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Self-hosting is the practice of running your own services instead of relying on third-party providers. Instead of Google Drive, you run Nextcloud. Instead of LastPass, you run Vaultwarden. Instead of Google Photos, you run Immich. Why Self-Host? The reasons are simple: Privacy: Your data stays on your hardware, under your control No subscriptions: One-time hardware cost instead of monthly fees Learning: You’ll gain real-world sysadmin and networking skills Independence: No vendor lock-in, no sudden service shutdowns What You Need to Get Started Hardware Typical self-hosting hardware ...

Most “smart home” products phone home to corporate servers. Your light switch usage, your door lock schedule, your thermostat data — all harvested and monetized. Home Assistant changes that. My Setup I run Home Assistant on a dedicated mini PC alongside my other self-hosted services. Here’s the stack: Home Assistant OS on a dedicated Intel NUC Zigbee2MQTT with a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle ESPHome for custom sensors Node-RED for complex automation flows Mosquitto MQTT broker Why Zigbee Over Wi-Fi? Zigbee devices: ...

Every self-hoster eventually outgrows Docker on a single machine. That’s when you discover Proxmox — a free, open-source hypervisor that turns any hardware into a powerful virtualization platform. Hardware My current homelab runs on: Node 1: Dell Optiplex 7060 (i7-8700, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe) Node 2: Beelink SER5 (Ryzen 5 5600H, 32GB RAM, 512GB NVMe) NAS: Synology DS920+ (4x4TB in SHR) Network: Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro, US-24 switch VM & Container Layout proxmox-node-1/ ├── vm-100: OPNsense (firewall/router) ├── ct-101: Docker Host (main services) ├── ct-102: Pi-hole + Unbound ├── ct-103: Home Assistant └── ct-104: Monitoring stack proxmox-node-2/ ├── ct-200: Nextcloud ├── ct-201: Gitea + CI runners ├── ct-202: Media stack (Jellyfin, *arr) └── vm-203: Windows (for the rare occasion) Networking VLANs keep things segmented: ...