Do You Need A Homelab?

You're guide to self-hosting

I have been working on my Homelab and been self hosting for 7+ months. I have gone through alot of different configurations and tried and tested multiple things. Failed and also succeded in a way that has allowed me to remove subscriptions and make my life easier but also harder

I will go through 2 main things in this post:

1. We will talk about if you should start a homelab
2. We will talk about the options you have

Should you start a homelab?

Yes, you can stop reading now

Of course, I can just end on that note but you have to ask yourself certain questions before we actually figure this out

Taking on a homelab is a forever task, depending on your skill and your needs and the complexity you want to add, you never will feel like you have done enough

Do I really need a homelab?

This is an important question you need to ask yourself, of course not, because most services are provided online. But if you are sick and tired of having to pay for 10's of subscriptions for every little thing, and you want to create a custom smart home that makes you feel in control, then maybe you should build a homelab.

There are so many tools to use, from security, to home automation, media streaming, photo library, etc. The possibilities are endless and there are many guides and tutorials online that can get you started quickly

Wouldn't running a server be expensive and loud?

The biggest misconception is that a homelab is like a server you see at your company. Its not, it can be done on any old computer or a small mini pc you have, you can startup completely free on your old laptop that you didn't throw away. Thats the beauty of it all, you never have to spend any money because there are already so many tools to help you out.

I am not from a tech background, I can't do all this?

Do not worry, you don't have to start with anything too complex. There are ways to not even have to code that we will discuss later. The beauty of a homelab is that it will only be as complex as you want so if you want it to be simple, keep it simple

How do I start?

Well the best thing to first figure out what is it you want to host, the easier stuff like ad blockers or a photo library can be setup in minutes. you just need to figure out what you want to do

If you want to keep it simple you can use things like CasaOS that are meant to just install things using docker, or you can just run plain windows, remember you don't need to use anything that you don't feel comfortable with

If you want to learn more complex things and are okay with running virtual machines, things like Proxmox is a very popular option. You can even choose to make a NAS ( Network Attached Storage ). This is can be a method to have a lot of storage and be able to run your stuff on it as well. Things like TrueNAS or Unraid. Or if you prefer a prebuilt NAS, Synology and Ugreen have good options. But they will be expensive because of their software and pre-built device. And the cheaper options of pre-built will not run many things due to the lack of hardware

If you are like me, working or aspiring to be a DevOps engineer or Site Reliability Engineer or anything similar you have many options like cloud, AWS, Azure or cheaper VPS option like Hetzner vault. I am running Kubernetes, using Sidero Omni with Talos Linux, which is a version that allows me to run it on bare metal an immutable linux for the best security, which allows also for remote management

If you want more tips about Homelabbing or get my latest blog posts about DevOps or SRE, subscribe for free down below

Sign up for free