State of Homelab 2026
7 hours ago
- #infrastructure
- #homelab
- #self-hosting
- The author's interest in bunkers and independence is channeled into building a homelab.
- Hardware includes an OrangePI 5 and a GMKTec NUC with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, plus a Hetzner VM for 24/7 uptime.
- No NAS yet; important data is synced with Syncthing.
- Principles: Infrastructure-as-Code, reproducibility, and ease-of-use.
- OS: Debian on bare metal.
- Network: Cloudflare Tunnels for free, secure external access without exposing ports.
- Reverse proxy: Traefik; authentication: Authentik.
- Operations: Ansible for automation with roles, SOPS for encrypted secrets management.
- Services include media management (*arr stack), media consumption (Jellyfin, Navidrome), AI (LibreChat), photos (Immich), and monitoring (Beszel, Statsping).
- Missing elements: backups, RAID, cloud independence, full IaC automation.
- Cost: €7/month for Hetzner VM; total time spent estimated at 100-150 hours.
- Goal is learning, owning data, and enjoying tinkering, not perfection.