What I run on my homelab

Let's take a quick look at what I'm currently running on my homelab. If you've ever been curious about setting up your own servers at home but felt a bit intimidated, I'm hoping this post will give you some inspiration—and maybe a dose of courage.

What's a Homelab?

A homelab is basically a personal playground for tech enthusiasts. Instead of experimenting on cloud services or corporate infrastructure, you do it right at home. This usually involves:

• Servers or old desktops you turn into servers
• Networking gear like routers, switches, or even Wi-Fi access points
• Services and apps to play around with (like media servers or code testing environments)

Why I Chose Proxmox

I’m using Proxmox as my virtualization platform. Proxmox is an open-source solution that lets you create and manage VMs (virtual machines) and containers on the same host. Some of the big wins here:

• It’s free and open-source.
• The user interface is straightforward for managing multiple VMs.
• Great for tinkering with Linux containers or running random OSes.
• Great community support.
• Easy LXC container creation and management.

LXC vs Docker

I've been using LXC containers for a while now and I've found them to be a great way to run applications in a isolated environment. They are lightweight and easy to manage, but they are not as flexible as Docker containers.

Common Challenges

• Learning curve: It’s not exactly plug-and-play, so you’ll need some research to avoid messing up your networking.
• Resource needs: Each VM requires CPU, RAM, and storage. Gotta balance performance across everything.
• Backups: You’re in charge of protecting your own data—no fancy cloud backups by default.

What have I built?

Personally, I made the choice to build my own home server from scratch with pieces I bought from different vendors. I've been using this setup for a few months now and it's been working great.

Currently, my setup has the following:

• A 10A power cord, with local web dashboard for monitoring and controlling the power consumption.
• A server with a Xeon running Proxmox.
• A TP-Link router.
• A patch panel for network management.
• 2 Asus routers for Wi-Fi 6 and connectivity.
• My ISP router.
• A gaming server running windows and steam.
• A server for my NAS with 4tb of storage (for now).

The Services I’m Running

Below is a quick rundown of the fun stuff I’ve spun up inside my Proxmox cluster, as shown in the screenshot:

1. homepage
   My custom homepage dashboard, giving me quick links to all my internal apps and services.

2. pihole
   Blocks ads and trackers at the network level. Super easy to set up and a must-have for an ad-free life.

3. jellyfin
   My media server of choice. Stream movies, shows, and music from anywhere in my house (or the internet, if I open it up).

4. qbittorrent
   My torrent client. Perfect for downloading Linux ISOs—or so they say. It's web-based, so I can manage downloads anywhere.

5. prowlarr
   An indexer manager that keeps all my torrent/newsgroup indexers in one place for apps like Radarr, Sonarr, etc.

6. radarr
   Automated movie library management. It fetches movies, organizes them, and sends them to qBittorrent for me.

7. sonarr
   TV show counterpart to Radarr. Keeps track of episodes and automatically fetches them. Life-changing if you're a series junkie.

8. jellyseerr
   Requests management tool for Jellyfin (similar to Overseerr for Plex). Friends or family can request shows and movies, and it's all automated.

9. bazarr
   Handles subtitles. Great if you watch content in multiple languages or just prefer to have subtitles available.

10. postgresql
    My relational database. Used by some of my other apps for data storage.

11. redis
    A blazing-fast in-memory data store. Handy for caching or queue systems if I want to speed up services.

12. myspeed
    A quick test environment to measure local network or internet speeds.

13. Samba
    My Samba-based Network-Attached Storage. Central file storage that's easily accessible across devices.

14. flaresolverr
    Solves Cloudflare's anti-bot challenges automatically for certain apps.

15. alpine-lab
    A small Alpine Linux LXC container for experimentation and messing around with container images or new software.

16. Home Assistant OS
    A Home Assistant OS VM. It's my go-to for home automation, controlling lights, temperature, and other smart devices around the house.

17. truenas
    My storage solution of choice for my NAS, providing reliable data storage with ZFS, snapshots, and easy-to-use sharing capabilities.

Quick Tips for Getting Started

• Start small: It’s tempting to spin up a million services, but begin with one or two critical services (like Pi-hole).
• Backups: Make sure you have snapshots or backups of your VMs. It saves you from heartbreak if something breaks.
• Learn by doing: Homelabs are all about experimentation. It’s fine to break things if you can learn from it!

Conclusion

There you have it—my personal homelab lineup using Proxmox. If this interest you, don’t be afraid to dive in. Homelabs can be as simple or as complex as you want.