The environment where I learned Linux, containers, monitoring, networking, automation, and the value of reading the documentation.
My homelab started as a Windows machine and eventually became an Ubuntu server as I learned that Linux was a much better platform for the services I wanted to run.
Today I use the environment to experiment with containerized services, automation, monitoring, networking, remote administration, self-hosting, and local AI tooling.
Remote administration through SSH, package management, configuration editing, logs, updates, service troubleshooting, and everyday command-line administration.
Multiple self-hosted applications run as containers, managed and troubleshot through Docker tooling and configuration files.
Tailscale provides secure administrative access without unnecessarily exposing management interfaces to the public internet.
Netdata and custom notification workflows report system health, resource issues, updates, restart requirements, and daily status summaries through Pushover.
This website runs on an Ubuntu DigitalOcean Droplet behind Nginx and HTTPS. I also operate a Vultr-hosted MeshCentral instance used for remote technical support.
Experiment with locally hosted language models and AI tooling using Ollama and Linux systems to better understand model deployment, hardware requirements, and private local inference.
The goal is for infrastructure to tell me when it needs attention instead of requiring me to constantly check it.
Notifications cover issues such as resource utilization, service status, system updates, restart requirements, and daily health summaries.
My next major homelab build is a rack-mounted server designed around virtualization, larger-scale self-hosting, local AI workloads, and private smart-home infrastructure.
The planned environment will use Proxmox as the virtualization platform and provide room for dedicated virtual machines, containers, GPU-backed local models, Home Assistant, and additional infrastructure experiments.
Planned infrastructure is intentionally labeled as planned — the systems above describe my current environment.