// Your home, your cloud.
STOP RENTING. START BUILDING.
Why pay monthly for cloud services when you can run them at home? A homelab lets you host your own cloud storage, media server, password manager, VPN, and more.
LEARN BY DOING.
The best way to learn DevOps, networking, and system administration is by doing. Your homelab is a safe place to experiment, break things, and learn.
Click a lesson to begin
Why build a homelab? Use cases and getting started.
BeginnerRaspberry Pi, old laptops, or dedicated servers.
BeginnerRouter, VLANs, static IPs, and DNS.
BeginnerInstall Proxmox or VirtualBox. Run your first virtual machine.
BeginnerContainerize your services. Docker Compose.
IntermediateNAS, RAID, and backup strategies.
IntermediatePlex, Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr. Build your streaming platform.
IntermediateHome Assistant, Bitwarden, Nextcloud, and more.
IntermediateVPN, reverse proxy, and accessing your lab from anywhere.
AdvancedFirewall, fail2ban, reverse proxy TLS, and hardening.
AdvancedUptime Kuma, Grafana, and knowing when services go down.
AdvancedPower management, rack setup, and scaling up.
AdvancedA homelab is a personal computing environment where you experiment with technology, host services, and learn new skills.
1. What is a primary benefit of a homelab?
1. What's the best starter hardware?
Assign static IPs to your servers:
# Ubuntu/Debian - /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml
network:
version: 2
ethernets:
eth0:
addresses: [192.168.1.10/24]
gateway4: 192.168.1.1
nameservers:
addresses: [1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8]
# /etc/hosts or dnsmasq config 192.168.1.10 nas.local 192.168.1.11 pihole.local 192.168.1.12 media.local
1. Why use static IPs?
# Install VirtualBox sudo apt install virtualbox # Or download from virtualbox.org
1. What is Proxmox?
Docker packages applications with all dependencies. One command to run any service.
# Install Docker curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh # Add user to docker group sudo usermod -aG docker $USER # Start Docker sudo systemctl start docker sudo systemctl enable docker
# Run nginx docker run -d -p 80:80 --name nginx nginx # Check status docker ps # Stop docker stop nginx # Remove docker rm nginx
# docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
nginx:
image: nginx
ports:
- "80:80"
volumes:
- ./html:/usr/share/nginx/html
1. What command runs a container?
1. What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?
version: '3'
services:
jellyfin:
image: jellyfin/jellyfin
container_name: jellyfin
network_mode: host
volumes:
- ./config:/config
- ./cache:/cache
- /mnt/media:/media
1. What manages TV downloads?
Smart home hub. Control all your IoT devices.
Password manager. Host your own vault.
Dropbox alternative. Files, calendar, contacts,办公.
Network-wide ad blocking. DNS-level filtering.
Docker management UI.
version: '3'
services:
homeassistant:
image: homeassistant/home-assistant
network_mode: host
volumes:
- ./ha:/config
bitwarden:
image: vaultwarden/server
container_name: bitwarden
restart: always
ports:
- "8080:80"
volumes:
- ./bw-data:/data
1. What is Bitwarden used for?
# Install WireGuard sudo apt install wireguard # Generate keys wg genkey | tee privatekey | wg pubkey > publickey # Configure /etc/wg0.conf [Interface] PrivateKey = <your-private-key> Address = 10.0.0.1/24 [Peer] PublicKey = <client-public-key> AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.2/32
1. What is the safest way to access from outside?
# UFW basics sudo ufw enable sudo ufw allow ssh sudo ufw allow 80/tcp sudo ufw allow 443/tcp sudo ufw default deny incoming
# Install sudo apt install fail2ban # Copy config sudo cp /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf /etc/fail2ban/jail.local # Edit settings sudo nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.local
1. What blocks brute force attacks?
Self-hosted status page and monitoring.
# Docker docker run -d --name uptime-kuma -p 3001:3001 -v ./uptime-kuma:/app/data louislam/uptime-kuma
System monitoring.
# Install pip install glances # Run glances
1. What checks if services are up?
You've completed the Homelab Mastery guide. You now understand:
A homelab is more than just servers—it's a learning environment and a way to take back control of your data.
Instead of renting cloud services, run your own. You'll learn invaluable skills and have full control over your data.
Your home, your cloud, your rules.