Personal Homelab

Coming home for winter break allowed me to work on my homelab more. Not only did I have more free time to tinkers and mess around with it, but I also couldn't virtually access my homelab from school. However, this would soon change.

I decided to set up a solution to the problem I had and that was not being able to access my homelab's applications from outside my network. So, I taught myself how to set up a virtual private network (VPN) tunnel. Since I already had a pfSense firewall/router combo, I set up a VPN tunnel so that I could access my homelab from anywhere around the world. Just as long as I was connected to the internet.

After setting up the VPN, I wanted to start a Proxmox server for myself. This is because for the holidays, I received parts for me to build myself a PC and no longer had a use for the laptop I was currently using.

I loaded the Proxmox ISO onto a USB drive and installed it on my old gaming laptop. From there, I configured the server and could access it remotely via its GUI. From there, I have a few virtual machines running on the server. I converted one of the servers into a Minecraft server so that I could have that up and running again. I have uses for the other servers but will slowly be working on them.

Additionally, I went to a hardware surplus store and scored myself a Dell OptiPlex for a good price. I only had to supply my own SSD and it was up and running!

I swapped out the old TrueNAS server and replaced it with the OptiPlex. Getting it set up was straightforward since I went through all the steps previously. The only difference was that I had an additional hard drive to set up for storage.

This additional hard drive allowed me to start using my applications. For example I taught myself how to set up a ZFS pool so I can add media to the drive while also connecting the drive to my Jellyfin server. This allowed me to start streaming the media I owned to my devices.

Adding this extra machine to my network required me to upgrade my network switch to accommodate the additional device. I invested in a layer 3 switch to improve network performance. This also allows me in the future to set up VLANs and isolate my network traffic for security purposes. However, I will learn that in the upcoming future.

Shout out to:

• Ardens for the inspiration on what to self-host.
• HardwareHaven for helpful guides on how to find and salvage computers and hardware.
• Louis Rossmann for his incredible FUTO guide.

If it weren't for these creators, I wouldn't have been able to build my homelab.

I took about a week doing research on what I could do to upgrade my already growing homelab. I discovered these YouTube channels and found inspiration through all of them.

I first went out and bought more ethernet cables for my network switch to add more ports for my devices. I also had a Raspberry Pi 5 laying around and learned from Louis Rossmann's FUTO guide that I could set it up to run Pi-hole, a network-wide ad blocker.

The Lenovo Mini PC continued running a Minecraft Paper server. I want to get mods running on it but need to learn how to get them working on a small device like the Mini PC.

Taking inspiration from HardwareHaven, I bought an HP Mini PC on eBay, upgraded the RAM to 8GB, made it a Ubuntu server, and installed Docker Compose. Some containers I set up to start:

• Home Assistant
• Portainer
• Uptime Kuma

Lastly, I found a stand for my Lenovo Mini PC to keep it upright. Everything fit perfectly on top of the TrueNAS server. Things are going great!

I taught myself how to image a new operating system onto a computer to repurpose it for my homelab. I discovered Network Attached Storage (NAS) and how it can be used to store and share files across a network. I took the 500GB hard drive from the Lenovo Mini PC and taught myself how to set it up through TrueNAS.

I successfully hooked TrueNAS up to the salvaged laptop and connected to the GUI from my network. Here I learned how to create storage disks, datasets, pools, shares, and most importantly, data protection. TrueNAS made sharing storage much easier — not only via SMB but also via NFS.

However, I ran into a problem: I couldn't close the laptop lid or the computer would shut down, or the screen text would burn into the display. So I taught myself how to pop open the hood and disconnect the screen power from the motherboard.

Popping open the hood helped me understand how the inside of a laptop is laid out. I learned the laptop had an M.2 drive for extra storage, and that laptop CPUs are usually soldered to the motherboard. Disconnecting the display saved the screen from burn-in and also conserved energy.

This allowed my first complete server to stay on with the screen off. Now I could access it from my personal laptop via SSH or the TrueNAS GUI.

The start of my homelab journey.

I decided to start a homelab after I was gifted a Lenovo Mini PC. At first I just wanted to run a Minecraft server for my college friends, but this quickly introduced me to the world of self-hosting.

In the image: a wired keyboard and mouse, the Lenovo Mini PC, a small layer 2 network switch, a Raspberry Pi 5, and a 500GB hard drive salvaged from another laptop. I taught myself how to upgrade the Lenovo from Windows 10 to Windows 11 by bypassing the CPU requirements via command prompt. I also set up the hard drive as a shared network drive using SMB and got Raspberry Pi OS running on the Pi.

I quickly got hooked on self-hosting and started exploring different services and hardware options at various price points.

I also run a Minecraft server for friends and a Jellyfin server for my owned media.