Building a homelab is one of the most rewarding journeys for any engineer. It allows you to experiment with physical hardware, networking, virtualization, and self-hosting in a low-risk environment.
Here is a quick look at the core components of my setup:
1. The Hardware Stack
- Server: A custom-built low-power server running an AMD Ryzen 5 processor and 64GB of RAM.
- Storage: A 4-bay NAS running TrueNAS with 16TB of usable ZFS storage.
- Networking: A managed 8-port gigabit switch and a dedicated firewall appliance running OPNsense.
2. The Services
- Hypervisor: Proxmox VE for running virtual machines and LXC containers.
- DNS: Pi-hole for local DNS resolution and network-wide ad blocking.
- Reverse Proxy: Nginx Proxy Manager with automated Let's Encrypt SSL certificates.
Setting this up from scratch taught me more about networking, routing, and systems administration than years of writing cloud-native application code.