Home lab

My Daily Companions

I strive to use resources sustainably and consciously, opting to repair rather than replace items whenever possible. This philosophy is reflected in the list of my daily companions. The only exception is my iPhone, which is provided by my employer and replaced approximately every three years.

  • Apple iPhone XR (6.1", 2018), 128 GB
  • Apple iPad Pro (10.5", 2017), 256 GB
  • Apple MacBook Pro (2021), M1 Pro, 1 TB, 16 GB RAM
  • Samsung 4K Display
  • Logitech MX Keys for Mac
  • Logitech MX Master 3 for Mac

As a computer scientist, I don't just use my PC for browsing the web or writing letters only. I've been self-hosting smaller services, such as my password manager, for several years to keep my data secure. Last autumn, I took a significant step by replacing all possible services with self-hosted alternatives, including my own social media services and mail server.

Proxmox Cluster

Below you will find a few photos of my old “home lab” (29.05.2024). As you can see, there was still room for improvement in terms of professionalization at the time.

my grown homelab within an IKEA sideboard

In the meantime (28.07.2024) something has happened, and the current status is as follows.

nearly current state

Hardware (last update: 18.11.2024)

  • 1x Lenovo ThinkCentre M920Q Tiny, Intel i5-8500T CPU, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD storage
  • 1x Lenovo ThinkCentre M920Q Tiny, Intel i5-8500T CPU, 40 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD storage
  • 1x Lenovo ThinkCentre M920Q Tiny, Intel i5-8500T CPU, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD storage

Software (last update: 23.04.2025)

  • Proxmox Virtual Environment with various LXC containers for:
    • AdGuard Home (primary and secondary for redundancy)
    • AdGuard Sync (for synchronizing settings)
    • AnonymousOverflow (StackOverflow privacy frontend)
    • Audiobookshelf (self-hosted audiobook and podcast server)
    • Bitwarden (long-used password manager)
    • Beszel (simple, lightweight server monitoring)
    • BookStack (personal knowledge base)
    • ChangeDetection (page change monitoring with alerts a breeze)
    • DumbWhois (a web application for looking up WHOIS, IP, etc.)
    • Fediwall (social media wall for the fediverse)
    • Flohmarkt (federated decentral classified ad software using activitypub)
    • Forgejo (self-hosted lightweight software forge)
    • FreshRSS (most used application)
    • Homepage (simple dashboard)
    • Immich (iCloud photo storage alternative)
    • Invidious (privacy backend for YouTube)
    • IT-Tools ()
    • Jellyfin (a free software media system)
    • Karakeep (occasionally used for scheduling)
    • LibMedium (privacy frontend for Medium)
    • LibreMDB (a free & open source IMDb front-end)
    • Lidarr (a music collection manager for Usenet user)
    • Mealie (recipe management)
    • MeTube (self-hosted YouTube downloader)
    • MiniQR (generate customized qr codes easily)
    • Mozhi (an alternative-frontend for many translation engines)
    • ntfy (a simple HTTP-based pub-sub notification service)
    • Pingvin Share (a self-hosted file sharing platform)
    • Piped (privacy frontend for YouTube)
    • Pocket ID (a simple and easy-to-use OIDC provider)
    • Radarr (a video collection manager for Usenet user)
    • RedLib (privacy frontend for Reddit)
    • RustDesk (my remote support platform)
    • SABnzbd (Free and easy binary newsreader)
    • SafeTwitch (privacy forntend for Twitch)
    • SearXNG (privacy-friendly Google alternative)
    • Sonarr (a tv series collection manager for Usenet user)
    • Speedtest-Tracker (Continuously track your internet speed)
    • Umami (a simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics)
    • Uptime Kuma (a fancy self-hosted monitoring tool)
    • Vaultwarden (Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust)
    • Web-Check (all-in-one OSINT tool for analysing any website)
    • WireGuard (secured way into my homelab)

Proxmox Backup Server

Hardware

  • 1x Beelink EQ12, Intel N100 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD storage

Software

Monitoring Dashboard & APT-Cache

Hardware

  • 1x Beelink EQ12, Intel N100 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD storage
  • 1x Fujitsu B24-8 TS 24" Display

Software

Synology DS223J 2 Bay Desktop NAS

Storage

  • 2x 12 TB Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD

Purpose

  • Backup storage for Proxmox Cluster applications
  • Time Machine server for all Mac computers in our home

External Hosts

1. Netcup

While I love self-hosting applications, I prefer to ensure reliability for communication services. Thus, I host my mail server on a VPS in Netcups data center in Nuremberg.

Hardware

  • VPS 3000 ARM G11, 12 vCore, 24 GB RAM, 768 GB storage

Software

  • Borg & Borgmatic (deduplicating archiver with compression and encryption)
  • Ghost (hosting this page)
  • Dockerized Mailcow (mail server, web mailer, contacts & calendar)
  • LibreSpeed (self-hosted Speed Test for HTML5 and more)
  • Mastodon (self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community)

2. Oracle

Hardware

  • Oracle Standard A1.Flex, 4 OCPU, 24 GB RAM, 200 GB storage

Software

  • Lemmy (a self-hosted social link aggregation and discussion platform)

3. Hetzner Storage Share

  • NX11, 1 TB Storage, 3 Subdomains (managed Nextcloud)

Network

Additional Stuff