Step-by-step breakdowns of real builds - Active Directory, hybrid identity, home lab infrastructure, and security tooling. Not theory, just what I built and how.
These walkthroughs come from my own home lab: a Docker host running 31 containers organized into logical stacks, plus Windows Server virtual machines for Active Directory and hybrid identity testing. Each lab below is being written up as a full step-by-step guide - the commands, the screenshots, and the mistakes I hit along the way - so you can rebuild the same environment yourself.
The first guides cover the identity fundamentals I use every day supporting 30+ higher education institutions: standing up an Active Directory domain from scratch, syncing it to Entra ID with Entra Connect, and enforcing MFA with Conditional Access policies. An Okta lab is planned after those - connecting a developer tenant to the same directory to compare SSO and provisioning against Entra ID. On the infrastructure side, the Docker walkthrough expands on how I organized 31 containers into 7 stacks with monitoring and secrets management.
Until each guide ships, the blog covers the same ground in story form - see a real hybrid identity lockout or the MFA chicken-and-egg loop for the kinds of failures these labs are built to reproduce.
Stand up a Windows Server domain controller from scratch, create OUs, configure Group Policy, join workstations, and set up a basic user provisioning workflow. The foundation for every hybrid identity lab that follows.
Connect an on-prem Active Directory to Entra ID with Entra Connect Sync, configure hybrid join for devices, and test password hash sync and seamless SSO in a real lab environment.
Organize containers into logical stacks with shared networking, secrets management, Prometheus and Grafana monitoring, and automated backups. Based on the approach from the 31-container reorganization blog post.
Configure Entra ID Conditional Access policies, enforce MFA for specific user groups, set up break-glass accounts, and test the authentication flow end to end.
Four step-by-step walkthroughs are planned, all marked COMING SOON: an Active Directory Domain Build covering domain controller setup, OUs, and Group Policy; Entra ID Connect and Hybrid Join for syncing on-prem AD to Entra ID; Docker Stack Organization based on the 31-container reorganization; and MFA and Conditional Access Policies for Entra ID. None are published yet - until they ship, the same ground is covered in story form on the blog.
The lab runs a Docker host with 31 containers organized into logical stacks, alongside Windows Server virtual machines used for Active Directory and hybrid identity testing. It mirrors the identity stack used daily supporting 30+ higher education institutions, including Active Directory, Entra ID, and planned Okta comparisons.