Homelab

What is a Homelab?

A homelab is a personal computing environment where enthusiasts set up servers, networking equipment, and various services at home for learning, experimentation, and practical use. It’s essentially a scaled-down version of enterprise infrastructure that allows you to gain hands-on experience with technologies used in professional environments. You can learn more about homelabs and get inspiration from communities like r/homelab and Homelab Wiki.

My Inspiration

I set up my homelab primarily for learning and testing across multiple domains:

• Hardware: Understanding server hardware, storage systems, and networking equipment
• Networking: Experimenting with VLANs, firewalls, routing, and network security
• DevOps: Testing containerization, orchestration, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code
• Software Engineering: Self-hosting applications, databases, and development environments

The homelab serves as a safe sandbox where I can break things, learn from mistakes, and implement best practices without affecting production systems.

My Current Setup

Network Infrastructure

OPNsense Router: Running OPNsense as my primary router/firewall behind my ISP modem configured in bridge mode. This gives me full control over my network with advanced features like VLANs, intrusion detection, and detailed traffic monitoring.

TP-Link Omada: Using TP-Link’s Omada ecosystem to manage my networking devices, providing centralized control over access points, switches, and network policies. Running via Docker container for easy deployment and management.

Tailscale: Secure VPN solution for remote access to homelab resources, providing encrypted mesh networking without complex configuration.

Security & Monitoring

Frigate NVR: Running Frigate for network video recording with AI-powered object detection using a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) for efficient real-time analysis of camera feeds.

Home Automation

Home Assistant: Central hub for smart home automation, integrating various devices and sensors:

• Energy monitoring smart plugs to track power consumption across different devices
• Temperature and humidity sensors distributed throughout different rooms for climate monitoring and automation
• Smart bulbs and lights for automated lighting control and scheduling
• Smart TV integration for media control and automation

Infrastructure & Storage

K3s Cluster: Testing Kubernetes deployments with a lightweight K3s cluster for container orchestration and microservices experimentation.

ZFS Storage: Basic ZFS drive setup for reliable data backup with features like snapshots, data integrity checking, and efficient storage management.

Self-Hosted Services

Nextcloud: Self-hosted cloud storage and file sharing platform, offering privacy-focused alternative to commercial cloud services with features like file sync, sharing, and collaboration tools.

Linkding: Self-hosted bookmark manager for organizing and managing web bookmarks with tagging, search functionality, and a clean web interface.

This setup provides a comprehensive learning environment that covers networking, security, automation, and modern infrastructure practices. It’s constantly evolving as I experiment with new technologies.