April 13, 2025 3 min read #tech#networking#hardware#self-hosting

building my homelab - Part 1

i’ve started putting together a homelab. it’s still early, but it’s starting to feel like something that might actually hold up.

the start of a self-Hosted journey

i’ve started putting together a homelab.

it’s still early, but it’s starting to feel like something that might actually hold up.

most of it came from old hardware—stuff from friends, family, and whatever i could get my hands on.

nothing fancy, but enough to start.

this is part 1—what’s running now, and where it’s probably going next.

i’ve always wanted to understand how the stuff behind “the cloud” actually works.

networking, orchestration, hosting—all the parts you don’t really see until something breaks.

a homelab gives me a place to:

and run services i actually use—ad-blocking, media, whatever— without relying on someone else’s setup.

it’s also just… fun.

frustrating sometimes, but that usually means i’m learning something.

same reason i’ve picked up other things over time— not because i need it immediately, but because it might matter later.

running opnsense as my router.

small box, but more than enough for what i’m doing right now— cpu and ram barely get touched.

it runs a bit warm, so i’ll probably throw a usb fan on it at some point.

old macbook from my brother.

mostly used for testing and messing around—proxmox, k3s, whatever i don’t want to break elsewhere.

this is the main node for now.

handles most of the services, and so far hasn’t complained.

came from a friend—probably the most “serious” piece in the setup.

second node in the cluster.

lighter workloads for now—older cpu, but still solid enough.

picked it up for around 200 aud, which made it an easy decision.

running pi-hole on bare metal.

probably the most immediately useful thing in the setup— network-wide ad blocking just works.

nothing too complicated on the network side yet:

a couple of cheap tp-link switches for connectivity old isp router acting as an access point eero units handling general wifi:

it works. not pretty, but it works. keeping the network mostly flat for now.

will probably start segmenting with vlans once things get harder to manage.

planning to build a small rack—downloaded a diy 10” design and currently sourcing parts. right now everything just sits in a corner like spaghetti.
might swap the topton out for something like ubiquiti later on.
i should probably build a nas next. realistically, that should’ve been first—but i wanted the network in place before dealing with storage.

this isn’t a finished setup.

it’s just where things are right now.

part 2 will probably look different.

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