Hey there, welcome back! Before diving into the nuts and bolts of my homelab, let me share a bit about my background:

I’ve been around tech for as long as I remember—from breaking and fixing my own and friends’ PCs in my younger days to now tinkering with enterprise servers. There’s something satisfying about taking apart technology, understanding how it works, and putting it back together (hopefully) better than before!

My professional journey led me to work in the datacenter space for over half a decade, including working at two of the largest Datacenters in Nepal. This experience has heavily influenced how I approach my homelab setup, bringing enterprise-grade thinking to my home environment.

🚀 What’s Running in My Homelab?

Ready for a peek behind the curtain? Here’s what powers my digital playground:

🐋 Virtualization & Containers

• Incus (LXD) containers are my primary workhorses—lightweight, fast, and efficient
• Qemu for those times when I need full virtualization
• Managed through Lxconsole for that sweet GUI management
• Docker for everything else cause why not

📦 Container Management

• Portainer keeps all my containers organized and easily manageable
• Because clicking buttons is sometimes nicer than typing commands (don’t tell the command-line purists!)

🎬 Media Server

• Jellyfin handles all my media needs
• Open-source goodness with no premium subscriptions required

🎵 Music Streaming

• Navidrome serves up my personal music collection
• Stream my own library from anywhere, anytime—goodbye music subscription services!

🖱️ Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

• KASM for browser isolation and remote applications
• Perfect for testing potentially sketchy websites or accessing applications from anywhere

🎮 Game Servers

• A versatile mix of Pufferpanel, Pterodactyl, and standalone containers
• Because hosting your own gaming servers means your rules, your mods, your fun

🔒 VPN Solutions

• A strategic mix of Twingate and Tailscale
• Because secure access to my network is non-negotiable, whether I’m at home or halfway around the world

🌐 Web Services & Proxy

• Hestia for managing web hosting needs
• Nginx Proxy Manager handles the traffic routing
• Cloudflared tunnel for secure external access without opening ports

🔗 External Access Solutions

• Playit.gg, ngrok, and ZeroTier for exposing game servers to friends
• Cloudflared tunnels for securely sharing web services
• All without the hassle of port forwarding or compromising network security

🛡️ DNS & Ad Blocking

• Pihole keeping advertisements at bay network-wide
• Because ads are so 2010, and my network deserves better

💾 Code Repository

• Gitea for self-hosted Git repositories
• Because not everything belongs on GitHub

📊 Monitoring & Security

• Currently running ELK Stack for college projects
• Usually Wazuh handles security monitoring
• Because knowing what’s happening on your network is half the battle

🤔 Why This Setup?

My homelab isn’t just about playing with cool tech—it’s my personal learning environment where I can experiment, break things (intentionally and unintentionally), and develop skills that translate directly to my professional work.

Each component serves a specific purpose, from security to convenience to just plain fun. I’m constantly evolving this setup based on new technologies, changing needs, and—let’s be honest—the occasional “ooh, shiny” moment when I discover something new.

🔮 What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, I’ll dive deeper into specific aspects of my homelab setup. I’ll be explaining what these tools and services actually are, why I chose them, and how I use them—sometimes in ways they are not intended!

I’ll share the unconventional configurations, the creative workarounds, and the occasional “I know this is wrong but it works” solutions that make my homelab uniquely mine. Because let’s be honest: half the fun of a homelab is bending technology to your will.

Want me to focus on anything particular first? Let me know in the comments!

The beauty of a homelab is that it’s never really “done”—there’s always something new to try, something to optimize, or something to rebuild from scratch just because you can.

#HomeLab #SysAdmin #DevOps #SelfHosted #ContainerLife #Virtualization #TechStack