Homelab Overview
The homelab lives on physical hardware in a dedicated rack. It’s designed for high uptime, easy recovery, and keeping as many services self-hosted as possible — not for performance benchmarking or running the absolute latest bleeding-edge stack.
Hardware
| Role | Hardware | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hypervisor | Custom x86 server | Proxmox VE |
| NAS | Custom Unraid build | ZFS pool + parity |
| Networking | Unifi stack | UDM-Pro, managed switches, APs |
| UPS | CyberPower 1500VA | Protects the core |
Architecture principles
- Separation of concerns — compute runs on Proxmox VMs/LXCs; storage lives on Unraid; they talk over dedicated VLANs.
- Container-first — services run as Docker containers (Compose stacks) inside a dedicated LXC on Proxmox.
- Backup before everything — Proxmox Backup Server + Unraid’s scheduled parity checks + offsite sync.
- DNS-first networking — local DNS resolves all internal services; no reliance on port numbers in URLs.
Sections
- Proxmox — hypervisor setup, VM/LXC organization
- Docker & Compose Stacks — what’s running and how it’s organized