My Home Lab Setup (with pics!)
A few years ago I had a coworker offer me his old Plex server for a buddy deal and I couldn’t say no. Ever since that day, I’ve been slowly building a Home Lab with scraps and whatever I have lying around. Some of it isn't pretty, but it sure works!
Hardware
Servers
Dell PowerEdge R710
Dual Intel Xeon L5630 4C/8T @ 2.13GHz
16GB DDR3 (yes, I know this is not nearly enough, but it hasn't really been a problem)
3 1TB Toshiba HDDs that came w/ the server
1 240GB WD SSD for boot/OS
8TB Easystore
Alienware Alpha (NVR)
Intel Core i3-4170T 2C/4T @ 3.2GHz
GTX 750ti
8GB DDR3
4TB shucked Seagate external HDD
Networking
TPLink AX5400 Wi-Fi 6 Router
Ubiquiti UAP-AC-Lite
Netgear R6400 in AP modeThis has been phased out (for now). It was causing hellacious interference and slow speeds for some devices that wouldn’t hop between APs
2 48 port Cisco 3750X switches
They were supposed to be PoE but aren't, thanks eBay dickhead
Cameras
4 Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW
These run 24/7 and get recorded to the NVR
5 Blink cameras w/ doorbell cam
These are just motion-activated and an effective backup for the Amcrest cams
Software
PowerEdge
Everything here runs on Docker except Apache; most are behind CloudFlare Zero Trust for the sake of security. Back in August, I moved to bare metal from Proxmox with an Ubuntu VM and Windows VM to just Ubuntu after learning I could run my game servers on Docker. The original Proxmox setup wasn’t super ideal, resources were constantly getting hogged and now I rarely see utilization of anything above 50%. You can check out my infrastructure GitHub page if you want to steal from my docker-compose file.
Portainer
Apache
Immich
NextCloud
Plex
Adguard
Prowlarr
Lidarr
I use the lidarr-on-steroids fork
Readarr
Kavita
Unifi Controller
This will be deprecated soon, will need to update next year
Gokapi
Homepage
qBittorrent
I use the qBittorrent VPN fork
Wireguard
I use the wg-easy fork
Speedtest Tracker
Fast.com Speedtest
2 IW4x servers
IW4madmin
I use IW4madmin in Docker
CSGO server
I use CM2’s docker container w/ SourceMod variant
Minecraft server
I use itzg’s docker container w/ this plugin list
Bookstack
Ntfy
Kasm
Frigate
I use this just for superior motion tracking and redundancy’s sake
TubeArchivist
This is for (insert link to project writeup here when it’s done)
DizqueTV
This is also for that project ^
Camera Setup
Alienware Alpha
This is solely an NVR running Windows Server 2019. I use iSpy Agent DVR for the 4 Amcrest cameras with an SMB share to my local network. To view the cameras I use an older HP laptop running Amcrest Surveillance Pro in the attic of my garage with an HDMI cable running to a TV for output
Email
Though not technically self-hosted, I do run it all on my own on a Vultr VPS. I'm using the basic $5/mo Cloud Compute from Vultr with Mail-in-a-Box. After setting everything up it's been rock solid for multiple years. I don't send a whole lot of emails but I've had no issues sending to Gmail users, although I've heard Microsoft is a bit worse about receiving emails from self-hosters.
Backups
Frankly, this is the most shameful part of the pie. I don't have any current automated backup process outside of grabbing a zip of my Docker data folder every once in a while. This will be fixed soon. I have a Raspberry Pi that's been sitting around gathering dust that I plan on using to do nightly backups. I really just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Conclusion
That's the whole thing (unless I've missed something). Outside of my hoard of old junk computers, laptops, and gaming PC (there's 10TB worth of storage in there lol), that covers everything I have in this house.
There are quite a few things I'd like to improve on, namely the backup situation. I'm always on the hunt for new cool stuff to host. Throw me some suggestions if you have any!