Homelab v0

As my homelab is about to reach a milestone I thought I’d look back on where it started.

What’s a homelab?

A homelab is a personal setup of computer stuff that some of us spend way too much time and money on.

Why would I want one?

Here’s a few reasons:

Learning

The biggest reason I wanted a homelab was for learning. I can get hands-on experience with tech I wouldn’t normally use, and as a DevOps Engineer that often ends up being useful at work.

Applications

There are loads of open source apps you can run for free at home.

You can block adverts, run your own Netflix and plenty more.

Services

You could backup your devices and centralise storage with a NAS, then setup a VPN and connect to it from anywhere.

How do I get one?

The biggest thing I want you to take away from this is that you already have one.

the homelab was inside you all along

Pretend for a moment you’re a mad scientist, hacking away at some computery stuff. There are several blinking lights and a faint computery hum fills the air.

What kind of computery stuff did you imagine?

Did it involve loads of blinky lights? You might be interested in networking. I bought a Ubiquiti switch and it’s way blinkier than my old one. It’s also 10 times faster.

Did you see yourself coding? Maybe you could setup your own git server, add on CI/CD and get your apps hosted on your own network. That’s what I’m doing.

Or maybe you want to try out AI on your own hardware?

Whatever it is, you can probably get started right now with the things that you already have. You don’t need to go and buy anything just yet. Start acting like a mad scientist doing computery stuff and eventually you’ll become one.

When I wanted to learn about Docker images I used my own laptop. Then when I was given a Raspberry Pi I tested out running Docker images on that and so my homelab doubled in size.

I didn’t realise it was called a homelab at the time. I was just doing computery stuff.

My Homelab v0

Macbook Pro (2012)

Raspberry Pi 1

Notebook

Pen for writing it all down, otherwise it’s not science.