About

I'm Iván, from Spain. I work as a systems and infrastructure administrator in the public sector and, alongside that, I'm studying a two-year Spanish vocational degree in networked systems administration (ASIR). Before that I completed an intermediate vocational qualification in computer systems and networks (SMR).

I like understanding how things work inside, so when something catches my interest at work, I usually end up building it at home too, to keep tinkering.

What I do at work

My day-to-day is keeping a mixed production environment running:

• Virtualisation: a Proxmox VE cluster with Ceph storage and backups to Proxmox Backup Server.
• Active Directory: organisational unit structure and group policies (GPO) for network drives, printers and software deployment.
• Security and monitoring: a SIEM with Wazuh, monitoring with Checkmk and a dashboard showing service status.
• Inventory and tickets with GLPI, plus user support.
• The organisation's public website, on WordPress.
• Security documentation for the ISO 27001 standard.

Some things I've built at work

Described without internal details, of course:

• Automated user onboarding and offboarding with PowerShell: a GUI tool that creates the account, assigns groups, generates the password, keeps an audit log and syncs with the inventory.
• Wazuh connected to GLPI: alerts arrive by email and open tickets on their own. By tuning rules I cleared tens of thousands of false alarms that were hiding the real ones.
• Continuity tests: I simulated a domain controller going down and measured how long the service took to come back (about five and a half minutes).
• Small internal Python apps: forms that generate PDFs and send email notifications, and a tool to manage the equipment inventory.
• Self-hosted services: remote support, a password manager and a Git server with directory sign-in.
• 3D printers on their own network, separated from everything else with a VLAN and firewall rules.
• A proposal for local AI infrastructure (Ollama, Open WebUI, vLLM, n8n and a vector database) with single sign-on.

My home lab

This is where I test almost everything you'll read here. It's very ordinary: a Raspberry Pi 5 that acts as the server for everything, an old Synology NAS for backups, a Linux laptop (CachyOS) for coursework, a Windows PC and a 3D printer. No racks, no company budget.

What Ctrl+IA is about

I write about real projects: what worked, what didn't and what I learned along the way. Many articles start from problems at work, told as a home version and without details from any organisation. There are five topics:

• Artificial intelligence: how I use AI day to day, what works locally and what doesn't, and how to get real value out of it.
• Home server: Raspberry Pi, Docker, backups, monitoring and alerts.
• Guides: step-by-step manuals, like the Proxmox VE one.
• Quick tips: small things that save time.
• Tools: software and services I use and why.

Away from work screens, I'm into 3D printing and space simulation and strategy games. They'll show up here now and then.

How the articles are written

I write with the help of an AI (Claude, by Anthropic). It helps me organise ideas and draft text, but the projects are mine, the commands are tested and I review every article before publishing. When something goes wrong, I say so: mistakes usually teach more than successes.

The site started in Spanish; the English versions are translations of the same articles.

The game

Every article you finish earns XP, and there are hidden achievements around the site. Your progress is stored only in your browser: no accounts, no leaderboards. It's just an excuse to make learning a bit more fun.