Useful enough to maintain
DNS filtering, private remote access, backups, Home Assistant, and storage are treated as reliability-sensitive services because daily routines depend on them.
Homelab showcase
A technical case study in practical infrastructure.
The homelab section documents a real personal lab: Proxmox compute, Synology storage, private remote access, DNS filtering, Home Assistant, Docker services, media, backups, and AI-agent experiments.
generalized architecture service boundaries
Learning without pretending
AI agents, automation runners, desktop VMs, and new service experiments are documented as works in progress with boundaries, rollback paths, and honest tradeoffs.
Architecture without a target map
Pages use role-based labels and sanitized diagrams instead of real hostnames, IP ranges, tunnel identifiers, dashboards, device names, or access paths.
Tailscale Remote Access
The private overlay network that connects trusted devices, core services, DNS, SSH, media, smart home, and AI agent systems.
tailscaleremote accessidentityzero trust
Media Stack
A local media service that combines Jellyfin, containerized support apps, NAS storage, hardware encoding, and practical backup tradeoffs.
mediastoragecontainersjellyfin
Home Assistant
A practical smart-home hub for lights, fans, climate, cameras, scenes, and experiments that still need fallback controls.
home assistantautomationssensorsprivacy
Proxmox Virtualization
How the lab uses Proxmox to separate reliable services, experimental VMs, media workloads, and AI agent environments.
proxmoxvirtualizationsnapshots
AdGuard Home
How DNS filtering became a reliability-sensitive service for local and remote devices.
dnsfilteringprivacyreliability
Forgejo Git Backend
How a self-hosted Git service became the lab's local history layer for Docker Compose, Ansible, documentation, projects, and AI-agent work.
forgejogitdockeragents
Cloudflare Tunnel and Browser Access
How identity-protected browser access complements Tailscale for devices where installing private overlay software is not practical.
cloudflareremote accessidentitydns
Monitoring and Reliability
How backups, update review, uptime checks, tunnel alerts, and restore thinking turn the lab into an operational learning system.
monitoringreliabilityalertsrunbooks
Architecture Overview
A map of a home lab built around a reliable network core, Proxmox compute, NAS storage, private remote access, smart home automation, and AI experiments.
architecturetopologydocumentation
Lessons Learned
A running log of practical lessons from turning a personal lab into useful daily infrastructure.
lessonsoperationsdocumentation
Synology NAS and Backups
A generalized storage and recovery overview covering NAS storage, Proxmox backups, workstation backups, Time Machine, sync, snapshots, and restore thinking.
nasbackupsrestorestorage