Architecting a Resilient, Zero-Trust Security SOC & Automation Stack on Legacy Hardware (Dell OptiPlex 3020 Micro)
🏛️ CASE STUDY: The Lean Enterprise Micro-Datacenter 1. Executive Summary This case study documents the design and deployment of a full-stack Infrastructure and Security Operations Center (SOC) on a resource-constrained Dell OptiPlex 3020 Micro (i3 CPU) . By leveraging LXC containerization, custom Python middleware, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) , the project achieves enterprise-grade observability and zero-data-loss resilience while maintaining a remarkably low resource footprint (~10.5% average CPU usage). 2. The Infrastructure Profile (The Constraints) Hardware: Dell OptiPlex 3020 Micro (Intel Core i3, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD). Networking: MikroTik hEX r3 (Backbone). Hypervisor: Proxmox VE 8.x. Objective: Host 10+ critical services (Wazuh SIEM, n8n Orchestration, Zabbix Monitoring, Home Assistant, and custom AI UI) on a dual-core platform without compromising stability. 3. The Logical Architecture (Sapper-Ranger Design) A. Network & Perime...