My First homeLab setup

My First homeLab setup

I have a laptop hanging around and thought about converting it into a home lab.

Here are the specs:

Lenovo IdeaPad

i3 10th Gen 2C/4T

8GB DDR4 RAM

512GB M.2 NVMe Gen4 SSD

1TB HDD

OS: Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS

The laptop is running headless with the lid closed and is being used as a small, always-on home server.

🌐 Networking & Remote Access

AdGuard Home — local DNS server and network-wide ad/tracker blocking

Tailscale — secure remote access to the homelab without exposing services directly to the Internet

Caddy — reverse proxy for accessing services through local hostnames

I'm also using local DNS and reverse proxying to make the internal services easier to access instead of remembering different ports for everything.

🐳 Currently running Docker containers:

– Tailscale — remote network access

– AdGuard Home — DNS / ad blocking

– Caddy — reverse proxy

– Uptime Kuma — uptime monitoring

– Grafana — dashboards

– Loki — log aggregation

– ntfy — push notifications

– Plex — media server

– Immich — photo management

-Vaultwarden — Password manager / self-hosted Bitwarden server

-Homepage — Homelab dashboard to access and organize all services in one place

And moreover, I'm trying to add more things that are useful in my POV, especially around cybersecurity, networking, monitoring, automation and self-hosting.

I'm still learning and experimenting with the setup, so I'd also love to see what other people are running in their homelabs. If you've built something interesting, drop your setup or projects in the comments! 👀