Helllooo everyone!

I just want to introduce myself and tell you all about my homelab. It's all pretty high-level, feel free to ask me about anything here.

About me

I’m just someone that absolutely loves technology. Software and systems are mostly where my heart lies, I’ve been working in IT for about 19 years. I have been homelabbing and self-hosting since about 2005. It started with game servers then learning how to become a sys admin, then wanting control over my data, and now I just want to explore different technology stacks and new software.

My homelab is a bit of a mix of running services for my family and a testing ground for learning new technology.

Quick and dirty

My entire homelab is Proxmox as the hypervisor, debian VMs to run Docker and Komodo. Forgejo deploys my containers on Komodo. Docker labels control Traefik and exposure.

6 hosts (3 “production” and 3 test lab) and ~147 containers.

Hostname	CPU	RAM	Storage	Used For
Jupiter	i7-9800X	128GB	122TB	App + Storage
Saturn	i9-13900K	64GB	3TB	Home Assistant + Dev + DNS (Secondary)
Mars	N150	16GB	500GB	Router + DNS (Primary)
Neptune	2x Xeon Silver 4214R	1.5TB	24TB	Testing + DR
Uranus	2x Xeon Silver 4214R	1.5TB	24TB	Testing
Pluto	2x Xeon Silver 4214R	1.5TB	24TB	Testing

Jupiter

My main server, pretty much what I would consider "production" in my house. I pretty much throw everything on this whether it's just for shits and giggles or actually useful. I try out every remotely interesting self-hostable application there is, so this list changes constantly,

It was running Unraid until a few weeks ago, but it has finally fallen inline with the rest of my environment with Proxmox and a debian VM.

I see people ask "Do you actually use any of this?" when people run a bunch of software, so I've split it into what I actually use and what just kind of exists.

What actually gets used

Most of these are actually used on a daily or weekly basis.

• Authentik – SSO/identity
• Excalidraw – Whiteboard
• FamFeed – Private Social Media
• Forgejo – Git hosting
• Glance – Dashboard
• Guacamole – Remote access
• Immich – Photo library
• Karakeep – Bookmarks
• Mealie – Recipes
• ntfy – Push notifications
• NZBGet – Usenet downloader
• Open WebUI – AI chat
• OpenHands – AI agents
• Outline – Wiki
• Penpot – Design tool
• Plex – Media server
• PrivateBin – Encrypted pastebin
• Seerr – Media requests
• Windmill – Workflow automation

Used, just not directly

• Grafana – Dashboards
• Jellyfin – Media server
• NetBox – IPAM/DCIM
• Paperless-ngx – Document management
• Prowlarr – Indexer manager
• Radarr – Movie management
• ReadMeABook – Audiobook requests
• SABnzbd – Usenet downloader
• Sonarr – TV management
• Tautulli – Plex stats
• Tunarr – Live TV channels

For that rare moment

• Audiobookshelf – Audiobook server
• BentoPDF – PDF tools
• ByteStash – Code snippets
• IT-Tools – Dev utilities

Infrastructure Apps

If I'm logging into one of these directly, something is broken. lol

• Backrest – Backups
• Beszel – Monitoring
• CrowdSec – Intrusion prevention
• Dozzle – Log viewer
• Komodo – Container management
• Node Exporter – Host metrics
• Traefik – Reverse proxy
• Umami – Web analytics
• UniFi Network Application – Network controller
• VersityGW – S3 gateway
• VictoriaMetrics – Metrics database
• Wazuh – SIEM

I should probably tear them down.

• Actual Budget – Budgeting
• Aurral – Music discovery
• LazyLibrarian – Book management
• Lidarr – Music management
• Navidrome – Music streaming

Saturn

This box was originally just to spin up VMs and test different applications, VMs, or build an environment to teach something to some of my junior. It was the first Proxmox box in the environment and after using it for a while I ended up switching all computers over to Proxmox.

Now it runs Home Assistant, secondary DNS, and some VMs that I use for Dev and AI agent work.

• Home Assistant – Home automation
• Music Assistant – Multi-room audio
• Technitium DNS – DNS (secondary)
• Z-Wave JS UI – Z-Wave controller
• Eclipse Mosquitto – MQTT broker
• Faster Whisper – Speech-to-text
• Piper – Text-to-speech
• Nanit – Baby monitor
• Node Exporter – Host metrics
• Backrest – Backups
• Beszel Agent – Monitoring agent

Mars

This is a little Beelink EQ14 that has dual 2.5 Gbps NICs and I purchased it specifically to be a dedicated router/firewall.

• OPNsense – Router/firewall
• Technitium DNS – DNS (primary)
• Cloudflare DDNS – Dynamic DNS
• Tailscale – VPN exit-node
• Node Exporter – Host metrics
• Backrest – Backups
• Beszel Agent – Monitoring agent

Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto

Relatively new hosts that are taking the simulation workloads I was running alongside production. They run Proxmox as well. I have OpenTofu and Ansible playbooks that spin up "scenarios" or my DR bubble. I am currently focused on OpenStack, Kubernetes, and other business simulation environments.

Current Goals

DR / Rebuild

Currently I am working on being able to rebuild and/or restore my entire homelab from a single script. The idea is if Jupiter, Saturn, or Mars have a catastrophic failure I can point the script to my new host and it will build it out, let me select which services to restore and hopefully be back up and running in a few hours.

Security Monitoring

I spent a chunk of the past year learning SIEM and how to tune alerts in Wazuh. Thankfully I work very closely with my InfoSec team at work so I had a helping hand, plus Claude being able to fill in some of the gaps. I am trying to get a Claude-based agent to do a lot of the triage and so far it is janky but works pretty well. My next step is to allow this agent to gather telemetry around whether or not the alert coming in is related to me. The idea is that between my remote sessions, where my phone is, and a few other details the agent will build a confidence score for how likely it is me accidentally generating the alert. It will then ping me to get confirmation, if I respond with "Not me" then it will go through some steps to either kill access.

I am also working on various apps and automations around my families needs, mostly our private social media.

Ask me anything or tell me about your homelab!