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¶ The purpose of this site
This wiki serves as a centralized knowledge base for my infrastructure, configurations, and the many lessons I’ve learned sometimes the hard way over time. Let’s be honest: if you’re new to the world of homelabbing, you quickly discover just how much there is to learn… including a surprising number of things you didn’t even know it existence and why it matters in the first place.
Many homelab enthusiasts are creative explorers whose day jobs have little to do with IT, yet they share a strong (and slightly obsessive) desire to take control of what's theirs and their privacy. This wiki may reflects that mindset, along with a fair share of trial, error, and “Oh crap, why the F*ck did I do it this way?” (two handed facepalm) moments.
Here may you find practical guides, useful insights, and ideas intended to assist and inspire you in your own neverending projects. In a homelab like mine, something is always not working as I had imagined, needs to become upgraded, or about to be reinvented for no good reason.
¶ A home.. what?
A homelab is a personal, self-hosted IT environment typically set up at home used for learning, experimentation, and running services. It functions as a private “mini data center” where you can safely build, test, and operate your creations without affecting your production or other personal systems
¶ Core Characteristics
- Self-hosted infrastructure: Runs on your own hardware (e.g., servers, NAS, or repurposed PCs).
- Isolated environment: Designed for testing configurations, updates, and new tools.
- Hands on learning: Commonly used to develop skills in areas such as networking, virtualization, and system administration.
- Service hosting: Can run real, day 2 day services for personal useage.
¶ Typical Components
- Hardware: Servers (e.g., a Dell PowerEdge), mini PCs, retired PC's, or other custom or purchased builds
- Virtualization platforms: Proxmox VE, VMware ESXi
- Storage solutions: external disks, Synology, TrueNAS SCALE or Samba servers
- Containers & orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes
- Networking: VLANs, firewalls, routers, reverse proxies
- Applications/services: Media servers, backup systems, monitoring tools, and home automation platforms like Home Assistant
¶ Common Use Cases
- Learning Linux, networking, and DevOps practices
- Hosting personal services (file storage, media streaming, notes, proxy managers)
- Testing software before deploying it in a personal or professional environment
- Building automation systems (smart home setups)
- Running secure remote access solutions (VPNs, tunnels)
¶ Convenience and awareness established the foundation for my homelab.
The development of my homelab began during the early days of Apple HomeKit, when I first started experimenting with smart devices integrated into my home network. While the concept of automation and convenience was appealing, I quickly became dissatisfied with the requirement to rely on multiple cloud-based accounts just to operate basic functionality.
As I continued researching online, it became clear that I was not alone in this skepticism. Many others were questioning what these devices were actually doing within their networks beyond their intended purpose. This led me to explore more advanced networking concepts, particularly network segmentation through VLANs. The idea of isolating IoT devices in a dedicated network separate from my private devices made immediate sense from both a security and privacy standpoint.
At that time, implementing VLANs with a standard Fritz!Box was not feasible. To overcome this limitation, I invested in an Aruba network switch, which allowed me to properly segment my network and create a fully isolated IoT environment. This ensured that smart devices could no longer directly communicate with systems on my primary network.
As my curiosity grew and the number of IoT devices increased, I began to look for more control and flexibility. This ultimately led me to move away from Apple HomeKit and adopt Home Assistant. That transition marked a turning point: what began as simple experimentation evolved into a structured and scalable environment. From that moment on, the foundation of my homelab was established.
¶ Be mindful before you share your private data @ Big Tech Daddy!
Before you hand your questions, ideas, or data to Mr. Google, and Mr. X or any cloud-based AI, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what you are actually sharing. These services are powerful and quite convenient, but they rely on processing your input externally often storing, analyzing, or using it to improve their systems. That means sensitive and private information, internal details, or personal thoughts may not stay as private as you may assume.
Thinking first does not mean avoiding these tools altogether; it means using them intentionally. Ask yourself whether the information you are about to provide is something you would be comfortable sharing publicly or with a third party. For more sensitive tasks, local solutions or self-hosted alternatives can offer greater control and privacy.
convenience is valuable, but awareness is essential.
¶ 
Support my work
If you’ve found anything here useful whether it solved a problem, taught you something new, or simply spared you from shouting at your screen, consider supporting the work behind it.
Everything you see has been built, tested, broken, fixed, and occasionally questioned at unreasonable hours of the night. It runs on curiosity, persistence, and probably more coffee than is strictly advisable. Contributions are never expected, but they are very much appreciated they help keep projects alive, improvements rolling, and half baked ideas evolving into something actually useful.
If you’d like to say “thanks” in a simple and direct way, you can do so with a small donation on BuyMeACoffee. Think of it less as a payment and more as fuel keeping the servers humming, the ideas flowing, and the latenight debugging sessions marginally more cheerful.
Support of any size genuinely makes a difference.
My sincere appreciation in advance, thank you.