A NAS only earns its keep when it disappears into your daily work. This is a practical guide to wiring TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault into Linux, macOS, and Windows for both live storage and backup — the right protocol per platform, mounts that survive reboots, and an honest look at how the network decides what feels fast and what feels like wading through mud.
Self-Hosting
-
Folding a NAS Into Your Daily Workflow: Linux, macOS, and Windows -
Yxk Zero1 4-Bay NAS: OS Options, Use Cases, and Drive Recommendations The Yxk Zero1 is a compact 4-bay NAS built around Intel's N100 — low TDP, QuickSync transcoding, and dual 2.5GbE in a desktop form factor. This guide covers every serious OS option, practical use cases, drive selection, and the real trade-offs you need to know before buying.
-
Measuring What Your Homelab Actually Costs How to find your homelab's real power draw and turn it into honest dollar figures: plug meters, Tasmota smart plugs, used enterprise PDUs, CT-clamp monitors, the Home Assistant energy dashboard, and the math from watts to your actual marginal rate.
-
Solar and Battery Backup for Network Gear: A Reality Check An honest engineering assessment of running homelab and network equipment on solar and batteries: load math, panel sizing with real capacity factors, LiFePO4 vs NMC vs lead-acid, DC-direct distribution, power stations as UPS, and the payback math that usually does not work.
-
UPS Sizing and NUT for the Homelab: Graceful Shutdown Done Right How to actually size a UPS for a homelab rack — VA vs watts, sine waves, runtime math — and a full Network UPS Tools walkthrough: drivers, upsd, primary/secondary upsmon, shutdown sequencing across Proxmox and TrueNAS, and testing discipline.
-
Why Your Homelab Burns 300W Doing Nothing Where 300W of idle homelab power actually goes, and how to claw most of it back: C-states, ASPM, powertop, HDD spindown, BIOS settings, consolidation onto mini-PCs, and scheduled wake-on-LAN — with the savings math worked out at real electricity prices.
-
Local Speech-to-Text With Whisper A deep technical guide to running OpenAI's Whisper ASR model entirely on your own hardware — covering architecture, model size trade-offs, every major implementation, GPU sizing, quantization, VAD, speaker diarization, and real command examples.
-
Local Vector Search for Homelab RAG: pgvector vs Qdrant vs Chroma A practical comparison of Chroma, pgvector, and Qdrant for fully self-hosted vector search — covering setup, embedding generation on local hardware, and wiring each into an offline RAG stack that never phones home.
-
Hermes Agent Comes to the Desktop: Install, Optimization, and the Best Local Models Nous Research just shipped Hermes Desktop, a native front end for its self-improving Hermes Agent. A hands-on guide to installing it, wiring it to local models via Ollama, choosing the right model for agentic tool use, and tuning the whole thing for real work.
-
Jan: The Open-Source Local LLM Runner Coming for Ollama and LM Studio Jan bundles a chat UI, a model hub, and an OpenAI-compatible server on top of a Cortex/llama.cpp engine — Apache 2.0, no account, no telemetry. A hands-on look at where it beats Ollama and LM Studio, where it doesn't, and how to tune it.
-
Frigate: AI-Powered NVR Frigate is a self-hosted, open-source NVR that runs real-time object detection locally using dedicated AI accelerators — no cloud subscription, no footage leaving your network, and sub-second alerts when the model is tuned correctly.
-
GitLab Self-Hosted A no-fluff guide to running GitLab CE on your own infrastructure: install paths, runner architecture, resource realities, backup discipline, and an honest verdict on when the weight is worth it.
-
Matrix and Synapse: Self-Hosted Chat Deploy your own federated, end-to-end-encrypted chat server with Matrix and Synapse — covering the protocol, real deployment configuration, bridges, and honest performance trade-offs.
-
Kubernetes for the Homelab: K3s from Scratch to Production An end-to-end guide to running Kubernetes at home with K3s — single-node and HA setups, ingress, persistent storage with Longhorn, MetalLB, cert-manager with DNS-01, automated upgrades, and a pragmatic path to migrate Docker Compose workloads without overengineering it.
-
Llama 4 and Gemma 4: The 2026 Self-Hosted Model Landscape Meta shipped Llama 4 Scout and Maverick and Google shipped four Gemma 4 variants under Apache 2.0 — all within a few weeks of each other. This is a practical walkthrough of what each model is, what hardware you actually need, how to deploy them with Ollama, vLLM, and llama.cpp, and which one to pick for which job.
-
Repurposing Old Phones and Mini PCs: Giving Retired Hardware a Second Act How to give retired phones and mini PCs a useful second life — low-power servers, thin clients, and self-hosted services — covering postmarketOS, Android options, and the workloads these efficient little machines handle well.
-
Running a Homelab on a Power Budget How to run a capable homelab without a punishing electric bill — measuring real draw, picking efficient low-idle hardware, consolidating workloads, and the power-versus-capability tradeoffs that show up on the first monthly statement.
-
MinIO: Self-Hosted S3 — Deployment, Erasure Coding, and Performance Tuning Running MinIO as self-hosted, S3-compatible object storage — deployment topologies, how erasure coding protects data, and performance tuning for line-rate throughput on commodity hardware, with a clear-eyed note on recent licensing changes.
-
Kavita: Self-Hosted Reading Server for Manga, Comics, and Ebooks Kavita is an actively developed, self-hosted reading server that handles manga, comics, light novels, and ebooks with automatic series organization, cross-device progress sync, and OPDS support.
-
Miniflux: Minimal Self-Hosted RSS Miniflux is a single-binary, PostgreSQL-backed RSS reader that trades feature bloat for speed and simplicity. Here's how to deploy it, configure it, and get the most out of it.
-
Stirling PDF: Self-Hosted PDF Swiss Army Knife Run 50+ PDF operations locally with Stirling-PDF — merge, split, OCR, convert, compress, sign, and redact without sending a single byte to the cloud.
-
Wallos: Take Control of Your Subscription Sprawl Wallos is a self-hosted subscription tracker that shows you exactly what you're paying for, when it's due, and how much it costs — without sending your financial data anywhere.
-
Immich Deep Dive: AI-Powered Photo Management for Your Homelab A complete guide to deploying and running Immich — self-hosted Google Photos with AI-powered face recognition, smart search, and hardware-accelerated machine learning.
-
Immich: Self-Hosted Google Photos That Actually Competes A complete guide to deploying Immich — the best self-hosted photo and video library — covering Docker Compose setup, hardware-accelerated transcoding and ML, mobile backup, storage management, and keeping a library of hundreds of thousands of photos running smoothly.
-
Pi-hole and AdGuard Home: Network-Wide Ad Blocking for Your Homelab A practical guide to deploying Pi-hole or AdGuard Home as your homelab DNS server — covering blocklists, DNS-over-HTTPS, split-horizon DNS, DHCP, and keeping the whole family happy.
-
Vaultwarden: Running Your Own Password Manager A complete guide to deploying Vaultwarden — the lightweight Bitwarden-compatible server — with HTTPS via Traefik, automated backups, admin hardening, and migrating from LastPass or 1Password.
-
K3s on Raspberry Pi and Homelab: Lightweight Kubernetes That Actually Works A complete hands-on guide to running K3s on Raspberry Pi hardware and homelab servers — from bare-metal bootstrap to production-grade workloads with ingress, persistent storage, and GitOps deployments.
-
Object Storage Internals: How S3-Compatible Storage Works and Self-Hosting with MinIO A deep dive into how S3-compatible object storage works under the hood — consistency models, multipart uploads, lifecycle policies, erasure coding, and running production-grade storage with MinIO.
-
Self-Hosted AI Inference: vLLM, llama.cpp, and Running Your Own OpenAI-Compatible API A comprehensive guide to running your own LLM inference servers — covering vLLM, llama.cpp, OpenAI-compatible APIs, batching strategies, quantization, and benchmarking throughput so you can make informed hardware and software decisions.
-
SQLite in Production: When It's the Right Choice, WAL Mode, Backups, and Litestream Replication SQLite is more capable in production than most developers realize. This guide covers when to choose it over Postgres, WAL mode for concurrent reads and writes, proper backup strategies, and continuous replication with Litestream.
-
ZFS for Homelabbers: Datasets, Snapshots, Send/Receive Replication, and Scrub Schedules A practical guide to ZFS for homelab operators — pool creation and tuning, datasets and properties, snapshots and rollbacks, automated replication with zfs send/receive, and the scrub/SMART schedules that keep your data safe long-term.
-
Automating Homelab Tasks with n8n: Visual Workflow Automation Self-Hosted A practical guide to self-hosting n8n for homelab automation — covering installation with Docker Compose, core concepts, real workflow examples for server health checks, Docker update notifications, and Home Assistant integrations, plus tips for AI-powered workflows with local LLMs.
-
Docker Compose for Homelab: Multi-Service Stacks Done Right A deep-dive into Docker Compose for homelabbers and self-hosters — covering Compose file anatomy, environment management, networking, healthchecks, real-world stack examples, and production-readiness tips that scale from a Raspberry Pi to a full rack.
-
Home Assistant: The Local-First Smart Home That Actually Respects Your Privacy A comprehensive guide to Home Assistant — the open-source, local-first home automation platform. Covers installation, Zigbee/Z-Wave/Matter hardware, ESPHome, automations with real YAML examples, Lovelace dashboards, presence detection, templates, and security best practices for homelabbers who want control and reliability over cloud-dependent solutions.
-
Homelab Hardware Guide: Mini PCs, Used Enterprise Gear, NAS Picks, and Power A comprehensive hardware guide for homelabbers at every level — covering mini PCs, used enterprise servers, NAS platforms, networking gear, rack vs desktop tradeoffs, power consumption math, and tiered starter build recommendations.
-
Kubernetes for the Homelab: K3s Setup, Workloads, and Beyond A thorough guide to running Kubernetes in your homelab using K3s — covering installation, core concepts, workload deployment, ingress with TLS, persistent storage, migrating from Docker Compose, Helm, GitOps, and cluster operations.
-
Nextcloud: Your Self-Hosted Google Workspace Replacement A comprehensive guide to replacing Google Workspace with a self-hosted Nextcloud stack — covering files, calendar, contacts, Collabora office editing, and migration from Google services, with complete Docker Compose configs and hardening tips.
-
Proxmox VE: The Ultimate Homelab Hypervisor A comprehensive guide to Proxmox Virtual Environment — covering installation, ZFS and LVM-thin storage pools, VM creation with VirtIO and cloud-init, LXC containers, networking with VLANs, clustering, backups with PBS, GPU passthrough, and the tools and tricks that make it the homelab hypervisor of choice.
-
Running a Local Knowledge Base: Obsidian, Logseq, and AI-Powered Search Over Your Notes A practical guide to building a personal knowledge base that you actually own — using Obsidian or Logseq for capture and organization, syncing without the cloud, and wiring in local AI so you can search and query your notes with natural language.
-
Self-Hosting Your Email: Postfix, Dovecot, Stalwart, and the Deliverability Gauntlet A brutally honest, comprehensive guide to running your own mail server — covering the Postfix+Dovecot+Rspamd classic stack, the modern Stalwart all-in-one, DNS authentication records, and the deliverability reality that makes getting into Gmail's inbox the hardest part of the whole endeavor.
-
The Self-Hosted Media Server Stack: Jellyfin, the *arr Apps, and Full Automation A complete guide to building a fully automated, self-hosted media library using Jellyfin, Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, qBittorrent, Bazarr, and Jellyseerr — everything you need to run a home streaming setup that rivals Netflix without subscriptions, ads, or disappearing content.
-
Uptime Kuma: Self-Hosted Status Pages and Alerting Done Right A practical guide to Uptime Kuma — the self-hosted uptime monitoring tool with a beautiful UI, 90+ notification integrations, and built-in status pages that replaces UptimeRobot, StatusCake, and Pingdom for homelabbers and DevOps engineers.
-
Microsoft Azure as a Personal VPS: The Complete Guide to Pricing, Setup, and Cost Optimization Everything you need to know about running a personal VPS on Microsoft Azure — VM tiers, pricing models, security hardening, and battle-tested strategies to cut your cloud bill by up to 90%.
-
OpenClaw: The Complete Guide to Self-Hosted AI Agents Everything you need to know about OpenClaw — the open-source, self-hosted AI agent that connects your messaging apps to real-world actions. Covers its origins and confusing rename history, the architecture, deployment on Docker, Mac mini, and a VPS, running it against local models with Ollama, the SOUL.md policy system, the serious security incidents you must understand before deploying, and an honest comparison against Claude Code.
-
Traefik: The Complete Guide to the Cloud-Native Reverse Proxy A comprehensive deep-dive into Traefik — the modern cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer. Covers core architecture, Docker auto-discovery with labels, automatic HTTPS via Let's Encrypt, the full middleware ecosystem, routing rules, ForwardAuth and SSO, observability, HTTP/3, and the tips and tricks that make it the go-to proxy for home labs and production Kubernetes clusters alike.
-
The Vibecoder's Home Lab: Running AI Agents Across Multiple Machines A comprehensive technical guide to building a home lab purpose-built for AI-assisted development — covering hardware selection, network architecture, DNS, Proxmox virtualization, shell configuration, running parallel Claude Code agents with git worktrees and tmux, agent sandboxing, and the workflows that make vibecoding genuinely efficient.
-
Securing Your Home Lab Network segmentation, firewall rules, and monitoring for self-hosted services.
-
Self-Hosting vs Cloud: A Cost Analysis Real numbers comparing VPS, home servers, and managed services.