISK
62%
Proxmox VE 8.x · HA enabled
VMs + LXC 17 active
Services 25+ running
VLANs 5 active + 1 planned
n8n 20+ workflows
Wazuh 10+ agents
Full architecture, VLAN map, services inventory, and phase roadmap →
03

Projects

Act II writeup
VFIO Forensic Postmortem
Silent hard lockup, zero local logs. Crash timeline reconstructed using external InfluxDB telemetry at 10-second resolution. Root cause: PCIe ASPM power state transition under VFIO.
ProxmoxVFIOInfluxDBIncident Response
Read writeup →
Act II project
Fleet Defense Stack
Wazuh SIEM across 10+ agents, n8n enrichment with AbuseIPDB threat intelligence, automated UniFi IP blocking, Discord alerting with MITRE ATT&CK tagging.
Wazuhn8nSecurityDiscord
Read writeup →
Act II project
Hybrid Identity Lab
On-prem AD forest (alliance.lab) synchronized to Entra ID via Password Hash Sync. GPO cascade testing, domain-joined workstation, hands-on SC-300 prep.
Active DirectoryEntra IDSC-300IAM
Read writeup →
Act II project
BD-1: Claude-Powered Discord Bot
Custom Discord bot powered by Anthropic Claude API with a $10/month budget cap enforced in code. Git-synced knowledge base, Haiku/Sonnet model routing, PM2 process management under a dedicated user. Archived to bd1-archive after 996 PM2 restarts; succeeded by Jocasta.
Node.jsClaude APIDiscordPM2Git
Read writeup →
Act III project
Jocasta: Hermes Agent Platform
BD-1's successor on the Hermes Agent framework. Local-first inference (qwen3:14b) with Claude Haiku/Sonnet elevation under a $5/day hard cap, 76 loadable skills including a full Azure cert study track, and a Git-synced Fleet Codex knowledge base.
HermesOllamaClaude APIDiscordAI Agents
Read writeup →
Act II project
Local AI Stack
RTX 4000 Ada passed through via VFIO to a dedicated VM. Ollama at 50+ tokens per second. OpenWebUI, AnythingLLM RAG with 2,385 embedded document vectors, ComfyUI. Zero data egress.
OllamaVFIORTX 4000 AdaRAGOpenWebUI
Read writeup →
Act II project
Authentik SSO Platform
Centralized identity for 15+ services via OIDC, SAML, and Forward Auth. MFA enforced at the flow level, not per-app. Single audit trail forwarded to Wazuh. One login gates everything.
AuthentikOIDCSAMLMFAIAM
Read writeup →
Act II project
Azure Offsite Backup Pipeline
Nightly Proxmox-to-Azure Blob backup via azcopy on the Corvette node. SAS-scoped credentials, 3AM cron, full vzdump set pushed daily. The first piece of the homelab to cross the boundary into Azure.
AzureBlob StorageazcopyBackupAZ-104
Read writeup →
Act II project
n8n Infrastructure Automation
20+ active workflows following a Detect/Enrich/Decide/Act/Report pattern. Connects SIEM, identity, network, AI inference, and Discord into one operational layer.
n8nWebhooksDiscordPostgreSQL
Read writeup →
Act II project
TIG Stack Observability
Telegraf shipping 10-second metrics to InfluxDB from every host. Grafana dashboards for fleet health and GPU telemetry. The monitoring layer that made the VFIO postmortem possible.
TelegrafInfluxDBGrafanaFlux
Read writeup →
Act III project
Alliance Fleet Codex
Docs-as-code for the fleet: BookStack authoring (18 shelves, 10 ADRs), nightly n8n export to Gitea, 4am sync into Jocasta's knowledge base. NetBox as IPAM authority. Authentik OIDC across the stack.
BookStackNetBoxGitean8nOIDC
Read writeup →
04

Field Notes

Transmission Received
Holocron Logs → Online
Self-hosted on the Alliance Fleet. Infrastructure documented in real time.
17 Projects
14 Writeups
3 Field Notes
Enter Holocron Logs
Phase 2 active