How It All Started

It all began when I watched a Linus Tech Tips server video and discovered my love for servers. This led me to self-learn about servers and networking. I also studied CCNA concepts, though I did not pursue certification. Eventually, I ventured into self-hosting and home servers.

Building My First Home Lab

With an old laptop (Intel i3 4th Gen, 4GB RAM) as my hardware, I decided to turn it into a home server. The laptop was headless, and I serviced and cleaned it myself before starting my self-hosting journey. After some research, I learned about Proxmox, a Type 1 hypervisor, and installed it as the foundation of my home lab.

Services and Applications

On my Proxmox server, I set up various services to create a functional and efficient home lab:

• XPEnology: Used as my NAS for file storage and management.
• Pi-hole: A network-wide ad blocker and DNS filtering service.
• Heimdall: An application dashboard to manage and access self-hosted services easily.
• Kali Linux: A virtual machine for experimenting with ethical hacking and networking tasks.
• VSCode Server: A remote development environment.
• Small Websites: Hosted some personal and experimental websites.
• Backup Server: For ensuring my important data is safely stored.
• Portainer & Docker Services: For managing and deploying containerized applications.

Making My Services Accessible

To make my services available from anywhere, I set up a domain and used Cloudflare Zero Trust tunneling. This allowed me to securely access my self-hosted websites and applications over the internet.

Future Plans

While my current hardware has limitations, my goal is to expand my home lab in the future. Some of my plans include:

• Proxmox Cluster: Setting up multiple nodes for better performance and redundancy.
• Self-Hosted Router & Firewall: For enhanced control over my network security and management.

Screenshots

Here are some screenshots of my self-hosted services:

Self-hosting has been a fun and rewarding experience, allowing me to learn so much about networking, servers, and security through hands-on practice. I look forward to growing my home lab even further!

🔗 Related Posts

• My Linux Journey — Self-hosting wouldn’t be possible without my Linux foundation — here's the story behind that transition.
• Building a Reliable Backup System — See how I layered in automatic backups and data protection into my self-hosted setup.