Homelab Infrastructure#
I love hardware. Racks, neat cable management, the hum of servers — there’s something deeply satisfying about building your own infrastructure.
I started with chunky dual Xeon servers that I built myself. Powerful? Absolutely. Power-hungry and loud? Also yes. My electricity bill noticed, and so did my family.
Over time, I migrated to SFF (Small Form Factor) PCs — and I haven’t looked back. Here’s why:
- ⚡ Lower power consumption — runs 24/7 without the shocking electricity bill
- 🔇 Near-silent operation — no jet engine sounds in the living room
- 🌡️ Less heat — no need for dedicated cooling
- 📦 Compact footprint — fits anywhere
- 🔄 Easy clustering — run multiple nodes for high availability
- 💰 Cost-effective — affordable to buy and operate
The trade-off? Less expandability and fewer drive bays. But with NAS for storage and Kubernetes for orchestration, it’s the perfect fit for a modern homelab.
🖥️ Compute#
| Component | What it does |
|---|
| Proxmox VE | Hypervisor running all my VMs and LXC containers |
| Kubernetes (Talos) | Container orchestration on immutable OS |
| Docker | For quick experiments and standalone services |
🌐 Networking#
| Component | What it does |
|---|
| Pangolin | Secure tunneling for external access without exposing ports |
| pfSense / OPNsense | Firewall and routing |
| Tailscale / WireGuard | VPN for remote access |
🏠 Home Automation#
| Component | What it does |
|---|
| Home Assistant | Central hub for all automations |
| Zigbee | Smart switches, sensors, and lights |
| Automations | Wake-up lights, presence detection, climate control |
🔧 DevOps & GitOps#
| Component | What it does |
|---|
| Flux CD | GitOps for Kubernetes deployments |
| GitLab | Self-hosted git and CI/CD |
| Terraform | Infrastructure as code |
| Ansible | Configuration management |
📊 Monitoring & Backup#
| Component | What it does |
|---|
| Prometheus + Grafana | Metrics and dashboards |
| Veeam | Backup for VMs and critical data |
| TrueNAS | Network storage and redundancy |