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Hi! I started my homelab journey about three years ago with a broken laptop that had no screen—because why not? (It worked, stop judging me.) I ran that setup for about two years, and it taught me a lot through sheer stubbornness and creative problem-solving. Over the past year (late 2024-2025), I've really accelerated this journey as I am going back to college to go into the IT realm, and my homelab has evolved into what I affectionately call "organized chaos."
My current setup is still modest but functional: 2 routers, 1 main router and an 8-port unmanaged mini switch (👎 not my favorite choice, but it works), and 4 Raspberry Pis. One Pi 3 runs Pi-hole for network-wide ad blocking, while three Pi 4Bs form a test environment Docker Swarm (I've broken this so many times it's sad). I also have 2 mini PCs—one running Proxmox as my virtualization server with 2 4TB NVMe drives in a mirror configuration, and the other as a TrueNAS server with 6 2.5-inch 4TB SSDs haphazardly wired into the board, looking like a glorious spaghetti monster of cheap cables. Everything lives in a DeskPi T2 mini 10-inch server rack, which keeps things surprisingly tidy given what's inside (just don't look at the back).
I've made every mistake in this guide—sometimes thrice—so you don't have to. But honestly, I quite enjoy that part of the learning process. (Narrator: he said as a tear rolled down his cheek.)
This guide is everything I wish someone had told me when I started. It's written for people who are curious but intimidated, enthusiastic but broke, or just tired of paying subscriptions for things they could probably host themselves.
I'm not a sysadmin with 20 years of enterprise experience. I'm just a nerd who reads too much documentation, enjoys making too much documentation, and watches too many YouTube tutorials at 2 AM when I'm supposed to be getting up at 6 AM.
I get unreasonably excited when a service finally works after the 47th attempt, 2 broken keyboards, and a complete meltdown (ugly crying and all 😭)—so excited I have to show the entire world! (Stuart quote: "look what I can do!") Hence the birth of this Wiki 🎉.
Look, all I'm trying to say is: if I can do this, you absolutely can too and probably better. So let's learn together, and maybe I can help you learn something, or better yet, you can tell me how I did everything wrong and hopefully show me a better way!
Now let's build something cool. 🚀
This wiki is organized to help you quickly find method of setting up various half hosted services, and IT tools. Here's how to make the most of it:
On the left side, you'll find the Quick Links callout box containing all major topics organized in collapsible toggles. Click any toggle to expand it and reveal sub-pages. Click on any page title to open that guide.
When viewing longer pages, look for the Table of Contents in the right sidebar. This automatically generates links to all headers on the current page, allowing you to jump directly to specific sections without scrolling.
Toggle dropdowns help organize content and keep pages clean:
Throughout this wiki, you'll encounter colored callout boxes that serve different purposes:
<aside> ℹ️ Blue Callouts - Additional information, tips, or helpful context that enhances your understanding.
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<aside> ⚠️ Orange Callouts - Warnings about potential issues, common mistakes, or things to be cautious about.
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<aside> 🛑 Red Callouts - Critical warnings! Stop and read carefully before proceeding. These highlight actions that could cause data loss, security issues, or system problems.
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Link blocks (shown with a chain link icon) provide quick access to related pages:
Code blocks appear throughout the guides. To copy them:
Use the search function (Ctrl/Cmd + P) to quickly find specific topics across all pages in this wiki.