My Homelab Stack: Everything I Run
A tour of my homelab stack: the hardware and the services I run, grouped by job, with a calculator for working out your own monthly cost.
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I’ve written a lot of posts on this site about individual services and hardware choices. What I haven’t done is show everything at once. So here it is: the hardware, the services, and where to work out the cost for your own setup.
This is not a beginner “start with these five things” post. That article already exists. If you’re just getting started, read The Budget Homelab Starter Stack first and come back here when you’re ready to go deeper. If you haven’t bought hardware yet, the build a homelab for under $300 article covers the complete hardware shopping list before you touch any software. This post is for people who want to see a full working stack before they commit to building their own.
The hardware it runs on
My homelab runs on two HP DL380 Gen9 servers (Proxmox) plus a small Intel N5105 mini-PC board running Unraid for storage and media. I also own an APC Back-UPS 600, and the Unraid box is plugged into it.
If you’re still deciding on what hardware to buy, the best mini PC for homelab guide for 2026 covers current options across the N100, N305, and Ryzen 5 class machines, with power and price trade-offs for each. And if you want to understand why I’m not running a tower with a big GPU, the low power homelab under 25 watts piece explains the math.
The base layer: Proxmox and Docker
Everything runs on Proxmox VE. Docker containers run on a Docker host managed with Portainer, and several services (NPM, Mealie, Immich, Technitium, n8n, ntfy, Paperless-ngx) run natively in their own LXC containers. Proxmox gives you proper snapshot-and-restore, isolated VMs when you need them, and a management UI that doesn’t require SSH every time you want to check something. Docker is the ecosystem where most self-hosted apps live, and Compose files are portable: moving a service to different hardware is a yaml file and a volume copy.
The Proxmox on a Mini PC setup walkthrough covers hardware selection, BIOS prep, and the full ISO install for a mini PC specifically, which has a couple of gotchas compared to a standard PC. After that, Docker Compose basics is worth reading before you have more than three or four containers going, because the organizational decisions you make early stick around.
I keep Proxmox snapshots and backups in rotation, and I have rolled back a snapshot. The Proxmox snapshots and backups guide covers the setup.
What I actually run
Networking and access
Nginx Proxy Manager sits in front of everything. Every service gets a clean subdomain and a valid HTTPS certificate. No more bookmarking IP:port combinations. The NPM setup guide covers the full setup, including the Let’s Encrypt cert automation.
Tailscale is a mesh VPN, so there is no VPN server to maintain. You install it on the homelab machine and any device you want to reach it from, and everything connects over an encrypted mesh network. The Tailscale homelab setup guide is a quick read.
Files and documents
Syncthing keeps my files synced between the server and my laptop without any cloud in the middle. I use it primarily for my notes vault.
Paperless-ngx handles documents. Scan once, OCR and index automatically, search by keyword forever. The inbox folder watches for new files and processes them without any interaction. The Paperless-ngx setup guide is solid.
Vaultwarden is my self-hosted Bitwarden password manager. All Bitwarden apps work with it, and my vault data never leaves the network. The Vaultwarden walkthrough covers it from install to first login.
Media and photos
Jellyfin is the media server. It handles movies and TV over local streaming, with no Plex Pass, no subscription, and no analytics phoning home. The Jellyfin setup guide gets you from zero to streaming in an afternoon.
Immich handles photos and videos. Google Photos alternative, self-hosted, with face recognition and mobile backup via the Immich app. My wife actually uses it. The Immich setup guide covers the Docker setup and the initial library import.
Monitoring
Uptime Kuma watches my services and sends me a notification when something goes down. Simple dashboard, dead easy to set up, runs in one container. The Uptime Kuma setup guide is short because the tool is just not that complicated.
What I don’t run that you might expect
No Home Assistant: I ran it for about six months and stopped, because I did not have enough smart-home gear to benefit. No Nextcloud, because Syncthing covers my file sync with less surface area.
What it costs
Cost depends on your hardware, your electricity rate, and what you would otherwise pay for cloud services, so this post does not publish a ledger. Use the power and monthly cost calculator with your own wattage and rate, then the self-hosting vs cloud break-even calculator to see how long a setup takes to pay for itself. The self-hosting vs cloud cost breakdown goes deeper on the math, including the honest case for when cloud is actually cheaper, and the homelab total cost breakdown covers the complete picture with hardware included. The homelab power usage piece explains how to measure your own draw and why the numbers matter for long-run cost.
What I’d cut if I had to
If I had to get this down to the bare minimum, I’d keep Tailscale, NPM, Syncthing, and Vaultwarden. Those four services cover the essential infrastructure: secure access, file sync, and credential management. Everything else is valuable but not critical.
Immich would be the first thing back. Paperless second. Jellyfin third.
If this whole stack looks like too much to start with, read The Budget Homelab Starter Stack. It’s five services chosen for the most payoff per hour of setup.
The calculators show where the money goes: hardware is the upfront cost, and electricity is the ongoing line to watch.
No vendor lock-in, no data leaving my network, no subscription price hikes. That’s the case for a budget homelab. If you’ve been on the fence, run your own numbers with the calculator.