Running OPNsense as a VM inside Proxmox is one of the best decisions I made when building my homelab. You get a full-featured firewall with the added benefits of snapshots, easy backups, and no dedicated hardware required. The setup is a bit more involved than installing on bare metal — mostly because of how network interfaces need to be configured in Proxmox. But once you understand the network topology, it clicks quickly. ...
Most people’s home network looks like this: an ISP-provided router sitting in the corner, doing everything — routing, DHCP, DNS, NAT, and whatever passes for a firewall in consumer networking gear. It works. Until it doesn’t. If you’re running a homelab, self-hosting services, or just care about what’s happening on your network, a proper firewall is one of the most valuable things you can add to your setup. And with tools like OPNsense, it’s more accessible than ever. ...
One of the biggest surprises when I got into homelabbing was just how cheap enterprise hardware can be. Servers that cost €15,000 new, sold for €50-150 on the second-hand market a decade later. Network switches that ran the backbone of a company’s infrastructure, available for less than a pizza. 10-gigabit networking gear that was out of reach for home users a few years ago, now completely affordable second-hand. The reason is simple: businesses refresh their hardware on a predictable cycle — typically every 3-5 years. When they do, the old gear gets sold off, donated, or scrapped. Most of it still has years of useful life left. ...
Proxmox is one of those tools that looks more intimidating than it is. The installation is straightforward, the web interface is clean, and within an hour of starting you can have your first virtual machine running. This guide walks through the full process from scratch. What you’ll need A machine to install Proxmox on (dedicated hardware or a repurposed PC) A USB drive (at least 2GB) for the installer A network connection (wired preferred for the install) A separate machine to access the web interface from Proxmox runs best on dedicated hardware — it’s a Type 1 hypervisor designed to be the only thing running on the machine. Don’t install it alongside another OS. ...
When you decide to build a homelab around virtualisation, the first real decision you face is which hypervisor to run. It sounds like a technical detail but it shapes everything that comes after — how you manage VMs, how you access the interface, what features you get for free, and how much you’ll be fighting the platform instead of learning from it. I evaluated three options seriously: VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Proxmox VE. ...
One of the biggest myths about homelabs is that they’re expensive. They don’t have to be. With a bit of patience and the right approach, you can build a capable setup for a fraction of the cost of buying new. Here’s how I do it. Start with what you actually need Before you buy anything, get clear on what you want to run. This sounds obvious but it’s where most people go wrong — they buy hardware first and figure out the use case later. ...
I’ll be honest — I didn’t plan my self-hosted stack. I started with one service, liked the feeling of owning my own data, and just kept adding things. Vaultwarden, then MkDocs, then more. Recently I added Karakeep. Before that something else. Each one solving a problem, replacing a subscription, or just satisfying curiosity. It works — but looking back, a bit of upfront planning would have saved me time, avoided some redundancy, and helped me think more clearly about what I actually needed versus what just seemed interesting at the time. ...
Every homelab starts somewhere. Mine started with a conversation with a friend in bar who had a server sitting in his garage collecting dust and no interest in running it anymore. “You want it?” That’s how I ended up with an HP DL380 G6 — and honestly, it’s been both one of the best and most humbling pieces of kit I’ve ever worked with. The specs This is what’s running everything: ...
If you’ve spent any time in IT circles online, you’ve probably heard the word “homelab” thrown around. But what actually is a homelab, and why do so many IT professionals swear by them? This post breaks down - and makes the case for why you should consider building one yourself. What is a homelab? A homelab is a personal computing environment you run at home for learning, experimenting, and building skills. It can be as simple as an old PC running a couple of virtual machines, or as complex as a rack full of enterprise-grade servers with a fully segmented network. ...
Every blog has on origin story. This one starts with a second-hand server, a lot of curiosity, and a growing frustration with how hard it is to find honest, practical IT knowledge, without starting a conversion with some AI bot. A bit of background I’ve been working in IT support for the better part of a decade. In that time I’ve helped businesses of all sizes keep their infrastructure running - diagnosing Active Directory issues at 8am, chasing down Exchange mail from problems after lunch, and explaining to someone why their VPN stopped working right before an important call. ...