Homelabbing

A home lab is an environment consisting of running servers, services, and infrastructure setups at home, usually created as a form of exploration or interest. Homelabbing taps into the personal setups already readily available at home (networks and devices).

I currently have an extremely basic homelab, with plans to expand even further and explore interesting tech in the time to come!

Additional resources

• GitHub repo for setup + config files

Setup

• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (active)
  • 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU
  • 4 GB LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM
  • 32 GB microSD internal storage; 1 TB HDD external storage
• Mac mini (not onboarded)
  • 64-bit Apple M2 CPU
  • 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 SDRAM
  • 256 GB SSD internal storage
• Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q (not onboarded)
  • 64-bit Intel Core i5-6500T CPU
  • 8 GB PC4-2400T (DDR4-2400) RAM
  • 256 GB SSD internal storage
• Custom-built PC (primary device)
  • 64-bit Intel Core i5-13500 CPU
  • 32 GB DDR4-3600 RAM
  • 1 TB + 1 TB SSD internal storage
  • 8 GB NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti

Current services

Application	Usage	Tech	Host	Status
Joplin Server	Note-taking	Docker Compose	Raspberry Pi	Active (in use)
Shlink	Link shortening	Docker Compose	Raspberry Pi	Active (in use)
5.0 GPA Student	Discord bot	Docker	Raspberry Pi	Active (in use)
Portainer Agent	Docker management	Docker	Raspberry Pi	Active (unused)
Radicale	CalDAV and CardDAV management	Docker Compose	Raspberry Pi	Active (in use)
Portainer	Docker management	Docker	Raspberry Pi	Active (in use)
Portainer Agent	Docker management	Docker	PC	Active (in use)
Portainer Agent	Docker management	Docker	Mac mini	Active (in use)
Open WebUI	LLM interaction	Docker	Mac mini	Active (in use)
Paperless-ngx	Physical paper scanning	Docker Compose	Mac mini	Active (experimenting)

Current plans

Architectural

• Explore container orchestration with either Kubernetes (k8s) or Docker Swarm
  • Currently, the home lab is preliminarily linked through instances of Portainer Agent and an instance of Portainer Server (running on the Pi) that allows me to interact with the Docker Engine of all three (Pi, PC, and Mac) devices — though somewhat connected this way, each system is still isolated

Onboarding

• Onboard Mac mini into setup (Done!)
  • Prepare separate home lab user — still want to be able to use the Mac regularly as a desktop
    • The setup for doing this seems more complicated such that the technicality overweighs the convenience. I’ve opted to installing OrbStack alongside the current default user instead of going with a separate home lab user

2. Source and install upgraded memory and storage devices for ThinkCentre
   • 8 GB DDR4-2400 → ~16+ GB DDR4-2400
   • 256 GB → ~1 TB
3. Onboard ThinkCentre into setup
   1. Read more about Proxmox VE and virtualisation
   2. Prepare and install Proxmox VE as main interface

Devlog

20 June 2025

• Figured out Samba and managed to get a Samba share working from the external 1 TB HDD connected to the Pi (USB) to the other devices in the home network!
• Came across Radicale and thought it can replace my current contacts + calendar back-up implementation (running on Wölkli’s hosted Nextcloud instance)
  • Managed to get Radicale working and ported over all my contact + calendar information successfully