Overview

My home lab is a self-hosted infrastructure setup I use for learning, experimenting, and running personal services. It mirrors real-world enterprise setups on a smaller scale.

Why I built it

I wanted hands-on experience with networking, Linux administration, and container orchestration outside of a purely theoretical environment. The home lab forces me to solve real problems.

Technical Implementation

Network

• OPNsense as the main firewall and router
• Multiple VLANs separating trusted devices, IoT, and servers
• Nginx Proxy Manager for reverse proxying services with Let's Encrypt HTTPS

Compute

• Proxmox on a home server running several virtual machines
• A K3s (lightweight Kubernetes) cluster for containerized workloads
• Docker Compose for simpler single-host services

Services

• Self-hosted Git, monitoring stack (Grafana + Prometheus), and media services
• Internal DNS for local resolution of all services

What I learned

Hands-on network segmentation, Kubernetes workload management, certificate lifecycle management, and how enterprise networking concepts apply in practice.

Next Steps

• Expand the K3s cluster with additional nodes
• Set up automated offsite backups
• Add proper alerting with Grafana Alertmanager