One of my hobbies is home labbing with old hardware. I love taking something that is supposedly obsolete (and therefore inexpensive) and turning it into a usable part of my lab. It is also incredibly rewarding and freeing to know that I am running my own services on my own hardware.

Remote access is secured via VPN. I take security very seriously and have been intentionally careful to not expose my home network.

Below is a list of my current home lab setup:

Desktop Computer

• 2014 iMac
• Arch Linux
• Riced Hyperland setup (matches laptop theme)
• Daily Driver Desktop

Lab Hypervisor

• 2012 MacMini
• Proxmox
• Accessible via Tailscale
• Used for:
  • Classes when an isolated environment is needed
  • Running a project that I would like to use various devices to work on without replicating an environment
  • Experimenting with other OSes in a low risk environment
  • Used to run a DNS filter (PiHole)
  • Other expirements

File Server

• 2012 Dell XPS 14 Laptop
• OpenMediaVault
• Accessible via Tailscale
• 1TB of storage
• Replaces cloud storage for a fraction of the cost and maintains data privacy

Future Expansions

Self Hosted Web Server

• Raspberry Pi 4B
  • Currently have this, it is just not in use
• Will allow me to self host my personal website for free and easily spin up preproduction/testing environments
• Need to subnet home network first for security

Self Hosted AI Model

• Tentative project
• Still running numbers, but would like to have a newer, more powerful computer for running my own “ChatGPT” but trained exactly for my use cases (cheaper than paying subscriptions and data stays private)