Your data.
Your infrastructure.
Your rules.
Practical guides for running Proxmox, Docker, and self-hosted services on budget hardware. Built from a real homelab, not a sponsored lab. New to homelabs? Here's how to build a homelab on a budget. Not sure where to begin? Start here for the full reading order.
Setup Guides
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Homelab Disaster Recovery: How to Get Everything Back When It Breaks
Backups are the easy half. This is the restore half: a recovery runbook, tiered priorities, bare-metal Proxmox rebuild, and the drill that proves it all actually works.
Vaultwarden for Families: Share Passwords With Organizations and Collections
Stop sharing a login over text. Set up Vaultwarden organizations and collections so your household shares the passwords it should, and nothing it shouldn't.
ntfy Setup: Self-Hosted Push Notifications for Your Homelab
Run your own push notification server with ntfy. Send alerts from any script or service straight to your phone, with authentication on from the first boot.
Latest Articles
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BookStack vs Outline vs Wiki.js: Which Self-Hosted Wiki for Your Homelab?
A self-hosted wiki comparison for homelabs: BookStack, Outline, and Wiki.js, judged on what they actually cost you in dependencies, RAM, and setup time.
Prebuilt NAS vs DIY: Should You Buy a Synology or Build Your Own?
Synology and UGREEN sell convenience. A DIY build sells capability per dollar. Here's the real cost of each once drives are in, and which one is actually right for a budget homelab.
Mini PC RAM Upgrades for a Homelab: What to Buy and What Actually Fits
RAM is the cheapest upgrade that makes a homelab mini PC useful. Here's how much you actually need, what your machine will really accept, and which kits to buy without wasting money.
Homelab vs. Cloud: The Real Cost After 2 Years of Self-Hosting
Two years ago I projected self-hosting would beat my cloud subscriptions in under a year. Here is the actual 24-month ledger, including the costs I did not predict and the subscriptions I went back to paying.
Homepage vs Glance: The Dashboard I Run vs the One I'm Still Testing
A homelab dashboard comparison: Homepage, my daily driver wired into my whole stack, versus Glance, the newer tool I spun up to evaluate but haven't switched to.
Used Enterprise SSDs for Homelabs: Are eBay Data Center Drives Worth the Risk?
Used data center SSDs on eBay look like an absurd deal. Here's what you actually get, what the endurance numbers really mean, and when a new consumer drive is the smarter buy.