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homelab
Author

Will

Published

May 19, 2022

Welcome to the (yet another) blog section of my site. I plan to use this space to write about what I’m working on or plan to work on.

Right now I’m mostly interested in documenting my experience building out a homelab. I’ve hit a point where I have learned a lot over the past few months and I need to start keeping track of what I am doing and why. The wiki pages will have more technical resources for anyone looking to replicate any of my infrastructure. This blog will be more about the journey.

First Pi and Self-Hosted Service

I unintentionally started my homelab journey near the end of 2019 but it wasn’t until about a year go that I’ve been getting more serious about it.

What started it all was watching a Linus Tech Tips video about running Pi-hole on a raspberry pi zero w. I thought the projected sounded cool so I bought a pi zero and began running my first service. It was cheap, fun to set up, and got me curious to learn more about Linux.

First Woes

A few months later, I was curious about what else I could do with a pi. I stumbled upon the NextCloudPi project and bought a pi 4b. I got lucky because this was before the covid-19 pandemic and the chip shortage.

I got NextCloudPi running and for a few months I was very happy with it. I started using it to store most of my personal files so I could access them either on my laptop or phone.

Overtime, maintenance & security started creeping in my head. I tried to update my NextCloud instance but something happened and my service went down. At the time I didn’t understand where the files were actually being stored so I got scared I had just lost my data (I also was not even thinking about back-up either). I was using a 2 TB external hard drive but I didn’t understand the file paths. Eventually I was able to recover my data but I remember the panic that set in trying to get it back.

My NextCloud was also exposed to the internet. I had set up login credentials but I really didn’t do anything else. I also had to open ports on my router to access my NextCloud away from home, which in hindsight I really didn’t understand what I was doing here either.

Eventually I pulled the plug on NextCloud and replaced it with Openmediavault (OMV). Compared to Nextcloud, OMV was a leaner product and easier to work with. I figured out how to set up a smb share and built my first network attached storage (NAS).

I can’t say I understood much of what I was doing with OMV either but I was able to address my 2 biggest concerns:

  1. Having a back-up strategy (for upgrades)
  2. Not being exposed to the internet

After these experiences, my OMW was more set it and forget it.

Homelab Community

For the next 2 years I stopped tinkering with my Pi’s. The chip shortage and scalpers made it harder to buy another Pi and I didn’t want to risk breaking my current deployments.

Instead I focused my attention on learning more about linux for the desktop. Then around the end of 2022 I stumbled upon Novaspirit Tech on youtube and his Pi-Hosted playlist.

I got introduced to Docker and saw the opportunity to be able to run more services on my pi without needing to buy another one. I could start tinkering once again.

I committed to decommissioning OMV and I followed Novaspirt’s guide for setting up portainer on my Pi 4. With portainer and Novaspirit’s container template set up, I was able to start testing different docker containers. I felt like a world of possibilities just opened up.

Throughout 2023, I kept looking for more self-hosted content and found more content creators. A few creators I want to mentioned are:

  • Novaspirit Tech
    • Pi-Hosted: Introduced me a more formal world of self-hosting on a Pi
    • Introduced me to low powered x86 servers compared to the the Pi’s ARM architecture
    • Introduced me to the world of proxmox
  • RaidOwl
    • Got me thinking more about home networking
    • Bought Omada networking gear
  • TechnoTim
    • Got me thinking about Infrastructure as Code
    • Helped me set up Traefik for my reverse proxy
  • Hardware Haven
    • Got me thinking about putting life back into older hardware
    • Bought dell optiplex’s for running proxmox
  • Jeff Geerling
    • Got me thinking about Ansible

What’s Next

I currently wrapping up 2 goals:

  1. Migrating from services from my Pi 4 (ARM) to using x86 machines
  2. Set up my homelab with infrastructure as code in mind

For the first goal, I now have older dell optiplexes with proxmox installed. I’ve been using LXC containers to redeploy my docker containers.

For the second, I’ve moved away from using Portainer to using Docker Compose.

My current set up is not perfect. There is still a lot that I want to redesign in my existing infrastructure. But for now it is working and I’m happy with the progress I’ve made.

My next goals are:

  1. Fine tune my infrastructure as code practice
    • It has been time consuming setting everything setting up for the first time with Docker Compose compared to Portainer, but it has been worth it
    • I feel like I’m understanding the technology stack better and it will help reproduce my builds faster and faster now that I have the code
    • Learn how to use Ansible
  2. Set up proper networking
    • I have omada equipment but I need to devote time for setting up proper vlan networks to segment my lan
  3. Explore more docker containers
    • I have yet to play with media streaming applications like Plex or Jellyfin
    • I want to incorporate a SSO authentication portal for the rest of my docker services, maybe Authentik or Authelia?
    • I need a way to monitor my services for disrutions, uptime kuma or healthchecks?
  4. Follow 3-2-1 backup strategy
    • 3 copies, over 2 mediums, and 1 offsite location
    • My current backup strategy is keeping a backup copy of my homelab data on my laptop
    • I don’t have a lot of data so this has been working fine, but this can definitely be improved

If all this sounds interesting, I hope you come back to read about updates on my homelab progress.

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