Overview
My homelab is where I test infrastructure ideas on real systems. It runs self-hosted services in Docker and is built around automation, visibility, and recoverability.
What it includes
- Container platform: Services run in Docker and are defined with Docker Compose, so each one is repeatable and easy to rebuild.
- Reverse proxy and TLS: A reverse proxy puts internal services behind HTTPS.
- DNS: Network-wide DNS filtering with Pi-hole, plus a local DNS zone for internal names.
- Logging: Container logs are sent to Graylog for central search and analysis.
- Home automation: Home Assistant brings smart home devices together in a custom dashboard.
- Storage and backups: A QNAP NAS with RAID storage, nightly file share backups to cloud storage, and Veeam backups of virtual machines.
- Raspberry Pi cluster: A five-node Raspberry Pi 5 cluster running Debian, used for hands-on Linux administration.
Tools
Docker, Docker Compose, Pi-hole, Graylog, Home Assistant, Veeam, QNAP, Raspberry Pi, Linux.
Focus
I use the lab to practice automation and infrastructure-as-code approaches to self-hosted services.