Automating the Homelab with Ansible
Configure every machine from one inventory file and repeatable playbooks -- instead of remembering (or forgetting) what you manually typed on each host months…
Intermediate
1.5 h
Free
Proxmox VM Templates with Cloud-Init and OpenTofu
Define VMs as code and spin up a fully configured, ready-to-SSH-into machine in minutes from one cloud-init template -- instead of clicking through the same…
Advanced
2.5 h
Free
DIY Sensors with ESP32 and ESPHome
A temperature/humidity sensor you built yourself, flashed with no C++ required, reporting straight into Home Assistant with no cloud service in the middle.
Beginner
1.5 h
$15
UPS Integration with Network UPS Tools (NUT)
A power outage that triggers a clean, automatic shutdown across every host on your network -- instead of a hard power-loss and the filesystem corruption risk…
Beginner
1 h
$80
Building a Router and Firewall with OPNsense
Replace your ISP router with a real firewall: full visibility into your network's traffic, VLAN segmentation, and rules you actually control instead of whatever…
Advanced
4 h
$100
Runbook: Diagnosing Network Problems with Packet Captures
When 'the network is slow' isn't good enough to go on -- a repeatable process for capturing traffic with tcpdump and reading it in Wireshark to find the actual…
Intermediate
45 min
Free
Network-Wide Ad Blocking with Pi-hole
Block ads and trackers for every device on your network at the DNS level, with no per-device app or browser extension, by making Pi-hole your network's DNS…
Beginner
1 h
Free
Caddy vs. Traefik vs. Nginx Proxy Manager
Three reverse proxies that solve the same problem -- routing hostnames to the right service with real HTTPS -- compared on config model, automation, and how…
Beginner
15 min
Free
Reverse Proxy with Wildcard HTTPS on Internal Names
Give every self-hosted service a real, browser-trusted HTTPS URL like jellyfin.home.example.com, using a wildcard certificate and split-horizon DNS -- no port…
Intermediate
1.5 h
$15
A Routing Protocol Lab with Containerlab and FRRouting
Build a virtual network of routers running real OSPF and BGP, entirely in containers on one machine -- and watch routes actually propagate, fail over, and…
Advanced
2.5 h
Free
Mesh VPN with Tailscale
Connect all your devices into one private mesh network in minutes, with no port forwarding and no manual key management -- the trade-off being a third party in…
Beginner
30 min
Free
Recursive, Filtered DNS at Home
Run Unbound as your own recursive resolver behind Pi-hole, so your DNS queries go straight to the root servers instead of through a third party's resolver.
Intermediate
1 h
Free
Segmenting Your Home Network with VLANs
Split one flat network into trusted, IoT, guest, and management VLANs on OPNsense, with firewall rules that actually enforce isolation between them -- not just…
Intermediate
3 h
Free
How VLANs, Trunks, and Tagging Actually Work
The frame-by-frame explanation of what a VLAN tag actually is, why a trunk port is different from a normal one, and the mistake that breaks isolation even when…
Beginner
20 min
Free
Remote Access with WireGuard
Reach your home network securely from anywhere with a self-managed WireGuard tunnel -- and know when a managed mesh VPN or plain port forwarding would actually…
Intermediate
1.5 h
Free
Centralized Logging with Grafana Loki
Every container and host's logs in one searchable place, viewed right alongside your metrics dashboards -- no more SSHing into five machines to find one error.
Intermediate
1.5 h
Free
Metrics and Alerting with Prometheus, Grafana, and Alertmanager
Real dashboards for your hosts and containers, and real alerts when something's actually wrong -- not a pretty graph nobody looks at until it's too late.
Intermediate
2 h
Free
A Linux Server Hardening Baseline
The concrete, non-negotiable set of changes to make on every Linux server before it goes anywhere near the internet -- SSH, firewall, updates, and fail2ban…
Beginner
1 h
Free
Network Scanning with nmap and Trivy
See your homelab the way an attacker would: what ports are actually open, and which of your container images have known vulnerabilities -- on your own network…
Intermediate
1.3 h
Free
Single Sign-On for the Homelab with Authentik
One login for every self-hosted service, with real MFA -- instead of a different password (or no password at all) guarding each one.
Intermediate
2 h
Free
Home Assistant for Home Automation
Bring your smart home devices under one local dashboard and write real automations across brands, instead of juggling a separate app -- and a separate cloud…
Beginner
1.3 h
Free
Self-Hosted Media Server with Jellyfin
Stream your own movie, TV, and music library to any device, on your own hardware, with no subscription and no cloud dependency.
Beginner
1.3 h
Free
Self-Hosted Local LLMs with Ollama and Open WebUI
Run open-weight language models entirely on your own hardware, with a ChatGPT-style web interface, no API key, no per-token billing, and no prompt data leaving…
Intermediate
1.3 h
Free
Real 3-2-1 Backups with restic and Proxmox Backup Server
Three copies of your data, on two kinds of media, one offsite -- built with restic and Proxmox Backup Server, and proven with an actual timed restore, not a…
Beginner
1.5 h
$5
Build a ZFS NAS with TrueNAS
Turn a dedicated machine into real network storage with ZFS underneath: the right pool layout for your drives, snapshots, scrubs, and replication -- not just a…
Intermediate
2.5 h
$300
Essential Homelab and Self-Hosting Resources
A curated, annotated map of the homelab and self-hosting world: communities, discovery lists, learning resources, hardware sourcing, and the tools worth knowing…
Beginner
20 min
Free
Managing a Homelab with Docker Compose, Portainer, and Watchtower
Go from a pile of one-off `docker run` commands to a consistent, visible, auto-updating set of self-hosted services -- and understand exactly what access you're…
Intermediate
1.5 h
Free
A Three-Node k3s Cluster with GitOps
A real, multi-node Kubernetes cluster on lightweight k3s, deploying workloads automatically from a git repo instead of `kubectl apply`-ing by hand.
Advanced
3 h
Free
Proxmox VE Command-Line Reference
The Proxmox CLI commands you actually reach for -- cluster status, VM and container management, storage, and backup/restore -- grouped by task, not…
Intermediate
15 min
Free
Build a 3-Node Proxmox VE Cluster
Join three separate machines into one Proxmox VE cluster with real quorum, so you can manage every host from one UI and live-migrate a running VM between them…
Intermediate
4 h
Free
Proxmox HA: Automatic VM Failover Across Nodes
Make your Proxmox cluster self-healing: a VM automatically restarts on a surviving node within about a minute of the node it was running on going dark, with no…
Advanced
2.5 h
Free